More Than Communion: Imagining an Eschatological Ecclesiology 9780567659880, 9780567663771, 9780567659897

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ECCLESIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS

20 Series Editor Gerard Mannion

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Other titles in the series: Receiving “The Nature and Mission of the Church” Christian Community Now Comparative Ecclesiology: Critical Investigations Church and Religious “Other” Ecumenical Ecclesiology Globalization and the Mission of the Church Friendship: Exploring its Implications for the Church in Postmodernity Agreeable Agreement Being Faithful Communion, Diversity and Salvation Dumitru Staniloae: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology The Crisis of Confidence in the Catholic Church Perpetually Reforming Christian Family and Contemporary Society

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MORE THAN COMMUNION

Imagining an Eschatological Ecclesiology

Scott MacDougall

Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Imprint previously known as T&T Clark 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 © Scott MacDougall, 2015 Scott MacDougall has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN:

HB: 978-0-567-65988-0 ePDF: 978-0-567-65989-7 ePub: 978-0-567-65990-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data MacDougall, Scott. More than communion: imagining an eschatological ecclesiology / by Scott MacDougall. — 1st [edition]. pages cm. — (Ecclesiological investigations ; Volume 20) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-567-65988-0 (hbk) — ISBN 978-0-567-65989-7 (epdf) — ISBN 978-0-567-65990-3 (epub) — ISBN 978-0-567-66377-1 (xml) 1. Church–Catholicity. 2. Eschatology. 3. Zizioulas, Jean, 1931– 4. Milbank, John. I. Title. BV601.3.M33 2015 262—dc23 2014048282 Typeset by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk, UK

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CONTENTS Acknowledgments

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Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION: MORE THAN COMMUNION?

1.1 Ecclesiology and Theological Imagination 1.2 Communion Ecclesiology: Dominant Paradigm, Diverse Meanings 1.3 The Ecclesiological Importance of (Re-)Imagining Communion 1.4 Arguing for the “More” 1.5 Some Terminological and Typographical Remarks 1.5.1 Church or the Church? 1.5.2 Kingdom of God or Basileia tou Theou? 1.5.3 Typographical Notes

1 1 3 5 6 10 10 11 12

Chapter 2 ECCLESIOLOGIES OF COMMUNION: PROPOSITIONS AND PROPOSALS, PROBLEMS AND PERILS

2.1 Propositions and Proposals 2.1.1 Communion Ecclesiology in the Roman Catholic Church 2.1.2 Communion Ecclesiology and the Orthodox Tradition 2.1.3 Communion Ecclesiology and the Anglican Communion 2.1.4 Communion Ecclesiology and the Ecumenical Endeavor 2.2 Problems and Perils 2.2.1 Background Critiques of Ecclesiologies of Communion Problematic Readings of Koinonia in the New Testament Inattention to the Provisionality of Models The Risks of Ontologizing 2.2.2 Principal Critiques of Communion Ecclesiology The Eschatological Critique An ecclesiocentric eschatology A realized eschatology A Johannine eschatology A restorationist eschatology The Relational Critique The Practical Critique 2.3 Beyond Ecclesiologies of Communion

13 14 15 19 22 27 31 33 33 35 36 40 40 41 43 46 48 50 55 58

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Chapter 3 CHURCH BEYOND THE WORLD: JOHN ZIZIOULAS

3.1 Zizioulas’ Theological Project: Communion as Truth 3.2 Zizioulas’ Ecclesiology: Communion in the Body of Christ 3.2.1 The Church as the Body of Christ 3.2.2 Ecclesial Communion, Unity, and Difference 3.2.3 Communion and the World: Locating Zizioulas’ Church 3.3 Zizioulas’ Eschatological Ecclesiology 3.3.1 Zizioulas’ Construal of Eschatology 3.3.2 The Eschatological Character of Zizioulas’ Ecclesiology 3.4 Zizioulas’ Eschatological Ecclesial Practice 3.4.1 Eucharist: Icon of the Eschatological Truth of Communion 3.4.2 Eucharistic Practice and the World

63 65 72 72 75 82 86 86 89 92 92 97

Chapter 4 CHURCH OVER AGAINST THE WORLD: JOHN MILBANK

4.1 Milbank’s Theological Project: Overcoming (Post)modernity 4.1.1 Milbank’s Problem: The Rise of the Secular 4.1.2 Milbank’s Ontologies: Agonistics and Metaphysics 4.1.3 Telling the Truth: Outnarrating the Secular–Modern 4.2 Milbank’s Ecclesiology: The Church as a Logic 4.3 Milbank’s Eschatological Ecclesiology 4.4 Milbank’s Eschatological Ecclesial Practice

101 102 102 108 113 117 122 129

Chapter 5 CHURCH IN THE WORLD: AN ESCHATOLOGICAL IMAGINATION FOR CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES

5.1 Eschatological Imagination 5.1.1 The Provisional Character of Eschatological Imagination 5.1.2 The Theological Role of Eschatological Imagination 5.1.3 The Grammar of Eschatological Imagination 5.2 Eschatological Considerations for Ecclesiology 5.2.1 Not Apocalyptic, But Not Non-apocalyptic 5.2.2 Not Individual, But Including the Individual 5.2.3 Not Historical, But Involving History 5.2.4 Fulfillment of the Promise of God 5.3 Imagining an Eschatology of Fulfillment 5.3.1 A Real Future Based on Divine Promise The Future in Eschatology The Future as Eschatological Promise The Future as Fulfillment 5.3.2 An Already–Not Yet Structure A Scriptural Consistency: The New Testament Witness

141 142 142 144 146 149 149 151 153 156 159 160 160 164 166 168 168

Contents

Tension in the New Testament What’s the matter with John? Resisting Overly Realized Eschatology: A Theological Imperative

vii 168 170 173

Chapter 6 CHURCH FOR THE WORLD PART I: REIMAGINING ESCHATOLOGICAL ECCLESIOLOGY

6.1 The Missio Ecclesiae: Eschatological Anticipation 6.1.1 Called to Anticipation 6.1.2 A Worldly Vocation 6.2 Five Marks of an Eschatological Ecclesiology 6.2.1 Tensiveness Tensiveness in Ecclesiological Perspective The Tensiveness of the Sacraments 6.2.2 Openness Openness to the Undetermined Future The Openness of Ecclesial Humility 6.2.3 Risk The Risk of Suffering The Risk of Communion 6.2.4 Trust Trust and Ecclesial Authority Trust and Hierarchy Trust in Light of Tradition and Apostolicity 6.2.5 Hope

177 178 178 181 186 186 186 188 191 191 195 201 201 203 204 205 207 208 210

Chapter 7 CHURCH FOR THE WORLD PART II: PRACTICING ESCHATOLOGICAL ECCLESIOLOGY

7.1 Theological Imagination: Practice-shaped and Practice-shaping 7.2 Practicing Eschatology: The Bass–Dykstra “School” of Practical Theology 7.2.1 Context and History of the Christian Practices Approach to Practical Theology 7.2.2 Eschatological Horizons in Christian Practice 7.3 Practicing Eschatological Ecclesiology: Church as the Gathered Disciples of the God of Promise 7.3.1 Breaking Down the Wall: Imagining “Worldly” Practice as Basileia Discipleship 7.3.2 Embodying Anticipation: Incarnating the Eschatological Ecclesial Imagination 7.4 Communion without Closure: Imagining a Church of the Open Promise

215 216 220 220 224 233 236 242 247

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Chapter 8 CONCLUSION: MORE THAN COMMUNION ECCLESIOLOGY: BEING A CHURCH OF THE BASILEIA IN AND FOR THE WORLD

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References Index

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My deep appreciation is extended to the Fordham University Department of Theology for the theological training from which this work emerged and for the intellectual, moral, spiritual (and material!) support I received while a doctoral student at that fine institution. Sincere thanks are offered, too, to the Louisville Institute, which awarded me a Dissertation Fellowship that allowed me to complete the dissertation on which this book is based during the 2012–2013 academic year without any distractions not of my own making. Finally, I express my profound thanks and appreciation to all who have reviewed or commented on this work in whole or in part, noting particularly Gerard Mannion, whose support over the years has been invaluable to me; Judith M. Kubicki, C.S.S.F., and Terrence W. Tilley, the faculty readers of my dissertation; Tom Beaudoin and Aristotle Papanikolaou, who challenged me in many fruitful ways as members of my dissertation committee; and above all, Bradford E. Hinze, my redoubtable dissertation director, for his willingness to let me explore this terrain, his patient yet firm guidance, and his true friendship, which not only saw me through my formation as a theologian, but lifted me up all along the journey. Although any errors or missteps one might discover in the text that follows are my own, anything profitable in it is due to the influence of these scholar–theologians and all my teachers at Fordham, to whom I am more grateful than I can say.

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Chapter 1 I N T R O DU C T IO N : M O R E T HA N C OM M U N IO N ?

1.1 Ecclesiology and Theological Imagination At its best, ecclesiology is the theological articulation of an imagination of what it is to be church. This does not mean that ecclesiology is a flight of theological fancy. Ecclesiological imagination is the type of imagination that philosopher Charles Taylor describes in his concept of the “social imaginary.”1 For Taylor, this “imaginary” represents the pre-conscious, pre-theoretical “background” that unifies the members of a society or a community. Encoded in shared perspectives, repeated narratives, and common practices, this social imaginary provides a people with a foundational imagination of who they are, how they relate to one another, and what to expect from their joint life. It is the framework that gives significance to their daily actions. It supplies a horizon of normativity, commitment to a set of metaphysical or moral truths that are taken to underlie the social order, that make things “the way they are.” The social imaginary is not a mere mental construct, but a way of being in the world. It is “the water one swims in.” It is the context within which one’s reality, one’s actions, and one’s identity are formed and have meaning. This imagination often remains invisible. Partially, this is because it includes so much: the intellectual, affective, bodily, historical, religious, and aspirational aspects of a particular community. It is therefore too broad, deep, complex, and open to be contained by “theory,” and it is so thoroughgoing, so apparently “given,” that it is difficult to perceive. Such an imagination takes shape as it is lived, as new ideas result in new practices and vice versa, in a slow and never-ending circular flow of action into vision, vision into action, and around again.2 Theology in its broadest sense can be understood as being a kind of “theological imaginary” analogous to Taylor’s social imaginary. James K. A. Smith, for example, explicitly adverting to Taylor, demonstrates how a theological imagination shapes and is shaped by the mode of Christian life in which a person’s

1. Taylor’s concept of the social imaginary is summarized in Taylor’s Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), pp. 23–30; and his A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 171–76. 2. Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, pp. 23–25, 29–30.

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identity is rooted.3 As such, this theological imagination is much more profound than the “Christian worldview” that is often invoked, particularly in more conservative quarters. Such a notion is far too perspectival and intellectual.4 Although it includes the intellect, theological imagination, like the social imaginary, is pre-cognitive, synthetic, affective, embodied, narrative, and poetic.5 It cannot be limited to the mental sphere because this is an imagination of God, the world, and our place in it that is fully lived rather than merely thought.6 It is a theological vision of human flourishing, profoundly informed by the scripture, tradition, and personal experience of Christian faith, that shapes and is shaped by (for better and for worse) our manner of life and that provides and reflects (for better and for worse) a template for the world we desire and the people we seek to become.7 Theological imagination does not “express” a view of the world. That, again, would make it the result of an intellectual process. Instead, like the social imaginary, it is an embodied understanding of the world, a pre-reflective intuition about reality and how to live in it, operationalized by and already embedded in what we think and do.8 Transposed into a phenomenological key, the theological imagination is like Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s praktognosia, “know-how,” a bodily, unthought, unthematized, deeply contextual capacity of the human person to move in the world in a way that has significance and that accords with the complex reality operating in a person’s “background,” prior to reflection and without having to make recourse to “theory,” which would include “theology,” in the technical sense.9 Christian community—church—is also theologically imagined in this way. Different imaginations of church result in and from the ways we “do” church. But in each case, this is, for most Christian people simply a facet of what Christian people do, not something carefully considered. When subjected to critical reflection, of course, this becomes ecclesiology in the formal mode of academic theology. But there is what we might call an ecclesial imagination that runs deeper and broader than scholarly theologies of church. It is this imagination of Christian community— conceptual, but not entirely so, embodied, “known” in the phenomenological sense in a pre-reflective way according to the deeper sense we have made of God, the world, and our place in it, supported by a common (scriptural) narrative and undergirded by common practices, both traditional and new, a manner of corporate life that endows our individual lives with profound significance—that I want to try

3. See especially the two published volumes of James K. A. Smith’s ongoing Cultural Liturgies project: Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formations (Cultural Liturgies, 1; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009); and Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works (Cultural Liturgies, 2; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013). 4. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, p. 65. 5. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom, pp. 16–20, 32, 36. 6. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, pp. 57, 64. 7. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, p. 54. 8. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, p. 69. 9. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom, p. 56.

Introduction: More than Communion?

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to bring into focus. Being a piece of written theology, this discussion will necessarily be skewed in an intellectual and conceptual direction. But, being driven by theological imagination rather than simply “theology,” the embodied, the practical, the lived, the aspirational, and the affective dimensions of what it means to be church will be at all times close at hand and should be what come to the reader’s mind whenever “imagination” and its cognates appear here. We cannot be church properly, we do not do Christian community well, if our ecclesial imagination is stunted. If theological imagination is a lived vision of human flourishing in light of a pre-thematized understanding of God, the world, and our place in it, what is imagined to constitute that flourishing will have everything to do with how we imagine church. This means our ecclesial imagination is inhibited if we do not have a robust imagination of that which gives rise to what is of ultimate value. The aspect of theological imagination that pertains to our vision of what has enduring significance is handled under the heading of eschatology. Eschatological imagination, the lived vision of what suffuses with divine meaning the entire drama of the cosmos from creation to ultimate fulfillment, provides the imaginative background for how we embody Christian community. The eschatological imagination and the ecclesial imagination are inextricably linked. Doing the difficult work of opening the eschatological imagination, therefore, opens the ecclesial imagination, making available modes of being church that are more in keeping with the vocation of Christian community and that serve God and God’s beloved creation in more life-giving ways. In light of this, I want to show that “communion ecclesiology,” the principal working theology of the church among ecclesiologists in the West, in the East, and ecumenically, tends to be associated with an eschatology that is not as rich as it might be. This limits our ability to imagine church more fully. The way in which ecclesiologies of communion often imagine eschatology sometimes forestalls modes of being church that could emerge from a more generous eschatological imagination, modes that would allow Christian community to live better into its appointed task of loving and serving the world God loves, as an anticipation of the relational perfection God desires for the entire creation.

1.2 Communion Ecclesiology: Dominant Paradigm, Diverse Meanings Communion ecclesiology is particularly strong among theologians rooted in what Miroslav Volf calls the “episcopal churches,” meaning “those churches in which the office of the episcopate is affirmed for strictly dogmatic rather than practical reasons,”10 which also happen to be the traditions with “higher” sacramental theologies—primarily the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican traditions, though this also includes some Lutherans, Methodists, and other Protestants. Communion ecclesiology is by no means limited to these branches of Christianity, however. It is accepted by the vast majority of churches involved in ecumenical 10. Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), p. 13.

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work. The ecumenical movement has played an especially significant role in bringing communion ecclesiology to the fore. It has not itself generated new versions of communion ecclesiology, but has drawn upon the communionecclesiological perspectives of the traditions involved to advance its work, as these are seen to be deeply consonant with the movement’s goal of visible Christian unity. Roger Haight contends that communion ecclesiology connects with the ecumenical desire to identify common ecclesiological ground among the manifold expressions of church in a manner that affirms and maintains their essential unityin-plurality.11 In addition, Haight posits that the pre-eminent ecumenical organization, the World Council of Churches (WCC), without being a church itself, “represents a form of actual communion,” to some extent enacting the communion it extols in its ecclesiological statements.12 Despite the dominant status of the communion notion among ecclesiologists, to state that a particular theologian advances a “communion ecclesiology” does not indicate that she maintains a specific theology of the church so much as it does that she is theologically situated within a range of ecclesiological possibilities. “Communion ecclesiology” can mean different, sometimes even contradictory, things depending upon who is invoking it. For this reason, some think “communion ecclesiology” has become a relatively empty catch-all phrase.13 To others, the openness of the idea is its strength. For them, communion ecclesiology is a “flexible model” that includes (or can include) many different ecclesiological perspectives.14 Haight thinks that the term “communion ecclesiology” is left “deliberately vague” precisely for this reason.15 The subtitle of Dennis Doyle’s study, Communion Ecclesiology: Vision and Versions, gestures toward this.16 A WCC statement and an influential letter from the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, for example, may both purport to espouse communion ecclesiology, but it certainly does not look

11. Roger Haight, Ecclesial Existence (Christian Community in History, 3; New York: Continuum, 2008), p. xi; Roger Haight, “Comparative Ecclesiology,” in Gerard Mannion and Lewis S. Mudge (eds), The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church (New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 397. 12. Roger Haight, Comparative Ecclesiology (Christian Community in History, 2; New York: Continuum, 2005), p. 424. 13. David McLoughlin writes that communion ecclesiology is “an umbrella concept under which Catholics, Orthodox and Anglicans have increasingly found themselves huddling” (“Communio Models of Church,” in Bernard Hoose (ed.), Authority in the Roman Catholic Church: Theory and Practice (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 185–86). See also Joseph D. Small, “What Is Communion and When Is It Full?” Ecclesiology 2 (2005), pp. 71–87. 14. See for example Nicholas M. Healy, “The Church in Modern Theology,” in Mannion and Mudge, p. 123. 15. Haight, Comparative Ecclesiology, p. 423; Haight, Ecclesial Existence, p. 56. 16. Dennis Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology: Vision and Versions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000). The introduction to his book, also entitled “Vision and Versions,” explicates this complexity.

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the same in both cases.17 The breadth of the term “communion ecclesiology” permits it to underwrite ideas of church that differ significantly.18 As a result, it is better to speak of plural ecclesiologies of communion rather than a monolithic communion ecclesiology. An ecclesiology of communion falls somewhere within a generous spectrum of theological possibilities, depending upon how a theologian’s ecclesiology interacts with that theologian’s other commitments.

1.3 The Ecclesiological Importance of (Re-)Imagining Communion Diverse as they are, however, all communion ecclesiologies are predicated upon a rich and multi-layered understanding of communion (koinonia) and its relation to ecclesial life: the trinitarian communion of persons in the Godhead, into which human persons are incorporated or in which they participate; church as a communion of persons within a community and of communities in communion with one another, related in some way to trinitarian communion; and the practice of eucharistic communion as an entry point into or mode of communion life. Communion ecclesiologies emphasize aspects of church that are crucial: unity, structure, apostolic fidelity, traditional wisdom, and eucharist as the ritual act that simultaneously effects communion with the triune God who in Godself is communion, the churches’ inter-ecclesial communion, and the communion of church members with one another. None of this should be rejected or even de-emphasized. Ecclesiological trouble arises, however, if these aspects of being church come to define church, if they alone form an ecclesiological imagination that bars tempering commitment to unity with an equal commitment to diversity, emphasis on structure with a flexibility that allows churches to develop and respond to changing conditions, reverence for apostolic fidelity with an ability to perceive apostolicity in new forms, honoring traditional wisdom with new knowledge and insight, and affirmation of the centrality of eucharist with an equal emphasis on other sacramental and nonsacramental practices. The issue is not that ecclesiologies of communion do not focus on concerns proper to the ecclesiological enterprise. They do. The issue is that they often extol the virtues of some important facets of healthy Christian community without perceiving, or even while actively denying, the equal importance of others. In general, ecclesiologies of communion tend to understand communion to be realizable now, as a gift that the Holy Spirit offers to, in, and through churches. This is closely connected to the eschatological imagination of such ecclesiologies, which often understands the eschatological new life opened by Christ to be a fully present reality, manifested in the form of ecclesial communion, a demonstrable, current

17. Clare Watkins,“Objecting to Koinonia: The Question of Christian Discipleship Today— And Why Communion Is Not the Answer,” Louvain Studies 28 (2003), pp. 326–43 (338–39). 18. Don Saines, “Wider, Broader, Richer: Trinitarian Theology and Ministerial Order,” Anglican Theological Review 92 (2010), pp. 511–35 (520).

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phenomenon. The eschatological promise of communion is too often reduced to focus on churches themselves in such ecclesiologies. If communion is imagined differently, however, this changes. A more tensive eschatological imagination, one that maintains that the eschatological promise of God is in fact offered now, as ecclesiologists of communion claim, but not in a full or total way (that fulfillment of this promise remains a future reality), and that it is creation as a whole and not the Christian church alone that will be its beneficiary, changes the status of communion and the way churches figure in the ongoing work of God. The project here, therefore, is not to dethrone communion as the ascendant approach to ecclesiology. On the contrary, it is to push it further. It is to maintain that communion ecclesiologies do not go far enough. It is to assert that the communion invoked by ecclesiologists of communion is actually too limited, that communion includes more than what ecclesiologies of communion suppose, and that a true ecclesiology of communion entails more than what most communion ecclesiologies provide. The intention here is to seek the “more” to communion so that a theological imagination of church in conversation with it can be “more,” can result in Christian communities characterized by a communion that ecclesiologies of communion ostensibly desire but are ultimately, in my view, unable to deliver. In short, for a communion ecclesiology to effect communion, it needs to imagine communion more expansively and, in doing so, to imagine church more eschatologically. The hypothesis here is that the eschatological imagination of communion ecclesiologies, being overly realized, is of a piece with a view of communion that is too limited and that its construal of church stops short of embracing a richer sense of the vocation and soteriological role of Christian community that would arise alongside a larger eschatological imagination of communion. Current ecclesiologies of communion prematurely foreclose upon important ecclesiological opportunities. By seeking the “more” to communion that is missed by an overly realized eschatological imagination, we can find the “more” to communion ecclesiology, a richer perspective on what it means to be church, which supports a deeper, more life-giving, and more scripturally and theologically appropriate form of communion and of church.

1.4 Arguing for the “More” I begin attempting to make this case by providing in Chapter 2 the background necessary for grasping more fully what communion ecclesiologies are, offering a brief portrait of this family of church-focused theologies that includes their history, development, core themes, concepts, and preoccupations. I also present certain critiques of such ecclesiologies, the questions and concerns that drive the overall endeavor. To provide specificity and concreteness to the argument, I then turn in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 to examinations of the work of the Orthodox bishop and theologian John Zizioulas and Anglican scholar and theologian John Milbank. Chapter  3

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takes up an examination of Zizioulas’ ecclesiology and Chapter  4 examines Milbank’s, demonstrating their consonance with the themes of communion ecclesiologies, situating their own ecclesiologies within the context of their respective overarching theological commitments and projects, delineating the ways in which these are consistent with their eschatological viewpoints, and raising concerns brought to the fore by their construals of eschatology and church. Zizioulas and Milbank were not selected arbitrarily. Both are deeply concerned about the social and theological effects of Western modernity on the Christian church, on individuals and groups associated with it, and on the wider culture. Both have responded to the challenges of modernity by offering theologies that creatively retrieve and develop a perceived Christian past, one that is underwritten by classical doctrines of the Trinity, theological anthropology, and eschatology. They offer an account of Christian community and how relationality is understood and lived within it that provides a counterpoint to modernity’s conception and experience of the same. For them, communion is the principal category for ecclesiality because communion, and all that it entails, is precisely what is missing from (post)modern life. In keeping with widely shared perspectives of communion ecclesiologists, both Zizioulas and Milbank emphasize ecclesial unity, structure, apostolicity, tradition, and eucharistic worship, all of which is funded by a multidimensional notion of communion as the key to understanding the character and vocation of church. Although they do so differently, both Zizioulas and Milbank, in a manner characteristic of ecclesiologies of communion, “unif[y] koinonia as mystery of the Church with koinonia as mystery of God, Pneuma with Ecclesia, Christology with Pneumatology, liturgy—especially the Eucharist—with theology.”19 They do this precisely to respond to the deep problems raised by modernity by proposing communion as their best solution. These theologians can both be considered ecclesiologists of communion— Zizioulas in a very direct sense and Milbank in an indirect one, which allows my argument to engage a spectrum of communion-ecclesiological perspectives. As a noted theologian and ecumenical leader, Zizioulas wrote several highly influential books such as Being as Communion (1985), Communion and Otherness (2007), and The Eucharistic Communion and the World (2011), which are profound ruminations on the meaning and implications of communion ecclesiology. Milbank is not an ecclesiologist at all in terms of his theological specialization, but the Christian church is a primary focus throughout his writings and Milbank advances an ecclesiological perspective that shares many of the aims, commitments, themes, and shortcomings of ecclesiologies of communion. The fact that a whole range of theologians interact with Milbank and with Radical Orthodoxy, the theological movement with which Milbank is closely associated, in advancing their own theologies makes surfacing the communion-ecclesiological import of his work an urgent task.

19. Wayne J. Hankey, “Theoria versus Poesis: Neoplatonism and Trinitarian Difference in Aquinas, John Milbank, Jean-Luc Marion and John Zizioulas,” Modern Theology 15 (1999), pp. 387–415 (394).

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The overarching project in which Zizioulas’ theology is engaged is a philosophical and theological reconstruction of the development of patristic thought on the character of “personhood,” one that allows for a deep understanding of what personhood means theologically and ecclesiologically. Zizioulas situates his theological anthropology within a larger ontology centered on communion, as a corrective for the individualistic excesses fomented by modernity. For Zizioulas, to be a person at all is an effect of participation in communion, in the trinitarian, ecclesial, and eucharistic senses. The same is true for the church itself. The church is a communion that interacts with divine communion. Each local church represents the eschatological New Jerusalem, the communion of the faithful gathered around Christ, in gathering around its bishop to celebrate the eucharistic liturgy. Each eucharistic community, in turn, is in communion across space and time with all other properly constituted eucharistic assemblies. Zizioulas asserts that a parish cannot be this on its own precisely because there is no bishop present. A parish is a communion, and so a church, only derivatively, in its (spiritual) communion with the (eucharistic) communion celebrated by the bishop, who has deputized the presbyter to celebrate a liturgy on his behalf, a liturgy of communion that is in communion with the bishop’s own, which is, in turn, an instantiation of trinitarian and eschatological communion. Eucharist, therefore, is the clearest and highest form of divine communion available under material conditions. To participate in church, especially in eucharist, is to participate in a communion that alone makes human beings authentic persons rather than mere individuals. The central effort of Milbank’s theological work is focused on drawing out a contrast he identifies in Augustine’s City of God between a prelapsarian “ontology of peace” and an “ontology of violence” that reigns in the time between the Fall and the eschaton.20 The vocation of Christianity, says Milbank, is to carry forward Christ’s work of proclaiming and instantiating the ontology of peace in the face of a powerful ontology of mimetic violence that propagates itself by disordering human desire to seek the negative (the privation of Being) instead of the positive (Being itself). Milbank agrees with Augustine in asserting that the vestiges of the Trinity within human persons constitute real participation in the communion life of the Trinity. Moreover, they create communion with others and facilitate participation in divine communion by leading us into church, the body of Christ, the concrete expression of the divine logos, second person of the Trinity. The church is, therefore, a trans-temporal “sequence” (a kind of communion) of those who have participated in the ontology of peace over against the ontology of violence, located, in an ontological–economical sense, within the trinitarian communion. Christ’s (ecclesial) body is the communion of the saints that “harmonizes” difference without “canceling” it. This is realized principally in eucharistic practice. The communion that is church is, for Milbank, the event that

20. The core programmatic text for Milbank’s project remains his 1990 magnum opus, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2nd edn., 2006).

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breaks into the ontology of violence, disrupting it by realizing the ontology of peace, thereby unmasking the non-being of the ontology of violence as the utter negativity and nothingness (nihil, evil) that it is, whenever eucharist is celebrated. Zizioulas and Milbank, though, once again, differently, understand communion in eschatological terms. Eschatology is deployed in their ecclesiologies of communion in order to advance the argument each is making against modernity and for a particular project of theological recovery that responds to it. For Zizioulas, eschatological ultimacy concerns the final fulfillment of the mission of Christ. This means returning God’s creation to God in love, praise, and thanksgiving. In this way, eschatology becomes a perfection of the worship of God. The church gathered around its bishop is the instantiation of the eschaton precisely because it is the icon of the priestly community, the communion of that assembly participating in the relationality of the trinitarian communion. In “remembering the future” this way, it fulfills the priestly vocation of Christ, who is the selfdonation of the trinitarian second person. Christ, in the incarnation, initiated the process by which that which is not God (creation) is returned and united with God by human action, in authentic love and praise. During eucharist, the eschatological reality of that communion is realized, as a mode of life. Church is, therefore, not only the communion that gives the lie to modernist autonomism and individualism, but is also the telos of creation as a whole. For Milbank, eschatological perfection is figured as a return to a prelapsarian ontology of peace. This is a peace marked by a universal concord among persons and between humanity and God, an overcoming of difference without dissolving diversity. The ecclesial role in this is to be the site in which the “sequence” of those incorporated into the ontology of peace (and into the trinitarian communion that funds it) stands against the ontology of violence, its members participating ontologically in one another and in the trinitarian economy, thus furthering the ministry of reconciliation inaugurated by Christ. In eucharist, the church participates simultaneously in the divine, quasi-Platonic Good, in the life of the Trinity, in the ontology of peace, and in one another. This interlocking construal of eschatology and ecclesiality constitutes Milbank’s ecclesiological answer to the nihilism of the ontology of violence, with which modernity is irredeemably identified: church is itself a social theory and a practice that opposes the fallen “secular city.” Because both Zizioulas and Milbank make communion, differently but similarly construed, the basis of an ecclesiology, and because the resulting ecclesiologies share a set of core concerns with ecclesiologies of communion in general, engaging these two theologians’ work provides an opportunity to explore the ways in which, despite the breadth of approaches within ecclesiologies of communion, they all tend to raise similar questions and concerns—questions and concerns that can be addressed profitably by seeking the “more” to communion and communion ecclesiology. Using the analysis of Zizioulas’ and Milbank’s ecclesiologies as a baseline, I then offer my constructive proposal for pushing such ecclesiologies of communion further by advocating for the “more,” for a richer eschatological imagination and a

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concomitantly richer eschatological ecclesiology of communion. Informed by the work of theologians such as Wolfhart Pannenberg, Johannes Baptist Metz, and, especially, Jürgen Moltmann, theologians whose positions are somewhat critical of the eschatological and ecclesiological positions typically maintained by ecclesiologists of communion, Chapter 5 articulates an eschatological imagination that pushes the idea of communion past the boundaries of Christian community to embrace the entirety of creation. Chapter 6 builds upon this by proposing an ecclesiology that is in deep conversation with this revised and expanded eschatological imagination, suggesting how this addresses the concerns I raise about ecclesiologies of communion in general and the implications of Zizioulas’ and Milbank’s ecclesiologies specifically. Finally, Chapter 7, in conversation with the “Christian practices school” of practical theology, exemplified by the work of Dorothy Bass and Craig Dykstra, argues for practicing this way of being church—a necessary component in a revised imagination of both communion and communion ecclesiology in an eschatologically enhanced mode. The conclusion (Chapter 8) indicates areas for future research and offers examples of the concrete difference this mode of eschatological ecclesiological imagination makes. The aim of this project is to demonstrate how recovering the “more” to communion and ecclesiologies of communion helps us to imagine—to conceptualize while living out of and into—a church that is not so much beyond the world (as seems to be the case in Zizioulas’ ecclesiology) or over against the world (which appears to be the case in Milbank’s) but in and for the world. Such a recovery helps us see more clearly that church is a community of disciples that gathers to anticipate the promised basileia of God—the eschatological perfection of the cosmos in the form of a thoroughgoing, four-fold communion between humanity and God, among human beings, within human persons, and between humanity and the rest of creation—through a life of ecclesial worship and witness that is ultimately inseparable from the worldly service and love that so deeply informs it.

1.5 Some Terminological and Typographical Remarks 1.5.1 Church or the Church? Unlike many of the theologians whose work I explore, I almost never refer to the church. Normative statements pertaining to the church, it seems to me, can only apply to the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church of creedal attestation. In our time, this is an object of hope rather than an empirical reality. As such, it is not particularly useful to invoke it. When I do, I usually refer to “the Christian church.” Of course, we may and should speak of the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church, and so on. These, however, are churches and not the church. When theologians refer to their own churches as the church, as so many do, it betrays not a little ecclesiological chauvinism, even if unintentionally. Nevertheless, theologians often write about the church. I retain this in quotations and sometimes

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when analyzing the ecclesiologies of such theologians. In my own constructive ecclesiology, however, I refer to “Christian community” or “church” without the definite article—to “being church,” “doing church,” the “character of church,” and so on—to mark that “church” only shows up in the world in the churches, in their concrete, plural, highly diverse specificity, not in an abstract universal monolith called the church. Any lack of smoothness this might cost my prose is, I hope, repaid by its theological precision and consistency with my overall position. 1.5.2 Kingdom of God or Basileia tou Theou? I also refrain from using the phrase “kingdom of God” when writing on eschatological themes. Wherever possible, I prefer to leave the term basileia tou theou untranslated, though I often shorten it to basileia.21 I agree with the many feminist and post-colonial theologians who maintain that using “kingdom” language to express the ultimate communal, egalitarian vision of God’s promised future is irredeemably problematic. Along with many others who are sensitive to these concerns, Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder, who use this New Testament concept as a principal category for re-imagining ecclesial mission, employ the term “reign of God” rather than “kingdom of God.”22 They do so in agreement with Rudolph Schnackenburg, who asserts that “reign” is a better translation of basileia than “kingdom” because it is dynamic and relational rather than static and spatial.23 The use of “reign,” however, also connotes a political ruler–subject model of “power over” rather than the relational concept of “power with and for” that I take to be the quality of life in this coming state of being. For this reason, I prefer to leave basileia untranslated. This is the tack taken by Johannes van der Ven, who lays out in great detail the character, historical meaning, and theological function of “the basileia symbol” and who is unable to subscribe to any equivalent term that captures its multivalence while avoiding undue political overtones.24 Scripture scholar Ben Witherington, III, also allows basileia to stand untranslated in his technical writing,25 even if he uses the more commonly accepted verbiage in work intended for less specialized

21. Typographically, I treat basileia as a term of theological art, like eschaton or parousia, and do not italicize it, while I treat basileia tou theou as a Greek phrase and do italicize it accordingly, as with koinonia, etc. 22. Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, “Mission as Liberating Service of the Reign of God,” in Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004), pp. 305–22. 23. Rudolf Schnackenburg, Gottes Herrschaft und Reich (God’s Rule and Kingdom) (New York: Herder & Herder, 1963). 24. Johannes van der Ven, Practical Theology: An Empirical Approach (Louvain, Belgium: Peeters, 1998), pp. 69–76. 25. See for example his Jesus, Paul, and the End of the World: A Comparative Study in New Testament Eschatology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1992).

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audiences.26 Witherington understands basileia to denote “dominion” or “domain,”27 which makes good sense: the basileia is the space–time in which the mode of being that Jesus specified is realized, not a political arrangement in which God as “lord” exercises power over “his” human subjects, which is what “kingdom” and “reign” can imply. Of course, this does not mean that the use of basileia (or, indeed, “dominion” or “domain”) has no political connotations. On the contrary, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza employs basileia in her eschatological writing precisely because she thinks it echoes with the same political resonance for us that it did for the early Christians, being an “imaginative” symbol of God’s emancipatory empire that exposes and resists the oppressive human politics of domination.28 For similar reasons, Terrence Tilley uses a combination of English-language equivalents for basileia tou theou along with leaving the phrase untranslated.29 For me, basileia lacks the controlling, hierarchical connotations that both “kingdom” and “reign” carry, and using this term affords it—for most of us English speakers, at least—a sense of the otherness and incommensurability that talk about God’s “lordship” (which itself can be a problematic term!) should evoke. 1.5.3 Typographical Notes While my own preference is to employ gender-inclusive language, and while I do so in my own text, I have opted not to change masculine pronouns for God or human beings in quotations from the work of others, so as not to clutter up those passages with endless brackets or uses of sic. Likewise, I have preserved in quoted texts authors’ original capitalizations and italicizations (or lack thereof). Finally, I have retained the diacritical marks on non-English words where they were used in the original texts, while in my own writing they have been omitted.

26. See for example his Imminent Domain: The Story of the Kingdom of God and Its Celebration (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2009). Though he uses “kingdom” in this work—and in the other works in the series it inaugurated—he points out for readers that, while basileia, “and more importantly the Aramaic term that Jesus likely used (malkuta),” are often translated as “kingdom,” these terms refer less to a place than “to an activity or condition” (Witherington, Imminent Domain, p. 2). 27. See Witherington, Jesus, Paul, and the End of the World, p. 51; and the title of his Imminent Domain. 28. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, “To Follow the Vision: The Jesus Movement as Basileia Movement,” in Margaret A. Farley and Serene Jones (eds), Liberating Eschatology: Essays in Honor of Letty M. Russell (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1999), pp. 134–35. 29. Terrence W. Tilley, The Disciples’ Jesus: Christology as Reconciling Practice (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2008). Follow the references to “basileia” in the book’s index to trace Tilley’s interesting, nuanced discussion of which terms could and which others absolutely do not constitute a proper English translation.

Chapter 2 E C C L E SIO L O G I E S O F C OM M U N IO N : P R O P O SI T IO N S AND PROPOSALS, PROBLEMS AND PERILS

Defining communion ecclesiology with precision is problematic. No two ecclesiologies of communion offer exactly the same perspective. They do, however, share themes and preoccupations. Fundamentally, communion ecclesiology rests on the conviction that trinitarian and eucharistic communion are the twin supports for how we imagine ecclesial communion. This idea is virtually axiomatic among theologians of communion.1 The intra-trinitarian relationship of the divine persons of the immanent Trinity mirror the relational components of ecclesiality. This is actualized in the celebration of eucharist, when a church becomes a communion in communion with the trinitarian communion through “grace and sacrament.”2 Participation in eucharistic communion is participation in the trinitarian communion, which produces a united ecclesial communion that comprises and reconciles tensions between the one and the many, the universal and the local, and so on. In the late twentieth century, influential theologians from the more sacramental Christian traditions formulated versions of communion ecclesiology both within their denominations and in the ecumenical sphere. Roman Catholic ecclesiologists saw communion ecclesiology as a logical outgrowth of the Vatican II reforms or, in some cases, as a means of curtailing “excesses” unleashed by the council. Orthodox theologians reclaimed what they took to be the patristic heritage of communionoriented thinking about church in order to assert a more authentic way of being in the world than was on offer in either the increasingly secular and socially atomized culture of the West or in the other branches of Christianity. Anglicans perceived in communion ecclesiology an answer to urgent questions related to the preservation of ecclesial unity among a family of churches with a common heritage but few authoritative structural links and that, being dispersed throughout the world, was

1. Brian Flanagan, Communion, Diversity, and Salvation: The Contribution of Jean-Marie Tillard to Systematic Ecclesiology (Ecclesiological Investigations, 12; London: T&T Clark, 2011), p. 41. 2. See for example Avery Dulles, Models of the Church (New York: Doubleday, expanded edn., 2002), p. 43; and Susan K. Wood, “The Church as Communion,” in Peter Phan (ed.), The Gift of the Church: A Textbook on Ecclesiology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2000), p. 160.

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challenged by vast differences in history, culture, values, and theology. In each of these contexts, communion ecclesiology was taken up to fill a perceived need, to address the exigencies of (post)modernity. Simultaneously, each of these groups brought its general acceptance of the communion-ecclesiological ideal to its bi- and multi-lateral dialogues with the others and into their work with the World Council of Churches (WCC). Communion ecclesiology took root and flourished at the WCC, which, primed by nearly a century of effort to arrive at a compelling theological vision of a united church, was eager to receive it. The consultations and debates that led to the development of the WCC’s church-related statements allowed the strands of communion ecclesiology each denomination brought to the discussions to crossfertilize with the others, after which the communion idea was received back into the various denominational arenas, having been modified (to various degrees) and validated by the dialogical encounter, a recursive process that was repeated with the development of each successive WCC statement. Often, this transmission of the communion idea occurred under the influence of one or more key thinkers who moved within and between the confessional and ecumenical spheres and who were in deep theological conversation with one another. For example, noted communion ecclesiologist J.-M. R. Tillard, a Roman Catholic, worked with the distinguished Orthodox theologian of communion, John Zizioulas, at the WCC in 1967. Tillard was a member of the Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission in 1969 and became a consultant to the Vatican’s Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. Back at the WCC, Tillard served as the vice president of the Faith and Order Commission as it was completing its work on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, a seminal ecumenical text foundational for furthering communion-ecclesiological principles. Zizioulas, in his capacities as a co-chair of the Anglican–Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Commission, a secretary of the Faith and Order Commission, and a participant in Orthodox– Roman Catholic dialogue, has been tireless in his efforts to promote broadly the ecclesial value of communion. Tillard and Zizioulas, along with Mary Tanner, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and many other distinguished theologians and advocates of communion ecclesiology, were key players in the 1993 WCC meeting in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, which unpacked the implications of one WCC document on communion ecclesiology (the Canberra Statement of 1991) in order to expand it into a more detailed treatment in a document that would eventually become The Church (2012). Primary players in the ecumenical movement thus provided an excellent conduit for the development and dissemination of the idea within and between churches.

2.1 Propositions and Proposals In general terms, how did theologies of church centered on the multi-layered idea of communion develop within specific Christian denominations and ecumenically? What are their common characteristics? Who are some of the

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crucial figures? Which are the significant texts? This portion of the chapter answers these questions in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and ecumenical contexts. These four necessarily compressed overviews allow me only to mark the themes and ideas that have emerged among ecclesiologies of communion within and across ecclesial traditions, not to analyze them fully. But this will be sufficient to supply the background needed to grasp the crucial concerns that such ecclesiologies occasion, which is the task of the second half of this chapter. 2.1.1 Communion Ecclesiology in the Roman Catholic Church The antecedents of communion ecclesiology in the Roman Catholic Church certainly stretch back prior to the Second Vatican Council. However, because Vatican II documents, especially Lumen Gentium, have often set the stage for debates over communion ecclesiology in the years since, it makes sense to pick up the story there.3 The concept of “communion” was not foremost in the minds of the council participants as they debated a theology of church. Lumen Gentium refers to the communion between the head and members of the Roman Catholic church, the hierarchical communion within the church, the communion of fellowship among members of churches and between churches, bishops being in or out of communion with the See of Rome, the communion of the saints, and, of course, Holy Communion. It does not, however, refer to church as a communion. The Council’s view, therefore, appears to be that church is characterized by communion rather than being a communion: “While the documents of Vatican II speak of the Church as a sacrament of unity, the body of Christ, a bride, flock, temple, and above all, the people of God, nowhere do the texts state that the Church itself is a communion.” As Edward Hahnenberg notes, the communion ecclesiology that emerged subsequent to the council is then an extrapolation from the invocation of communion in the council documents, not a direct reading of the texts.4

3. For an account of the proceedings at Vatican II as they relate to ecclesiology, see Joseph A. Komonchak, “Toward an Ecclesiology of Communion,” in Giuseppe Alberigo (ed.), Church as Communion: Third Period and Intersession, September 1964–September 1965 (Joseph A. Komonchak (English version ed.); History of Vatican II, 4; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2003), pp.  1–93. It is curious that this lengthy treatment of the goings-on at the council relative to its statement on ecclesiology is entitled “Toward an Ecclesiology of Communion,” given that the communion notion is barely dealt with at all, where it appears it seems to pertain mostly to questions of episcopal collegiality (e.g., pp. 63–64) or the communion of the saints (e.g., pp. 50–51), and “communion” does not even merit a mention in the volume’s “Index of Themes.” Nevertheless, in Komonchak’s estimation, Vatican II was a move toward communion ecclesiology. 4. Edward P. Hahnenberg, “The Mystical Body of Christ and Communion Ecclesiology: Historical Parallels,” Irish Theological Quarterly 70 (2005), pp. 3–30 (19).

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Yet this is precisely how those texts were interpreted. Concerned about the direction of Roman Catholic ecclesiology in the years following the council, a meeting of all Roman Catholic bishops, the Second Extraordinary Synod, was convened to “clarify” Vatican II teaching on the church. In its 1985 final report,5 the bishops held communion to be the controlling image in ecclesiology and “the ecclesiology of communion [to be] the central and fundamental idea of the Council’s documents.”6 The report stated that to be holy is to participate in the communion of the triune God,7 especially through eucharist, “the source and the culmination of the whole Christian life.”8 Church is a “sign and instrument of communion with God and also of communion and reconciliation of men with one another.”9 It is an imperfect communion now, but it is a communion destined for eschatological perfection.10 The universal church, the fullest expression of such communion, was privileged over the discrete local churches.11 This subordination of the local to the universal was, not surprisingly, replayed in a subordination of diversity to unity and in a warning against a “pure pluralism” that “leads to dissolution, destruction and the loss of identity,”12 a common refrain among ecclesiologists of communion. It can hardly be coincidental that the bishops interpreted Vatican II’s teaching as espousing a communion ecclesiology that emphasized unity, doctrinal orthodoxy, and obedience to ecclesiastical authority during their deliberations in the mid-1980s, an anxious and chaotic time marked by the culture wars in North America, the Cold War struggle against the Soviet bloc, debates over theological and liturgical inculturation, and the church’s internal conflicts over liberation theology. This, however, was not the only option available. The renowned ecclesiologist J.-M. R. Tillard espoused a version of communion ecclesiology markedly different from that offered by the Second Extraordinary Synod. Without at all downplaying the unity of the churches, Tillard’s work consistently emphasized that, in the New Testament, ecclesial communion occurs only among the local churches, by virtue of their plurality. This communion of diverse, plural, local churches is what makes the universal church present and concrete.13 Consistent with the general tenor of ecclesiologies of communion, for Tillard, trinitarian and eucharistic communion effect and accent ecclesial unity. Communion is a restoration of human nature

5. Second Extraordinary Synod, final report, 1985, St. Michael’s Call, http://www.saintmike.org/library/synod_bishops/final_report1985.html [accessed 22 July 2014]. 6. Second Extraordinary Synod, II.B.b.1. 7. Second Extraordinary Synod, II.A.4. 8. Second Extraordinary Synod, II.B.b.1. 9. Second Extraordinary Synod, II.A.2. 10. Second Extraordinary Synod, II.A.3, II.B.b.2. 11. Second Extraordinary Synod, II.B.b.2. 12. Second Extraordinary Synod, II.B.b.2. 13. J.-M. R. Tillard, Church of Churches: The Ecclesiology of Communion (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1992), p. 14.

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through participation in Christ via the Spirit, participation, therefore, in the life of the Trinity (Tillard, 1992, p. 19), as Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer (John 17) promises is possible. While the communion of the Father and the Son is not the model for ecclesial communion, as it is of an entirely different order than human communion, it is its source (Tillard, 1992, p.  51). The koinonia that Christians enjoy in the eucharistic celebration is not their own work but Christ’s prior gift, in which human beings participate (Tillard, 1992, p. 155). To enter into this communion is to heed Jesus’ call to unity. This unity is fully realized only eschatologically, but Christians must work toward it now (Tillard, 1992, p. 36), for even a “wounded” communion, once activated, can “ignite the universe” (Tillard, 1992, p. 157). Neither the report of the Second Extraordinary Synod nor the work of Tillard ended debate over the ecclesiological legacy of Vatican II. Concerned by continuing claims that Vatican II envisioned a less hierarchical and uniform Roman Catholic Church, then-cardinal and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, issued in 1992 a “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion.”14 This letter sparked a debate that stretched for nearly a decade between Ratzinger and Walter Kasper, a prominent German cardinal and president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.15 Although both agreed throughout the exchange that the universal church can only be understood properly as communion, there were significant differences between the two, differences that have continued to make themselves felt in their subsequent careers and, particularly in Ratzinger’s case, in the tone and direction of the Roman Catholic Church during his pontificate. At the heart of their disagreement was Ratzinger’s assertion in his letter that the universal church is “ontologically and temporally prior” to the particular churches16 and all that logically follows from that postulation. Kasper argued that Ratzinger’s claim that the local churches exist “in and from” the universal church in communion with God through the hierarchy and the pope was a direct inversion of Vatican II’s teaching that the universal church exists “in and from” the local churches.17 Kasper noted (as had Tillard) that the New Testament generally refers to local communities when it refers to “church.” These churches maintained communion, but not because

14. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion,” Origins 22 (25 June 1992), pp. 108–12, http://www.originsonline. com [accessed 10 February 2012]. 15. For a thorough account of the debate and for bibliographical references to the articles in German and in English that it comprises, see Kilian McDonnell, “The Ratzinger/Kasper Debate: The Universal Church and Local Churches,” Theological Studies 63 (2002), pp. 227– 50. 16. McDonnell also takes issue with the idea, and claims this language is “Ratzinger’s personal formulation” (McDonnell, “Ratzinger/Kasper Debate,” p. 228). 17. Walter Kasper, “On the Church: A Friendly Reply to Cardinal Ratzinger,” America 184 (2001), pp. 8–14 (11–12).

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of structures or a particular theology of ecclesial universality. Their communion sprang from their common character in being the total church of Christ in their respective locales. Their collegial manner of ordaining bishops, in which bishops from neighboring churches came to lay hands on the newly created bishop, ensured the creation of a network of churches bound to one another in fraternity (Kasper, 2001, p. 11). This decentralized autonomy provided what Kasper maintained the church still requires: episcopal latitude to apply “universal laws” flexibly and sensibly in local contexts, not in order to effect “cheap compromises” with local culture, but so as to ensure that local people are able to follow church teaching in good conscience and that bishops are able to remain both loyal to the church and sensitive to the exigencies of a given situation (Kasper, 2001, pp.  8–9). Kasper argued that Ratzinger’s “Platonic” construal of the universal church did not allow for this, while his own “Aristotelian” conception of it did (Kasper, 2001, p. 13). With Ratzinger’s version of communion being all vertical and no horizontal, his “one-way communication seems to violate the spirit and the letter of a communion ecclesiology,” as Todd Salzman understands it.18 To Hahnenberg, the Ratzinger letter “confirms the magisterial drift toward a Platonic, universal and idealized interpretation of communion,”19 toward a conception of a pre-existent “universal church” that is no more than an “ecclesiological abstraction,”20 yet one that consolidates a great deal of very real and concrete earthly power and control at the center. This would seem to be of a piece with what Gerard Mannion calls Ratzinger’s “(ecclesiological, indeed ecclesial) project”21 to enlist an ecclesiology of communion, underwritten by deeply scriptural and theological convictions, into his effort to maintain the unity of the Roman Catholic Church through strong centralized authority and uniformity of belief and practice. In promulgating a communion ecclesiology of a Platonic stamp (which appears to many to be the “official” Catholic ecclesiology) and in this manner (that is, from the center), it appears to have little to do with koinonia in the round, since it virtually excludes the human-to-human aspect of communion.22 This debate, in various guises, continues in the Roman Catholic Church.

18. Todd A. Salzman, “Communion Ecclesiology: Friendship as a Model of Conversation within the Church,” in J. Haers and P. de Mey (eds), Theology and Conversation: Towards a Relational Theology (Louvain, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2003), p. 538. 19. Hahnenberg, “Mystical Body of Christ,” p. 25. 20. McDonnell, “Ratzinger/Kasper Debate,” p. 241. 21. Gerard Mannion, “Postmodern Ecclesiologies,” in Gerard Mannion and Lewis S. Mudge (eds), The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church (New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 141; emphasis in original. 22. Gerard Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity: Questions for the Church in Our Time (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2007), pp.  53, 68; Nicholas Sagovsky, “The ARCIC Statements,” in Bernard Hoose (ed.), Authority in the Roman Catholic Church: Theory and Practice (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), p. 144.

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2.1.2 Communion Ecclesiology and the Orthodox Tradition Put succinctly by Timothy (Kallistos) Ware, “The Orthodox theology of the Church is above all else a theology of communion.”23 Beginning in the late nineteenth century and carried through the twentieth, Orthodox theologians re-examining the Patristic sources came to understand koinonia, communion, to be the principal means of achieving church unity. They contend that, as in the second century, the Orthodox church must be characterized by a “common mind,” united in its diversity by the shared “proclamation of the Gospel ‘according to Scripture’ as delivered by the apostles.”24 Thus one in ethos, the churches are free to govern themselves. The unity of the autocephalous Orthodox churches lies, therefore neither in structure nor in law, but in communion, a perfect unity in truth, effected by the Holy Spirit. This is not a unity imposed from the top down or from the center to the periphery, but one that emerges from the churches themselves as their common doctrinal views are generated, practiced, shared, and received. Koinonia is thus not only the Spirit-created unity in truth that comes from without. It is also the emergent relational reality that underlies the notion of sobernost, a word that might be translated as “conciliarity,” “synodality,” or even, as Ernest Skublics contends, “ecclesiality,” and an Orthodox perspective on church that underwrites its inner freedom.25 The Orthodox conception of koinonia thus emphasizes the local church. “In contemporary Orthodox theology,” writes Aristotle Papanikolaou, “the claim that the Church is constituted in the [local] eucharistic assembly has the status of a first principle in ecclesiology.”26 According to Skublics, the resurgence and promotion of this view within Orthodoxy since the end of the nineteenth century has constituted a “reaction to Enlightenment culture, science, individualism, and theology.”27 It is therefore motivated by some of the same considerations that have led other ecclesial families to champion the communion ideal, as well. The communion of the Orthodox churches is, not surprisingly, a deeply trinitarian reality. Some Orthodox thinkers contend it is insufficient to assert that church simply “reflects” the Trinity.28 Ware, however, thinks this is exactly the case, that church is an “icon” or “image” of the Trinity, a representation of trinitarian

23. Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin, new edn., 1997), p.  246; emphasis in original. 24. John Behr, “The Trinitarian Being of the Church,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 48 (2004), pp. 67–88 (80). 25. Ernest Skublics, “The Rebirth of Communion Ecclesiology within Orthodoxy: From Nineteenth-century Russians to Twenty-first Century Greeks,” Logos 46 (2005), pp. 95–124 (99). 26. Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Integrating the Ascetical and the Eucharistic: Current Challenges in Orthodox Ecclesiology,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 11 (2011), pp. 173–87 (173). 27. Skublics, “Rebirth of Communion Ecclesiology,” p. 100. 28. Behr, “Trinitarian Being of the Church,” p. 68.

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unity-in-diversity and interdependence, and of the trinitarian balance of freedom and authority.29 In its connection with the Trinity, however this is conceived, it is proper to maintain that church is, in scriptural terms, the people of God, the body of Christ, and the temple of the Holy Spirit. These images, which recur frequently in communion-ecclesiological documents, not only link church to each of the trinitarian persons in their uniqueness but also illustrate “the basic Cappadocian point” that God’s actions are not divided within the Trinity. All of the persons are always present because each is in full communion with the others.30 This trinitarian ecclesiological perspective is itself connected to a strongly eucharistic construal of church. Skublics, in fact, reports that he uses “communion ecclesiology” and “eucharistic ecclesiology” interchangeably,31 though John Erickson is not able to follow him in doing so.32 While there may be some debate over at which ecclesial level (the local or the universal) church can properly be said to be the body of Christ,33 the Orthodox are in agreement that a church’s participation in eucharist makes it precisely this and that this is what gives rise to ecclesial communion. Church is a sacramental reality and everything else about it derives from that.34 Nikolai Afanasiev, a Russian priest and theologian who fled to Paris after the Bolshevik Revolution, developed ecclesiological work started by Alexei Khomiakov and others, eventually arriving at the conclusion that the universal church is the sum total of the local churches.35 There could be, Afanasiev maintained, no universal church without its local manifestations. This did not obviate conciliarity as a mode of ecclesial communion, but it did bring the eucharistic celebration to the very heart of what it means to be church. Afanasiev’s research led him to assert that the early councils did not constitute the Christian church so much as reflect it. That is, the conciliar debates and proclamations reflected the extant views of the delegates. The resulting settlements, therefore, were received by the local churches, inspired by the Holy Spirit, as being consistent with their faith, not as constitutive of it. Church, he concluded, is therefore not a juridical creation, but a sacramental–pneumatological one.36 Interestingly, this local-centric ecclesial viewpoint is reputed to have influenced the composition of Lumen Gentium.37 Paul McPartlan claims that its drafters encouraged the bishops to familiarize themselves with Afanasiev’s work

29. Ware, Orthodox Church, pp. 240–41. 30. Behr, “Trinitarian Being of the Church,” p. 70. 31. Skublics, “Rebirth of Communion Ecclesiology,” p. 96. 32. John H. Erickson, “The Church in Modern Orthodox Thought: Toward a Baptismal Ecclesiology,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 11 (2011), pp. 137– 51 (147). 33. Papanikolaou, “Integrating the Ascetical and the Eucharistic,” p. 179. 34. Ware, Orthodox Church, p. 242. 35. Afanasiev’s seminal text is his The Church of the Holy Spirit (Vitaly Permiakov (trans.); Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2007). 36. Skublics, “Rebirth of Communion Ecclesiology,” pp. 102–4. 37. Skublics, “Rebirth of Communion Ecclesiology,” p. 106.

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because they believed it would assist them in grasping better what a eucharistic ecclesiology requires and the nature of the local church’s freedom within it.38 The Romanian Orthodox priest and theologian Dumitru Staniloae articulated a communion ecclesiology quite different from Afanasiev’s, one in which the search for unity was construed as the search for church itself39 and ecclesial communion was extolled as the divine plan for creation as a whole. Radu Bordeianu observes that Staniloae held eschatological fulfillment to be that time “when all creation will be united with the Creator in the Church,” quoting Staniloae’s view that “the Church is the union of all that exists, or is destined to encompass all that exists: God and creation. It is the fulfillment of the eternal plan of God: the union of all.”40 Staniloae, Bordeianu contends,“affirmed that creation is a Church that is not yet fully developed or actualized”41 and that when God becomes All-in-all (1 Cor. 15.28), the cosmos “will have become a Church.”42 Not surprisingly, Staniloae’s view was that church is “fully manifested” in eucharistic liturgy because it is there that ecclesial communion is effected and a church is most clearly the “icon”—and even the “sacrament”—of the Trinity it is meant to be, as the Trinity is “the structure of perfect communion.”43 John Zizioulas’ communion ecclesiology, like Staniloae’s, is also quite different from Afanasiev’s. The basis for Zizioulas’ construal of church is a patristic–scriptural personalistic anthropology.44 Authentic personhood is achieved by participation in the trinitarian communion, a prior and eternal communion rooted in the Father’s begetting of the Son and engenderment of the Spirit. The theosis of the individual, which is co-extensive with her achieving personhood, is accomplished through leaving the “biological hypostasis” and taking up the “ecclesial hypostasis,” life in churchly communion. This is effected, above all, by participation in eucharist.45 In Zizioulas’ communion ecclesiology, the accent has shifted from the horizontal communion emphasized by Afanasiev to the vertical one.

38. Paul McPartlan, “The Same but Different: Living in Communion,” in Hoose, p. 154. This would seem to be somewhat ironic, given that, in many ways, Afanasiev provides an ecclesiological perspective that is precisely the opposite of Ratzinger’s interpretation of Vatican II. 39. Dumitru Staniloae, Theology and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), p. 11. 40. Radu Bordeianu, Dumitru Staniloae: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology (Ecclesiological Investigations, 13; London: T&T Clark, 2011), p.  155. The quotation from Staniloae is Bordeianu’s own translation from the second volume of Staniloae’s Teologia Dogmatica Ortodoxa (Orthodox Dogmatic Theology) (3 vols; Bucharest, Romania: EIBMBOR, 2nd edn., 1996–1997), p. 137. See also Staniloae, Theology and the Church, p. 114, where communion is represented as the ultimate design of creation. 41. Bordeianu, Dumitru Staniloae, p. 155. 42. Bordeianu, Dumitru Staniloae, p. 151. 43. Bordeianu, Dumitru Staniloae, pp. 7, 26, 44, 46–47, 51. 44. Skublics, “Rebirth of Communion Ecclesiology,” p. 109. 45. Skublics, “Rebirth of Communion Ecclesiology,” p. 110.

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Bordeianu points out that although Staniloae and Zizioulas differ in their approaches to certain topics, for example in their attitudes toward hierarchy and the role of the laity in churches,46 in important ways their ecclesiologies are more alike than they are different, particularly in comparison with Afanasiev’s ecclesiology.47 Bordeianu asserts that Afanasiev emphasized the priority of the local church, advocating a “eucharistic ecclesiology” in which no doctrinal consensus or structural unity at the episcopal level was needed prior to eucharistic sharing, because he thought the churches’ concelebration of the sacrament would result in doctrinal consensus and structural unity. Zizioulas and Staniloae, however, emphasize the priority of the universal church, advocating a communion ecclesiology in which doctrinal consensus and structural unity at the episcopal level are required prior to eucharistic sharing, as the churches’ concelebration of the sacrament results from and is the visible sign of that doctrinal consensus and structural unity.48 Tension between these views persists. 2.1.3 Communion Ecclesiology and the Anglican Communion As early as 1851, long before there was anything called “communion ecclesiology,” the various Anglican churches began to think of themselves as the “Anglican Communion.” Invocation of “communion” was not at all arbitrary. It served specific conceptual and practical theological purposes. The choice of the word “Communion” in place of “Church” was significant, for it expressed a growing Anglican awareness that it was no longer a Church [that is, the Church of England dispersed throughout the world] unified by a central legislative body like Parliament, but a family of Churches that acknowledged a common liturgical and historical heritage. Although administratively independent from one another, these Churches were keen to remember that they had grown out of the Church of England and remained in communion with the See of Canterbury.49

Naming themselves a communion rather than a church allowed the autonomous expressions of Anglicanism in the various former and then-current outposts of the British Empire to remain in close connection, even while doing some things differently from one another.50 Communion has been of concern to Anglicans in a formal theological way, then, since at least the mid-nineteenth century.

46. Bordeianu states quite clearly that he considers Staniloae’s ecclesiology to provide “a much-needed alternative” to Zizioulas’ (Bordeianu, Dumitru Staniloae, p. 4). 47. See Bordeianu, Dumitru Staniloae, pp.  189–217 for Bordeianu’s positioning of Afanasiev’s, Staniloae’s, and Zizioulas’ ecclesiologies relative to one other. 48. Bordeianu, Dumitru Staniloae, pp. 199–209. 49. Kenneth A. Locke, The Church in Anglican Theology: An Historical, Theological and Ecumenical Exploration (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), p. 110. 50. Locke, The Church in Anglican Theology, p. 115.

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Anglicans have not understood “communion” statically, however. They have participated in and have been affected by developments in communionecclesiological thinking. The Final Report of the work undertaken by the Anglican– Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) following its first phase (1970–1981), for example, makes it clear that koinonia was the commission’s controlling ecclesial image.51 This is crucial not only for Anglicans but Christianity in general, for it is in this report “that we first find the concept of koinonia extensively used as a fundamental theme in articulating would-be ecumenical theologies; and it is the approach set out in those documents which . . . has formed the basis of the increasing use of the language not only in subsequent ARCIC documents, but in a number of other important bi-lateral ecumenical texts.”52 Given that Tillard was a commissioner, it is not surprising that the theology of the report was quite in keeping with the ecclesiologies of communion developing at the time, ideas not totally inconsonant with the Anglican ecclesiological tradition. However, the Final Report asserts that the first churches “were not a loose aggregation of autonomous communities” (presumably in contradistinction to the Anglican churches) and that ecclesial communion is embodied and maintained in the person of the bishop,53 notions that subsequently were roundly criticized among Anglicans.54 The Final Report’s accent on eucharist at the expense of baptism, on episcope at the expense of the ministry of all the baptized, and on questions of ecclesial primacy at the expense of dispersed authority was at odds with historical Anglican thought. In important ways, the Final Report marks an initial turn in Anglican ecclesiology toward the new ideas being advanced by ecclesiologists of communion. That turn was completed by a subsequent ARCIC report, The Church as Communion,55 produced during the second phase of the commission’s work (1983–2005). In it, Anglicans affirmed with Roman Catholics that ecclesial life is participation in the Trinity,56 the visible unity of churches must be attained,57 eucharist is the “pre-eminent expression and focus” of church,58 and that communion occurs as the result of a recognizably apostolic faith, safeguarded by bishops, and truly received by the church universal.59 51. Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission, The Final Report (hereafter FR), 1981, Anglican Communion, preface, http://www.anglicancommunion.org/ministry/ ecumenical/dialogues/catholic/arcic/docs/pdf/final_report_arcic_1.pdf [accessed 22 July 2014]. 52. Clare Watkins, “Objecting to Koinonia: The Question of Christian Discipleship Today— And Why Communion Is Not the Answer,” Louvain Studies 28 (2003), pp. 326–43 (329). 53. FR, “Ministry and Ordination,” paras 6, 16. 54. FR, “Elucidation on ‘Ministry and Ordination,’ ” para. 1. 55. Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), The Church as Communion (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1990). 56. Church as Communion, section 13. 57. Church as Communion, section 43. 58. Church as Communion, section 45. 59. Church as Communion, sections 25–41.

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The Virginia Report,60 produced as a theological response to a Communionwide furor occasioned by the election and ordination of its first female bishop, placed the communion ecclesiology of the ARCIC reports at the heart of its findings and further developed them. Communion was held to consist not simply in unity but in “agreement,” the antidote to “division.”61 Because “the purpose of all structures and processes of the Church is to serve the koinonia, the trinitarian life of God in the Church,”62 the report suggested that the Communion might need stronger centralized authority to preserve its “universal communion,”63 a statement at odds with the dispersed authority embodied in Anglicanism’s historically synodal and conciliar ethos and practice.64 Nevertheless, the question of enhanced centralized power became the subject of the next ARCIC report, The Gift of Authority.65 This report reiterated the claim that the tenets of communion ecclesiology require clarity and agreement in doctrine, which effects the unity of a church and thus fulfills its trinitarian mission, a mission that, the report implied, the Roman Catholic Church with its centralized hierarchy was positioned to carry out in a manner that the Anglican Communion, lacking this, was not. Just as the Virginia Report had drawn on communion-ecclesiological principles to propose centralized solutions to an ecclesial controversy, the Windsor Report66 adopted the same approach in responding to yet another Communion-wide upheaval (this time over the election and ordination of an openly gay and partnered bishop, the approval of rites in one diocese in Canada for blessing same-gender unions, and the “ministries” of bishops to Anglicans outside their jurisdictions who had been distressed by these actions). Windsor makes explicit what had previously been implicit, stating that its understanding of communion is shaped by its bi- and multi-lateral ecumenical dialogues.67 The portrait of communion ecclesiology it offers is basically familiar: ecclesial communion is a divine imperative68 stemming

60. Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission, The Virginia Report (London: Anglican Consultative Council, 1997), introduction. 61. Virginia Report, section 1.2. 62. Virginia Report, section 5.1. 63. Virginia Report, section 5.20. 64. See Locke, The Church in Anglican Theology, pp. 101–27; and Frederick H. Shriver, “Councils, Conferences and Synods,” in Stephen Sykes, John Booty, and Jonathan Knight (eds), The Study of Anglicanism (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, rev. edn., 1998), pp. 202–16. 65. Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission, The Gift of Authority, 3 September 1998, Anglican Communion, http://www.anglicancommunion.org/ministry/ ecumenical/dialogues/catholic/arcic/docs/gift_of_authority.cfm [accessed 22 July 2014]. 66. Lambeth Commission on Communion, The Windsor Report (London: Anglican Communion Office, 2004). 67. Windsor Report, para. 47. 68. Windsor Report, para. 45.

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from its trinitarian foundation.69 Unity in communion is the ultimate ecclesial ideal.70 Bishops are the Communion’s authentic teachers, the “accredited leaders of the Church.”71 Lines of authority have to be strengthened and clarified to maintain communion. Walter Kasper and the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I both praised the Windsor Report for articulating clearly and well the tenets and merits of communion ecclesiology.72 In 2006, the International Commission for Anglican–Orthodox Theological Dialogue produced The Church of the Triune God: The Cyprus Agreed Statement.73 Members of this commission were also involved in other communionecclesiological projects both inside and outside of the Anglican Communion. Zizioulas was a chair of the group and was instrumental in the composition of its report.74 His co-chair, Mark Dyer, an Episcopalian bishop, served on the commissions that produced the Virginia Report and the Windsor Report. Rowan Williams, an expert in Orthodox theology, was a member until his appointment to the See of Canterbury. This report marks another instance in which currents of communion ecclesiology circulating in multiple spheres converged. As the title suggests, the Trinity plays a tremendous role in the statement. A church exists to incorporate its members into trinitarian life. This is theosis.75 Rehearsing a strongly Zizioulan theme, communion is the “original and authentic state” of the human being, a state broken by sin. Re-establishing communion, then, is salvation.76 Participation in eucharist effects communion among its participants by “transcending” their differences, allowing them to “experience the unity of God’s

69. Windsor Report, paras 5, 45, inter alia; the report’s readers are directed to the Virginia Report for a fuller theological treatment of that theme. 70. Windsor Report, para. 3. 71. Windsor Report, para. 58. 72. Letters from Bartholomew and Kasper to the Anglican Consultative Council to this effect are reproduced in James Rosenthal and Susan T. Erdey, Living Communion: Anglican Consultative Council Report (New York: Church, 2006), pp.  459–60 and pp.  473–74, respectively. See also Walter Kasper, “Letter of His Eminence Cardinal Walter Kasper to His Grace Dr. Rowan Williams Archbishop of Canterbury,” 17 December 2004, Vatican, http:// www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/card-kasper-docs/rc_pc_ chrstuni_doc_20041217_kasper-arch-canterbury_en.html [accessed 22 July 2014]. 73. International Commission for Anglican–Orthodox Theological Dialogue, The Church of the Triune God: The Cyprus Statement Agreed by the International Commission for Anglican–Orthodox Theological Dialogue (London: Anglican Communion Office, 2006). 74. Duncan Reid notes that “Anyone who is familiar with his work will undoubtedly see the influence of Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon on the Cyprus statement” (“Anglicans and Orthodox: The Cyprus Agreed Statement,” Journal of Anglican Studies 8 (2009), pp. 184–99 (199)). 75. Cyprus Statement, section 1.21. 76. Cyprus Statement, section 3.11.

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kingdom.”77 The eucharistic effecting of communion is a pneumatological act that makes the eschaton present.78 The reign of God, simultaneously present and future,79 is nevertheless “already realized” in Jesus Christ80 and made concrete in the ritual act of eucharist. In both content and method, the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission’s 2008 report, Communion, Conflict and Hope,81 marks a 180-degree turn away from the ecclesiological perspectives of the previous statements.82 Koinonia remains central,83 but the report explicitly rejects the reduction of “unity” to “agreement.”84 Instead, “as the title suggests, ‘communion’ provides the context in which conflicts can be resolved: it is not a consequence of agreements reached over disputed areas of faith and understanding.”85 Communion transcends and contextualizes differences. It does not exacerbate them or entrench people in their positions. Rather, it helps transform people and positions.86 Neither is communion an abstract, pre-existing reality that churches access through espousing specific doctrines and performing a certain sacramental act. It is a relational phenomenon that arises, in part, on account of hard work.87 It is not a thing to be acquired, but an ethos to be practiced.88 It requires acting like a family, sticking together when relations are easy as well as when they are difficult.89 As such, communion is not the result of an exercise of hierarchical authority. This is inappropriate for churches, and is especially inappropriate for the autonomous churches of the Anglican Communion, as they are related not hierarchically but by a “dynamic catholicity”90 that “sees constant change and renewal as a necessary condition, not just a challenge to the church.”91 The report does not deviate from the standard line on the authority

77. Cyprus Statement, section 1.12. 78. Cyprus Statement, section 2.28. 79. Cyprus Statement, section 4.17. 80. Cyprus Statement, section 2.7. 81. Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission, Communion, Conflict and Hope: The Kuala Lumpur Report (London: Anglican Communion Office, 2008). 82. For a detailed analysis of the development of communion-ecclesiological thought in the Anglican context and of the contribution Communion, Conflict and Hope makes in this regard, see Scott MacDougall,“The Covenant Conundrum: How Affirming an Eschatological Ecclesiology Could Help the Anglican Communion,” Anglican Theological Review 94 (2012), pp. 5–26. 83. Communion, Conflict and Hope, note 26. 84. Communion, Conflict and Hope, para. 4. 85. Communion, Conflict and Hope, foreword. 86. Communion, Conflict and Hope, para. 6. 87. Communion, Conflict and Hope, para. 114. 88. Communion, Conflict and Hope, para. 11. 89. Communion, Conflict and Hope, para. 10. 90. Communion, Conflict and Hope, para. 119. 91. Communion, Conflict and Hope, foreword and paras 45–49.

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of bishops,92 but it does assert that bishops alone will not solve relational difficulties. It is the dispersed authority of the Communion, lodged in Spirit-led synodal and conciliar processes of discernment, both formal and informal, that truly maintains koinonia. Top–down communion ecclesiologies tend to construct abstract churches that bear only a resemblance to actual ones and that do little to promote gospel values and practices in and for the world. In contrast, “communion ‘from below,’ is real communion—arguably the most vital aspect of koinonia with God and neighbour.”93 Seeking to establish and maintain communion is a laudable and worthwhile goal. But Communion, Conflict and Hope helpfully points out that how “communion” is understood ecclesiologically makes a good deal of difference. Using the language of earlier Anglican and communion-ecclesiological reports and statements, it contends, The obligation to seek “the highest degree of communion possible” within the church is a laudable ambition, a vocation even. Yet unless we are clear what sort of communion is anticipated for congregational, local, regional or global fellowship, the terminology can be used merely to justify higher level organisational arrangements without ever analysing how they contribute to communion itself.94

The implication here is that an uncritical employment of communion ecclesiologies as a means of theologically underwriting a more hierarchical, juridical, centralized, authoritative, uniform expression of church has ramifications that, at the least, demand acknowledgment. 2.1.4 Communion Ecclesiology and the Ecumenical Endeavor Twentieth-century ecumenism was a major force behind communion ecclesiology’s rise to prominence among theologians across many branches of the Christian family. This was not only due to the role that notable ecclesiologists of communion played in ecumenical endeavors—especially Tillard and Zizioulas, as already mentioned—but also because communion ecclesiology supplied efforts to achieve visible ecclesial unity with a welcome, timely, and energizing theological rationale for proceeding. As Brian Flanagan puts it: The ecumenical movement drew on Reformation conceptions of koinonia as fellowship and, later, on Orthodox understandings of koinonia in relation to the Eucharist and Trinitarian perichoresis, in order to forge a new language of

92. See its Appendix II, “The Anglican Way: The Significance of the Episcopal Office for the Communion of the Church.” 93. Communion, Conflict and Hope, para. 121. 94. Communion, Conflict and Hope, para. 122.

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The more that ecumenical ecclesial statements featuring the tenets of communion ecclesiology were promulgated, the more influential the perspective became. A very abbreviated survey of the development of communion ideals in recent World Council of Churches (WCC) documents parallels the growth of this perspective into the dominant trans-denominational theology of church and foregrounds communion-related themes and concepts that continue to reverberate in ecclesiological thought in both the ecumenical and confessional contexts. Some of the terms and themes of communion ecclesiology appear in a nascent form in Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry,96 a watershed ecumenical statement that has been, in general, warmly received by the churches. Ecclesial communion is held to be a trinitarian reality (WCC, 1982, p.  16). Eucharist is the sacrament that “restores” human dignity and in so doing is the source of ecclesial communion (WCC, 1982, p. 12). The universal church is referred to as “the eschatological people of God,” which may indicate support for the common communion-ecclesiological notion that it is destined for eschatological perfection (WCC, 1982, p.  22). Throughout, the ministry of all the baptized is emphasized along with the importance of the three-fold order for ordained ministry and the apostolic succession of bishops. In contrast to this embryonic communion ecclesiology, the short Canberra Statement of 1991,97 a programmatic document that charted the WCC’s present ecclesiological course, supplied a developed communion-ecclesiological viewpoint. By this time, Zizioulas’ Being as Communion had long been in print, Tillard’s

95. Flanagan, Communion, Diversity, and Salvation, p.  27. Flanagan thinks that the WCC’s version of communion ecclesiology and that extolled by the Roman Catholic Church are different. The former uses it to attempt to identify what the churches have in common. The latter uses it to react to the individualizing tendencies it sees in Protestant ecclesiology and to the institutional thrust of pre-Vatican II ecclesiology, but also to shore up support for a hierarchical church (pp. 37–38). As true as this may be, there is certainly not an absence of Roman Catholic-style communion ecclesiology in some WCC documents. Although the Roman Catholic Church is not a member of the WCC, various commissions have included important Roman Catholic theologians, such as Tillard (who, admittedly, was highly influenced in his views by Orthodox ecclesiology), and some of the later and most thoroughly “communion-oriented” WCC statements were developed with strong Roman Catholic participation. 96. World Council of Churches (WCC), Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Faith and Order paper no. 111; Geneva, Switzerland: World Council of Churches, 1982). 97. World Council of Churches (WCC), The Unity of the Church: Gift and Calling—The Canberra Statement, 20 February 1991, World Council of Churches, http://www.oikoumene. org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/faith-and-order-commission/i-unity-thechurch-and-its-mission/the-unity-of-the-church-gift-and-calling-the-canberra-statement. html [accessed 22 July 2014].

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Communion of Communions was just about to appear, and both men, who had been heavily involved in the WCC’s ecclesiological work for decades, were active participants in the Canberra gathering. “Communion” appears in every paragraph of the document, which opens with this statement: The purpose of God according to Holy Scripture is to gather the whole of creation under the Lordship of Jesus Christ in whom, by the power of the Holy Spirit, all are brought into communion with God (Eph. 1). The Church is the foretaste of this communion with God and with one another. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion98 of the Holy Spirit enable the one Church to live as sign of the reign of God and servant of the reconciliation with God, promised and provided for the whole creation. The purpose of the Church is to unite people with Christ in the power of the Spirit, to manifest communion in prayer and action and thus to point to the fullness of communion with God, humanity and the whole creation in the glory of the kingdom.99

The 1993 statement Costly Unity,100 on the relationship between ecclesiology and ethics, took the communion ecclesiology of the Canberra Statement as its starting point.101 Thomas Best and Martin Robra, writing about the WCC meetings that produced the statement, contend that this work could have gone nowhere without placing koinonia at its conceptual center.102 Repackaging Stanley Hauerwas’ oft-quoted dictum, “The church does not have a social ethic; it is a social ethic,”103 Costly Unity states, “The church does not have an ethic of koinonia, it is an ethic of koinonia” (p. 5; emphasis in original). In the trinitarian church,104 moral authority is not discerned by the individual believer, but by the community as a whole105—a process that is often “costly.”106 A related statement, Costly Commitment (1994), went on to illustrate the implications of this, stating quite correctly that there can be no ecclesial unity at the cost of doing what is right.107 In these statements, communion is not conflated with unity, unity does not imply “agreement,” and

98. Note that the term here is “communion,” not “fellowship,” often the translation koinonia receives in this biblical formula (2 Cor. 13.14). 99. Canberra Statement, section 1.1. 100. World Council of Churches (WCC), Costly Unity, in Thomas F. Best and Martin Robra (eds), Ecclesiology and Ethics: Ethical Engagement, Moral Formation and the Nature of the Church (Geneva, Switzerland: WCC Publications, 1997), pp. 2–23. 101. Costly Unity, p. 4. 102. Best and Robra, Ecclesiology and Ethics, p. ix. 103. Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1983), p. 99; emphases in original. 104. Costly Unity, p. 5. 105. Costly Unity, p. 9. 106. Costly Unity, p. 6. 107. World Council of Churches (WCC), Costly Commitment, in Best and Robra, p. 25.

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neither communion nor unity take precedence over concrete and embodied witness (martyria) to the gospel. This is important to note as a contrast to other construals of communion ecclesiology, inside and outside of the WCC. On the Way to Fuller Koinonia is the title of both a 1993 convening of the WCC Faith and Order Commission at Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and of the official report of the conference proceedings, published in 1994.108 Notable theologians and ecumenists from all over the world and from virtually every Christian tradition participated in the gathering, including Tillard and Zizioulas. In some ways, this conference was an expanded version of the Canberra gathering. The presentations and discussions, which were many and detailed, and which centered completely on the theological nuances of koinonia, launched a process that developed the agenda laid out in the Canberra Statement into an initial study document entitled The Nature and Purpose of the Church (1998), which, following global consultations and input, became The Nature and Mission of the Church.109 This document, following another process of comment and revision, was the basis for the WCC’s most current articulation of ecclesiology at the worldwide ecumenical level, The Church: Towards a Common Vision.110 The Church is called a “convergence text,” a label intended to give it the same status as the WCC’s previous “convergence text,” the highly influential Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry.111 The Church attempts to articulate where churches are currently in ecclesiological agreement and disagreement, demonstrate progress toward visible unity, and inaugurate a reflective process among churches about what remains to be done in order to secure universal ecclesial unity.112 Because “the Church is fundamentally a communion in the Triune God,”113 the entire report is structured around the core concepts and themes of communion ecclesiology. Koinonia is the fundamental character of God, the church, and all creation.114 It is only through the lens of koinonia that we can achieve an appropriate balance between unity and “legitimate diversity”115 and between the universal church and

108. World Council of Churches, On the Way to Fuller Koinonia: Official Report of the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order (Thomas F. Best and Günter Gassmann (eds), Faith and Order paper no. 166 (Geneva, Switzerland: World Council of Churches, 1994)). 109. World Council of Churches, The Nature and Mission of the Church: A Stage on the Way to a Common Statement (Faith and Order paper no. 198; Geneva, Switzerland: World Council of Churches, 2005). 110. World Council of Churches (WCC), The Church: Towards a Common Vision (Faith and Order paper no. 214; Geneva, Switzerland: World Council of Churches, 2012). For a detailed account of the development of this document, see its “Historical Note,” pp. 41–47. 111. The Church, pp. vii, 46. 112. The Church, p. 2. 113. The Church, para. 23. 114. The Church, para. 25. 115. The Church, paras 28–30.

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local churches.116 Only through koinonia can we understand the shape and significance of ministry and the sacraments.117 Consistent with the tenets of most ecclesiologies of communion, The Church maintains that “the journey towards the full realization of God’s gift of communion requires Christian communities to agree about the fundamental aspects of the life of the Church,”118 normatively, but not exclusively, under the direction of bishops or ecclesial figures serving an episcopal function, theologically and practically.119 In this regard, The Church positively invokes the controversial ARCIC report The Gift of Authority more than once120 and, while being politic in its language, appears to favor a universal hierarchical primacy of the church exercised by the Bishop of Rome.121 Baptism is considered to initiate a new believer into communion, a communion that “is brought to fuller expression and nourished in the eucharist.”122 A welcome move in The Church is an extended and relatively nuanced treatment of eschatology that is absent from most communionecclesiological treatments of church and of the implications of this for mission ad extra. However, its implications for churches ad intra remain significantly underdeveloped.

2.2 Problems and Perils At the end of the twentieth century, ecclesiological challenges that churches were facing, some separately and some in common, led to the development of ecclesiologies of communion that, while they responded to different questions and needs, shared some core commitments and influenced one another tremendously, making communion ecclesiology as a general outlook on the church the reigning ecclesiological paradigm. Figures such as J.-M. R. Tillard and John Zizioulas, influential both within their own traditions and in the ecumenical sphere, facilitated communion ecclesiology’s growth in stature in a direct way, while a range of other ecumenists and theologians engaged in bi- and multi-lateral dialogues contributed to this in a less direct fashion. Nevertheless, the fact remains that by the opening decade of the twenty-first century, communion-ecclesiological concepts such as the “personal, communal, and ecclesial” exercise of authority embodied in episcope; the “limits of diversity” and “degrees of communion”; ecclesial communion as grounded in or as an icon of intra-trinitarian relationality; and the tripartite image of the trinitarian church as being simultaneously “people

116. The Church, paras 31–32. 117. The Church, paras 37–57. 118. The Church, para. 37. 119. The Church, para. 52. 120. The Church, paras 30, 39, 51, 57. 121. The Church, paras 55–57. 122. The Church, para. 42.

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of God, body of Christ, and temple of the Holy Spirit” were common currency, appearing in both ecumenical and denominational statements regarding church. Communion was the unquestioned controlling image: the communion of the Trinity underwriting the human–divine communion in the ecclesial body, made manifest in the eucharistic communion of the assembly. Church as communion was understood as the making visible of the mystery of salvation, for just as Jesus Christ was the communion of God and humanity made flesh, that relationship continued in the material form not only of eucharistic celebration, which also combined these elements, but in the reconciliation of the local and the universal, the many and the one, the diverse and the unified, the horizontal and the vertical. Certainly, communion ecclesiologies could be leveraged to emphasize one or the other of the poles of these dyads, as the Kasper–Ratzinger debate and contests over the character of communion in the Anglican context demonstrate. But that such debates and contests were to be had within the framework established by communion-ecclesiological discourse was not questioned. Neither were the crucial ecclesiological matters that the preoccupation with the communion ideal left out of the picture able to appear. Now that communion ecclesiology and its development have been described, it remains to attend to precisely those lacunae. Communion ecclesiology offers many gifts: a deep trinitarian commitment; a high sacramentality; an emphasis on the richness and value of ancient tradition and practice; and especially an impulse toward reconciling difference in the name of unity and fostering relationship with God, others, and the world. The focus on unity, the close connection between our understanding of God and our practice of human relationships, and the profound commitment to eucharist as a pillar of what it means to instantiate Christian community are all scripturally valid, theologically rich, and practically fruitful components of the communionecclesiological model. Communion ecclesiologies, however, are not a panacea for what supposedly ails the churches.123 They present challenges that, if not faced squarely and confronted directly, divert Christian community from its mission as surely as the problems that they are often held to solve. There is even more to communion than communion ecclesiologies tend to recognize, and there is more to being church than the features of it that communion ecclesiologies most often prize. The next step in discovering what this “more” might be is to attend to the critiques of ecclesiologies of communion, in order to open our theological eyes to that to which the communion paradigm is sometimes blind.

123. I agree with Brian Flanagan that the real or perceived “cultural context of fragmentation, loss of meaning, isolation, and . . . disintegration of community found in late-modern Western societies and increasingly communicated through the structures of globalization” was one of the driving forces behind the rise of communion ecclesiologies as a whole (“Communion Ecclesiologies as Contextual Theologies,” Horizons 40 (2013), pp. 53–70 (55)).

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Among such critiques, three sets of considerations are especially crucial for the investigation at hand: (1) the eschatological viewpoint that ecclesiologies of communion commonly espouse, which has (2) serious consequences for how intra- and extra-ecclesial relationality is construed within such theologies, and thus carries (3) practical implications for ecclesial life. The intersecting theological imaginations of communion and church, out of which ecclesiologies of communion tend to emerge and into which they feed, are both revealed and informed by these three broad issues. These overarching and interlocking concerns are the principal drivers of my argument’s desire to supplement ecclesiologies of communion with the “more” that is missing from them. Several others, however, operate in the background. Because these should be made explicit, I will surface first the less directly thematized concerns that ecclesiologies of communion raise before turning to discuss the three main critical areas I delineated above. This will allow me to conclude the chapter with preliminary descriptive assertions about certain problematic features of communion ecclesiologies that will figure concretely in the more detailed analyses of the representative theologies of ecclesial communion that will begin in the next chapter, after which they will be subject to further critique during the constructive phase of the work. 2.2.1 Background Critiques of Ecclesiologies of Communion Problematic Readings of Koinonia in the New Testament Clare Watkins observes that koinonia and its associated verbal forms do not appear at all in the gospels.124 In fact, koinonia language can hardly be considered prominent in scripture, despite its appearance in the Pauline corpus. The trend of reading a range of scriptural passages in light of the communion idea is simply a “benign eisegesis.” Not only does it contribute little to our understanding of the Bible and Christian community, Watkins thinks, but it obscures what should be our focus: the shape of discipleship. Pinning our ecumenical and ecclesiological hopes on koinonia seems unwarranted, since “other approaches would be more characteristic [of a scriptural understanding of church], or at least as much so as koinonia. So, why not a contemporary ecumenical ecclesiology based on hope, or the eschaton, or the Kingdom of God, or mission, or love125 . . . all of which terms are more prominent than koinonia in the scriptural texts.”126

124. This paragraph traces part of Watkins’ argument in “Objecting to Koinonia.” 125. Or, one might add, discipleship, following Avery Dulles’ ultimate arrival at “community of disciples” as his preferred model of the church (Models of the Church, pp. 195–217) or Colleen Mary Mallon’s argument in “Ecclesial Discipleship: Applying the Requirements of the Gospel to the Church as Social Institution,” Louvain Studies 28 (2003), pp. 344–62. 126. Watkins, “Objecting to Koinonia,” p. 338; ellipses in original. This is a very welcome challenge, as an ecclesiology based on these ideas is precisely what this work aims to provide.

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Andrew Lincoln agrees that, although theologizing about communion has had some positive results over the past 50 years, such theologies are not easily read off the New Testament texts where koinonia appears.127 Koinonia, he claims, is not necessarily the multivalent word some theologians take it to be. Rather, it simply has different meanings in different contexts, meanings that are not necessarily theologically connected.128 Drawing on the philological work of the German Jesuit scholar Norbert Baumert, Lincoln argues that while the verbs metecho (“to share” or “to participate in”) and koinoneo (“to enter into fellowship or partnership”) both appear in the Pauline corpus,129 they are not synonymous, as has often been asserted, and that only the former term carries the Platonic notion of “participation” upon which so much communion ecclesiology is predicated, while koinonia itself really only indicates “having something in common with.”130 Lincoln holds that Baumert’s work does not at all mean that the ideas commonly ascribed to koinonia are not present in the New Testament. “There are, of course, frequent references to a relationship of participation in Christ, in his death and resurrection and in the Spirit in Paul. The claim is simply that these are not in view when he uses the κοινων- word group.”131 Obviously, this revision of the intended meaning of koinonia and its cognates in the New Testament would have serious implications for ecclesiologies of communion, which commonly find their scriptural warrant in passages that employ this word. “If this is right, it clearly removes one of the key elements of . . . koinonia-theology constructed from particular uses of the term in Paul, namely participation in Christ, the Spirit and the eucharist.”132 It changes the meaning of koinonia and the implications of communion ecclesiology from one predicated upon a metaphysical, (Neo-)platonic participation in the divine to one of solidarity by virtue of common identity in Christ. In the case of the “strong and the weak” in Romans, for example, Paul reminds both parties they are not to judge one another because they are unified in their common allegiance to Christ. This commonality is the koinonia of which Paul writes. It lies in their “common identity and ethos,” in the love and solidarity they are to show one another as members of the same community, a community that does things differently from the honor-driven society at large. “The communion Paul wants to maintain entails mutual edification through regard for the integrity of the other.” Believers must assume the best of their co-religionists, and no

127. Andrew T. Lincoln, “Communion: Some Pauline Foundations,” Ecclesiology 5 (2009), pp. 135–60 (135–36). 128. Lincoln, “Communion,” p. 137. 129. Among Paul’s seven authentic letters, the verbs in question appear in six: koinoneo and its cognates appear in Rom. 12.13; 15.26, 27; 1 Cor. 1.9; 10.16, 18, 20; 13.13; 2 Cor. 1.7; 6.14; 8.4, 23; 9.13; 13.14; Gal. 2.9; 6.6; Phil. 1.5; 2.1; 3.10; 4.15; and Phlm. 1.6, 17; and metecho and its cognates appear in 1 Cor. 9.10, 12; 10.17, 21, 30; 2 Cor. 6.14; and Gal. 1.6. 130. Lincoln, “Communion,” p. 141. 131. Lincoln, “Communion,” p. 143. 132. Lincoln, “Communion,” p. 143; emphasis in original.

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community should feel pressured to engage in practices that are insufficiently internalized, that rub against their consciences. Lincoln maintains that where God’s basileia breaks through in “righteousness, peace, and joy,” a context is established in which strife and animosity are obviated and partnership (communion, koinonia) is enabled, despite divergences in belief and practice. This gives the community an eschatological hope for full reconciliation, empowered by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 15.13).133 Lincoln repeatedly makes the point that in Romans and Philippians, Paul is not trying to bring the contending parties into agreement or to visibly “unify” them. Neither is he contending they are unified invisibly already on a higher level of communion. He is saying their continued partnership in Christ results from an ethos that allows them to remain one in love and self-giving, despite disagreement. This is the kind of communion that Lincoln, through Baumert, thinks that koinonia actually signifies. It is a disposition, a logic, not a metaphysical condition or an ontological reality. Such a take on koinonia is rather at odds with the typical view of ecclesiologies of communion, as the foregoing survey demonstrated. Moreover, as Lincoln suggests, and as is central to the concerns of this work, the context for the nurturance of this disposition—this imagination—is eschatological. Inattention to the Provisionality of Models Edward Hahnenberg contends that the breathlessness with which some ecclesiologists of communion have written of the koinonia idea since Vatican II is similar to the manner in which theologians wrote about the mystical-body ecclesiology that rose to prominence earlier in the twentieth century. It is marked by the same air of finality and features similar problems. Hahnenberg wonders what will happen when communion gives way to another model, as it inevitably will. He speculates that just as mystical-body ecclesiology, which seemed so self-evident and “eternal,” was gradually complemented (not replaced) by “people of God” ecclesiology, so something will also come to complement (not replace) communion ecclesiology. Likely, he thinks, whatever it is will be a move away from the Neoplatonic universalizing and abstraction of current communio notions toward a more concrete and historical view. His hunch is that it is likely to be a missional and/or baptismal ecclesiology.134 Theological supplementation of one model by another is analogous to Yves Congar’s assertion that the relationship between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches is complementary. They are two ways of expressing the same faith. They may sometimes do so in divergent ways, but they are nevertheless true, in much the same way that the wave and particle theories of light are contradictory and yet true. Neither can be reduced to the other. Each explains something the other cannot.135 Theological models are related in much the same way. Grasping at one model too firmly, to the exclusion of other plausible ways of conceiving

133. Lincoln, “Communion,” pp. 145, 149–52. 134. Hahnenberg, “Mystical Body of Christ,” pp. 27–29. 135. McPartlan, “Same but Different,” p. 156.

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theological truth, forecloses on the possibility of a richer understanding than one’s own limited viewpoint can afford. Regarding communion ecclesiologies specifically, such an attitude—in which one specific form of “communion” is the only proper way of construing ecclesiality—is particularly troubling, since “the domination of one particular form of any ecclesiology, in fact, contradicts the very concept of communion.”136 Ecclesiologists of communion, like all theologians, develop their theologies through the prism of pre-theoretical attitudes toward church—a theological imagination—that informs their research. They come to their readings of communion in a manner that reflects these prior assumptions and concerns, and their ecclesiologies are marked by them. Such predispositions, however, often remain invisible to them. This can contribute to an inability to perceive one’s particular construal of the communion ideal, let alone the notion itself, as provisional. Paradoxically, this can be a constraint on ecclesial dynamism and a hindrance to the very communion such theologies desire to privilege and effect. The Risks of Ontologizing Ecclesiologies of communion often stem from or at the very least reflect a metaphysics and ontology of a Neoplatonic cast. Under such a view, church is ontologized—or slotted in to a Neoplatonic metaphysical system at the level of Being—in such a way that its existence is held to derive principally through its participation (in ways variously theorized) in divine Being rather than existing as a theological entity, to be sure, but nevertheless equally as a social and historical—that is, eminently human—phenomenon or event.137 According to Nicholas Loudovikos, Dionysius was the first theologian to ontologize church in this way. His ecclesial ontology involved an application of Neoplatonic concepts, which he used to claim that the institutional church participates in God through its eucharistic practice. The institutional form of church, under this view, is a eucharistic structure, the spiritual reality of which derives from its actual participation in God-as-(communal)-Being.138 This understanding of church, in which one can clearly perceive many of the tenets of contemporary ecclesiologies of communion in nuce, is fraught with difficulties.

136. Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, p. 69; emphasis in original. 137. It is important here to re-emphasize that, if Baumert and Lincoln are correct, ecclesiologists of communion are mistaken in identifying the presence of a (Neo)platonic participatory metaphysic in biblical koinonia–communion language. Such a metaphysic might still exist in the New Testament, which raises its own problems, but it would be a mistake to find it in scripture’s talk of “communion” (koinonia) rather than its language of “participation” (metechein), which is, interestingly enough, a concept that is of tremendous importance to the ontological systems of both Zizioulas and Milbank. 138. Nicholas Loudovikos, “Eikon and Mimesis: Eucharistic Ecclesiology and the Ecclesial Ontology of Dialogical Receptivity,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 11 (2011), pp. 123–36 (123–24).

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Travis Ables, for example, contends that once God is understood as Being, even “being as communion,” God is put into “competitive relation” with the world.139 God and world, since both are beings, then require differentiation. To distinguish them, one must posit distance or duality between them. This means that God, as uncreated Being, becomes prioritized over the world, as created being, to the detriment of creation.140 The goodness of creation is impugned in order to distinguish its mode of being from that of a God-become-Being. This ontologizing diminishes both the dignity and worth of creation and the glory of a transcendent God beyond Being. Moreover, Ables asserts, because to ontologize is to generalize, and because ontology trades in essences and natures, the particular loses its texture, depth, and integrity. The particular only exists to the extent that it participates in the general. The particular becomes merely conceptual. But human beings cannot maintain relationship—communion—with concepts but only with other persons, human or divine.141 “As long as communion or relation is inscribed within an order of being, there cannot be persons in relation, only concepts in instantiation.”142 This is clearly unacceptable ecclesiologically. Whether or not one ultimately agrees with Ables’ specific points, they suggest the risks that arise when communion is made an implication of a metaphysics. An additional problem here is that metaphysics tends to—or, in Carl Raschke’s view, will always—reduce the relational God of the Bible to a finite cosmic principle. In so doing, “metaphysics is the most insidious lapse into idolatry.” Idolatry is always engaged in unknowingly, for no one purposefully worships something less than God. But its presence is sometimes betrayed by “a haughty self-assurance.”143 Communion ecclesiologies may not be any more marked by hauteur than theologies of other sorts, but their often unbending commitment to a Neoplatonic metaphysics commonly effects an over-confidence that results in a hasty and sometimes strident rush to multiple forms of closure that too easily dismiss other views, as we will see. The metaphysical reduction of God under such circumstances is often mirrored by a metaphysical inflation of church and ecclesial communion. Elevating

139. The argument here follows Travis E. Ables, “Being Church: A Critique of Zizioulas’ Communion Ecclesiology,” in Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen (ed.), Ecumenical Ecclesiology: Unity, Diversity and Otherness in a Fragmented World (London: T&T Clark, 2009), pp.  115–27. Ables’ essay is discussed here simply as a provocative illustration of the sorts of questions that theological ontologizing can raise. A more thorough investigation of the risks of ontologizing, which for my purposes is a background issue, is beyond the scope of the present work. 140. Ables, “Being Church,” p. 121. In addition, christological conundrums arise when the Son is used as tertium quid to mediate between these two “orders” of being. Ables explores this in depth. 141. Ables, “Being Church,” p. 123. 142. Ables, “Being Church,” p. 124. 143. Carl Raschke, The Next Reformation: Why Evangelicals Must Embrace Postmodernity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), p. 82.

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church-as-communion into the realm of ontology—as many ecclesiologies of communion do, with their claims of a church that existed with God prior to creation—lessens, if not negates, the intrinsic value of concrete communities and persons in concrete relation to other concrete communities and persons. Further, it only exacerbates the tendency of communion ecclesiologies to fall into dualism, particularly one that juxtaposes the visible and the invisible, as Avery Dulles has noted.144 Communion does not provide direct spiritual participation in the unseen God, as Neoplatonic ontologizing claims, but fosters embodied relationship with God and others “through Christ in faith.”145 There seems to be little scriptural support for endowing communion with the status of an ontological principle. As David McLoughlin points out, “Despite the fact that the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint[,] is influenced by Greek thought, koinonia is never used as a term denoting a companionable relationship with God.” Rather, it is only with Philo and Paul—both influenced by Platonist thinking—that we find the first vertical uses of koinonia in the Jewish or Christian contexts.146 It is not a coincidence, then, that communion ecclesiology tends to take root in soil primed by “late Platonic mysticism.”147 Making communion an ontological principle carries at least three crucial risks for ecclesiology: it may turn the church into an abstraction or an idealization, divinize the church, or overemphasize the hierarchical aspect of the church, as the Kasper–Ratzinger controversy makes clear. To begin with the first, ontologically based communion ecclesiologies tend to posit that there is a “primary reality” to church that is invisible, underlying its material manifestation.148 Church is reduced to a sort of abstract substance. “A Platonic approach to communion risks either presenting a nebulous and contentless ideal, spiritualized to the point of denying any tangible implications for the historical community or serving as a mystical shell to mask an ideological restoration of the societas perfecta model.”149 A “Platonic ideal” of church has little purchase on the real-world complexity of actual ecclesial life as it is lived. Ecclesiologies of communion easily slide into presenting “an idealized Church making only tangential contact with . . . historical realities, a Church whose structures exist only in some idealized sense, whose operations rarely impinge on anyone’s life, a Church that never really knows change because, in its idealized world, it is already complete and perfect.”150 144. See Dulles, Models of the Church, p. 52. 145. David McLoughlin, “Communio Models of Church: Rhetoric or Reality?” in Hoose, p. 183. 146. McLoughlin, “Communio Models of Church,” p. 182. 147. G. R. Evans, “The Church in the Early Christian Centuries: Ecclesiological Consolidation,” in Mannion and Mudge, p. 29. 148. Nicholas M. Healy, “Communion Ecclesiology: A Cautionary Note,” Pro Ecclesia 4 (1995), pp. 442–53 (444). 149. Hahnenberg, “Mystical Body of Christ,” p. 28. 150. Neil Ormerod, “The Structure of a Systematic Ecclesiology,” Theological Studies 63 (2002), pp. 3–30 (5).

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The formation of community is complex and deeply textured in a manner that the idealizing and generalizing abstractions of “communion” can often elide, downplaying what is challenging about life in communion.151 When ecclesiologies of communion are formulated “ideologically,” the abstract ideal of “unity,” clearly contradicted by empirical observation, serves to squelch disagreements and forestall change and development.152 Second, ecclesiologies of communion based on an ontology of communion tend to apotheosize the church. Even salutary images, such as the church as the body of Christ, can result in “an unhealthy divinization of the church.”153 In addition, when the Holy Spirit is conceived of as the “life principle” of church, as it is under such a scheme, this runs the risk of attributing to the Holy Spirit all the actions of a church,154 which, given the history of the institution, is clearly unacceptable. If the Christian church is solely a divine institution, the ancient adage extra ecclesiam nulla salus would also seem to hold, a notion that is becoming increasingly less tenable theologically and inter-religiously.155 Of course, communion ecclesiology does not have to lead to a divinization of church, particularly if the historical and social dimensions of Christian community are properly emphasized.156 The same is true if the eschatological dimensions of church are adequately understood. Finally, ecclesiologies of communion reliant upon ontological construals of communion tend to overemphasize the hierarchical dimensions of church. This makes sense if church is an emanation of divine Being. As reflective of the cosmic order, ecclesial hierarchy is not an accidental or inconsequential matter, but is essential to the nature of church. As a result, such understandings of communion ecclesiology often result in a top–down officialdom, a highly centralized and institutionalized church.157 Paul McPartlan contends that one of the major reasons for the break between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches was that the Orthodox perceived in the Roman Catholic Church an attempt to promote a “universal ecclesiology,” in the form of a conflation of power with hierarchy, so as to bring all churches under Roman sway into “conformity.” For McPartlan, this is an inauthentic communion ecclesiology. True communion ecclesiology is a eucharistic ecclesiology that calls “universalistic structures” and coercive hierarchical tactics deeply into question.158

151. Watkins, “Objecting to Koinonia,” pp. 332–33. 152. Ormerod, “Structure of a Systematic Ecclesiology,” p. 27. 153. Dulles, Models of the Church, pp. 47, 52. 154. Dulles, Models of the Church, p. 47. 155. Dulles, Models of the Church, p. 50. 156. Dennis Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology: Vision and Versions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000), p. 19. 157. Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, p. 58. 158. McPartlan, “Same but Different,” pp. 154–55.

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Eucharistic ecclesiologies, however, also carry the seeds of a structural conception of church.159 The mystical images of church that communion ecclesiologies often employ tend be used to undergird the institutional structures of church in a way that affirms hierarchical power as the most appropriate organization of authority within it.160 However, churchly unity cannot be imposed by the hierarchy. It must arise organically, as churches at all levels experience the charismata given them by God.161 Biblically, this means the radical sharing of power, authority, and financial resources.162 A communion ecclesiology in practice requires churches to be governed by “reception or consent” rather than by “obedience” to a hierarchy, as during Christianity’s first millennium.163 Ontological emphasis on the hierarchy, however, bars—or at least radically reduces—this possibility. 2.2.2 Principal Critiques of Communion Ecclesiology I am indirectly asking, then, whether our contemporary ecclesial imagination is shaped by an inadequate New Testament concept of koinonia, is unquestioningly too confident about the permanence of a self-sufficient communion-ecclesiological model, and is too beholden to a Neoplatonic ontology that dissolves the concreteness of churches in favor of an institutional, overly hierarchical abstraction. While not directly addressed here, these implicit questions rise repeatedly in the course of confronting the three principal sets of concern that are explicitly in focus: the eschatological, relational, and practical critiques I wish to make of ecclesiologies of communion. I now turn to these. The Eschatological Critique If it is true that an ecclesiology of communion should feature a “humble willingness to admit to limitations” in its understanding of church,164 then an adequate eschatology, one that accents the partialness of human understanding of God’s mysteries, particularly in the time before the parousia, would be an ally in maintaining that humility. Unfortunately, however, a robust, tensive, and dynamic eschatology is often missing in communion ecclesiologies. This lacuna takes various forms. It also has multiple ill effects upon the manner in which ecclesial life is conceptualized and practiced. The attenuated eschatological imagination of many ecclesiologies of communion constitutes the principal shortcoming of the model, as far as the present work is concerned. It is the crucial theological blind spot from which the other two main problems—its relational and practical deficiencies—spring.

159. Loudovikos, “Eikon and Mimesis,” pp. 134–35. 160. Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology, p. 12. 161. Loudovikos, “Eikon and Mimesis,” p. 131. 162. Joseph D. Small, “What Is Communion and When Is It Full?” Ecclesiology 2 (2005), pp. 71–87 (82). 163. Salzman, “Communion Ecclesiology,” p. 545. 164. Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology, p. 2.

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An ecclesiocentric eschatology Ecclesiologies of communion tend to posit church itself as the subject of eschatological perfection.165 However, as Christoph Schwöbel points out, “The church is finite; it has by itself and for itself no eschatological ultimacy.”166 A church neither exists for itself nor proclaims itself.167 It exists to proclaim God’s coming basileia and to demonstrate now the fellowship that will be perfected then.168 Wolfhart Pannenberg is, therefore, careful about how the term “people of God” is used in characterizing church—the people of God is an eschatological reality that is much larger than those who compose churches.169 The Christian church qua church will pass away in the basileia; the people of God will endure. In large part, ecclesiologists of communion take the opposite position, making a claim that the eschaton will bring the Christian church to its final perfection. As already noted, Dumitru Staniloae makes the remarkable claim that eschatological fulfillment entails the transformation of the entire cosmos into one tremendous church. Tillard’s less grandiose perspective is more broadly representative of communion ecclesiologies. He asserts that as Christ’s body, the communion that is the ecclesia is destined for divine perfection, as the Roman Catholic bishops affirmed in 1985. For Tillard, communion is salvation, it is the fulfillment of the human vocation.170 The restoration of the broken communion between God and human beings, the establishment of eschatological reconciliation, occurs now, in ecclesial communion—at least in part. The church is therefore the basileia, in Tillard’s estimation, but only in the basileia’s present, not ultimate, form. Tillard follows Irenaeus in asserting that the present celebration of eucharist is terrestrial participation in the eternal worship offered to God in heaven, making “the whole Church . . . already the Temple of God.”171 Eschatologically perfected, however, the heavenly church will celebrate a never-ending cosmic liturgy.172 This is hardly an idiosyncratic perspective. Leonardo Boff, drawing upon the Vatican II documents, speaks of the church being “fulfilled” or “completed” at the

165. Dulles, Models of the Church, pp. 102–3, 105–6. 166. Christoph Schwöbel,“The Church as a Cultural Space: Eschatology and Ecclesiology,” in John Polkinghorne and Michael Welker (eds), The End of the World and the Ends of God: Science and Theology on Eschatology (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000), p. 114. 167. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993), p. 19. See also J. C. Hoekendijk, The Church Inside Out (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966), p. 71. 168. Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Church (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), p. 151. 169. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology (vol. 3; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 433, 477. 170. Flanagan, Communion, Diversity, and Salvation, pp. vii–viii; Tillard, Church of Churches, p. 17. 171. Tillard, Church of Churches, pp. 55–57; emphasis in original. 172. Tillard, Church of Churches, pp. 55, 65.

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end of time, when it “will attain to its plenitude.”173 Most Orthodox theologians also see the church this way.174 They tend to assert that “when all the clergy and faithful, with their diverse gifts, are gathered together under the presidency of the one bishop . . . the Church becomes truly herself, the icon of the Kingdom which is to come.”175 For the Orthodox, “at each local celebration of the Eucharist, the whole Christ is present, not just a part of him, the full eschatological gathering of all in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.”176 Each eucharistic assembly is “a realization of the eschatological community.”177 As an eschatological entity, the church is not truly located on earth, but in heaven.178 Pannenberg, in contrast, like Schwöbel, sees church as a provisional community that points now toward a future universal reality, stating that the eschaton will bring about “the elimination of the contrast between church and secular society.”179 This is not a “fulfillment” of the Christian church, but rather—“church” being a boundary term that marks off a particular people as dedicated to the basileia presently in a certain intentional way—the cessation of church in a context where no such boundary can be drawn any longer. Avery Dulles disagrees with this assessment, taking exception to Pannenberg’s idea of church as “a temporary, this-worldly reality.” Instead, Dulles contends, “on the basis of nearly all the images of the Church in Scripture, one is led to believe that the Church, far from passing away at the end of time, will truly come into its own.” He maintains that no scripture suggests “the community of the disciples will be dissolved in heaven,” since the Twelve will be set as judges over Israel.180 Yet it is not clear what Dulles makes of the absence of a temple in the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21), and reducing church to a juridical curia seems quite at odds with the quality of communality that Jesus is seen to establish in the gospels. George Lings observes that it is as important to avoid “ecclesiolatry” as it is “bibliolatry.”181 A fundamentalism of church is as unbalanced and unhealthy as a fundamentalism of scripture. Gustavo Gutiérrez thinks such “ecclesiocentricity” is intimately connected to Christendom, where church functions as a node of power and authority instead of being an exemplar of the basileia.182 To posit the 173. Leonardo Boff, Ecclesiogenesis: The Base Communities Reinvent the Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1986), p. 20. 174. Behr, “The Trinitarian Being of the Church,” p. 79. 175. Erickson, “Church in Modern Orthodox Thought,” p. 141. 176. Erickson, “Church in Modern Orthodox Thought,” p. 141; emphasis added. 177. Papanikolaou, “Integrating the Ascetical and the Eucharistic,” p. 176. 178. Ware, Orthodox Church, p. 244. 179. Pannenberg, Church, p. 63. 180. Dulles, Models of the Church, p. 96. 181. George Lings, “Unravelling the DNA of Church: How Can We Know That What Is Emerging Is ‘Church’?” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 6 (2006), pp. 104–16 (112). 182. Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 15th anniversary rev. edn., 1988), pp. 143–48.

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eschatological “fulfillment” or “completion” of church rather than of creation in its entirety looks very much like just this kind of ecclesiolatry or ecclesiocentricity. Rather than being the subject of eschatological apotheosis, churches, the present gathering of those who believe in, follow, and seek to emulate Jesus Christ, are prefigurements of the basileia. They point to that basileia to the extent that they participate in the eschatological reality that is Jesus Christ.183 The mission of the Christian church, as Jürgen Moltmann expresses it, is “not to spread the church but to spread the kingdom. The goal is not the glorification of the church but the glorification of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.”184 Jan Lochman has observed that “there is one powerful, perhaps even the chief, temptation of church history: the temptation for the church to claim the kingdom for itself, to take over the management of the kingdom and even, at the limit, to present itself as the realized kingdom of God over against the world.”185 A selfinterested church strives only for its own perfection. But a church interested in a transformed life for the whole world will seek to partner with groups outside of itself, forming crucial relationships that, based upon realizing justice and friendship, allow it to mediate the basileia to the world more clearly.186 John Howard Yoder makes a similar point, arguing that despite the fact that God is not yet All-in-all, “we do see Jesus” (Heb. 2.9), who reveals the coming basileia more than sufficiently for us to begin articulating the vision of what God desires for creation, and to rally allies in cultural, political, intellectual, and other spheres of human society in an effort to contribute toward expressing that and working toward it in a convincing and meaningful way.187 Only a church that considers itself a participant in and not the prized object of God’s saving work in the world is likely to do this. Yoder observes, “The church is called to be now what the world is called to be ultimately.”188 Notice the terms. Church is called to be a proleptic revelation of the coming basileia by becoming a living reality of what the world—not the church— will be when the basileia is fully manifest. God will be All-in-all, and all people will be God’s. Church does not exist for its own perfection, but to lead the world into the life of the basileia, through loving service and example. A realized eschatology The most common eschatological problem associated with ecclesiologies of communion is their too realized eschatological outlook, 183. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, p. 44. 184. Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 11. 185. Jan Milic Lochman, “Church and World in the Light of the Kingdom of God,” in Gennadios Limouris (ed.), Church Kingdom World: The Church as Mystery and Prophetic Sign (Faith and Order paper 130; Geneva, Switzerland: World Council of Churches, 1986), p. 69. 186. Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 134. 187. John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 61. 188. Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom, p. 92.

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one not complemented by a futural eschatological perspective. Because ecclesiologies of communion tend to posit that church makes visible a salvific “primary reality,” they tend to understand the purposes of God to be fulfilled in the present, in churches.189 “The realized eschatology of Orthodox liturgy,” for example, construes what is properly considered to be a future fulfillment “as happening ‘today’ in the gathered church.”190 This is logical if, as Staniloae asserts, “the New Testament represents, even during our life on earth, the fulfillment of certain promises of a spiritual order which were made in the Old Testament,” promises fulfilled in receiving the grace on offer in the sacraments.191 A focus on the future of eschatological assertions is thus lessened. Eucharistic language overemphasizing the sacrament of communion as the “banquet of the kingdom” and so forth also tends to loosen the tension between present and future. Such perspectives can result in an ecclesial triumphalism that sidelines the penitential character of baptism, which reminds a church of its imperfections.192 “What the eucharistic and communion ecclesiologies do not fully nuance is how Christians do not live up to being Christians.”193 In both instances, the lack of focus on futurity tends to foster imaginative complacence with the status quo, since the salvific purposes of God are thought to have been largely realized. As Dulles puts it, communion ecclesiologies can result in “a de-eschatologizing of theology,” where “heaven” is construed as the “depth dimension” of what is already experienced here, now, in churches,194 all of which is to say, it can result in an overly realized eschatology. Tillard claims that church arises at the dawn of the eschatological age and that its communion is facilitated by the work of God in this “new eschatological period.”195 In the Windsor Report, immediately following a statement that does have the character of a properly tensive eschatology, there is mention of the “kingdom” (inexplicably placed in scare quotes) having “been accomplished,” rather than announced or even inaugurated, in Jesus Christ.196 Robert Jenson goes even further, stating that “the church now truly is People of God and Body of Christ and Temple of the Spirit” (note the formula), despite, because of its brokenness, being this only in anticipation of its ultimate perfection.197 This is common in communion

189. Healy, “Communion Ecclesiology,” pp. 447–48. 190. Paul Valliere, Conciliarism: A History of Decision-making in the Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 183. 191. Staniloae, Theology and the Church, pp. 155, 167. See also pp. 163–64. 192. Erickson, “Church in Modern Orthodox Thought,” p. 149. 193. Papanikolaou, “Integrating the Ascetical and the Eucharistic,” p. 184. 194. Dulles, Models of the Church, p. 104. 195. Tillard, Church of Churches, pp. 5, 7. 196. Windsor Report, para. 55. 197. Robert W. Jenson, “The Church as Communion: A Catholic–Lutheran Dialogue– Consensus-Statement Dreamed in the Night,” Pro Ecclesia 4 (1995), pp. 68–78 (68); emphasis in original.

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ecclesiologies, which tend to see the earthly churches as manifestations of God’s “eschatological gift, . . . already poured forth on [or as?] the Christian community.”198 Ecumenically speaking, a realized eschatology has great attractiveness for seeking the unity of the universal church. Like the Augustinian idea that the earthly church is the “inferior part of the total Church” that exists even now in eschatological fullness, being in communion with the saints in heaven,199 the WCC, as Dulles points out, tends to view the church as already unified invisibly by Christ as “an inalienable gift,” a notion that springs from the realized eschatology that runs through the WCC ecclesial documents, beholden as they are in many ways to Roman Catholic and Orthodox ecclesiologists of communion. At the 1954 convening of the WCC in Evanston, the Orthodox delegates could not agree with the majority that ecclesial unity is a future reality. Rather, they saw it is “a present reality that is to receive its consummation in the Last Day,”200 a concept that has become increasingly accepted by the ecumenical movement in the years since and is now reflected in its ecclesiological statements. Even where eschatological language appears properly tensive, it may not be so functionally. As Gerard Mannion observes, “The eschatological dimensions (positive aspects concerning the future of church and world alike in God’s plan of salvation) of [communion ecclesiologies] can be rendered powerless by the institutional strictures and rhetoric surrounding them.”201 John Behr asserts that “no eschatology can be exclusively ‘realized’; Christian eschatology is always already but not yet. The Church is still in via, seeking, and receiving proleptically as a gift, her perfection that is yet to be fully manifest.”202 Behr here seems to be claiming that it is permissible to come right to the edge of realized eschatology, since realized eschatology is a logical impossibility and no serious theologian would ever claim that God’s purposes have been fulfilled. Many ecclesiologists of communion appear to agree, since their ecclesiologies employ a realized eschatological vocabulary without ever discounting the reality of a divinely promised future that is qualitatively different from today. However, despite its intentions, this language has deleterious consequences for how church is imagined and, so, lived.

198. Dulles, Models of the Church, p. 103. Some ecclesiologists of communion contend that Pentecost represents not only the eschatological outpouring of the Spirit’s gifts on the church, but that the Pentecostal event itself is eschatological in that it constitutes the church and realizes God’s eschatological promises. See, for example, International Commission for Anglican–Orthodox Theological Dialogue, Church of the Triune God, §§2.13, 2.22.3; and Tillard, Church of Churches, p. 15. 199. Dulles, Models of the Church, p. 103. 200. Dulles, Models of the Church, p. 149. 201. Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, p. 68. 202. Behr, “Trinitarian Being of the Church,” p. 82; emphasis in original.

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A Johannine eschatology That communion ecclesiologies evince a strong tendency toward realized eschatology is not surprising given their equally strong tendency to privilege the Johannine corpus in their work.203 Tillard, for example, employs a “canon within the canon” that includes, in addition to the deutero-Pauline letters, the Johannine corpus, with a special accent on Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer in John 17,204 which is no doubt part of the reason that Tillard’s eschatology has been criticized for being overly realized.205

203. That the eschatological outlook of the Gospel of John and the Johannine literature is essentially realized in character has become something of a commonplace. See for example C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text (Philadelphia: Westminster, 2nd edn., 1978), pp. 67–70; George R. Beasley-Murray, John (Word Biblical Commentary, 36; Nashville, TN: Nelson Reference & Electronic, 2nd edn., 1999), pp. lxxxv–lxxxvii (“The Evangelist consistently represents the new existence in Christ by the Spirit to be a present reality. Life in the kingdom of God or new creation is now, not a hope reserved for the future” (Beasley-Murray, John, p. lxxxvi; emphases in original)); Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John (The Anchor Bible, 29; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), pp. cxv–cxxi. (Although Brown shows that future eschatology is not absent in John’s gospel, it is nevertheless the case that “in many ways John is the best example in the NT of a realized eschatology” (Brown, Gospel According to John, p. cxvii).); Rudolf Bultmann, History and Eschatology (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1957), pp. 47–55; Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (vol. 1; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), pp. 320–23. (“Whatever the source of his realized eschatology, John’s eschatological motifs clearly focus on the present” (Keener, Gospel of John, p. 322).); Andrew T. Lincoln, The Gospel According to Saint John (Black’s New Testament Commentaries; London: Continuum, 2005), p.  57. (“While there are a few elements of future expectation in the Gospel, for the most part traditional Jewish and early Christian hopes have been extensively reinterpreted in terms of a ‘realized’ eschatology” (Lincoln, Gospel According to Saint John, p. 57).); Christopher Rowland, “The Eschatology of the New Testament Church,” in Jerry L. Walls (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 61; Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St. John (vol. 1; New York: Crossroad, 1982), pp. 159–60. (“We can see in the basic soteriological formula, ‘he who believes in the Son has eternal life,’ a further characteristic of Johannine theology: the actualization of eschatology. In its original meaning, and outside the Johannine writings, ‘eternal life’ is an eschatological concept referring to the future world. But in John it is understood in the sense that the blessings of salvation are already present, as the essence of the salvation already attained in faith in Christ” (Schnackenburg, Gospel According to St. John, p. 159).); Sandra M. Schneiders, Written So That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (New York: Herder & Herder, rev. and expanded edn., 2003), pp. 57, 179–80; Hans Schwarz, Eschatology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000), pp.  88–90; and Urban C. von Wahlde, The Gospel and Letters of John (Eerdmans Critical Commentary, 1; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2010), pp. 482–94. 204. Tillard, Church of Churches, p. 1. 205. Flanagan, Communion, Diversity, and Salvation, p. 66.

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Tillard is not the only one to find support for his ecclesiological views in John 17 and 1 John, where communion among Christians is effected by its grounding in the Son’s communion with the Father.206 Geoffrey Rowell maintains that unity is the “root of mission,” citing John 17 as the scriptural warrant for his communionecclesiological viewpoint.207 As with Tillard, the Canberra Statement relies principally upon the deutero-Pauline letters to the Ephesians and Hebrews and John 17 for its scriptural grounding.208 The Church as Communion and the Virginia Report both open with references to John 17; the ARCIC-I Final Report and the Anglican–Orthodox statement The Church of the Triune God open with references to 1 Jn 1.3, a text that Jenson takes as the “motto” for his analysis of ecclesial communion.209 As Church of the Triune God puts it, “St. John makes it clear that the fellowship or communion (koinonia) of life in the Church reflects the communion that is the divine life itself, the life of the Trinity.”210 The Anglican–Roman Catholic statement The Church as Communion agrees, explicitly singling out the Johannine literature as the source for understanding koinonia in precisely the manner advocated by communion ecclesiologies,211 which may be one reason that Zizioulas considers Revelation to be a “eucharistic [communion] text”212 and Staniloae calls it “the only exclusively prophetic book of the New Testament, the only book which shows the hidden meaning of history to its very end, as well as what will happen after the end of historical time.”213 In section 18 of The Gift of Authority, even where “foretaste” language is used, the scriptural warrant advanced is from John.214 Bernard Prusak, perhaps inadvertently, shows the contrast between the way koinonia is deployed in Acts versus 1 John, in that it shifts from an emphasis on community and fellowship to the reception of God’s self-gift, effecting a

206. Flanagan, Communion, Diversity, and Salvation, p. 94. 207. Geoffrey Rowell, “The Bishop, Other Churches, and God’s Mission 1,” in Martyn Percy, Mark Chapman, Ian Markham, and Barney Hawkins (eds), Christ and Culture: Communion after Lambeth (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 2010), p. 83. 208. Canberra Statement, sections 1.1, 2.2, 4.1. 209. Jenson, “Church as Communion,” p. 71. 210. Church of the Triune God, section 1.3. 211. Church as Communion, sections 12, 26. 212. Papanikolaou, “Integrating the Ascetical and the Eucharistic,” p.  176. Another reason, of course, is the common reading of the Apocalypse as a description of the heavenly liturgy that earthly communions emulate and in which they ontologically participate. Loudovikos, similarly, refers to John as “the first eucharistic theologian,” pointing specifically to Jn 6.51–58, a locus classicus for theologians who read the Fourth Gospel in this way (A Eucharistic Ontology: Maximus the Confessor’s Eschatological Ontology of Being as Dialogical Reciprocity (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2010), p. 26). 213. Staniloae, Theology and the Church, p. 122. 214. Gift of Authority, sections 2.22, 14.6.

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participation in the divine nature that, in turn, “generates” communion among those who have been so incorporated.215 This shift from koinonia as mostly horizontal to a Johannine one that is predominantly vertical corresponds to the type of realized eschatology generally on offer in those same texts. McPartlan asserts that the “complementary” ways that the Orthodox and Roman Catholics understand eschatology both spring from 1 Jn 3.2. The East follows Maximus the Confessor in asserting that our end is theosis (that “we will be like him”) and the West follows Augustine in claiming it is the beatific vision (that “we shall see him as he is”). For both, McPartlan claims, on the basis of further Johannine texts, this is what it will mean to be a citizen of heaven (Rev. 7.21) and is what we enact in eucharist, “where we are one with the Church in the heavenly Jerusalem,” as revealed in John 17.216 In all of this, the conflation of communion, eucharist, realized eschatology, and the Johannine corpus could hardly be more clear. By contrast, an ecclesial statement with a robust, properly tensive eschatology, such as Communion, Conflict and Hope, does not open with a Johannine text or calls to “unity,” but with the effects of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and the “images of fragmentation, isolation and violence” that followed those days in the media and in our imaginations. The report uses this to propose that “the Gospel’s invitation to koinonia—fellowship, communion, a common participation in the purposes of God—became overwhelmingly relevant” in our lives. The report contains almost no references to Johannine literature. Its scriptural warrants are drawn from the synoptic gospels, Acts, and Paul’s authentic letters, not the deutero-Pauline material or the pastoral epistles. As a result, its view of communion and its eschatological perspective are markedly different from much of what is found in ecclesiologies of communion. My argument follows that approach in presenting a tensive, less realized eschatology, one that engages the synoptic gospels and authentic letters of Paul, using these to supplement—not deny, de-emphasize, or demote—the theological importance of the eschatological images that derive from the Johannine literature. A restorationist eschatology When the eschatology on offer in an ecclesiology is overly realized, the promise of the new, of the unfolding, is often underemphasized in that theology’s understanding of the role of Christian community in God’s work. A theology of church that is not sufficiently attentive to what is new, to what is emerging, Watkins rightly asserts, “fails to do justice to the radical eschatological dimension of Christian life, which transcends the ordinary sense of community, and calls disciples into radically new kinds of relating and encounter.”217 Valuing the newness of relationship and encounter is much less likely if eschatology is conceived as restoration. The Church of the Triune God, for example,

215. Bernard P. Prusak, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries (New York: Paulist, 2004), pp. 83–85. 216. McPartlan, “Same but Different,” pp. 156–57. 217. Watkins, “Objecting to Koinonia,” p. 340.

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asserts that God’s intention for creation includes “restored humanity,”218 as if God’s purposes once had been fully realized and the key to bringing this about again is a return to something prior.219 The coming of the new, the transformation of the existing, and the fulfillment of the initial plan are not eschatological themes that appear there. It will not do to say with Staniloae that baptism “reestablishes man in his primordial state,” realizing eschatological hope for “the ‘new man’ [which] is, the original authentic man,” even if this return is understood to involve a certain amount of change.220 As Lincoln points out, for Paul truly authentic ecclesial communion depends on a proper eschatological imagination of the new, not a return to the old: “For Paul, in the midst of the old order with its still impinging self-interest and divisiveness, the hope [that motivates true fellowship] lies in love and humility being realities of the new order, made possible by God’s Spirit, available for appropriation, and anticipating the full future flourishing of humanity in joy.”221 It may be true, as Neil Ormerod posits, that communion ecclesiologies emerge from contexts in which social atomization and “anonymous forces of globalization” make such a notion attractive. However, as he points out, in situations where such “communion” is experienced not as a desideratum but as oppressive, an ecclesiology and practice based on it is hardly inviting or convincing. Ormerod’s approach is to conceive of church in terms of mission in the service of the emerging basileia, which can be attractive much more widely.222 For this to work, of course, the coming of the new, the advent-ure of the future, is a requirement. A realized eschatology cannot envision this. Transposing “communion” and “unity” into the appropriate eschatological key does not reduce their urgency by relegating them to a shadowy, distant, and inconsequential divine future that will dawn on its own with no help from us. In fact, the opposite is true. Dulles is quite right to claim that “the fact that Christian [communion or] unity is an eschatological ideal should not deter us, but should motivate us all the more to seek [their] realization, in a participated and representative way, in the earthly form of the Church.”223 The manner in which

218. Church of the Triune God, section 16. 219. To be sure, the previous sentences in the document invoke an image of transformation: “God’s purpose is to bring all people into communion with himself within a transformed creation (cf. Rom. 8.19–22). To accomplish this the eternal Word became incarnate.” (Note the reference to Paul’s authentic letter to the Romans.) Given the overall emphasis on a more realized eschatology in this document, however, this seems more like the “no eschatology can ever really be realized” approach of John Behr, noted above, than it is indicative a truly tensive eschatological position overall. 220. Staniloae, Theology and the Church, pp. 170–72; quote at p. 170. Staniloae is, in fact, the author of a book entitled Iisus Hristos sau restaurarea omului (Jesus Christ or the Restoration of Humankind) (Craiova, Romania: Editura Omniscop, 2nd edn., 1993). 221. Lincoln, “Communion,” p. 160. 222. Ormerod, “Structure of a Systematic Ecclesiology,” p. 28. 223. Dulles, Models of the Church, p. 151.

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ecclesiologies of communion construe eschatology means that this reigning view of church needs supplementation by perspectives that affirm a different eschatology, one that shifts the emphasis away from the full, authoritative, universal, metaphysical, and hierarchical to the limited, provisional, local, historical, and relational.224 Eschatologically, there is “more” to ecclesial communion than an assertion of its heavenly perfection recognizes; there is more than a realized, Johannine eschatological sensibility makes apparent; and a focus on the eschatological advent of the “new” brings to light more implications for God’s work in and through churches than communion ecclesiologies typically acknowledge. Specifying the shape and implications of this eschatological “more,” so as to illumine the “more” to communion and of an ecclesiology in conversation with it, is a central task here. The Relational Critique Certainly, ecclesiologies of communion are concerned broadly with relationality. Ecclesial relationality is understood as a communion that takes multiple relational forms. The congregation engaged in the joint act of eucharist gathered around the bishop is a communion that largely constitutes church. Ecclesial collegiality and synodality are communal relationships. So, too, is ecclesial unity within and among churches. These are, in fact, aspects of communion that are crucially important to the nature and vocation of Christian community. A problem seems to arise, however, when communion is understood to be an already existing state of affairs into which a church enters or of which it avails itself. Jenson is typical in claiming that “all koinonia is founded and defined in the koinonia which is the life of the triune God.” The Trinity is the source of church and, even further, to participate in church is to participate in the Godhead. “The church exists to be taken into the divine triune communion.” Jenson argues that the persons of the Trinity “make room” for the church catholic to enter into their midst.225 The koinonia that is the church is not foundationally our association with one another. The koinonia that is the church is foundationally our association with God in the incarnate Christ; then, because our participation in God is participation in the triune God whose very being is koinonia, our joint participation in God becomes our participation with one another.226

Of course, this is precisely what Lincoln argued was not meant by koinonia in the New Testament, but it remains a dominant view among ecclesiologists of communion. Joseph Small contends that because scripture does not speak of the Trinity as a koinonia, it is a mistake to predicate communion ecclesiology on a speculative intra-trinitarian communion. Rather, humans have koinonia with the Trinity. Specifically against the communion ecclesiologies of Tillard and Jenson, Small

224. Hahnenberg, “Mystical Body of Christ,” p. 30. 225. Jenson, “Church as Communion,” p. 69. 226. Jenson, “Church as Communion,” p. 71.

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therefore asserts communion should instead be predicated on the communion that the trinitarian God establishes with human beings as an act of grace.227 “Communion is a theological reality before it is an ecclesiological possibility. That is, communion is a statement about God and God’s way in the world before it is a statement about the church and its way in the world.”228 According to Ormerod, this is precisely why the Trinity should not be the model for ecclesial relationships.229 Because “the divine unity is where God is most different from God’s creatures, even the creation that we call Church,” the Trinity in se is not what gives the church its significance. What does provide that significance is its mission, which is a relational mission of communion, one that participates not in God’s nature but in God’s purposes.“In this way a missio ecclesiology also makes contact with trinitarian theology, not in terms of communio and perichoresis, but in terms of missio and processio.”230 There is no reason, Mannion contends, to assert that churches are rooted in the trinitarian nature, but there is every reason to maintain that such communities bear “sacramental witness to the Triune God” in their life and work by consonance with divine purpose and mission.231 However, even if one were to take intra-trinitarian relationality as the model for ecclesial relationality, the result would look much different from the formulation generally put forth by ecclesiologies of communion. No priority could be given, for instance, to either the universal or the local churches, for both would be equal, ontologically speaking, just as none of the three persons of the Trinity have priority over their unity nor does the unity have priority over any of the persons.232 Ecclesial relationships would necessarily be a “unity of reciprocal relations—different, unique, necessary relations”—and could not be reduced to a monadic conception

227. Small, “What Is Communion and When Is It Full?”, pp. 77–78. 228. Small, “What Is Communion and When Is It Full?”, p.  77; emphasis in original. According to Flanagan, Tillard would partially agree with this. Tillard does think the Trinity is characterized by communion in a way that Small does not. But, Tillard agrees that it is a mistake to predicate ecclesial communion on intra-trinitarian communion in the manner that Jenson does. For Tillard, any connection between the communion of the Trinity and ecclesial communion can be drawn only subsequent to an analysis of ecclesial communion and applying that analogically to how the persons of the Trinity appear to be related. This earthly relational starting point, Flanagan thinks, is an important difference between the ecclesiologies of Tillard and “his friend” John Zizioulas (Communion, Diversity, and Salvation, pp. 93, 97). 229. Kathryn Tanner offers her own detailed agreement with this in Christ the Key (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 221–46. An article by Karen Kilby that she employs to support her position (“Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity,” New Blackfriars 81 (2000), pp. 432–45) also makes a very valuable contribution. 230. Ormerod, “Structure of a Systematic Ecclesiology,” p. 29. 231. Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, p. 186. 232. Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, p. 69.

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of “unity” in the manner they often are.233 “In the life of the Trinity all is unique, yet all is drawn into relation.”234 In general, such a dynamic view of utter diversity in reconciled harmony—a harmony quite different from arrangement into hierarchy—is signally missing from most ecclesiologies of communion, particularly those with weak pneumatologies. Being able to accept true otherness is the authentic hallmark of trinitarian relationality. And it is precisely this that McPartlan claims the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches—eminent proponents of communion ecclesiology—are unable to do.235 Moreover, taking intra-trinitarian relationality as the model for ecclesial relationality would require a less hierarchical view of church than ecclesiologies of communion advocate. Among Roman Catholics, Joseph Ratzinger—although initially in agreement with the view of Congar and Henri de Lubac (and the Orthodox) that the first 1,000 years of Christianity conceived of church in local and dynamic terms, a view that greatly influenced the proceedings at the Second Vatican Council—has, as McLoughlin notes, increasingly moved away from this position back toward the pre-conciliar “static” notion of church as a divinely instituted hierarchy surmounted by a supreme pontiff holding universal ecclesial jurisdiction.236 The Communio movement, in which he has been an important leader, has downplayed the horizontal communion that Vatican II had very much in view. Some have argued that the Roman Catholic magisterium has therefore returned to “mystical body” theology instead of advocating a full-throated communion ecclesiology, and as such has abandoned the council’s emphasis on collegiality, the local church, and the role of the laity.237 An ecclesiology of communion modeled on trinitarian relationship would take seriously the diversity of “Spirit-given gifts” appearing at all levels in the

233. McLoughlin, “Communio Models of Church,” p. 185. One must be careful not to lump all ecclesiologies of communion together on this point. Zizioulas, for example, does not assert that trinitarian communion evinces equality of relationality or its necessity. God’s freedom requires the monarchy of the Father in the Trinity and the non-necessity of the intra-trinitarian relationships, though those relationships are thoroughly reciprocal and equally important. Reading an ecclesiology off from such a view of the Trinity, therefore, would not require an ecclesiology of communion that eschews hierarchy. That McLoughlin and Mannion, among others, assert otherwise is a result, Zizioulas might say, of their Western (read, Augustinian) version of trinitarianism and their insufficient attention to the Cappadocians. 234. McLoughlin, “Communio Models of Church,” p. 189. 235. McPartlan, “Same but Different,” p. 149. 236. McLoughlin, “Communio Models of Church,” p. 186. 237. Hahnenberg, “Mystical Body of Christ,” p. 24. Dulles points out that the difference between “mystical body” theology, exemplified by Mystici Corporis, for example, and the communion ecclesiology he finds latent in Lumen Gentium, is that (1) the former conflates church hierarchy with the entire congregation as body of Christ into one “mystical body” while the latter distinguishes them in a manner similar to the distinction drawn between

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church and would cease efforts to homogenize or domesticate them through a uniformity resulting from applying strict hierarchical organization to church structure.238 In reality, communion ecclesiologies, in which “organizational structure or the comradeship of good will among church members is secondary,” have been advocating precisely that hierarchy, thereby tending to de-emphasize the laity and to over-empower the bishops.239 In the Anglican context, Stephen Pickard writes, “Koinonia is the business of the episcopate because it is the business of the gospel.”240 McLoughlin wonders how ecclesial communion can really be what is on offer in ecclesiologies of communion that reduce ecclesial relationality to hierarchical formulations that place koinonia in the hands of bishops alone or even that focus on the priesthood, an ever-decreasing cadre of (in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches) men commissioned to confect eucharist, when church exists to equip all of the baptized for ministry as total partners in the faith, each according to her own abilities and gifts.241 To take the Trinity seriously as a model for communion ecclesiology would be, above all else, to assert the complete interdependence of all members of Christ’s church at all levels.242 Interdependence, contra many ecclesiologists of communion, does not require the relinquishment of autonomy but its assertion. Paul Avis writes, “ ‘Autonomy’ cannot be the first thing that we have to say about ourselves as Anglican Churches. The attributes of the Church of Christ that we affirm in the Creed must surely come much higher up: unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity.” These are what truly mark church as an “interdependent” reality.243 But without the maturity that comes with autonomy, there can be no authentic interdependence because there is insufficient agency for self-direction. Without agency, there cannot be communion. Like Lincoln and Baumert, Colleen Mallon understands koinonia as fellowship, not as Platonic “communion,” and she uses Congar’s theology to outline how

the human and divine natures of Christ, and (2) the former identifies the “mystical body” as the Roman Catholic Church while the latter understands the “People of God” as in some ways transcending that boundary (Models of the Church, p. 45). Communion ecclesiology, construed in this way, thus represents a positive advance over “mystical body” theology, yet Ratzinger’s understanding of communio, which has tremendous influence in communionecclesiological circles, constitutes a version of communion ecclesiology that leans in character more toward its theological predecessor. 238. McLoughlin, “Communio Models of Church,” p. 188. 239. Wood, “Church as Communion,” p. 160. 240. Stephen Pickard, “The Bishop and Anglican Identity: Signposts for Episcopal Character,” in Percy, Chapman, Markham, and Hawkins, p. 36. 241. McLoughlin, “Communio Models of Church,” p. 184. 242. Of course, there would be sacramental and functional distinctions. Hierarchy would not be obviated, even if hierarchicalism would be. 243. Paul Avis, “The Anglican Covenant,” Ecclesiology 7 (2011), pp. 293–96 (294).

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ecclesial fellowship effects discipleship by connecting the creation of this fellowship to the Holy Spirit’s work of bringing the world closer to the eschatological basileia.244 Watkins is unsure the basileia tou theou is properly characterized by “restored relationship” (since a disciple’s efforts to seek the basileia can create major rifts within families, resulting in more rather than less conflict, as Matthew 10 makes clear245), but she does wonder whether the communion lens tends to “blur our focus” on the relational realities that matter greatly: “repentance, forgiveness of sins, the breaking in of God’s Kingdom, and the eschatological promise of all being restored ‘in Christ.’ ”246 Communion, characteristic of the basileia that is the fulfillment of eschatological expectation, is a relational reality. It is the fulfillment of interdependence. As a result, ecclesial communion must also be radically interdependent. It must be dialogical.247 It must be collegial.248 Where hierarchy exists, it must not serve a strictly sacramental or juridical purpose but a communicative one.249 This is particularly true of the episcopal office, which, standing as it does in the apostolic line, in the lineage of the first witnesses to the eschatological reality of Jesus’ ministry and resurrection, provides a “sign of the new humanity” made possible through the Christ event, and so “expresses the [eschatological] relationality that comes from new life in Christ.”250 A church that is not dynamically interdependent does not adequately exemplify communion. In the Roman Catholic context, it is fair to argue that “the exercise of central authority at the synods, with the pope issuing the final document to be accepted by local churches, is an undermining of the model of koinonia.”251 Within the Anglican Communion, recent advocacy to move toward something similar is no less so. While ecclesial communion and God’s own nature as Trinity may be analogically related, relationally speaking, there is “more” to communion than its reduction to an iconic reflection of intra-trinitarian communion allows. In addition to the contribution trinitarian communion makes to a theological imagination of church, a deep, communal interdependence is prized by ecclesiologies that feature a more robust and tensive eschatology that finds communion to be an emergent quality.

244. Mallon, “Ecclesial Discipleship,” pp. 350–51. 245. Watkins, “Objecting to Koinonia,” pp.  326–28. One might also argue, with the Anglican statement Communion, Conflict and Hope, that communion is not the absence of conflict but an ethos that allows for the furtherance of “restored relationship” through conflict. 246. Watkins, “Objecting to Koinonia,” p.  333. Watkins uses “restoration” in her eschatological language in her response to Roman Catholic and Anglican documents that do so, including the ARCIC-I Final Report and The Church as Communion. 247. Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, p. 188. 248. McLoughlin, “Communio Models of Church,” pp. 187–88. 249. Erickson, “Church in Modern Orthodox Thought,” p. 145. 250. Mark Chapman, introduction to Percy, Chapman, Markham, and Hawkins, p. 17. 251. McLoughlin, “Communio Models of Church,” p. 187.

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Ecclesiologies with more realized eschatologies, by contrast, are often characterized by stratified, hierarchical constructions of ecclesial relationality rooted in the notion that communion is fully available to churches now via participation in trinitarian existence, a participation that carries certain (often quite conservative and limiting) requirements. Communion in the truest sense occurs in a unified body that, precisely as a structured entity, is marked by plurality and otherness, a mutually respectful diversity in which authority is shared. This condition is often forestalled by a sometimes homogenizing and centralizing impulse in communion ecclesiologies. The Practical Critique When communion is the principal lens through which church is viewed, an especially powerful focus on eucharist as the core church practice is almost inevitable. While eucharist should be a primary aspect of any theological imagination of church, an overemphasis on it can produce certain ecclesiological difficulties. Eschatologically, celebration of eucharist is the proleptic pointer par excellence toward the basileia. In ecclesiologies of communion, however, that promised reality is made available now, often precisely in and through eucharist. Instead of being an anticipation of the fulfillment of communion, it becomes a means of entering now into an extant condition. Further, in ecclesiologies of communion, the celebration of eucharist is so strongly emphasized that it often seems to be the only ecclesial practice of note. After all, among some theologians, ecclesiologies of communion are profoundly related to or, in some instances, equivalent to “eucharistic ecclesiologies,” as mentioned earlier. Rowan Williams exemplifies this perspective, claiming that a church is truest to its identity when gathered for eucharistic worship.252 Just as there is only one church, there is only one eucharist: thus the local sacramentally manifests the fullness of the universal in communion ecclesiology.253 The bishop is the locus of ecclesial authority in communion ecclesiologies precisely because of the bishop’s status as eucharistic president.254 The local church is thus demarcated by bishop and eucharist.255 That ecclesiologies of communion place an accent on eucharist virtually to the eclipsing of other Christian practices is a major shortcoming, and it leads to a

252. Rowan Williams, “The Church as Sacrament,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 10 (2010), pp. 6–12 (8). 253. See for example Hahnenberg, “Mystical Body of Christ,” p. 17; and Wood, “Church as Communion,” p. 164. 254. Susan K. Wood, “Continuity and Development in Roman Catholic Ecclesiology,” Ecclesiology 7 (2011), pp. 147–72 (166). 255. See for example Wood, “Church as Communion,” p. 162. Also, note how this theme is sounded by the very title of John Zizioulas’ book, Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist and the Bishop During the First Three Centuries (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2nd edn., 2001).

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variety of problematic theological assertions. G. R. Evans, for example, maintains that while there is some degree of ecclesial unity among Christians because of a common baptism, Jesus did not come to establish “denominations” but the church, which means that the non-sharing of eucharist by various segments of the Christian family indicates a brokenness in the body of Christ that is a scandal, since the dominical establishment of eucharist (the Last Supper) marks the founding of the universal church.256 Certainly, that all Christians are not welcome at the eucharistic table of every Christian gathering is a tragic circumstance that is a scandal and is a sign of brokenness. However, the exalted view of eucharist here leads to the troubling assertions that Jesus’ intention was to establish an institution rather than a way of life; that the Last Supper, rather than a series of communal responses to Jesus’ resurrection, marks the origin of church; and that diversity of Christian belief and practice (“denominations”) is thoroughly negative. None of these are uncontested views, they all result from a high notion of eucharist common in communion ecclesiologies, and they have important practical ramifications for ecclesial life. The elevation of eucharist as the highest form of Christian practice has the particularly negative effect of reducing the importance of baptism to being little more than a prelude to this “more important” ritual act. This is a crucial problem because church is no less baptismal than it is eucharistic.257 Erickson makes this point abundantly clear in the Orthodox context, advocating a baptismal ecclesiology that stresses the ecclesial centrality of baptism as the rite of Christian initiation and formation, which is productive of real and lasting unity.258 The form that liturgical renewal took in the Episcopal Church in the United States during the mid-twentieth century was to rethink church in terms of a baptismal ecclesiology in order to correct what had come to be seen as a eucharistic ecclesiology that had overly privatized and hierarchized that church.259 While it may be as much a mistake to replace a eucharistic ecclesiology with a baptismal one, as an overemphasis on either sacrament will surely lead to an ecclesial imbalance,260 as a complement to the eucharistic theme in ecclesiology, a baptismal emphasis capitalizes on the epicletic character of eucharistic ecclesiology in recalling the presence of the Spirit in the baptismal act as a commissioning for Christian life, a moment to which, Erickson contends, one could say that the eucharistic epiclesis actually refers and reflects. Increased attention to baptism and the formation that normally accompanies it would, Erickson asserts, mitigate the

256. G.R. Evans, The Church and the Churches: Toward an Ecumenical Ecclesiology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 298–99. 257. Behr, “Trinitarian Being of the Church,” p. 82. One might want to point out that it is no more baptismal than it is eucharistic, either. 258. Erickson, “Church in Modern Orthodox Thought,” p. 147. 259. Ruth A. Meyers, Continuing the Reformation: Re-visioning Baptism in the Episcopal Church (New York: Church, 1997). 260. Whether this has, in fact, happened in the case of the Episcopal Church (and I firmly maintain it has not) cannot be addressed here.

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propensity for local churches to become insular.261 Moreover, far from emphasizing universal unity, identification of ecclesiality with eucharistic practice tends to cause communicants to feel that church begins and ends at the borders of their own communities.262 Baptism, however, particularly because this is the one ecclesial act nearly all Christian churches accept as validly performed by all others, truly emphasizes the universality of the church in a manner that a eucharistic emphasis—presently—cannot.263 This is certainly not an idiosyncratic view. Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry clearly emphasizes the importance of both sacraments for the life of the church. Even Jenson, an ecclesiologist of communion, maintains that communion is inaugurated in baptism, establishing the relationship that becomes “enacted” in eucharist.264 Jenson, in fact, calls baptism the “wellspring of the church’s koinonia” because it bestows the Holy Spirit.265 But among communion ecclesiologists, there is generally a resistance to elevating baptism to the same ecclesiological significance as eucharist. Aristotle Papanikolaou, for example, in responding to the idea of a baptismal ecclesiology, writes: What an overemphasis on a baptismal ecclesiology . . . forgets is that, in the end, baptism exists in order to stand in the eucharistic assembly: in the ancient rites it took place within the eucharistic assembly; and the catechumens preparing for baptism were excluded from the eucharistic assembly when it was preparing to offer the eucharistic gifts. Baptism is the entry toward a eucharistic way of life; it always points to the Eucharist. Being eucharistic is the fulfillment of the baptismal commitment.266

While there is nothing to dispute about the historical details here, the theology of baptism in play is perhaps somewhat restrictive and insufficiently missiological. Despite the claims of most ecclesiologies of communion, baptism is not simply a ritual that opens the way for eucharistic participation. It is the ministerial commissioning of a human being for a new way of life. Certainly, it takes place in the context of the eucharistic liturgy—this is the normal gathering of the Christian community. And of course it “points to the Eucharist,” but not because eucharist is its “fulfillment” but because eucharist is a key component—not the only and maybe not even the principal expression—of the communal life and mission into which

261. Erickson, “Church in Modern Orthodox Thought,” p. 148. 262. Behr points out that an overemphasis on eucharistic ecclesiology can slide into a revivification of the Cyprianic perspective: no salvation outside of the (that is, my) church (Behr, “Trinitarian Being of the Church,” p. 84). 263. Erickson, “Church in Modern Orthodox Thought,” p. 149. 264. Jenson, “Church as Communion,” pp. 71–72. 265. Jenson, “Church as Communion,” p. 74. 266. Papanikolaou, “Integrating the Ascetical and the Eucharistic,” pp. 175–76; emphasis in original.

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the baptized are initiated. Baptism points through eucharist, out into the world, for the sake of which Christian people seek to anticipate now the life of the basileia. Fulfillment of the baptismal commitment is one’s continual reorientation to a life of love. This is certainly part of “eucharistic living.” But there is much more involved in the continual effort to live a life of discipleship than participation in eucharist alone, and to name this journey “eucharistic” is only, once more, to obscure a whole range of additional practices that are also ingredient to Christian life. In terms of Christian practice, there is “more” to ecclesial communion than eucharist, as crucial and central to church as that practice is. In addition to the celebration of eucharist, the communion and mission of the community depend upon a whole range of practices that communion ecclesiologies do not recognize, practices that not only effect the sort of ecclesial communion so prized by communion-ecclesiological perspectives, but that seek to transform the world, a non-ecclesial world that, in large part, ecclesiologies of communion tend to characterize “in uniformly negative terms.”267

2.3 Beyond Ecclesiologies of Communion Communion ecclesiologies, like all theologies, are contextual.268 They answer questions put to them by their places and times. Tillard, for instance, addresses ecumenism and secularism in his theology of the churches.269 Because ecclesiologies of communion are contextual, they are ambivalent and partial, open for construal in many ways and employed for a variety of ends. Therefore, communion ecclesiologies appear in versions, some with one set of features, some with others. Even though they share recurrent themes, ecclesiologies of communion, therefore, are not uniform. To engage a particular communion ecclesiology on a critical point, then, is only to criticize a tendency within ecclesiologies of communion that a particular theologian’s work happens to exemplify, a tendency that may or may not appear in the work of any other specific ecclesiologist. It is not to claim that all ecclesiologists of communion maintain that position. Similarly, to suggest there are often significant gaps in ecclesiologies of communion as they are currently formulated, to which theological attention must be paid, is not a denunciation of ecclesiologies of communion. There is much that is good in communion ecclesiology. An interrogation of this approach does not deny this. As Watkins puts it, “I hope it is clear that I am not—in objecting to the all-pervasive, and uncritical

267. Behr, “Trinitarian Being of the Church,” p. 83. 268. Flanagan argues convincingly that communion ecclesiologies developed in response to the needs and conditions of, and questions put to, churches in Western “modernity” and that because this remains invisible to ecclesiologists of communion, who see communion ecclesiology as a universally valid conception, they ironically suppress ecclesiologies that do not conform to it (Flanagan, “Communion Ecclesiologies as Contextual Theologies,” p. 65). 269. Flanagan, Communion, Diversity, and Salvation, p. viii.

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use of this language—‘against’ communion, or koinonia, or community, as such; this could no more be true for a theologian in the Christian tradition than that I should be opposed to ‘love’ or ‘hope’ or ‘virtue.’ ”270 Problems arise, however, because insufficiently conceptualized versions of communion “all too easily lead to an equating of the term with something rather less than its leading protagonists would wish for it.”271 As Mannion observes, it is not the idea of communion or even of communion ecclesiology that is an issue. It is how they are often used by those seeking to advance “official” communion ecclesiologies that presents difficulties.272 Such attempts seem to carry agendas. The manner in which “communion” was construed by the Extraordinary Synod in 1985 was not “ideologically innocent,” for example. It was an effort to derail less hierarchical and juridical ecclesiologies fomented by Vatican II’s “people of God” approach.273 The CDF’s “Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious” stated specifically that it was authorizing the appointment of an Archbishop Delegate to “assist” the orders of women religious in the United States “in implementing an ecclesiology of communion” characterized by doctrinal agreement (the CDF wanted sisters to represent better the Magisterium’s line on human sexuality and “radical feminism”) and the tamping down of “corporate dissent.”274 Upon his appointment as that Archbishop Delegate, the Archbishop of Seattle told reporters that he viewed his remit to implement this ecclesiology of communion among American nuns to be “an important moment in living out communio . . . the very communio that the task before us seeks to deepen.”275 Such ideologically loaded invocations of communion have also appeared within the Anglican Communion, where the respective ecclesiological perspectives of the Virginia and Windsor reports on the one hand, and of Communion, Conflict and Hope on the other, resulted in radically different construals of ecclesial communion. Truly, “consequent of particular interpretations, an ecclesiology of ‘communion’ can be just as authoritarian/life-denying as any political society and/or hierarchical model of yesteryear.”276 Where anxiety and fear impel theologians and church leaders to seek security and certainty through control and the supposed neatness of uniformity, eschatological assertions of partialness and provisionality are given over in favor

270. Watkins, “Objecting to Koinonia,” p. 340. 271. Watkins, “Objecting to Koinonia,” p. 341. 272. Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, p. 55. 273. Flanagan, Communion, Diversity, and Salvation, p. 131. 274. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious,” 18 April 2012, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, http://www.usccb.org/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&pageid= 55544 [accessed 25 July 2014]. 275. Peter Sartain, “Deepening Communion,” America, 18 June 2012, http://www. americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=13456 [accessed 22 July 2014]. 276. Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, p. 60.

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of immediate surety, relationality is hierarchized and the otherness of diversity is limited, and the acceptable range of authentic Christian practice is reduced. Communion ecclesiology is often enlisted in this effort, focused as it tends to be on an ideal, vertical, God–world relationship and much less so on the concrete, horizontal, visible level of ecclesial communion and practice.277 Nicholas Healy is quite right in maintaining that no church will ever conform to an ecclesial ideal—of communion or of anything else. The ideal perfection of communion (which, if Watkins is right, may not be ideal at all278) can only occur eschatologically. Instead of seeking fulfilled “communion” then, church must anticipate it, through constant repentance and reorientation to God and God’s purpose, pursuing this in “practical and prophetic” ways. This requires an ecclesial imagination that attempts to engage with churches as they are, not in the abstract. Healy contends this is precisely the opposite of communion ecclesiology, which focuses on the ideal “primary reality,” leaving its “expression” relatively unaddressed. Ecclesiology, Healy claims, should begin precisely with that “expression.”279 When this is not the case, when the abstract ideal takes precedence over the reality, it is too easy to make the notion of “unity” into an idol. Williams, whose tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury was centered on preserving the unity of the Anglican Communion, sometimes at the cost of equally important considerations, has written, “The question of identity is inseparable from the question of unity: to recognize another community as essentially the same, whatever divergences there may be in language and practice, is necessary for any unity that is more than formal.”280 To claim that unity is predicated on sameness (despite the overture to “divergences”) is contradictory to a view of communion that strives for unity within difference with the help of the Holy Spirit, as a gift of grace. Such a “ ‘communion’ at all costs” approach further bars voices of the already dispossessed from contributing to ecclesial life, work, and debate,281 and does little to effect true koinonia. “A preference for ‘peace at all costs’ or for institutional agreement often covers over the continuing presence of real divisions of power and perpetuates a system of injustice by discouraging open discussion of conflicts and maintaining a status quo in favor of those currently holding power.”282 When an idol is made of unity, this is precisely what takes place. Rowell, for example, claims that the election and ordination of Gene Robinson as Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire in 2003 sidetracked ecumenical

277. Salzman, “Communion Ecclesiology,” p. 533. 278. Further to the question of whether the “communion” on offer in ecclesiologies of communion is an “ideal” or a “travesty,” see Bernd Jochen Hilberath (ed.), Communio—Ideal oder Zerrbild von Kommunikation (Freiburg, Germany: Verlag Herder, 1999). 279. Healy, “Communion Ecclesiology,” pp. 451–52. 280. Chapman, introduction to Percy, Chapman, Markham, and Hawkins, p. viii; emphasis added. 281. Flanagan, Communion, Diversity, and Salvation, p. 130. 282. Flanagan, Communion, Diversity, and Salvation, p. 131.

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dialogues between Anglicans and the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches that were years in the making and, therefore, it should not have taken place.283 But what is the value of an ecclesial unity predicated on the betrayal of the truth? Rowell’s argument only works if what the Episcopal Church did was wrong and if the furthering of unity at all costs is theologically appropriate. Clive Handford points out that, in communion, “actions in one place affect another. Perhaps this was typified for many by the words of an African bishop who said: ‘Because of our history we were always known as “The State Church”; now we are known as “The Gay Church”—and our children suffer in the playground because of it.’ ”284 No one wants to see children taunted by their playmates. However, as the WCC statement Costly Unity warns, it would be a “cheap unity” that avoided undertaking gospel action to stave off such discomfort.285 If communion means anything, it means strengthening ties to and standing in solidarity with the most marginalized members of the koinonia. Unfortunately, witness to the gospel may, at times, entail conflict and suffering. The idolizing of unity has caused some to confuse it with peace. Communion cannot be pursued at the expense of truth, including the hard work of witness, which may mean coming into conflict with families, neighbors, and even co-religionists. Unity must not become an idol under the cover of a misguided ecclesiology of communion. By recognizing and redressing the shortcomings of ecclesiologies of communion, particularly in their deficient eschatological perspectives, which carry attendant relational and practical shortcomings, churches can live out of and into an imagination of more fruitful and more scripturally sound ways of understanding and anticipating communion and so of being a church in and for the world. Having raised some background considerations and the three overarching and interrelated areas of core concern about ecclesiologies of communion, I will now turn to examine the work of two theologians, John Zizioulas and John Milbank, as exemplars of ecclesiological work that falls within the spectrum of communion ecclesiologies, to uncover the extent to which their work also raises these questions. This will provide case studies for analyzing the gaps in ecclesiologies of communion, for specifying the “more” to communion and to communion ecclesiology, and, ultimately, for offering a constructive supplementation to communion ecclesiology based on this eschatological, relational, and practical “more.”

283. Rowell, “The Bishop, Other Churches, and God’s Mission,” pp. 89–90. 284. Clive Handford, “Celebrating Common Ground: The Bishop and Anglican Identity,” in Percy, Chapman, Markham, and Hawkins, p. 52. 285. World Council of Churches, Costly Unity, p. 6.

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Chapter 3 C H U R C H B EYO N D T H E WO R L D : J O H N Z I Z IOU L A S

John Erickson has written of John Zizioulas that “it would be difficult to overestimate the importance of [his] contribution to modern Orthodox theology.”1 Zizioulas’ influence extends far beyond the Orthodox tradition, however. Rowan Williams, formerly Archbishop of Canterbury, writing on Zizioulas’ best-known and widely cited and studied volume, Being as Communion,2 contends that it “has a fair claim to be one of the most influential theological books of the later twentieth century; it had a lasting effect on ecumenical discussion and on the vocabulary and assumptions of many churches.”3 Likewise, Kallistos Ware noted as recently as 2011 that “the ‘eucharistic ecclesiology’ of Zizioulas continues to prevail almost everywhere,”4 which can hardly be surprising, as his influential work has been a major driver in the development and ascendancy of communion ecclesiology for nearly half a century. Communion has always been key to Zizioulas’ theological perspective. “I cannot but rejoice at the employment of [communion] in ecumenical discourse,” he told the World Council of Churches in 1993, since it would be disastrous for Christians to “overlook the important place of the theme of koinonia in the Bible” and in theological imagination and practice.5 Because the God whom Christians worship is a trinity, communion is the primary way in which God, Christ, and church must

1. John H. Erickson, “The Church in Modern Orthodox Thought: Toward a Baptismal Ecclesiology,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 11 (2011), pp. 137– 51 (144). 2. John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985). 3. Rowan Williams, foreword to John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (New York: T&T Clark, 2007), p. xi. 4. Kallistos Ware, “Sobornost and Eucharistic Ecclesiology: Aleksei Khomiakov and His Successors,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 11 (2011), pp. 216– 35 (231). 5. John D. Zizioulas, The One and the Many: Studies on God, Man, the Church, and the World Today (Gregory Edwards (ed.); Alhambra, CA: Sebastian, 2010), p. 49.

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be understood. “God is Trinitarian; He is a relational being by definition; a nonTrinitarian God is not koinonia in His very being. Ecclesiology must be based on Trinitarian theology if it is to be an ecclesiology of communion,” if the Holy Spirit is to be understood properly as the spirit of communality, and if Christ is to be identified as the body of the faithful in communion, that is, precisely as church, as Zizioulas construes it.6 Zizioulas predicates his entire theological perspective on an understanding of koinonia close to the one that, as seen in the previous chapter, Norbert Baumert and Andrew Lincoln, among others, warn us may range beyond what the New Testament texts meant by it. In Zizioulas’ view, koinonia . . . provides us with a key to deal with almost every ecumenical issue in a theological way based on a common faith in God as Holy Trinity. Thanks to this key concept we can interrelate subjects such as Christology, Pneumatology, anthropology, ecclesiology, etc., in an organic way. This concept can help us tackle issues such as Church ministry, primacy, mission, etc., in faithfulness to our Trinitarian and Christological faith and in openness to the concerns of human beings in social and everyday life.7

Throughout his career, Zizioulas has championed communion as the theological reality best positioned to correct what he sees as an overly localized view of the parish as a full and sufficient expression of ecclesiality, advanced above all by Nikolai Afanasiev,8 and a creeping “Western” individualism that allows a social and theological atomization to proceed unchecked to detrimental effect. To support his theology of communion, Zizioulas relies principally upon the Cappadocian theologians of the fourth century, whose work establishes the foundation of his resolutely trinitarian viewpoint, and Maximus the Confessor, from whom he derives at least four insights that play a decisive role in his theology: that (1) the incarnation is the demonstration of God’s desire to create freely in love; (2) Christ is the trans-temporal bridge between uncreated divine being and created being; (3) the eschatological end of history determines the presence of truth within history; and (4) history itself can never be the cause of truth, which is derived solely from the eschaton.9

6. Zizioulas, The One and the Many, p. 51; emphasis in original. 7. Zizioulas, The One and the Many, p. 382. 8. While Aristotle Papanikolaou maintains that Zizioulas “owes many of his central themes to Afanasiev” (“Integrating the Ascetical and the Eucharistic: Current Challenges in Orthodox Ecclesiology,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 11 (2011), pp. 173– 87 (179)), he would likely also agree with Calinic Berger that Zizioulas attempts to “correct” Afanasiev’s ecclesiological position by supplementing it with the ideas of communion and eschatology (“Does the Eucharist Make the Church? An Ecclesiological Comparison of Staˇniloae and Zizioulas,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 51 (2007), pp. 23–70 (29)). 9. Robert D. Turner, “Eschatology and Truth,” in Douglas H. Knight (ed.), The Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 23–24.

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In this chapter, I will not present a complete portrait of Zizioulas’ intriguing, highly technical, and complex theological system. Instead, I will limit myself to explicating his understanding of communion and demonstrating how this affects his ecclesiological imagination. It is impossible to understand Zizioulas’ communion ecclesiology properly without first situating his view of church within the overarching ontological framework that gives rise to his position. To that end, the chapter will begin with an analysis of Zizioulas’ contention that communion is nothing other than truth: the truth of being, the truth of God, the ultimate truth of the eschaton. For Zizioulas, communion is truth because of the ontological priority of personhood. In Zizioulas’ estimation, individuals are by definition not in relation to one another while persons are by definition in a relationship of communion with one another. The source of this relationality, which simultaneously effects communion and persons, is the Trinity. The Trinity—communion itself (hence the title of Zizioulas’ magnum opus)—seeks to be in communion with its creation, the world. The entry point for this communion is the human-beingbecome-authentic-person, and the place where this personhood is conferred and communion is realized is called church. After describing Zizioulas’ overall theological project in light of his conception of communion, therefore, the chapter will then outline the ecclesial role in the relational ecstasis of God toward creation and in the relational referral of creation back to God by churches in eucharistic worship. Because Zizioulas considers the realization of communion to be an eschatological reality, his communion ecclesiology will then also be analyzed in its eschatological dimension before examining its practical implications. While certain problematic issues will be highlighted as it unfolds, this chapter will be primarily descriptive, laying the groundwork for more substantive critique hereafter, particularly in these latter two dimensions (eschatological imagination and practice).

3.1 Zizioulas’ Theological Project: Communion as Truth Zizioulas’ construal of communion is a profound implication of his larger “ontology of personhood,” in which it is rooted.10 Communion is, for him, a mode of being. Moreover, it is the only authentic mode of being because it is God’s own mode of being. And it is this because communion is the mode of being proper to what Zizioulas calls persons. To grasp what “personhood” means in his system, one must first attend to the principles that underlie it. Based on his reading of the Greek patristic theologians, Zizioulas distinguishes between created and uncreated being. Created being, the type of being possessed by

10. The locus classicus for Zizioulas’ presentation of his ontology of personhood remains the first chapter of Being as Communion, “Personhood and Being” (pp.  27–65), which is unparalleled for its scope, clarity, and thoroughness.

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the material universe, is contingent and finite. It does not endure of itself. It dies.11 In contrast, divine being, uncreated being, is “true life” and is eternal. This is God’s own being: the being-in-communion of the Holy Trinity. This is a first principle in Zizioulas’ thought. A second critical idea is that uncreated being is totally free while created being lacks freedom. God’s being is free: unconditioned and unconstrained. Human being is not. The freedom of uncreated being is key to Zizioulas’ idea of personhood. Freedom thus stands close to the heart of his analysis of being.12 Because human beings are not ontologically free, being constrained to exist by factors outside of their control, the “hypostatic fact” of human existence, which derives from the “ecstatic fact” of sexual relations and not a personal ecstasis of mutual communion, as between the trinitarian persons, means that the human hypostasis of biological being, on its own, is “interwoven with individuality and with death.”13 It is not free to relate, as the trinitarian hypostases (persons) are. As such, it does not naturally possess personhood. Personhood, we can begin to see, is, for Zizioulas, the result of a totally free relational ecstasis of uncreated being in communion. Everything in Zizioulas’ theology is established on the basis of his ontology of personhood. “Zizioulas’ Trinitarian theology of persons in communion is unambiguously the center point or source of his whole theological system, . . . incorporat[ing] within it, as essential elements, not only an anthropology, christology, and pneumatology . . . but also an ecclesiology and a cosmology.”14 Personhood in the Zizioulan sense is not the typical understanding of personhood as “consciousness or psychological subjecthood,” but rather, following the Cappadocians’ teachings on the Trinity, a relational reality that “arises from trinitarian co-existence in love.”15 For Zizioulas, “person” is the name one gives to

11. John D. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (London: T&T Clark, 2007), p. 257. Zizioulas is aware that this is a relatively negative view of the created order (Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 63). Although this does not trouble him, as he ultimately sees the natural realm as saved by grace, questions have been raised about his “negative determination” of created being, which appears to imply that nature has no goodness on its own and, in the assertion that such being can only attain to goodness by “participation in uncreated nature,” carries with it “more than a small trace of the Platonism” that Zizioulas adamantly denies is present in his theological system (Travis E. Ables, “Being Church: A Critique of Zizioulas’ Communion Ecclesiology,” in Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen (ed.), Ecumenical Ecclesiology: Unity, Diversity and Otherness in a Fragmented World (London: T&T Clark, 2009), pp. 118, 119). 12. Paul McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue (Fairfax, VA: Eastern Christian Publications, 2nd edn., 2006), p. 146. 13. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 52; emphases in original. 14. Patricia A. Fox, God as Communion: John Zizioulas, Elizabeth Johnson, and the Retrieval of the Symbol of the Triune God (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2001), p. 52. 15. Zizioulas, One and the Many, pp. 21–22.

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“ontological difference within divine being,”16 a “movement out of self in love”17 in which the united uncreated being of the Trinity is nonetheless differentiated relationally, in the perfect freedom proper to God, into a Father who gives being, a Son who returns and reflects that being back to the Father, and a Spirit who effects communion as at once a present and an eschatological reality. The personal and the relational are therefore the same. “The personal existence of God the Father [as the source of being] constitutes the divine substance. Thus ‘person’ forms the ultimate ontological reality and personhood can only be constituted in communion.”18 Accordingly, for created being to become personal, it must share in the uncreated (authentic) being of God, but in a way that is ontologically different from it, analogously to the way in which the three trinitarian persons share in the one being but in a differentiated manner. Personhood is therefore an unconstrained agency that simultaneously results from and is constituted by an utterly free, selfdonative differentiation in uncreated being. Moreover—and significantly for an ecclesiologist of communion—this insight resulted not from philosophical presuppositions but from ecclesial experience. The early church, in eucharistic worship and through its relational structures, particularly the exercise of the episcopal office, experienced God as communion, an experience from which the Cappadocians developed a rich theology of God’s triune being.19 Zizioulas contends this ecclesial encounter led to the realization that, in Catherine LaCugna’s words, “God cannot be anything but who God is, namely, the event of communion.”20 Elaborated into an ontology, the triune communion of uncreated being becomes the source of all being, becomes ultimate truth. Created being is said to be capable of bearing the weight of truth only to the extent that it participates in the truth that is God in communion with Godself. Zizioulas marks this distinction by claiming the former “is truth as communion by participation (as compared with God, who is truth as communion without participation).”21 In the created order, “revelation of the truth always brings about communion”; in fact, “Christian doctrine points to this communion and teaches us that this communion is the truth itself.”22

16. Turner, “Eschatology and Truth,” p. 17. 17. Robert D. Turner, “Foundations for John Zizioulas’ Approach to Ecclesial Communion,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 78 (2002), pp. 438–67 (441). 18. Edward Russell, “Reconsidering Relational Anthropology: A Critical Assessment of John Zizioulas’s Theological Anthropology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 5 (2003), pp. 168–86. 19. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, pp. 16–17. 20. Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity & Christian Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), p. 262. 21. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 94; emphases in original. 22. John D. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics (Douglas H. Knight (ed.); London: T&T Clark, 2008), p. 12.

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This understanding of truth is not propositional but a metaphysical insight attained through an existential attitude. It is about being, not intellect. Zizioulas thinks this is a crucial part of how we imagine the world as trinitarian Christians. Truth is the communion that is God the Father, and that which is true participates in it, partakes of its being. Through church, this truth is not so much “known” as it is lived as ecclesial communion, in Christ, in the power of the Spirit. It also means that the truth that is communion is eschatological. The truth is the eschaton, and the Spirit makes the eschaton appear in history, which is the only way the truth can be known.23 Making this eschatological reality present is the means by which God shares with human beings the “communion and freedom” proper to the Trinity.24 The only way that human beings can accept this gift and become persons is to undergo an ontological change, a transformative supplementation of their created being by uncreated being through incorporation into the divine triune communion. As a unique form of created being, each human is what Zizioulas calls a “biological hypostasis.” This hypostasis, as seen above, leads only to atomization and death, not because this is what God wills for creation but because creation, on its own, lacks communion with God, the source of being. In baptism, however, the biological hypostasis is transformed into the “ecclesial hypostasis.” The individual is brought into church and so into the communion life of God, and is thus finally constituted as a full, truly unique person, free of the determinations of the biological hypostasis, destined for eternal life, and standing “over against the world” in a new mode of (uncreated) being.25 This does not obliterate the biological hypostasis or replace created being with uncreated being. Rather, the two exist in tension. Created being attains permanence only in its deep communion with uncreated being, not by itself becoming uncreated being, which is not possible for finite creatures. In addition, the perfect attainment of the ecclesial hypostasis is only an eschatological reality, as communion is not a present reality for creation but is its eschatological destiny. Even after taking on the ecclesial hypostasis in baptism, it remains an object of hope rather than a fully present condition, thus, in effect giving rise to yet one more hypostatic condition: “The situation created by the expectation and hope of the ecclesial identity, by this paradoxical hypostasis which has its roots in the future and its branches in the present, could perhaps [be] expressed by another ontological category, which I would call . . . a sacramental or eucharistic hypostasis.”26

23. Zizioulas, One and the Many, pp. 85–86. 24. Knight, Theology of John Zizioulas, p. 1. 25. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, pp. 53, 57. 26. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p.  59; emphases in original. As far as I can tell, this intriguing third hypostasis is nowhere elaborated upon subsequently in Zizioulas’ work.

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In all of creation, only the human can become a person,27 a condition possessed by God alone but that God is pleased to confer on human beings through theosis, the process of “becoming divine,” which is to say, a being in communion with the divine trinitarian communion that is the revealed eschatological truth of God.28 Taking on the ecclesial hypostasis means attaining personhood by entering into the divine communion of God. As already stated, this does not mean replacing created being with uncreated being—that would be to become a component of the godhead, which is obviously impossible. Zizioulas contends, following his patristic forebears, that participating in that intra-trinitarian reality means taking on the relational position of the Son to the Father, “enter[ing] by grace into the sonship (υἱοθεσία) which is conveyed to us by the living relationship between the Father, the Son and the Spirit.”29 This is a critical point for both Zizioulas’ ontology and his resulting ecclesiology. Christ was the only human being ever to have been fully a person in the ontological sense, one so full of true life that death was impossible for him.30 It is Christ, therefore, who opens to all human beings the possibility of participating in the free, uncreated being—the personhood—of God and thereby obtaining one’s own particularity and eternality.31 And to enter into Christ is to take on the ecclesial hypostasis, to be incorporated into the universal church as the body of Christ through baptism. If to take on the ecclesial hypostasis is to stand “over against the world,” and if this is how personhood is achieved, this means that “personhood thus proves to be in this world—through man—but not of this world.”32 As we will see, the ecclesiological ramifications of this position are vast.33

27. Turner, “Foundations for John Zizioulas’ Approach to Ecclesial Communion,” p. 445. 28. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 31. 29. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 306. 30. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 108. 31. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 240. 32. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 224; emphases in original. 33. While they will not be engaged directly here, this also raises serious questions about Zizioulas’ definition of the person. Edward Russell is concerned that “ ‘person’ as Zizioulas defines it is too narrow. Only certain people become persons when they experience salvation, participate in relationships at a certain level and are incorporated into the church.” He wonders whether Zizioulas thinks individuals with “distorted relationships” rather than proper ecclesial ones are somehow not persons and whether, even more dramatically, any individual standing outside the church is a person in Zizioulas’ estimation (Russell,“Reconsidering Relational Anthropology,” pp. 181, 182). Jonathan Ciraulo, similarly, finds Zizioulas’ theology of baptism somewhat alarming, asserting that “one could find in the history of theology an insistence on a strict interpretation of Cyprian’s axiom extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, but a close alignment of baptism and personhood leads inevitably to the novel and somewhat shocking assertion: extra Ecclesiam nulla persona, which has

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To be saved in Christ is to participate in the unique relationship between the Son and the Father. This unites created with divine being, thereby ensuring the continuance of the former.34 Salvation is possible because Christ makes personhood possible. “Jesus Christ does not justify the title of Savior because he brings the world a beautiful revelation, a sublime teaching about the person, but because he realizes in history the very reality of the person and makes it the basis and ‘hypostasis’ of the person for every man.”35 This being what Zizioulas means by salvation, the meaning he attaches to the Fall is quite clear: “The ultimate meaning of the Fall was . . . in the fact that by perverting personhood (personhood being the only way of communion with God) man turned the difference between uncreated and created natures into a division between the two, and thus ruined God’s purpose in creating man: communion.”36 The postlapsarian condition of sin is the refusal of human beings to “refer” created being back to the communion of God in the way we find the Son doing in Christ.37 It is the introversion that

implications Zizioulas has perhaps not considered” (Ciraulo, “Sacraments and Personhood: John Zizioulas’ Impasse and a Way Forward,” Heythrop Journal 53 (2012), pp.  993–1004 (994)). Richard Fermer extends the critique from the person to the status of the entire natural order in Zizioulas’ theology: If being is communion, if, as Zizioulas holds, personhood is “itself primary and constitutive” of being, then what are we to say of the natural world? Is the natural world to be denied “existence” or true “being”? There appears to be a dualism in Zizioulas’ thought at this point, for he wishes to describe two realms. On the one hand, there is an ontology by “nature,” which is marked by “necessity,” compulsion, a “given datum” which one “simply has to recognize.” On the other hand, there is a personal ontology established by Divine personhood, on the basis of love and freedom. Zizioulas writes that, “Personhood thus proves to be in this world— through man—but not of this world.” Personhood is a transcendence of the order of nature, or one’s biological limitations. Yet, if personhood constitutes being, this poses a question for the ontological status of “natural” existence, threatening to undermine its res ens (Fermer, “The Limits of Trinitarian Theology as a Methodological Paradigm,” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosphie 41 (1999), pp. 158–86 (171); emphases in original). Colin Gunton, commenting on Miroslav Volf ’s critique of Zizioulas’ ecclesiology (in Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), p. 85), observes that “Volf may exaggerate, but he exaggerates something that is there when he asserts Zizioulas’ ‘conviction that human personhood is not of this world, but rather is divine’ ” (Gunton, “Persons and Particularity,” in Knight, p. 104, n 35). 34. Turner, “Foundations for John Zizioulas’ Approach to Ecclesial Communion,” p. 446. 35. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 54; emphasis in original. 36. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 238; emphases in original. 37. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 102.

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forestalls the ecstasis required to move beyond the world (that significant notion again) in order to perform this referral.38 The result is persistence in the inauthentic mode of (created) being inherent in the biological hypostasis, which leads to individualization, not communion, and therefore death39—a death that occurs not as punishment for sin but because only that which is in communion with the true being that is the divine communion survives eternally.40 “To be saved from the fall, therefore, means essentially that truth should be fully applied to existence, thereby making life something true, that is, undying. For this reason, the Fourth Gospel identifies eternal life—life without death—with truth and knowledge.”41 Salvation, Zizioulas contends, is “a realization of theosis, as communion of man—and through him of creation—in the very life of the Trinity.”42 Again, this does not mean absorption into God,43 but entering into the relationship of the Son to the Father, which confers personhood on human beings and, through them, on the entire created realm.44 As McPartlan puts it, “The Fall did not damage the natures of things, but broke their communion with God; it made difference into division and persons into individuals. Conversely, theosis is not about divinizing the natures of things, but about changing the way they exist, by imparting to them divine communion.”45 If salvation is personhood-in-communion, and communion is an eschatological destiny, then it should also be true to claim—and Zizioulas does—that “sin is not deviation from an original state but from what will be.”46 Salvation, the attainment of personhood by participating in the communion of the Trinity, is accomplished by entering into the relationship of the Son to the Father in the Spirit, which takes place through incorporation into the churchly body of Christ by accepting the ecclesial hypostasis and therefore entering into the saving truth of the communion realized in the eschaton. To become a person is to be saved by accepting the ecclesial hypostasis that directs us toward our eschatological destiny: communion in and with the Trinity. In Zizioulas’ theology, therefore, church could hardly be given a higher position. It is the exclusive site of salvation for people individually and collectively and, indeed, for creation as a whole. And it is this precisely as the entry point into and expression of communion in and with the Trinity.

38. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 229. 39. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 105. 40. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 228. 41. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 105; emphasis in original. 42. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 211. 43. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 37. 44. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 31. 45. McPartlan, Eucharist Makes the Church, p. 152; emphases in original. 46. Douglas H. Knight, “John Zizioulas on Eschatology and Persons,” in Neal De Roo and John Manoussakis (eds), Phenomenology and Eschatology: Not Yet in the Now (Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), p. 93; emphasis in original.

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3.2 Zizioulas’ Ecclesiology: Communion in the Body of Christ 3.2.1 The Church as the Body of Christ Ernest Skublics refers to Zizioulas as “the primary Orthodox theologian who has contributed more than any other to a retrieval of an ecclesiology of communion.”47 As we have seen, the communion that Zizioulas has in mind is the communion of true being in the divine Trinity in which human beings are able to participate via church, which is able to become the bearer of that truth in ways that I soon will specify,48 but that are available only in and through church, the sole place where personhood is possible49 because it is the sole place where Christ is available: “The restoration of personhood in Christ thus leads inevitably to the community of the Church which, in its turn, offers impersonal nature the possibility of being ‘referred’ to God in its integrity through the personhood of man.”50 Ecclesiologically, the ontology of personhood expands into an ontology of communion, which conditions “not the well-being but the being[,] . . . the very being” of church.51 But what does it mean to consider koinonia to be the ontological character of church? Zizioulas asserts that this means church is relational in its core identity and concrete structure, that its authority is exercised in a communal manner, that its mission is relational, that churches are connected to one another not just sociologically but ontologically, that the communion in which churches participate is real but perfected only eschatologically, and that its “sacramental heart”— eucharist—expresses all of this in liturgical terms.52 In the context of Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood, church can only be all of this if it is the place where human beings attain personhood by incorporation into the relationship of the Son to the Father in the trinitarian communion. This means that church must be understood above all as the body of Christ, because Christ, the result of the hypostatic union of divine and human natures, is the means by which created being is enabled to enter into uncreated being. Incorporation into the body of Christ, taking on the ecclesial hypostasis, is participation in the relational communion of Son to Father, which alone is theosis–salvation. To understand the manner in which Zizioulas’ theology supports the notion of church as the body of Christ, it is important first to notice that Zizioulas situates

47. Ernest Skublics, “The Rebirth of Communion Ecclesiology within Orthodoxy: From Nineteenth-century Russians to Twenty-first Century Greeks,” Logos 46 (2005), pp. 95–124 (96). 48. Turner, “Foundations for John Zizioulas’ Approach to Ecclesial Communion,” p. 459. 49. Zizioulas writes: “Man cannot realize his personhood outside the Church, or else the Church is ultimately irrelevant and should be made redundant” (Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 15). 50. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 245. 51. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 141. 52. Zizioulas, One and the Many, pp. 52–59.

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church in an overarching trinitarian framework. As Russell points out, “Ultimately ecclesiology forms the heart of Zizioulas’ theology, but his ecclesiology rests upon an ontology of the person which derives primarily from a consideration of the nature of the triune God,”53 and Zizioulas himself confirms that it is a “basic theological presupposition” that “ecclesiology must be situated within the context of Trinitarian theology.”54 This might seem to be a reversal of the order by which Zizioulas contends the early church came to awareness of divine communion,55 but the historical sequence that led from ecclesial experience to trinitarian theology is a different process from the subsequent attempt to locate church theologically within the trinitarian economy, as Miroslav Volf helpfully observes: “According to Zizioulas, in the ordo cognoscendi one moves from the experience of ecclesial communion to the correct understanding of the divine communion. In the ordo essendi, however, ecclesial communion presupposes the trinitarian communion, since the church is imago trinitatis.”56 Consonant with this reading of Zizioulas’ ecclesiology, Ștefänițä Barbu thinks the trinitarianism of Zizioulas’ ecclesiology so pronounced that he calls his a trinitarian rather than a eucharistic ecclesiology,57 which seems logical given Zizioulan statements such as “The Church is rooted in the being and life of the Holy Trinity” and “the Holy Trinity is the communion in which the Church participates.”58 Douglas Knight argues that, for Zizioulas, “the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the source of the communion of the universal Church,”59 and Patricia Fox contends that it is Zizioulas’ view that “since the God revealed by Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit is Trinitarian, any authentic theology of Church must be based on the doctrine of the Trinity.”60 Indeed, Zizioulas writes: “The fact that God reveals to us His existence as one of personal communion is decisive in our understanding of the nature of the Church. It implies that when we say the Church is koinonia, we mean no other kind of communion but the very personal communion between

53. Russell, “Reconsidering Relational Anthropology,” p. 169. 54. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 137. 55. As Aristotle Papanikolaou points out, Zizioulas is clear that communion in ecclesial life was the source of the intuition that God is communion in se. There is no question that for Zizioulas, the Trinity is a “bottom–up” understanding in this way (Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), pp. 110–13). However, as Zizioulas also makes quite clear, when it comes to constructing an ecclesiology, it is expressed in unambiguously “top–down” language, in which the Trinity is taken to be its doctrinal and ontological basis. 56. Volf, After Our Likeness, pp. 74–75. 57. Ştefäniţä Barbu, “From Ontology to Ecclesiology: John Zizioulas, the Cappadocians and the Quest for a New Ecclesiology,” Studii Theologice 6 (2010), pp. 201–16 (209–10). 58. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 135. 59. Knight, Theology of John Zizioulas, p. 1. 60. Fox, God as Communion, p. 71.

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the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.”61 Thus, it seems clear that Zizioulas invites us to understand the church in profoundly trinitarian terms.62 The trinitarian communion that church instantiates reveals that church is, concretely, the body of Christ. Christ, the hypostasis of a human–divine person, requires embodiment. That embodiment is church, and truly, not symbolically, so.63 “Christ Himself,” Zizioulas maintains, “becomes revealed as truth not in a community, but as a community.”64 Consistent with the trinitarian grounding of Zizioulas’ ecclesiology, he contends that the body of Christ appears in the world because it is so constituted by the action of the Holy Spirit, the trinitarian spirit of communion–truth.65 The Spirit of eschatological communion gathers the people to form Christ’s corporate body. “Christ contains us in Himself, by His very constitution as Christ in the Spirit. He thus in the Spirit contains by definition the eschata, our final destiny, ourselves as we shall be; He is the eschatological Man— yet, let me repeat, not as an individual but as Church, i.e., because of our being included in Him.”66 Thus, when a church prays, it is the Son, the embodied Christ, praying to the Father. No third party is interposed between church and the Father. At no time is this more true than when a church celebrates eucharist,67 as Pascal Nègre makes clear: “In the eucharistic celebration, the expression ‘body of Christ’ simultaneously signifies the body of Jesus and the body of the Church. Then it means the resurrected body of Christ, of the eschatological Christ, and therefore of the entire eschatological community. The corporate personality established in the Eucharist that is the Church is therefore also an eschatological reality.”68 For Zizioulas, church and Christ are one.69 Accordingly, communion in church is as ontologically significant as the communion of church with the divine Trinity. Without this, personhood, communion, and theosis would all be impossible, and Zizioulas’ system would collapse. Zizioulas’ communion ecclesiology requires

61. Zizioulas, One and the Many, pp. 52–53. 62. Saying this is not at all to imply that Zizioulas runs afoul of the trenchant critique of social trinitarianism made by Karen Kilby (Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity,” New Blackfriars 81 (2000), pp. 432–45) or that he is guilty of the ecclesiological abstraction that Anne Hunt argues often accompanies ecclesiologies with a trinitarian underpinning (Hunt, “Trinity and Church: Explorations in Ecclesiology from a Trinitarian Perspective,” St. Mark’s Review 198 (2005), pp. 32–44). His ecclesiology seems relatively free of the problems they diagnose. 63. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 245. 64. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 115; emphases in original. 65. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 294. 66. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 183. 67. Zizioulas, One and the Many, pp. 139–40. 68. Pascal Nègre, “Ceci est mon corps: traversée de l’ecclésiologie eucharistique de Jean Zizioulas,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 130 (2008), pp. 194–219 (200); author’s translation. 69. This is why Berger asserts that Zizioulas’ ecclesiology evinces a problematic “overidentification of Christ with the Church” (Berger,“Does the Eucharist Make the Church,” p. 57).

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its trinitarian basis and its firm commitment to church as the concrete body of Christ. 3.2.2 Ecclesial Communion, Unity, and Difference As the body of Christ, church is characterized by both unity and difference. As a trinitarian reality, this is as it should be, because ecclesial communion mirrors the inseparable unity of the ontologically differentiated persons of the Trinity in their communion. Unity and difference are perennial themes among ecclesiologists of communion. Understanding better how Zizioulas conceives of unity and difference in the ecclesial context will, therefore, provide a clearer view of what he offers in his version of communion ecclesiology. To begin with unity, Zizioulas maintains emphatically that in church “unity and oneness must be safeguarded.”70 He does not mean by this the enforcement of unity by recourse to rules, structures, and ethical codes, but rather the unity that arises from an ethos of oneness grounded in trinitarian theology, church, eucharistic worship, and the ecclesial structures attendant on it.71 In Zizioulas’ own formulation, the unity of the body of Christ makes it a manifestation within history of the “transcendence of all divisions into the unity of all things in Christ through the Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father.”72 In the unity of the members of the body, their personhood is established, which is, after all, a principal role of church in the divine economy. In church, “one is so united with the ‘other’ (God and our fellow man) as to form one indivisible unity through which otherness emerges clearly, and the partners of the relationship are distinct and particular not as individuals but as persons.”73 Here, the interplay between unity and difference— that is, between oneness and multiplicity—becomes apparent, illustrating that, for Zizioulas, each is required for the other: there can be no unified one without the many that compose it nor an authentically diverse many without the unifying force of the one. These are synchronous, not sequential. Ecclesially, “the Body of Christ is not first the body of the individual Christ and then a community of ‘many,’ but simultaneously both together. Thus you cannot have the body of the individual Christ (the one) without having simultaneously the community of the Church (the many).”74 The unity that Zizioulas extols is not only unity in eucharistic sharing, which is of the utmost importance, but theological unity, as well. Dogmatic agreement is prerequisite to eucharistic fellowship. Once formulated, dogma is an engine of communion and to break with it is to break communion.75 How God is understood

70. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 53; emphases in original. 71. Fox, God as Communion, p. 95. 72. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 169. 73. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 307. 74. Zizioulas, One and the Many, pp. 68–69; emphasis in original. 75. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 118.

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theologically carries implications for the unitive ethos that the body of Christ is constituted to foster. A church cannot be the body of Christ without it and if a church is not the body of Christ then personhood and salvation are unobtainable. Therefore, “orthodoxy concerning the being of God [or anything else] is not a luxury for the Church and for man: it is an existential necessity.”76 The only thing excluded from ecclesial unity is exclusion. Exclusion is anything that contributes to division. Heresy foments division. Therefore, heresy is excluded from church and orthodoxy is requisite for its unity.77 A church must say one and only one thing theologically, as there is only one truth, and any church “which is not able to speak with one mouth is not a true image of the body of Christ.”78 Nevertheless, as already stated, there can be no unity without diversity, and so difference is equally important to Zizioulas in his construal of church, as Communion and Otherness makes very clear.79 Churches are diverse not despite being but because they are united.80 As Aristotle Papanikolaou puts it,“Communion or unity requires real difference, otherwise the unity is less a union than an absorption into sameness. Love, which is the force of communion and unity, requires freedom or an ekstasis from oneself toward the other. This freedom in communion does not become division but true diversity or otherness.”81 The movement-out-of-self-toward-other-in-freedom that constitutes personhood can only occur if there is an other toward whom to move. Ecclesial diversity is thus required for the same reason that diversity arises within God. “There is no model for the proper relation between communion and otherness either for the Church or the human being other than the Trinitarian God,” Zizioulas contends.82 And just as God is not first one and then three but simultaneously one and three, within divine being so in church “otherness is constitutive of unity, and not consequent upon it.”83 Just as unity requires difference so as not to become a kind of assimilative or ontological totalitarianism, however, difference requires unity so as not to turn into a fragmentation that rips apart the body of Christ. Zizioulas, therefore, similarly to the attempts of communion ecclesiologies to define “acceptable” or “legitimate” levels of diversity, establishes limits to difference: “As noted by St. Maximus the Confessor in the seventh century in a truly ingenious analysis of existence, division (διαίρεσιϚ) is one thing, while difference (διαΦορά) is something

76. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 15. 77. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 7. 78. John D. Zizioulas, “Address to the 1988 Lambeth Conference,” Sourozh 35 (1989), pp. 29–35 (32), quoted in Fox, God as Communion, p. 96. 79. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. xiii. 80. Zizioulas, One and the Many, pp. 53–54. 81. Aristotle Papanikolaou, Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine–Human Communion (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), p. 139. 82. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 4. 83. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 4; emphasis in original.

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else; difference is holy while division is not.”84 Diversity is therefore conditional, and “the most important condition attached to diversity is that it should not destroy unity.”85 It is to avoid disunity that Zizioulas argues that “all diversity in the community must somehow pass through a ministry of unity.” This ministry exists in the form of episcope, exercised by bishops.86 The bishop is precisely the figure who works to prevent diaphora from falling into diairesis.87 This is not simply for functional reasons, but for deeply theological ones. Bishops are the carriers of communion– truth not because of their historical connection to the past but because of their spiritual incorporation into the apostolic relational role. This is the true meaning of apostolic succession.88 In the text of a lecture, published as “Apostolic Continuity of the Church and Apostolic Succession in the First Five Centuries,”89 Zizioulas traces two approaches to apostolic succession and apostolic continuity: a “Western” and a “Syro-Palestinian” approach. The first is a linear view. “God sends Christ ⇒ Christ sends the apostles ⇒ the apostles transmit the Gospel and establish Churches and ministries” (Zizioulas, 1996, p. 154). Zizioulas cites scripture to support this view and shows how it was advanced in the patristic period in 1 Clement, the Apostolic Constitutions of Hippolytus, and the works of Irenaeus and Cyprian. Its exponents tend to emphasize churches as historical, missional institutions, often contending that church leaders possess authority because of their position in an apostolic succession that transmits the power of representation—in some instances the power to represent Christ, in others to represent the original apostles, and in others, both. This is framed in terms of the eucharistic role of the bishop: the bishop represents Christ, as head of the worshipping community and the one who offers the eucharistic sacrifice, while simultaneously representing the apostles, as possessor of the authoritative apostolic teaching. When taken up by Cyprian, the alter Christus aspect of this is dropped in favor of emphasis completely on the bishop as alter apostolus. Moreover, every bishop is a successor of one particular apostle: Peter. “This means not only that all bishops are essentially equal, but also that they are all equally successors of the entire apostolic college headed by St. Peter” (Zizioulas, 1996, p.  157). Against the intentions of Cyprian and his forebears, in the Middle Ages, the modified Cyprianic perspective that becomes the reigning one in the West maintains that apostolic succession is a matter of the transmission of authority from an individual apostle to an individual bishop, rather than being the transmission of authority by the entire apostolic college with

84. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 405; emphases in original. 85. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 54. 86. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 54. 87. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 8. 88. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 116. 89. John D. Zizioulas, “Apostolic Continuity of the Church and Apostolic Succession in the First Five Centuries,” Louvain Studies 21 (1996), pp. 153–68.

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Christ and Peter at its head to a bishop who represents a specific eucharistic community of which he is to become the head, as both alter Christus and alter apostolus.90 The second view of apostolic succession, “the Syro-Palestinian” perspective, is represented by Ignatius of Antioch, the Didascalia Apostolorum, the “PseudoClementine” corpus, Hegesippus, and the earliest lists of bishops standing in the apostolic succession. Instead of positing a historical, linear succession, this tradition understands succession to be a matter of eschatological transmission: apostolic succession is invested in bishops in their role as alter Christus, standing at the head of the worshipping community in place of Christ during eucharist, understood as a remembrance not of the past (as in the linear view) but as a paradoxical remembrance of the coming future. An individualistic view of apostleship is ruled out in favor of a collegial view of the apostolic band surrounding Christ in his eschatological role as ruler of the re-constituted Israel. Apostolic succession is thus seen as “a succession of communities and not of individuals” (Zizioulas, 1996, p. 159; emphasis in original). It emphasizes the bishop as head of the eucharistic community, surrounded by his presbyters, as the leaders of the whole community, together. The focus is not on the bishop or priest in himself, as came to be the case in the other view, but on each local church as an instantiation of the New Jerusalem, an image of the eschatological community in divine worship, with the bishop at its head as an icon of Christ. Zizioulas posits that the historical and individualistic version of apostolic succession maintained in the West (partially under the influence of a Platonism that only understands a remembrance of the past and cannot imagine a remembering of the future) occluded an alternative and equally ancient tradition that understood apostolic succession as an eschatological phenomenon, as the succession of eucharistic communities each imaging the eschatological community of perfect worship, with Christ—represented iconically by the bishop—as its head. The first view leads to a view of episcopacy as an individual affair, the investiture of power and authority in a particular person who then has the ability to “bind and loose” the members of that community. The second leads to a view of episcopacy as a ministry of unity in which the bishop, as head of a local church, is invested with the power to lead a community in the ritual act that establishes it as the eschatological, corporate body of Christ, unifying the many in and with the one, in order to transmit the truth–communion of God’s own being into the communion of the bishop’s church, thereby playing a crucial role in creating the only community capable of giving rise to personhood and, so, salvation. This minister, the bishop, unites a church by leading its eucharistic worship but also by exercising the ministry of unity that binds the members into the one saving body of Christ. Significantly, Zizioulas argues that “this one minister should be part of the community and not stand above it as an authority in

90. Zizioulas maintains that the bishop should not be this in his own eyes but only in the eyes of the faithful (One and the Many, p. 141).

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itself. All pyramidal notions of Church structure vanish in the ecclesiology of communion.”91 It is because of these considerations that Zizioulas takes exception to Afanasiev’s belief that the local church can be the local catholic church at the parish level, that is, regardless of the presence of the bishop. Zizioulas denies this because this configuration departs from the eschatological icon that exists when the bishop stands at the head of the eucharistic community, surrounded by his presbyterium and the laity, and because the unity–difference dialectic required for the body of Christ is absent without the bishop, in whom the unification of the one–many is concretized. The parish-based view cannot establish the conditions for overcoming division, as the church is ecclesiologically incomplete without its bishop. Zizioulas further maintains that Afanasiev’s axiom runs the risk of affirming that local eucharistic celebration constitutes the universal church independently of other local churches (that is, independently of the eucharistic celebrations of other bishops’ congregations), a notion that also runs afoul of the unity required of the one church of God. The presence of the bishop, even when that presence is maintained through the mechanism of a presbyter deputed to preside over eucharist at the parish level, is required in order for that church to be what it is: the body of Christ through which the eschatological truth of unity in communion effects incorporation into the triune relational life of God.92 Consistent with the general trend of ecclesiologies of communion, bishops are not optional in Zizioulas’ understanding of church. As already noted, this view is less a function of a certain notion of authority, although that comes into play, than it is a theological concern related to questions of structure and hierarchy. This must now be analyzed further. “The Church is not simply an institution. She is a ‘mode of existence,’ a way of being.”93 These first two sentences of Being as Communion reflect Zizioulas’ demand that church be understood as the material instantiation of the ethos of communion– truth, a “way of being” resulting from the personal work of God in Christ through

91. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 54; emphasis in original. 92. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, pp. 24–25. Some commentators have found Zizioulas’ emphasis on episcopacy problematic. Ware writes: “Zizioulas is strongly ‘episcopo-centric’; indeed, he has sometimes been accused of ‘episcopomonism.’ At times he appears to imply that the bishop is the sole channel of grace and sole source of authority within the Church” (Ware,“Sobornost and Eucharistic Ecclesiology,” p. 232). Somewhat more stridently, Nicholas Loudovikos asserts that “Zizioulas misreads the sources of the first two centuries in order to put the bishop in the place of the dictating Father” (Loudovikos, “Person Instead of Grace and Dictated Otherness: John Zizioulas’ Final Theological Position,” Heythrop Journal 52 (2011), pp. 684–99 (694)). Papanikolaou, on the other hand, thinks the real “misreading” is to understand Zizioulas’ ecclesiology as episcopocentric, because Zizioulas is so very clear that the bishop’s service as icon of the one only occurs because he is so constituted by the many (Papanikolaou, “Integrating the Ascetical and the Eucharistic,” p. 175), consistent with the unity–difference dynamic at the ecclesial and trinitarian levels. 93. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 15; emphasis in original.

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the Holy Spirit. Because church is God’s personal work, it will necessarily be hierarchical. This is because “hierarchical ordering is inherent in personhood, all personal relations being ontologically a-symmetrical, since persons are never selfexistent or self-explicable, but in some sense ‘caused’ by some ‘other,’ by a ‘giver’ who is ontologically ‘prior’ and, in this sense,‘greater’ than the recipient.”94 The trinitarian reality that is church is thus “hierarchical in the sense in which the Holy Trinity itself is hierarchical: by reason of the specificity of relationship.”95 In the Trinity, the Father personally causes (without being temporally prior to them) the Son and the Spirit, who arise as personal distinctions (hypostases) within uncreated being. Hierarchy is thus established within the Trinity itself, given the monarchy (monarchia) of the Father within it. As the body of Christ, and therefore a participant in the being of the Trinity through communion, a church must exhibit this structure. “The issue, therefore, is not whether there is hierarchy in the Church, but what kind of hierarchy it is that does justice to the Trinitarian model.”96 Zizioulas acknowledges that hierarchy is a troublesome concept for contemporary people, but contends that there are positive and negative ways to understand it. “Hierarchy” has acquired a pejorative sense in our modern minds. It is connected with oppression and suppression of freedom. It is normally treated as a moral problem, but its roots are ontological. Hierarchy is evil and ontologically problematic when the “greater” one, the “causing other,” does not let the “inferior”

94. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 144. 95. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 223; emphases in original. 96. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 146. Volf finds exactly this point to be highly problematic ecclesiologically. Making a distinction in Zizioulas’ position between the one that constitutes the many and the many that only conditions the one, Volf maintains that: one encounters in the relation between bishop and congregation the same asymmetrical structure of communality that according to Zizioulas also attaches to innertrinitarian relationship and to the relationship between Christ and the church; the one (God the Father, Christ, bishop) constitutes the many, but the many are conditioned by the one. It is thus doubtful whether Zizioulas’s understanding of the relation between the one and the many genuinely has excluded “all pyramidal notions” from ecclesiology, as he asserts (Volf, After Our Likeness, p. 112). One might not agree with Volf ’s analysis of Zizioulas’ explication of the relationship between the many and the one, and I think a case can be made that Volf has misunderstood Zizioulas, here, perhaps because Communion and Otherness had not yet been written at the time Volf wrote his book. Nevertheless, Zizioulas maintains that “pyramidal notions” are removed from ecclesiology simply by asserting that the bishop is merely another member of the many with a special relationship that constitutes him as the one, as if this somehow obviates the clear, real-world differential of power and authority between bishops and the other orders. This may strike some as being less than convincing.

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one, the “receiving other,” be fully other, fully “himself ” or “herself,” equal in nature and “whole of the whole.”97

Hierarchical structure is not negative in and of itself but only when it is used to inhibit rather than promote the attainment of personhood in a church. In addition, hierarchy is an eschatological as well as a present reality, and this also must be reflected in church organization: “There is no Kingdom of God which is not centered on Christ surrounded by the apostles. And this implies again a structure, a specificity of relations, a situation in which the relations within the community are definable, and they are definable not arbitrarily but in accordance with the eschatological nature of the community.”98 As the analysis of Zizioulas’ theology of episcope and apostolic succession made clear, a church gathered around its bishop for eucharist is the image of the apostles gathered around Christ in the eschatological kingdom. The hierarchical ordering of church is therefore not an accident or merely functional but ontological. It pertains to the identity of church as the body of Christ. If the bishop is the one who unifies the many in the ecclesial structure, it is the synodal and conciliar character of the churchly many that establishes some limits to episcopal power within the hierarchy. Examining the structures and institutions set forth in the ancient canons for maintaining and fostering communion, Zizioulas discerns two principles: the local bishops/churches can do nothing without the presence of the one primate in a given region, but at the same time this “one” cannot do anything without the “many.” In other words, there is no ministry or institution of unity—no primacy in the Church—which is not expressed in the form of communion, for the Church by its nature is communion.99

A robust communion ecclesiology requires both synodality and primacy.100 But a leader exercising primacy (as a bishop, metropolitan, or patriarch, for example) does so as a member of a community, not as a despot. Synodality and conciliarity mean that leaders act in concert with their peers and in a manner that is at one with those who are hierarchically subordinate to them: for example, even though bishops alone are permitted to participate in synods, by virtue of their eucharistic roles as the heads of their local churches,101 the decisions taken by the bishops in council must be received by their churches to be considered authoritative.102 Primacy exercised in the mode of the one-constituted-by-the-many is, thus, “both desirable and harmless in an ecclesiology of communion.”103 97. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 143; emphasis in original. 98. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 205; emphases in original. 99. Erickson, “Church in Modern Orthodox Thought,” p. 143. 100. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 55. 101. Zizioulas, One and the Many, pp. 218–19. 102. See Zizioulas, One and the Many, pp. 118–25. 103. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 56.

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Conciliarity and synodality, the principles that canonically bar those endowed with primacy from acting unilaterally,104 are crucial for preserving communion, which “is an ontological category in ecclesiology,”105 and reflect the “eucharistic mentality” that overcomes the distinction between the universal and the local106—precisely what Zizioulas asserts that Afanasiev’s (insufficiently) eucharistic ecclesiology does not do because its downgrading of the episcopal role destroys the reconciliation of one and many in the bishop required for communion–truth in the ecclesia. As Zizioulas puts it, emphasizing themes of great importance to all ecclesiologies of communion, “One community isolated from the rest of the communities cannot claim any ecclesial status. There is one Church in the world, although there are many churches at the same time. This paradox lies at the heart of an ecclesiology of communion.”107 Ecclesial communion thus depends upon the interplay of the one and the many in church, the reconciliation of difference and otherness into a communal union as the one body of Christ. This is reflected in church structures—their ministries (especially the episcopacy) and their hierarchical ordering, expressed through eucharist on the one hand and by conciliar and synodal processes on the other— structures that participate in and reflect the ontology of personhood that gives rise to communion and establish the conditions necessary for effecting personhood in the members of the body of Christ. This allows these persons to share in the divine salvific relationship of the Son to the Father via the only available means for this: incorporation into the ecclesial communion that is Christ, the hypostasis of the Son, incarnationally—yet also eschatologically—present. 3.2.3 Communion and the World: Locating Zizioulas’ Church The communion of church as the concrete body of Christ is, in Zizioulas’ estimation, the means by which God’s own communion is opened to the world. This allows created being, through humanity, to participate by grace in the uncreated being of God’s own triune personhood, endowing creation with the eschatological permanence proper only to uncreated, divine being. While this is suggestive of Zizioulas’ view of the relationship between church and world, it is important to understand with greater precision (and ask certain questions about) how he characterizes the church–world dynamic, since his perspective on this has important implications for how he construes the eschatological and practical dimensions of Christian community. Zizioulas maintains that there is not a dichotomy between church and world because church is involved compassionately in the world incarnationally, as the place where the body of Christ is made manifest.108 Even so, while “she lives in the

104. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 258. 105. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 134; emphasis in original. 106. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 157. 107. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 55; emphases in original. 108. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 149.

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world . . . she is not of the world (Jn 15.16).”109 Taking on the ecclesial hypostasis effects the realization that the world is not one’s “true home”110 and, in fact, that the world is antagonistic toward church and the communion with God it offers. “Just as Christ, the all-inclusive being, . . . is an eschatological reality existing in a state of conflict with the fallen creation in history, so the Church, by drawing her identity from Christ, is thrown into a world hostile to Christ and to herself and is forced to live in conflict with it.”111 This conflict cannot be used as grounds for disengagement with the world. “The Church and the world are in a state of opposition (as the writings of John make clear), but they are not therefore in a state of separation.”112 The purpose of church, as the body of Christ, is to effect communion between God and creation. Therefore, the animosity of the world toward it is not the last word. “It is, of course, true that the Church is not of this world and that the world hates Christ and his Church. But the relation of the Church to the world is not just negative: it is also positive.”113 As the body of Christ in and for creation, it directs the world away from the biological and determined toward the ecclesial and truly free.114 This is crucial because without church, the world does not understand its ontological predicament. It understands neither that its created purpose is to be in communion with its creator nor that without this it is headed for eternal death. It does not understand that the separation between church and world is really the separation between created and uncreated being and, because of this, it marks “a crisis within creation itself” that church, the body of Christ given for the world, exists to rectify.115 The church–world relationship from the Zizioulan perspective is, therefore, dynamic. Its purpose is lived out as a “double movement”: (i) as a baptismal movement which renders the Church a community existentially “dead to the world” and hence separated from it, and (ii) as a eucharistic movement which relates the world to God by “referring” it to God as anaphora and by bringing to it the blessings of God’s life and the taste of the Kingdom to

109. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 87; emphases in original. 110. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 63. 111. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 143. 112. John D. Zizioulas, The Eucharistic Communion and the World (Luke Ben Tallon (ed.); London: T&T Clark, 2011), p. 37; emphases in original. 113. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p.  57. It is crucial to note carefully that Zizioulas maintains that the world “hates the Church (Jn 15.18–25; 20.19)” (Eucharistic Communion, p.  36; emphasis in original) not because church instantiates a mode of relationality that turns the typical human manner of constructing social realities upside-down but because the world resents church for judging it negatively for its lack of ontological communion with uncreated being (Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, pp. 36–37; Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 143). 114. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 63. 115. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 37; emphasis in original.

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This double movement, in which church is simultaneously dead to the world baptismally and seeks to refer the world to God eucharistically, means that “the frontiers between Church and world are always difficult to establish. This will always be the fundamental problem of the Church: that is, the preservation of her identity without withdrawing from the world into a ghetto.”117 Zizioulas recognizes that it is a temptation to read the Byzantine tradition as advocating understanding church as a retreat from the world, a temptation to which many Orthodox, he admits, have succumbed.118 This is a mistake. Zizioulas claims that in the end (in both the teleological and eschatological senses), “the Church is not opposed to the world; it is in the world, and while its presence constitutes a sign of judgment and a call to repentance and to Baptism for the world, it never ceases to be there for the life of the world.”119 There is no question that in Zizioulas’ communion ecclesiology, church exists in order to offer the world the possibility of sanctification, theosis, communion in the being of God through incorporation into the body of Christ. Zizioulas’ construal of communion, in fact, is predicated on the notion of a personal God who moves toward the world in a self-donative ecstasis in love for creation as God’s ontological other. While none of this would be objectionable to most Christian theologians on its face, in conjunction with Zizioulas’ position as a whole, it does raise some important questions regarding some facets of his theology. Considered in light of Zizioulas’ view of the biological hypostasis proper to created being, a view that appears to identify little intrinsic value in creation qua creation, despite scriptural support for understanding creation—even in its fallen state—as possessing goodness in and of itself by virtue of its origin in God’s free act of granting it existence and God’s subsequent proclamation that this creation is “very good” (Gen. 1.31), the argument that church and world are not “separate” because church is “in” the world seems somewhat flimsy. Zizioulas is clear that the world must undergo an ontological transformation or be lost in death. Church and world do not seem here to be related in any meaningful way. Church is “in” the world only in the sense of being a gateway to communion with God, a communion that alone confers truth and goodness upon anything. It is “in” the world only as a kind of missionary, not because it has any firm foundation in it, not because its worldliness is constituent to its identity. Zizioulas’ language around church–world relations emphasizes the Johannine notion that a Christian’s “true home” is not “the world” but elsewhere, “with God,”

116. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 221. 117. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 389. 118. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 26. 119. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 362; emphasis in original.

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imaged as a realm outside the material order. To be redeemed, the world must be “brought into” church. In fact, Zizioulas employs just this language,120 which reinforces the impression that nothing valuable inheres in creation itself, nor that church might strengthen its identity by insisting on its rightful place in creation rather than simply enduring a temporary earthly sojourn. The quote above, in which Zizioulas juxtaposes the loss of ecclesial identity against withdrawal from the world, makes it clear that he can see no way in which the church of God could possibly honor and live into its identity precisely by delving even more deeply into its earthly, created reality.121 When Zizioulas’ understanding of eschatology is added to the picture, this impression becomes even stronger, as eschatological reconciliation is imagined and represented not as the perfection or fulfillment of creation as the material ground of God’s desire to bring that which is not God to ultimate flourishing in the plenitude of divine goodness, but as the completion of an ontological shift from this (broken, erroneous, fragmented, defective, impermanent) mode of being into that (reconciled, truthful, united, perfect, permanent) mode of being. The sense here is less that creation will unfold into its divinely intended fullness—right “where” it is—than it is that God will take creation “to” Godself (metaphorically speaking, from “where” it is to “where” God is), thereby renovating it into something it was always meant but failed to be (that is, thoroughgoing communion). In spatial terms, this has the character of a displacement, whereby creation must be taken “out of ” itself to be “brought into” God–uncreated being–communion–truth. Zizioulas may not intend to create this impression. But the images, language, and theological notions he employs can leave one with the distinct sense that salvation consists in moving “away from” the world and “toward” Christ-as-church, leaving the world behind in order to discover authentic being elsewhere. Church, the entry point to and site of this mode of authentic being, is construed not as “here,” in the world, but “there,” in the divine communion, in “heaven.” The church appears to be beyond the world.

120. As a representative example, Zizioulas writes, in the context of eucharist, “In the Orthodox tradition, in which the Eucharist is central, the world is brought into the Church in the form of the natural elements as well as in the everyday preoccupations of the members of the Church” (Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 57; emphasis added). 121. This does not mean, of course, that Zizioulas thinks churches should be uninterested in the world. But the adversarial manner in which Zizioulas construes the church–world relationship—remember how baptism regenerates a person “over against the world”—can elicit a confrontational posture on the part of those who use his work to support their own. As Papanikolaou points out, Vigen Guroian uses Zizioulas to posit that church exists in a permanent tension with the surrounding world and that the best resolution for such a tension is to dissolve the separation of church and state and to allow church to take a direct role in government (Papanikolaou, Mystical as Political, pp. 60–63, 73). Zizioulas does not say this, but that his work can be read this way is part of the problem I am trying to address.

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For Zizioulas, this must be the case if church is to fulfill its role as mediator between creation and Creator, if church is to participate in sanctifying and transfiguring the world. This, however, has serious collateral consequences for the theological imagination of the world. For instance, the capacity of history to bear the eschatological truth in the here and now takes on problematic aspects as a result of this construal of the world. In addition, material Christian practices in the world that might have precisely the communion-producing effects Zizioulas desires are not explored because Zizioulas has difficulty conceiving of the world as an arena capable of providing a context for such communion, since his theology of church as the body of Christ and, therefore, the only site of communion–truth, disallows it. Zizioulas’ theology and conceptual vocabulary can effect the sense that his church, which is not of the world, is not really in the world either, but actually exists beyond the world. This is not the place to advance an alternative to Zizioulas’ construction of the church–world relationship. One will be suggested later. For the moment, the foregoing queries are intended to highlight some of the issues that Zizioulas’ perspective and presentation raise. These should be kept firmly in mind as I proceed into the final two sections of this chapter, which deal with Zizioulas’ eschatological ecclesial imagination and resulting eschatological ecclesial practice, for these questions will condition the analysis of his theological views in those areas, and will resurface when it comes time to suggest in subsequent chapters what “more” there might be to an ecclesiology of communion than Zizioulas’ own theology of church offers.

3.3 Zizioulas’ Eschatological Ecclesiology 3.3.1 Zizioulas’ Construal of Eschatology As has been seen already in this survey of the ecclesial dimensions of Zizioulas’ theology, his perspective is markedly eschatological. To understand the character of Zizioulas’ eschatology, it is instructive first to define what he takes the eschaton to be. For him, the eschaton “is nothing less than God’s eternal life, and, as such, the eschaton is truth insofar as truth is God’s being.”122 For him, therefore, eschatology is the theological examination of the ultimate “coming to truth” of creation in the promised teleiosis (τελεíωσις, final perfection) of its divinely ordained purpose: communion with the uncreated being of the Trinity, God’s self. Eschatology, then, answers the following question: How . . . can truth be considered simultaneously from the point of view of the “nature” of being (Greek preoccupation), from the view of the goal or end of history (preoccupation of the Jews), and from the viewpoint of Christ, who is both a

122. Papanikolaou, Being with God, p. 31.

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historical person and the permanent ground (the λόγος) of being (the Christian claim)—and all while preserving God’s “otherness” in relation to creation?123

The answer this eschatology gives is “communion,” communion as formulated by the patristic Fathers, one that is simultaneously the being of God as truth and the destined end of all creation. Eschatology thus qualifies ontology.124 In the ontology of personhood, “the truth and the ontology of the person belong to the future, are images of the future.”125 This does not mean that created being will become uncreated being, as creation will remain finite and other to God.126 What it means is that in the eschaton, the relationship between created and uncreated being will be transformed: created being will commune fully in God’s own personal communion, thereby itself becoming fully personal and free for the first time. To the (limited) extent that this happens now, then, it is only a prolepsis of what is to come. Scripturally, Zizioulas’ eschatological imagination has a pronounced Johannine cast.127 Because Zizioulas’ understanding of the church is centered on its being the body of Christ, a deeply Pauline view, one might expect his construal of eschatology to be more Pauline, as well. To be sure, Pauline eschatological perspectives are not absent from his treatment.128 But Zizioulas’ eschatological, as distinguishable from

123. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, pp. 71–72; emphasis in original. 124. In the unpublished manuscript of an address Zizioulas delivered at King’s College, London, in 1998, Zizioulas argues that the theological “rediscovery” of eschatology in the twentieth century has provided a renewed grasp of how the future is implicated in both the past and the present in God’s oikonomia. Thus, in contrast to a view of eschatology that was formerly merely psychological, pertaining as it did to questions of hope around the eternal destiny of the individual after death, it is now primarily ontological, refocusing our attention on being as “an event” in which past, present, and future converge within the narrative of God’s salvific work (Zizioulas, “Towards an Eschatological Ontology,” paper presented at King’s College, London, 1998, pp. 1–2). 125. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 62; emphasis in original. 126. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 37. 127. Although the texts that are most foundational for his eschatology are Johannine, other images and concepts are important to him, as well. In particular, he draws on the Synoptic gospels (Matthew, especially) in order to support his position on the legitimacy of ecclesial judgment, on Acts to emphasize the eschatological gift of the Holy Spirit to the church, and on the Corinthian correspondence to stress the importance of Jesus’ resurrection for eschatological thinking. What is important to note, in terms of the position being taken here, is (1) the relatively Johannine cast of Zizioulas’ eschatology and (2) how little Zizioulas makes of texts such as Romans 8 and 1 Cor. 15.28 (which he does not mention at all, except for one brief citation in The One and the Many, where he deploys it to illustrate a trinitarian notion), texts that, as we will see, are central to eschatologists with a more robust notion of the eschatological future. 128. See, for example, Zizioulas, Being as Communion, pp. 186, 232.

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his ecclesiological, imagination relies heavily upon the Johannine literature, which emphasizes the realization of God’s purposes in the Christ event. His understanding of the eschatological character of the Holy Spirit, for example, is supported by his reading of Jn 3.8 and 16.14.129 Like other ecclesiologists of communion (as seen in the previous chapter), he employs 1 Jn 3.1–2 to assert that the eschatological future, while future, is nevertheless present now, interpreting the passage in light of his ontology of personhood to be a revelation that, although “the person constitutes an eschatological reality, . . . within the Church man is able to taste of its truth even now.”130 And Zizioulas considers John’s gospel to be better than the others at taking ecclesial experience into account, which is why that text’s emphasis on anamnesis—specifically, a paradoxical remembrance of the future—is missing from the others.131 As already noted, Zizioulas takes ecclesial experience to have been the source of the explicitly trinitarian theology of God out of which the interrelated themes of communion and eschatology emerged, and it is in consonance with this view that Zizioulas’ eschatological perspective is deeply informed by this text, as well. As a result, his theology is marked by the realized eschatology that runs through those writings, which colors his ecclesiological eschatology. The resurrection, the eschatological moment par excellence, is what “gives Zizioulas’ ontology its basis in eschatology. The incarnation brings the truth of divine personhood into the world, but the victory of the resurrection realizes the eschatological truth, Christ, in time.”132 Because Christ is raised, churches exist now, in the world, as the body of Christ constituted by the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, those who are reborn in church by taking on the ecclesial hypostasis in baptism are able to prefigure the eschatological reality of communion in the truth of God’s triune being. In this way, “man appears to exist in his ecclesial identity not as that which he is but as that which he will be; the ecclesial identity is linked with eschatology, that is, with the final outcome of his existence.”133

129. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 186. 130. Zizioulas, One and the Many, pp. 36–37; emphasis in original. 131. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 7. 132. Turner, “Eschatology and Truth,” p. 21. 133. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p.  59; emphasis in original. This is because, for Zizioulas, an ontology that is eschatological understands being to derive not from the past—that which has being is not simply equivalent to that which appeared at some point in history—but from the future—that which has being is that which endures eternally (Zizioulas, “Towards an Eschatological Ontology,” pp.  3–4). In Zizioulas’ anthropological terms, this means individuals have being only to the extent that those beings are incorporated into the ecclesial hypostasis and thereby participate in the eternal being of God, thereby becoming persons and attaining authentic (read: communal and so eschatological) existence. This ontological viewpoint is a key driver behind the realized cast of Zizioulas’ eschatology. A determination of a thing’s being requires assessment of its future status. This, in turn, requires Zizioulas to develop a theological means of distinguishing that which has

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This brings the present and the future into such close relationship that, in Zizioulas’ theology, they are almost conflated. This is consistent with his realized view of eschatology (and Johannine language generally). It also carries methodological import for his theology, particularly in the manner by which Zizioulas defines how he will and will not deploy eschatological imagining in his work. Zizioulas does not want to support an eschatological “orientation” that finds communion and truth to be historical occurrences. Contingent events composing the processes inherent to created being cannot lead to communion with God, cannot result in truth. Instead, eschatology must be considered as a “state of being” outside of history. As such, it corresponds to the ontological change in being signaled by taking on the ecclesial hypostasis. It stands in a “confrontational” relationship with history rather than emerging from within it, and it comes into the world from without, from “beyond history,” and, therefore, beyond the world, from the “location” of church–communion–truth.134 Zizioulas’ eschatology, then, is both ingredient to and an implication of his ontology and his allied ecclesial perspective. 3.3.2 The Eschatological Character of Zizioulas’ Ecclesiology Consistent with Zizioulas’ adamant assertion that church is not of this world, it is not, in his view, an “interim arrangement that is intended to hold good just between the resurrection and the end of time. The Church refers to a Christ-centered reality, the body of Christ, which exists even after the resurrection and will continue to exist, forever.”135 Church, because it participates already in the uncreated being of God, is promised permanence in a manner that other earthly realities are not. This additional element of Zizioulas’ distinction between church and world is extended universally. Given that church is the place where created being enters into communion with uncreated being, Zizioulas declares that he has “come to the

this everlastingness from that which does not. In order for him to avoid creating anxiety over what is real (everlasting) and what is not, he must posit that we can see what is real by its visible alignment with the structures of (true) reality. For him, those structures of authentic reality are church and the eschatological communion–truth that is “realized” in it. His theological language around eschatology, therefore, must take a realized tone in order for him and his readers to have any confidence in the ontological, theological, and spiritual status of any given thing. Undoubtedly, he himself would not express this in such terms, but as the analysis here goes forward, I hope it becomes clear that this is a very real—and problematic—impetus for and result of his approach. 134. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 174, n 11. As a result, Zizioulas continues in the same note—with emphasis—his construal of eschatology “presupposes the end of mission.” This seems an incredible pronouncement for a theologian who asserts that church is “for” the world. In what sense can we consider a church animated by an eschatological theology that obviates mission to be “for” the world? 135. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 117.

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conclusion that it is the good will of the Father that the entire material world should become the Church, the body of the Son in the Holy Spirit. The Father does not desire mankind only, or only a certain number from among mankind, but all creation.”136 It is not only through church that creation is saved, but it is by creation literally becoming church that it achieves theosis. Like many ecclesiologies of communion, Zizioulas asserts that church itself is the object of eschatological perfection. In his case, however, this is understood to include all of material reality. As an eschatological entity, church “does not draw her identity from what she is but from what she will be.”137 The Spirit of communion that constitutes church as the body of Christ does this precisely by manifesting the eschatological future as present within it.138 In the power of the Spirit, churches remember the future. This occurs above all in eucharist, the ecclesial instantiation of the future that gives rise to the very existence of church. In celebrating eucharist, a church “is what she is by becoming again and again what she will be.”139 As an eschatological reality, just as church lives in the world but is not of the world, Zizioulas contends that church lives in history but is not historical.140 And just as conflict arises between church and world because churchly identity comes from beyond the world, conflict arises in church and world because churchly identity comes from beyond history.141 This tension arises because, as the only place where true personhood is available, church “overcomes” the world.142 Moreover, precisely because the church is an eschatological reality, it makes present now the promised future of communion–truth. One of the ways in which it does this is by manifesting the basileia tou theou, and not only in prospect but truly. “The Church is . . . nothing other than the kingdom of God in which Christ reigns.”143 This is very much in keeping with the Johannine tenor of Zizioulas’ eschatological imagination. Because “now (νῦν) is the judgment of the world”

136. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 135. 137. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 138. 138. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 79. 139. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 144. The language of “foretaste” and “anticipation” that appears in Zizioulas’ work can obscure the extent to which his eschatology tends toward the realized. It is important to notice that, for him, church and life in it may provide a proleptic experience of the eschaton, but it is actually realized in eucharist. See Eucharistic Communion, p. 12, where he makes exactly this point. Moreover, because eucharist is the event that constitutes Zizioulas’ church, the realized eschatology that characterizes it also indelibly colors his ecclesial viewpoint, despite occasional overtures toward eschatological futurity. 140. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 127. 141. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 143; Nègre, “Ceci est mon corps,” pp. 200–201. 142. Douglas Farrow, “Person and Nature: The Necessity–Freedom Dialectic in John Zizioulas,” in Knight, p. 112. 143. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 116.

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(Jn 12.31), the eschata are present in church. In “this simple moment of the Johannine νῦν, all of history is consummated,”144 he claims. Also consistent with his general view of eschatology, Zizioulas is quick to add that this “now” is not the end result of a historical process but is the result of the visitation of a reality from beyond history that comes to “tabernacle” (Jn 1.14) with us as truth.145 A second and, in Zizioulas’ work, a perhaps more common way in which church makes the eschatological future present in the world now is by being an icon of the basileia. Frequently, Zizioulas refers to church as “the image or ‘icon’ of the kingdom of God”146 and, conversely, to the basileia as “the cause and archetype of the Church.”147 This churchly iconicity carries implications for how its role in the ontology of personhood is to be understood. By being the icon of the Kingdom, the Church is at the same time maximalized and minimalized. She is maximalized in that she will definitely survive eternally when her true identity will be revealed in the Parousia. And she is minimalized in that she has no ὑπόστασις of her own but draws her identity from Christ and the Kingdom to come. By existing in history “in persona Christi,” she is guaranteed the glory and eternal life of her Head. But for the very same reason she is no autonomous entity vis-à-vis either Christ or the Kingdom. Her existence is iconic.148

Church is held to be an icon of the basileia precisely because it is simultaneously destined for eternal preservation while being non-hypostatic itself. Its hypostasis is derivative. Its form is Christ’s own, as Christ’s body, the eschatological gathering of all people. Therefore, the gathering of ecclesial persons (hypostases) into the corporate ecclesial body is the mode in which the icon–church appears in history. “The reassembly of the people of God in one place is a fundamental characteristic for Zizioulas of the eschaton.”149 Church is the site where the one and the many are united in communion, thereby becoming an icon of the basileia.150 Accordingly, “the Church is primarily a foretaste of the eschatological assembly of the Lord, made present in the world.”151 A church is this above all in its gathering for the liturgy. “When the Church comes together to celebrate the Eucharist, she becomes truly the εἰκὼν of the

144. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 179. 145. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 179, n 27. 146. See, for example, Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 138; Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 301; Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 136; Zizioulas, One and the Many, pp. 143–44, 244. 147. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 43. 148. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 144; emphasis in original. 149. Papanikolaou, Being with God, p. 34. 150. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 138. 151. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 127.

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Kingdom.”152 It is to the eucharistic iconicity of church that I turn now, as a means for exploring the implications of Zizioulas’ eschatological ecclesial imagination for the practice of church.

3.4 Zizioulas’ Eschatological Ecclesial Practice 3.4.1 Eucharist: Icon of the Eschatological Truth of Communion Zizioulas writes, “We must immediately say that for the Orthodox, although it is not the only image, the image of the Eucharist is certainly the key to ecclesiology. If we ask what is the nature of the Church in Orthodox understanding, what expresses the nature of the Church in its fullness, the answer, if anything, is certainly the Eucharist.”153 That eucharist expresses this ecclesiological fullness is connected directly to its iconic quality, its role as an image of the future. “The Divine Liturgy is an image of the Kingdom of God, an image of the last times. There is nothing so clear as this in the Orthodox liturgy. Our liturgy begins with the invocation of the Kingdom, continues with the representation of it, and ends with our participation in the Supper of the Kingdom, our union and communion with the life of God in the Trinity.”154 To gather around the eucharistic table is to form an icon of the basileia, making that eschatological reality present and visible. Zizioulas claims that eucharist is thus a dual reality, earthly and heavenly: “We are to understand the ‘heavenly reality’ . . . as the Kingdom, and the ‘earthly reality’ as the icon itself, the local eucharistic gathering. In other words, the Eucharist opens up the earthly gathering not into Heaven as it might be understood now, with the saints already there, but into Heaven in its future completion, that is, into the Kingdom in its fullness.”155 The expression of that heavenly fullness—the presentness of eschatological ultimacy—that takes place in eucharist is of a piece with Zizioulas’ realized eschatological outlook and with the ontology of personhood that undergirds his view of communion. In eucharist, the human person “assumes his proper identity, his eternal identity. There, in the full sense, he exists, he lives. For Zizioulas, the Eucharist is the existential location of salvation,”156 and salvation, as we have seen, is entrance into the relational communion of authentic being through theosis, an eschatological communion, realized now. Eucharist is iconic because it was constituted as such by Christ from the start. Zizioulas maintains that the first eucharist was performed by Christ in order to demonstrate for the apostles the structure of the kingdom, the structure that church would be required to emulate: the many are made one in gathering for the 152. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 244. 153. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 311. 154. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 39. 155. McPartlan, Eucharist Makes the Church, p. 135; emphases in original. 156. McPartlan, Eucharist Makes the Church, p. 132; emphases in original.

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celebration, and the body of Christ is constituted under the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the ontological–eschatological–ecclesial reality that eucharist instantiates.157 Given that ecclesial identity derives from the eschatological reality of which eucharist is the living icon, Zizioulas maintains that “all the institutions that result from [the eucharistic reality of the church] form part of its true identity and its Mystery. To my mind, institutions such as episcopacy, or the structure of the eucharistic community, or the distinction between laity, priests, and bishops, or even conciliarity, stem from the Church as event and Mystery, precisely in the celebration of the Eucharist.”158 Church structure is part and parcel of its eucharistic iconicity, as is the liberation of its members from their biological hypostases in the participation of those persons in and constitution of the eucharistic icon: the fragmentary character of the biological hypostasis is transcended in the unifying communion of the ecclesial hypostasis, bringing created and uncreated being into union without confusion,159 and conferring authentic, eschatological personhood on church members.160 It is clear, then, that church is defined by the eucharistic icon of the kingdom that is at the heart of its practice. As McPartlan observes, “The Eucharist for [Zizioulas] is not something which takes place within a certain gathering or in the context of communion; rather it is this gathering and the communion themselves. Further, the eucharistic gathering is not just something which the Church, having her definition elsewhere, does; it itself is what defines the Church and is where the Church is the Church.”161 Accordingly, Zizioulas holds that, while necessary, the distinction between the sacraments is erroneous. All sacraments are “aspects of the divine Eucharist”162 and “Baptism, Chrismation or Confirmation, and the rest of the sacramental life, are all given in view of the Eucharist.”163 The fact that we may not see it that way, he argues, is due precisely to the “gradual loss” of the ecclesial eschatological imagination, because of which the eschatological nature of eucharist was forgotten and differentiation between the sacraments arose, despite all of them having been eucharistically inflected originally.164 Eucharist is the “fulfillment” of baptism,165 for example, “not . . . simply one sacrament among many, but . . . the expression of the mystery of the Church itself.”166 This is consonant with its role as icon, an icon not only of the eschatological conferral of personhood

157. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 206. 158. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 145. 159. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, pp. 261–62. 160. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 61. 161. McPartlan, Eucharist Makes the Church, p. 133; emphases in original. 162. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 138. 163. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 59; emphasis in original. 164. Zizioulas, “Towards an Eschatological Ontology,” p. 10. 165. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 80. 166. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 239.

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in communion, but also of pan-cosmic sharing in the relationship of the Son to the Father through the intermediary of human ecclesial participation in that relationship (the “referral of created to uncreated being”) in sacramental form.167 As the “definition” of church, eucharist, therefore, also expresses communion– truth, the ontological reality manifested in and as church. Zizioulas observes that “it is not without significance that in many languages, including Modern Greek, koinonia or communion is a synonym for partaking of the Eucharist (Θεία Κοιωνία—‘Holy Communion’)”168 and that “it is not by accident that the Church has given to the Eucharist the name of ‘Communion.’ For in the Eucharist we can find all the dimensions of communion: God communicates himself to us, we enter into communion with Him, the participants of the sacrament enter into communion with one another, and creation as a whole enters through man into communion with God. All this takes place in Christ and the Spirit, who brings the last days into history and offers to the world a foretaste of the Kingdom.”169 In this way, eucharistic communion “incarnates and realizes our communion within the very life and communion of the Trinity, in a way that preserves the eschatological character of truth while making it an integral part of history.”170 Consonant with Zizioulas’ conception of a church that is located beyond the world, this truth is “not produced by ourselves” but “clearly comes from another world.”171 This liturgically expressed reality, this truth, is what theologians are given the duty to explicate.172 Eucharist is the source for all knowledge of truth because it is only there that the communion that is truth is embodied and encounterable.173 As such, to theologically expound upon the character of church is to arrive at the heart of reality: “Ecclesiology, then, is the (philosophical) antidote Zizioulas offers to existentialist anxiety and despair about authentic existence. For ecclesiology is precisely an analysis of the transformation of the stuff of necessity into the stuff of freedom; which is to say, it is an analysis of the eucharist.”174 What does this analysis reveal? That the presence of the eschaton, grounded in “the experience of the triune God” via churchly eucharistic practice, is the future appearance of communion–truth taking place now, in history.175 John Manoussakis asserts that in making this claim, Zizioulas has transformed our understanding of

167. Zizioulas, One and the Many, pp. 145–46. 168. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 59. 169. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 7. 170. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 114. 171. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p.  115. Zizioulas repeats this a few pages later, writing that “the eucharist contains an idea of truth which is not of this world, and which seems unrealistic and inapplicable to life” (pp. 121–22). 172. Knight, Theology of John Zizioulas, p. 3. 173. Turner, “Foundations for John Zizioulas’ Approach to Ecclesial Communion,” p. 460. 174. Farrow, “Person and Nature,” p. 112. 175. Papanikolaou, Being with God, p. 31.

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eschatology. This is because Zizioulas “recognizes in the Parousia not only the event that stands at the end of history . . . but also . . . that event [which], grounded in the Eucharist, flows continuously from the ἔσχατα and permeates every moment in history.”176 Manoussakis perceives rightly that, for Zizioulas, the parousia is “grounded in the Eucharist,” not the other way around. Christ’s eschatological appearing takes place in the liturgical action of the gathered church, here and now, even while remaining to some degree a future reality. This trans-temporality is an effect of the iconic character of eucharist.177 Zizioulas maintains that the already–not yet dialectic pervades eucharist and that the Johannine literature supports this tensiveness within the rite.178 “See, for example the Revelation of St. John: although nothing is more certain there than the presence of Christ in the eucharist, and yet the cry ‘Come, Lord,’ and the assurance, ‘I am coming soon’ (22.8–17) change Him who is already present into Him who is expected, or rather, make Him present precisely as the expected one.”179 Also, Zizioulas argues that, while one could interpret the exclamation “Always, now and ever and to the ages of ages!” at the end of the liturgy as either an affirmation of the eschatological promise of God’s eternal presence or as entrance into that presence now on account of the liturgical celebration, it is nevertheless to be affirmed that the already–not yet tension is a central tenet of Christian belief, that we await a Second Coming, that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and that all of creation will be transformed. This is one of the few unambiguously futural eschatological passages in his work, despite the fact that it begins with an overture toward a (possibly) realized interpretation of a significant liturgical moment.180 More characteristically, Zizioulas asserts that church travels toward its final end in celebrating the sacrament, but at the same time in each eucharist “the Kingdom

176. John P. Manoussakis, “The Anarchic Principle of Christian Eschatology,” Harvard Theological Review 100 (2007), pp. 29–46 (29). This is the core idea of Zizioulas’ “Towards an Eschatological Ontology.” 177. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, pp. 79–80. 178. Zizioulas considers John’s gospel to be an extended “eucharistic liturgy” (Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p.  147) and Revelation “basically a eucharistic text” (Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 42). The bread prayed for in eucharist is “the bread that comes down from heaven (Jn 6.33–34)” (Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 43). Jn 12.31 states, as already noted, that “now is the judgment of the world,” a locution that Zizioulas takes to refer to “the Eucharist, in which all those events represent themselves immediately to us, without any gaps of history between them” (Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p.  155). Consistent with the view that the Johannine literature presents a realized eschatological perspective, Zizioulas’ sacramental imagination, shaped in part by it, evinces the same tendency. 179. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p.  149, n 62; emphasis added. Or, as he puts it elsewhere, “The present One is the coming One” (Zizioulas, “Towards an Eschatological Ontology,” p. 9). 180. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, pp. 79–80.

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in its fullness enters into history and is realized existentially there and then.”181 This sort of language reveals that, while Zizioulas wants to affirm that eucharist is simultaneously “a movement toward” and “a realization of ” the basileia,182 and while McPartlan is correct in arguing that Zizioulas maintains that eucharistic celebration only effects a “momentary” and rhythmic realization of the eschaton on earth,183 Zizioulas’ position does not maintain the equal tension between “already” and “not yet” that (some of) his exponents argue that he seeks. If there are passages in his theological writings that point in that direction in a literal sense— he does, after all, technically affirm an eschatological future—it has not penetrated and suffused through his theological imagination to the extent that a genuine sense of futurity is present in it. More often than not, even the gesture toward a tensive eschatology is absent. His view of eucharist, as the icon par excellence of the church that exists to celebrate it, maintains that the sacrament realizes fully and presently the eschatological future of communion–truth. Zizioulas writes, for example, that “while the Church is still God’s people walking in history towards the Kingdom, in the Eucharist she becomes what he was looking forward to.”184 Zizioulas claims that “in the Eucharist the Church realizes in its historical (yet sacramental) existence what it is destined to become when the Lord comes.”185 As Robert Turner puts it, “For him, ultimate ontological reality is truly seen, here and now, in the eucharist, where God realizes the life of salvation it expresses. It is seen not as a reproduction of the past but as the presence of what will be.”186 Zizioulas asserts that he is claiming nothing new in holding this view. The Didache, he states, supports the idea that “in the celebration of the eucharist the Church experiences that which is promised for the Parousia, namely the eschatological unity of all in Christ.”187 This is possible because the liturgy celebrated on earth actually becomes the eschatological heavenly liturgy celebrated before the throne of God, as described in the Apocalypse of John.188 “By partaking of the eucharistic body,” he writes, “we enter into the new aeon, the new earth and new heaven.”189 Eucharist discloses the future now, “in the form of the present.”190 In the clearest possible terms, Zizioulas states: What we experience in the divine Eucharist is the end times making itself present to us now. The Eucharist is not a repetition or continuation of the past,

181. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 34, n 52; emphases in original. 182. Volf, After Our Likeness, p. 100. 183. McPartlan, Eucharist Makes the Church, p. 266. 184. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 12. 185. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 34; emphasis added. 186. Turner, “Eschatology and Truth,” p. 25; emphasis added. 187. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 144. 188. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 49. 189. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 297. 190. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 137.

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or just one event among others, but it is the penetration of the future into time. The Eucharist is entirely live, and utterly new; there is no element of the past about it. The Eucharist is the incarnation live, the crucifixion live, the resurrection live, the ascension live, the Lord’s coming again and the day of judgment, live.191

One would be hard pressed to claim that there is anything “dynamically tensive” about such a formulation. To the limited extent that Zizioulas is able to maintain an already–not yet dynamic in his viewpoint, it is skewed greatly toward the already, to a degree so marked that his theology of the future and the principal ecclesial practice that flows from it are most accurately characterized as reflecting a realized eschatology. 3.4.2 Eucharistic Practice and the World What are the implications of Zizioulas’ realized eucharistic eschatology for his understanding of the relationship between church and world? For Zizioulas, eucharist, as the appearance of communion–truth in history, constitutes a judgment of the world. That, though, is not the final word on the subject. The Eucharist is the moment in the life of the Church in which the destiny of the world is finally decided. It is therefore essentially linked to the world, it concerns the world as the world concerns it. If it begins with a “setting apart” from the world, if it “closes its doors” [liturgically] to the world, it is not because the world has nothing to do with the Eucharist or because it is judged in the Eucharist. The “Eucharist–world” relationship is more positive, and we must see what it means in the light of the New Testament.192

How is this act, which appears to be performed almost over against the world, to be understood as “more positive” with regard to the world? Because, Zizioulas avers, the eucharistic act “restores” the “true relationship between the world and its creator.” It undoes the communion-breaking acts of Adam by becoming the eschatological work of Christ (via church, as Christ’s body) in referring all creation back to its creator in a priestly act of thanksgiving (eucharistia).193 As such, “the liturgy is the most positive and active acceptance of the world and creation.”194 Eucharist is present judgment on the world by being the conduit through which the cosmos is reconciled to the Father. Given such a view of the sacrament, it cannot be surprising that Zizioulas can identify no other action or practice that approaches its import.

191. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 155. 192. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 31. 193. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 33. 194. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 125; emphasis in original.

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For this very reason, Zizioulas does not even attempt to develop an ethics. The focus is, instead, on “living the truth,” the truth revealed in eucharist. As Turner observes, “Although knowledge comes from living the truth, living the truth is not to be taken in an ethical sense.” Turner argues that, for Zizioulas, one does not “apply” the truth to life.195 There is no “system” for this. Consistent with the ontology of personhood, Christian practice does not stem from an ethics, but from an ethos, a shift away from one way of being toward another, from the biological to the ecclesial, from the individual to the communal, from adhering to a list of obligations and prohibitions to a new mode of life.196 For Zizioulas, “doing the truth” means actively responding to the promises of God.197 This is a eucharistic endeavor. “Man’s responsibility is to make a eucharistic reality out of nature, i.e., to make nature, too, capable of communion. If man does this, then truth takes up its meaning for the whole cosmos, Christ becomes a cosmic Christ, and the world as a whole dwells in truth, which is none other than communion with its Creator. Truth thereby becomes the life of all that is.”198 Church is where such an ethos develops and its eucharist foments it. “The Church must be conceived as the place where man can get a taste of his eternal eschatological destiny, which is communion in God’s very life. If we accept the Eucharist as the sacrament intended to offer this taste, then we must recognize it in the Eucharist and, furthermore, relate it to the requirements of the Trinitarian way of existence.”199 This is precisely why there is a kind of “ethics” of eucharist itself. Zizioulas repeats throughout his work that it runs counter to the meaning at the very heart of eucharist to celebrate exclusive or “special” eucharists, for people belonging to certain populations, ages, occupations, and so on.200 According to his reading of the New Testament and patristic writings, early Christian eucharistic practice was self-consciously inclusive of people across lines of gender, race, class, and status so as to embody and iconically manifest true communion. Eucharist for a certain subset of Christians, therefore, betrays its purpose. The transcendence of all “natural” division was and remains a distinction between the universal church and its eucharist on the one hand and insular worldly groupings on the other. This

195. Turner, “Foundations for John Zizioulas’ Approach to Ecclesial Communion,” p. 462. 196. Luke Ben Tallon, introduction to Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. xiii. 197. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 68. 198. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 119; emphasis in original. Aside from the priestly role of the properly human (that is, ecclesial) person in offering creation back to God through eucharistic worship, Zizioulas presents in his writings few concrete examples of what he means in asserting that the responsibility of humanity is to make nature “capable of communion.” 199. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 15. 200. See, for example, Communion and Otherness, p. 7, as one instance of this recurring notion.

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concretizes the eschatological imagination of Christianity.201 Moreover, within the church, eucharistic practice images the kingdom of God by placing a premium on forgiving others and remaining in eucharistic—and, therefore, ontological— communion with those who might have wronged us or whom we have wronged.202 Extrapolating from this, the eucharistic practice of churches leads to what Zizioulas calls a “eucharistic life,” one that “sometimes expresses itself outside of the eucharistic celebration.”203 This rather weak “sometimes” is surprising, given that Zizioulas appears to claim that transferring the way of being instantiated in eucharist to one’s way of being in the world is the only authentic manner of being in the world as a Christian. What is realized in the communion established during the eucharistic communion celebrated in church is meant to recast one’s mode of being in the world into an authentically communion-shaped one.“This relationship or life in communion is realized again and again in the eucharistic liturgy and lived out in the ‘liturgy after the liturgy,’ an Orthodox expression for the daily enactment of one’s eucharistic life.”204 Given that this is the upshot of Zizioulas’ theological program, one would think it would enjoy a robust treatment in his theology. But that is not the case. Why? Perhaps that “sometimes” is more revealing than Zizioulas intends. Zizioulas does not limn the contours of an ethics—for theological reasons rooted in his overarching ontology—but neither does he draw out the concrete shape of the ethos he contends stands in its place. As such, it is difficult for him suggest what this “daily enactment of one’s eucharistic life” might look like. Papanikolaou observes that McPartlan is right to note that, for Zizioulas, church realizes the eschaton in eucharistic practice, but goes on to suggest that if this is true, Zizioulas ought to be able to say more than he does about what the communion–truth realized in this essential practice implies both for additional ecclesial practices and for the relationship of church to the larger world.205

201. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 151. 202. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 78. None of this, however, should be taken to imply that Zizioulas does not think there are legitimate reasons for Christians from different ecclesial groups to refrain from eucharistic sharing. While this is tragic, he maintains, he consistently argues that eucharistic sharing reflects ecclesial consensus on matters of theological, and so, ontological, import. Doctrinal orthodoxy, remember, is required for the unity in which the eucharistic table is to be approached. Until ecumenical efforts to heal the rifts within the Christian family succeed, Zizioulas supports the practice of barring nonOrthodox from communing among the Orthodox, non-Roman Catholics among Roman Catholics, and so on. 203. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 78. 204. Catherine T. Nerney and Hal Taussig, “An Eastern Orthodox Contribution to Understanding Communion: The Work of John Zizioulas,” in Re-imagining Life Together in America: A New Gospel of Community (Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward, 2002), p. 83. 205. Papanikolaou, Being with God, p. 174, n 132.

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Zizioulas’ only explicit area of moral or practical concern (conciliar structure, perhaps, aside) appears to be environmental degradation.206 This is possibly because Zizioulas claims that a properly eschatological perspective denies that “our actions can lead to the Kingdom.”207 While this is certainly true, it does not mean worldly action has no eschatological significance and requires no theological investigation, nor does it imply that only eucharist should receive such a treatment. In keeping with a view of the world that Zizioulas himself admits is negative, there is no place in his eschatological imagination to explore the possibility of churchly practices—never mind extra-ecclesial ones—that constitute authentic Christian practice other than eucharistic worship. Even the other sacraments are, at their deepest level, subordinate and auxiliary to eucharist. Eucharist is understood to be the only human act that is authentic because it is the only one that is consonant with humanity’s created purpose: communion with God. That Zizioulas believes this to be the case is a direct outgrowth of his ontology of personhood, an ontology of communion that contends that truth, as communion, resides with a body of Christ (church) that is instantiated only during its core ritual act, during which church fulfills its eschatological destiny and is revealed thereby as a reality beyond the world, in communion with the Godhead. The world is hostile to this reality. It rejects it. Zizioulas’ response to this perceived state of affairs is to suggest that we can reorient creation to its proper communal purpose by leaving behind the biological hypostasis and taking on the ecclesial hypostasis, thereby becoming the conduit through which the world is referred back to its creator in the eucharistic act that realizes—not prefigures, but is—the revelation of ultimate truth: communion. In order for this scheme to make theological sense, Zizioulas must claim that this truth is fully on offer now. Here we have the reason for his realized eschatology and the cause of the imaginative and practical issues that arise from it. After analyzing John Milbank’s ecclesiology of communion in the next chapter, I will move to explore how a different way of understanding eschatology results in an equally different way of both conceptualizing the church eschatologically and practicing that eschatological ecclesial imagination. In this way, I can suggest in fuller terms the “more” that Zizioulas’ ecclesiology of communion, so influential among theologians and practitioners within the church today, unfortunately leaves out.

206. This is a recurring theme in his work. For his most sustained treatment of it, see “Proprietors or Priests of Creation?” and “Preserving God’s Creation” in Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, pp.  133–75. Another exception might be his brief treatment of the ethic of forgiveness that derives directly from thinking of human beings in eschatological rather than protological terms in Zizioulas, “Towards an Eschatological Ontology,” pp. 14–15. 207. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 134.

Chapter 4 C H U R C H OV E R AG A I N ST T H E WO R L D : J O H N M I L BA N K

John Milbank’s theological project is quite different from that of John Zizioulas. Yet, these theologians raise similar questions about church and world and appear to arrive at similar answers. In part, this is because they are both in conversation with patristic thinkers on the one hand (even if Zizioulas’ interlocutors come from the Christian East while Milbank draws mostly upon the thought of the foremost Latin theologian of the period, Augustine, though he does advert to some Eastern figures, as well) and with contemporary philosophical trends on the other. But it is their connection as communion ecclesiologists, broadly understood, that gives rise most directly to their theological family resemblance. Milbank’s ecclesiology, again like Zizioulas’ is a direct and logical entailment of his overall theological project. It cannot be understood properly without an adequate prior assessment of Milbank’s overarching vision. Accordingly, this analysis of Milbank’s ecclesiology will begin with a description of his core theological perspective before moving to a more specific exploration of how his ecclesiology functions within it. Once this has been accomplished, it will be possible to detail in a third section of the chapter how Milbank’s eschatological imagination intersects with his conception of church, and, in the fourth section, how Milbank envisions the ways in which the eschatologically inflected church that his work advocates is practiced. To anticipate the key conclusions of this survey, we will see that, like Zizioulas, Milbank considers communion to be a central focus in theology, though his construal of what communion means is somewhat different from Zizioulas’. We will see, as well, that Milbank, again like Zizioulas, advances an overly realized eschatology. In his case, however, this leads to a view that does not imaginatively situate church “with God” beyond the world, a condition in which the world qua world seems to lose theological significance, but over against the world, with church serving as the sole site of communion in a world of self-serving nihilism and evil, a kind of refuge where those willing to enter into relationship with God stand together against the violence that surrounds them, rejecting that mode of being in favor of ontological participation in the communion of divine peace. As with Zizioulas, the primary way in which this ecclesial reality is both expressed and realized is by the celebration of eucharist. 101

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4.1 Milbank’s Theological Project: Overcoming (Post)modernity 4.1.1 Milbank’s Problem: The Rise of the Secular Milbank thinks contemporary reality can be read as a competition between two ontological orders. To explicate this, Milbank takes up Augustine’s distinction in the City of God between the civitas terrena and the civitas Dei and he correlates them with what he terms ontologies of peace and violence.1 He uses Augustine’s earthly city to represent the sociopolitical order and juxtaposes this against the city of God, which represents the divine order. Milbank’s ontology of violence, linked to the earthly city, corresponds to all that we have learned to call the “secular”—the area of human life that we have sectioned off from the divine and assign to strictly human agency (the social, the political, the scientific, and so forth). The heavenly ontology of peace associated with the city of God corresponds to the places and times where God’s purposes are most fully lived out. Milbank calls this “Church.”2 The earthly city is oriented toward everything proper to violence (power, wealth, domination, and the like), while the heavenly city is oriented toward the transcendent. As Milbank expresses it: “The Civitas terrena is marked by sin, which means, for Augustine, the denial of God and others in favor of self-love and self-assertion; an enjoyment of arbitrary, and therefore violent power over others—the libido dominandi.”3 The arbitrary exercise of “power-over” can never, Milbank understands, lead to authentic peace. It may result in a momentary cessation of conflict, but only “harmonious agreement, based upon a common love, and a realization of justice for all”—what we might call a form of communion—is authentic peace. This communion issues from alignment with the ontology of peace, never from the exercise of violence.4 The ontology of violence is aided and abetted by a falsehood called “the secular.” Milbank and Radical Orthodoxy, the theological movement of which he is the principal progenitor, aim to expose, analyze, and critique the processes by which the Christian West moved away from a philosophically realist and

1. John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2nd edn., 2006), p. 392. 2. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 411. 3. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 392. Eric Gregory points out that Augustine himself did not oppose the two cities on the ontological level and that Milbank has admitted this is a reading of Augustine rather than an explication of the Civitas Dei (Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p.  129), though Milbank continues to attribute this idea to Augustine. What he has not so readily acknowledged, Gregory thinks, is that “Milbank departs from an Augustinian perspective when he declares that secular institutions and practices should be characterized as ‘fundamentally sinful’ ” (Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, p. 134; emphasis in original). 4. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 393.

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transcendent ontology of analogical participation in God and the Good toward a nominalist ontology of immanence that resulted in the secular. The philosophically realist ontology of analogical participation relies on the notion of a highly transcendent God and a version of substance metaphysics that views anything with positive existence as sharing ontologically in this transcendent source. Milbank traces this view along a line running from the Neoplatonic philosophers, patristic theologians, and, supremely, Augustine, to Thomas Aquinas, Giambattista Vico, certain German Romantic philosophers, such as J. G. Hamann and J. G. Herder, down to Søren Kierkegaard and theologians such as Henri de Lubac and Maurice Blondel, all of whom he thinks preserve it to varying degrees. The other, the nominalist ontology of immanence, is taken to posit a God so transcendent to creation that worldly processes and phenomena attain a thoroughgoing autonomy from the divine. Milbank contends this set of views originated with Duns Scotus, was advanced by William of Ockham, apotheosized by the Enlightenment philosophers, Immanuel Kant above all, and carried forward by G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche (held by Milbank to be especially culpable in this), and Martin Heidegger, and by their philosophical and theological progeny, especially the postmodernists. This led directly, Milbank maintains, to the liberalism, positivism, material immanentism, and dialecticism that take their ultimate intellectual and socio-historical form in the atheism and nihilism he thinks characterize “secular” postmodern thought and life today.5 Despite the received narrative, therefore, the rise of the secular was not the outgrowth of the wars of religion or of increasing proto-globalization and multicultural encounter during the Renaissance but of an epistemic shift. No component of creation, however, is or legitimately can be conceived of as being separated from divine purpose. Milbank does not deny the salutary effects of secularization—the retreat of the ecclesial from direct involvement in political and economic life (though he expresses ambivalence about this).6 He vigorously contests, however, the notion that the secular is a morally neutral sphere of purely human action. Anything that does not participate in divine purpose is de facto oriented toward evil, toward violence.7 As such, it is an illusion, a negativity with no positive ontological status.

5. It is important to be aware that Milbank and Radically Orthodox thinkers more broadly often use “the secular” and “the (post)modern” in a nearly interchangeable manner. 6. Nathan Schneider, “Orthodox Paradox: An Interview with John Milbank,” The Immanent Frame: Secularism, Religion, and the Public Sphere, 17 March 2010, http://blogs. ssrc.org/tif/2010/03/17/orthodox-paradox-an-interview-with-john-milbank/ [accessed 22 July 2014]. 7. Milbank’s critics question whether the “secular” can be equated with violence and evil in quite so easy a way as Milbank does this. Gregory points out that even Augustine recognized that the goods that agents of the secular realm attempt to secure are actual goods and that a better order is achieved when those goods are realized (Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, pp. 52–53). Todd Breyfogle concurs (Breyfogle, “Is There Room for

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This means at least two things: (1) the “secular” as a philosophical construction is fictitious because no actually existing thing is separable from God’s purpose and that which is imagined as being separate from it can have no positive being; and (2) to the extent that the secular is given conceptual reality by those deceived into believing that it denotes something real, to the extent that it is imagined also as being free from divine purpose, anything undertaken in its name will be thoroughly nihilistic. This is why Milbank asserts that secularity is “hostile” in its anti-Christianity, and is becoming more so. “Basic Christian attitudes towards human dignity, human life, birth, death and sexuality are now being overthrown by a [secular] culture that is sloughing off a respect for Christian values as well as Christian belief.”8 The ill effects of this, to Milbank, are quite clear: a social, political, and cultural “economy that destroys life, babies, childhood, adventure, locality, beauty, the exotic, the erotic, people, and the planet itself.”9 Milbank claims that, ironically, Christianity cleared the way for “secularity” by abandoning Neoplatonic participatory metaphysics in favor of nominalism, thereby opening a divide between a disenchanted, “natural,” “secular” space for politics, economics, and culture, and a religious, “supernatural,” private space for faith, a reading of history that Theology and Social Theory traces out in great detail. It should always be the aim of Christianity to curtail the operations of the earthly city and its ontology of violence.10 Instead, in allowing the creation of the so-called “secular,” it facilitated “unleash[ing] a more ‘naked’ violence” in the form of political controls meant to enforce rights and the ownership of private property. Worse, “the

Political Philosophy in Postmodern Critical Augustinianism,” in Wayne J. Hankey and Douglas Hedley (eds), Deconstructing Radical Orthodoxy: Postmodern Theology, Rhetoric and Truth (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 44). By lumping all secular arrangements into one undifferentiated mass, “Milbank fails to take adequate account of the subtle varieties of liberalism or constitutionalism indebted to, for example, de Tocqueville or Burke, who were not only well aware of the atomist–statist dialectic of contractarian liberalism but often came forward with significant critiques and alternatives from which Christian social thought can learn (and has learned)” (Jonathan Chaplin, “Suspended Communities or Covenanted Communities? Reformed Reflections on the Social Thought of Radical Orthodoxy,” in James K. A. Smith and James Olthuis (eds), Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition: Creation, Covenant, and Participation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), p. 163). Furthermore, “emphasizing that all cities should be cities of the good has little to say about what makes specific cities relatively good. This points up a dilemma of critical normativity” (Lambert Zuidervaart, “Good Cities or Cities of the Good? Radical Augustinians, Societal Structures, and Normative Critique,” in Smith and Olthuis, p. 146). 8. John Milbank, “The New Divide: Romantic Versus Catholic Orthodoxy,” Modern Theology 26 (2010), pp. 26–38 (27). 9. John Milbank, The Future of Love: Essays in Political Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2009), p. 263. 10. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 427.

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State itself assumed the form of a perverted Church, an anti-Church,” seeking to establish social harmony, properly speaking an ecclesial goal, based on codes of “normality” that the state began to enforce, as Michel Foucault’s work is said to demonstrate.11 Milbank agrees with Charles Taylor that secularization was “not inevitable, but that it has occurred.”12 Realism, therefore, requires a certain tragic resignation to the “worldly city,”13 tragic because the imperium, that is, the state, has taken over the task of “disciplining sin” from the ecclesia, arrogating ecclesial tasks to itself, rendering the state and its underlying culture apostate.14 Milbank has gone on to write that “the earthly city is valid insofar as it serves the heavenly,”15 but this is a development in his thinking and, although it may accord better with Augustinian theology, it is difficult to square satisfactorily with Milbank’s ongoing claims about the character of the secular. In short, the rise of the secular has been a tragedy, stemming from an epistemological error perpetrated by Christianity itself, resulting in the decay of intellectual vigor and appearing concretely as war, exploitation, injustice, rampant individualism, consumerism, and social atomism. Milbank maintains that following this trajectory will lead only to annihilation. The solution is to return to the ontology of peace, the “original position” of creation, so to speak. Returning to this divinely intended mode of life is a renunciation of worldly violence in favor of peace and of God. This occurs in the (true, authentic) church, where one participates analogically in the Platonic form of the Good, in God, and in God’s purpose. So, there is church, characterized by the ontology of peace, and there is the secular, characterized by the ontology of violence.16 If church is authentically to instantiate the ontology of peace, however, it must free itself from colluding with secular logics—which are actually theologies. One of the few positive things Milbank has to say about Nietzsche’s work is that the mythos in which it is rooted is, in fact, an accurate view of the condition of secularity, a condition that is thoroughly theological. This mythology [of Nietzsche’s] is the best, the least self-deluded, self-description of the secular, which fails only at the point where it will not admit that it has shown the secular to be but another “religion.” This religion is not quite accurately described as “neo-paganism,” because it is an embracing of those elements of sacred violence in paganism which Christianity both exposed and refused, and of which paganism, in its innocence, was only half-aware. The

11. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, pp. 441–42. 12. John Milbank, “A Closer Walk on the Wild Side,” in Michael Warner, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, and Craig C. Calhoun (eds), Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 56–57. 13. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 429. 14. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 425. 15. Milbank, Future of Love, p. xv. 16. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 392.

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secular episteme is a post-Christian paganism, something in the last analysis only to be defined, negatively, as a refusal of Christianity and the invention of an “Anti-Christianity.”17

This is why Milbank claims that social theories—whether in the shape of philosophy, political science, economics, or social science—are only and always “theologies or anti-theologies in disguise.”18 What masquerades as an “autonomous sphere” of human endeavor is nothing of the sort (for nothing is actually independent of God) but arises on the basis of an inverted theology, an antiChristian theology. “It follows,” Milbank claims, “that if Christianity seeks to ‘find a place for’ secular reason, it may be perversely compromising with what, on its own terms, is either deviancy or falsehood.”19 In short, “the secular” can only be understood in Christian terms, and in Christian terms, it is a heresy.20 It is just this heretical notion of the secular—the logical and inevitable outcome of the slide into the ontology of immanence—that provides the epistemological basis for the development of the historical condition called (post)modernity. Milbank claims that both modernity and its intensification, postmodernity, are “relentlessly secular,” meaning “(1) that they explain and evaluate without reference to transcendence, (2) that they see finite reality as self-explanatory and self-governing, and (3) that they see this finite reality which is the saeculum— the time before the eschaton for Christian theology—as being all that there is.”21

17. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, pp. 279–80. 18. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 3. 19. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 25. 20. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 3. 21. John Milbank, Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 195. Gregory does not think this is how Augustine himself saw secularity. Contemporary Augustinians, in Gregory’s estimation, see the contrast in the Civitas Dei as a temporal rather than an ethical one. The “secular” means for them what it appears to have meant for Augustine—the current day, not a mode of life marked by the irreligious or anti-religious. This view does not read a contrast between sacred and secular but between eternal and secular (Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, pp. 10–11). Indeed, Milbank himself has pointed out that “Augustine has his own . . . form of resignation [to the way the world currently runs]: as long as time persists, there will be some sin, and therefore a need for its regulation through worldly dominium and the worldly peace, which takes the form of a bare ‘compromise’ between competing wills” (Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 405). To this extent, Milbank acknowledges, Augustine himself evinces a “liberal” view. Gregory thinks this is less “liberal” than it is simply realistic: in Augustine, “the secular is the ‘not yet’ dimension of an eschatological point of view” (Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, p. 79). Luke Bretherton, likewise, affirms that politics during the saeculum is provisional and ambivalent, an indeterminate mixture of “better” and “worse,” in which Christians not only may but seemingly must participate. To claim, therefore, as Milbank does, that for Christians to identify and pursue causes in common with the secular–political is to give credence to the

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The instability of secularity, in its rootlessness and alienation from God, makes it possible to see the world as nothing but endless flux.22 Milbank offers an analysis of the postmodernity that has resulted from the rise of secularity: Above all it means the obliteration of boundaries, the confusion of categories. In the postmodern times in which we live, there is no longer any easy distinction to be made between nature and culture, private interior and public exterior, message and means, production and exchange, product and delivery, the State and the market, humans and animals, humans and machines, image and reality— nor beginning, middle and end. Everything is made to run into everything else; everything gets blended, undone and then re-blended. There are no longer any clear centres of control, and this means that new weight is given to plurality and the proliferation of difference. However, none of these differences ever assume the status of a distinct essence: rather they are temporary events, destined to vanish and be displaced.23

This postmodernism is the triumph of Nietzschean historicist philosophy, predicated upon the ontology of violence (and difference and immanence), and its attendant ethical nihilism. Despite all their promises, neither secularity nor the (post)modernism it funds can deliver freedom. They are always and only fascistic.24 Therefore, just as there is no room for Christianity to compromise with the heresy of secularity, there is equally no room for it to compromise with the modern or the postmodern. “The efforts of modern theologians to mediate or find a place for modern secularity is in Milbank’s eyes to make a pact with the devil.”25 This should come as no surprise, for, as James K. A. Smith puts it, in Radical Orthodoxy, “modernity is the heuristic label used to name what’s wrong.”26 Moreover, like the secularism that gave birth to it, modernity, too, has theological roots. Christianity, “the religion of the obliteration of boundaries,” created postmodernity “as a kind of distorted outcome of energies first unleashed by the Church itself.”27 Neil Robertson thinks that Milbank has located the genesis of postmodernity in three theological sources. fallacious idea of the existence of an autonomous secular realm is not only to mistake Augustine’s position but, Bretherton thinks, a missed opportunity on Milbank’s part to avail himself of what is really valuable about Augustine’s view vis-à-vis the ecclesial and the political: the opening this presents for church to contribute to the upbuilding of a truly good (Godly) social order (Bretherton, Christianity and Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilities of Faithful Witness (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 81–84). 22. Neil G. Robertson, “Milbank and Modern Secularity,” in Hankey and Hedley, p. 81. 23. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 187. 24. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, pp. 278–79. 25. Robertson, “Milbank and Modern Secularity,” p. 81. 26. James K. A. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-secular Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), p. 95. 27. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 196.

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First, it has a heretical origin in late-medieval theology, particularly Duns Scotus and Suárez, which involved a univocity of being and a voluntaristic deity (this strain is exemplified by the thought of Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza). Second, it arises from a resurgence of pagan fate, fortuna, and manipulation in the Renaissance, exemplified by the thought of Machiavelli. Third, it is tied to a theodical account of political economy that is simultaneously heretical (insofar as a secular providence is invoked) and pagan (insofar as it involves violent imposition, agonistics and a historicist sensibility).28

In Robertson’s estimation, this is an idiosyncratic move. Milbank denies the traditional account of the birth of modernity with the work of Descartes and Hobbes, pushing its origin further back, to late medieval and early Renaissance thinkers such as Scotus, Ockham, Francisco Suárez, Pierre d’Ailly, Jean Gerson, and Niccolò Machiavelli. This, Robertson thinks, is what allows Milbank to claim that modernity is actually a theology and not “secular” at all, that it is the inevitable outgrowth of an earlier erroneous “hermeneutical shift” (toward nominalism), and that it is therefore “inherently caught up in the confusions of the collapse of late medieval theology and Renaissance politics.”29 Yet, even though Milbank believes that “modernity,” a modernity that began as early as the fourteenth century by his account, “names what’s wrong,” he claims he does not advocate a return to a pre– 1300 Europe. Rather, what is required is for theology to identify the possibilities that Christianity missed by taking those wrong turns and to map a new route toward them now. In fact, postmodernity’s critique of modern epistemologies might provide the means for doing exactly this, affording “both an opportunity to launch an internal critique of modernity and an occasion for the church to be alerted to its complicity with modernity,” which would allow for movement in a better direction.30 Milbank’s theological endeavor as a whole, then, is to reveal and describe the essential natures of the two ontologies and to advance a conceptual–rhetorical remedy for overcoming the ontology of violence inherent in the secular. To understand better in the next section how he conceives of church as the locus for this work, we need to look more closely at, first, the ontological–metaphysical commitments that underlie his theology, and second, the contours of the antisecular strategy he proposes. 4.1.2 Milbank’s Ontologies: Agonistics and Metaphysics Milbank claims that Plato and Aristotle, in different ways and to different degrees, accord positive ontological status to evil and violence. Christianity (that is, Augustine) understands evil and violence instead as privation, possessing no

28. Robertson, “Milbank and Modern Secularity,” pp. 81–82. 29. Robertson, “Milbank and Modern Secularity,” p. 85. 30. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, p. 141.

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ontological positivity.31 By providing an alternative mythos to that of Plato and Aristotle, Christianity gives the lie to the notion that peace is only suspended warfare, which is all it can be if violence has ontological priority over peace.32 Postmodernity, shot through as it is with Nietzschean nihilism, remains committed to the idea that human society is “always a field of warfare”33 and affirms the ontological priority of violence, even if in hidden ways. The postmodern premium on “difference” is indicative of this.34 As Smith puts it, “Within an ontology of immanence, differences are construed as competing and thus ultimately oppositional: Being reduces to war.”35 Milbank finds this view embedded in evolutionary biology, as well, where conflict is seen as “endemic” to development and life itself an “unstable and violence-dominated process.”36 Violence, however, is the condition of a fallen world awaiting redemption, not an aspect of creation as originally intended by God. Milbank therefore agrees with Taylor that violence is neither inevitable nor natural and that it can be overcome.37 The genius of Christianity is its denial of the ontological priority of violence, its denaturalizing of violence. Christianity “allows us to unthink the necessity of violence, and exposes the manner in which the assumption of an inhibition of an always prior violence helps to preserve violence in motion.”38 The underlying framework of Milbank’s theological project, then, is the structure of the two ontologies, of violence and of peace, in which peace is construed as prior to violence.39

31. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 365. 32. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 332. 33. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 282. 34. R. W. Lawrence, “Tarrying with the Positive: John Milbank and the Critique of Reason,” Heythrop Journal 55 (2014), pp. 59–72 (59–60). 35. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, p. 195. 36. John Milbank, “Sophiology and Theurgy: The New Theological Horizon,” in Adrian Pabst and Christoph Schneider (eds), Encounter between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy: Transfiguring the World through the Word (Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), p. 48. 37. Milbank, “Closer Walk,” p. 65. 38. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 416. 39. This structure is highly vexatious for those who find Milbank’s ontology to be dualistic and, therefore, problematic. Christopher J. Insole thinks the two-ontologies approach simply re-inscribes the agonism it wishes to overcome and can only be arrived at in the first place by availing oneself of a “transcendental conception”—a neutral place outside both of these ontologies in order to observe them—a standpoint Milbank himself repeatedly denies is possible to attain (Insole, “Against Radical Orthodoxy: The Dangers of Overcoming Political Liberalism,” Modern Theology 20 (2004), pp. 213–41 (219, 221)). Paul Hedges thinks to make such a “quasi-Husserlian move” to find an “absolute” vantage point is to be implicated in the same (post)modernism Milbank finds so objectionable (Hedges, “Is John Milbank’s Radical Orthodoxy a Form of Liberal Theology? A Rhetorical Counter,” Heythrop Journal 51 (2010), pp. 795–818 (805)).

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A major metaphysical support for this framework is Milbank’s commitment to a reconstructed Neoplatonism. Milbank claims that, in ways neither Nietzsche nor Heidegger grasped, Platonism is not taken into the Christian system wholesale, on Augustine’s part or his own, because of Platonism’s affirmation of the priority of violence. Augustinian Neoplatonism, cleansed of this error, however, is central to Christian theology. It preserves ideas that “remain primary for Christian theological ontology,” namely: “transcendence, participation, analogy, hierarchy, teleology . . . and the absolute reality of ‘the Good’ in roughly the Platonic sense.”40 This is a rare précis of the specific ingredients of the animating metaphysic of Milbank’s theology. Transcendence, the otherness of God to creation, is affirmed, but not so strongly that it leads to the material immanentism that resulted in the secular and its violence. The traditional dialectic between a God who is both transcendent to and immanent within creation is preserved for Milbank through the Neoplatonic concept of participation. Participation is a principle of identity that maintains that an entity exists by virtue of something outside of itself, providing another rationale for asserting divine transcendence. This participation is what gives that which is good existence and is why that which does not so participate—the violent—has no existence. Moreover, that which belongs to the ontology of peace participates in the Good and, therefore, in God, as the source of all being.41 Analogy is critical to Milbank’s theology, above all the analogia entis expounded by Aquinas. Aquinas is a monumental figure in Milbank’s thought, perhaps second only to Augustine, because analogy is the outworking of participation on the epistemic level and also on the material. It shares some similarity to dialectic, but more closely resembles paradox and is associated with theological realism, all of which is important to Milbank.42 Hierarchy is affirmed because, as the Neoplatonists and PseudoDionysius realized, participation and analogy cannot operate without fixed levels unified by a transcendent “psyche.”43 God is the pinnacle of this arrangement. In

40. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 297. 41. Wayne J. Hankey contends that “participation” in the sense that Radically Orthodox writers use the term is not supported by Platonic metaphysics and that an authentic retrieval of Neoplatonism, which has been a constant current throughout Western culture, cannot include either “a war against modernity or philosophy” or “a denial of the turn to the subject,” as Milbank’s does (Hankey, “Philosophical Religion and the Neoplatonic Turn to the Subject,” in Hankey and Hedley, pp. 18–19). 42. John Milbank, “The Double Glory, or Paradox versus Dialectics: On Not Quite Agreeing with Slavoj Žižek,” in John Milbank and Slavoj Žižek, The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? (Creston Davis (ed.); Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), p.  112. Theological realism shares certain characteristics of philosophical realism where the question of universals is concerned. But Milbank seeks to distinguish the two by denying that theological realism makes recourse to a substance metaphysics in the way that philosophical realism tends to do (Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 433). 43. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 107.

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Milbank’s schema, as Mayra Rivera puts it, “The divine is imaged as inhabiting, indeed constituting, an external space of ontological elevation which is also the eternal telos of all creatures.”44 Hierarchy is thus reflective of a pre-existing order and governs social constructions in ways that are, Milbank thinks, insufficiently appreciated.45 In a church, for example, hierarchy and subordination are a requirement; equality is only an eschatological reality.46 Teleology, as just indicated, concerns the ultimate orientation of everything to God, to the ontology of peace or the Good. It does not denote a particular purpose proper to each individual created thing but the complete, good purpose of God, which is the peace of Truth. Milbank claims that this perspective does not constitute a substance metaphysics nor does it fall into the trap of ontotheology.47 Rather, it is a metaphysics founded upon semiosis. He agrees with the postmodern notion that reality is linguistic, an idea he finds is consonant with Christianity, being a religion of the logos.48 This does not mean that the idea of “God” becomes the “transcendent signified” of semiotic theory. Rather, “God” is found in the very notion of semiosis, the interplay of signs. This interplay is not, as modern semiotics sees it, an arbitrary

44. Mayra Rivera, The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2007), p. 23. 45. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 397. 46. Milbank, Future of Love, pp. 139–40. 47. Michael Horton does not think Milbank’s theology can escape being ontotheological, arguing that Radical Orthodoxy’s ontology posits a hypertranscendent God in which creation “participates,” thereby collapsing legitimate dualisms, such as “Creator and creature, redeemer and redeemed, cult and culture” (Horton, “Participation and Covenant,” in Smith and Olthuis, p. 132) so completely that all reality becomes one, disallowing a true encounter with the other or the stranger. Its Neoplatonism leads to univocity and, therefore, ontotheology. As Merold Westphal states, Horton notes, only undoing ontotheology allows us to overcome “ontological xenophobia” (quoting Merold Westphal, Overcoming Onto-theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), p.  238). If Hankey is correct in asserting that Milbank refuses “to give up the western Christian attachment to Being as the highest name of God” (Hankey, “Philosophical Religion and the Neoplatonic Turn to the Subject,” p. 17), it is difficult to see how his views are not ontotheological. Indeed, in addition to pointing out the irony of Milbank purportedly pursuing Heidegger’s project of overcoming ontotheology despite excoriating Heidegger’s work, Hankey reminds us that to use Greek philosophy—even via Augustine and Aquinas—to undo ontotheology is to remain within the mythos that led to it in the first place. Under Neoplatonism, God must always remain Being (Hankey, “Theoria versus Poesis: Neoplatonism and Trinitarian Difference in Aquinas, John Milbank, Jean-Luc Marion and John Zizioulas,” Modern Theology 15 (1999), pp.  387–415 (388, 390, 407–8)). 48. All of the essays collected in The Word Made Strange: Theology, Language, Culture (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997) explore this idea and its implications.

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and violent chaos. Instead, it is a harmonized difference, which is the effect of God upon it.49 Christianity is the religion that expresses the semiotic “recoding” of the signs that compose reality. In the gospels, “a drastic textual alchemy recodes rejection, failure, betrayal and death as the signs and efficacious sources of life and victory,” a recoding that takes place on both the linguistic and material planes.50 In a sense, Christianity is the true and only revaluation of values. Furthermore, the theological concepts that employ the signs involved in this recoding are not secondary to the scriptural narratives in which they are embedded, but a constituent part of the semiotic recoding process. Neither the narratives nor the theological ideas are “foundational” for this work, which proceeds instead as a “constant movement” between the two.51 This is an important reason why, for Milbank, Christian metaphysics cannot be understood as substance metaphysics but only as a “metaphysics of relation.”52 This relational ontology, this “analogical ontology,” is an ontology of communion. This communion baptizes (Neo)platonic participatory metaphysics, leading at once, Milbank supposes, to a vision of reconciliation between “the one and the many,” a workable conception of the common good,53 and the only authentic pluralism possible. Milbank claims that his metaphysics results in “the most radical imaginable modern pluralism” because, unlike postmodern ontologies that purport to privilege diversity and difference, Milbank’s perspective posits that evil and privation have no positive being while everything else participates in some way in the Good, meaning that each thing that enjoys positive existence “analogically concur[s with all others] in a fashion that exceeds mere liberal agreement to disagree.”54 His, then, is a metaphysics of communion, leading to harmony and peace, individually and socially: “Christian social ontology, linked to the neoPlatonic idea of an emanative procession of all reality from a single divine source,

49. Milbank, The Word Made Strange, p. 85. Note that God does not unify difference but harmonizes it. Milbank claims that the idea of a God standing outside of being, unifying all difference, is a Plotinian concept that is incompatible with Christianity. While Milbank asserts that “God is superabundant Being,” he quickly draws upon Dionysius to nuance this by affirming that God is also “a power within Being which is more than Being, an internally creative power,” this harmonizing power (Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p.  430). Perhaps this “more than Being” is what he supposes exonerates his view from the charge of ontotheology? 50. Milbank, The Word Made Strange, p. 146. 51. Milbank, The Word Made Strange, p. 180. 52. Milbank, The Word Made Strange, p. 112. 53. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. xxi. 54. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. xvi; emphasis in original. Milbank believes his view is not dualistic because one of the ontologies in the dyad—that of violence—does not actually exist.

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abolishes [all] duality which supports the idea of an ineradicable ontological violence.”55 Milbank’s Neoplatonic–Augustinian metaphysic is foundational for his overall theological project. It undergirds his ontological commitments to transcendence, participation, analogy, hierarchy, teleology, and the Good. These concepts, combined with his reading of the City of God, support his dual ontology and are the lenses he uses to read Western history as a movement away from the ontology of peace toward an embrace of the ontology of violence, intellectually, religiously, politically, socially, and culturally. This is the crucial issue that his work as a body seeks to diagnose and remedy. 4.1.3 Telling the Truth: Outnarrating the Secular–Modern In recent writing, Milbank has indicated a partial rethinking of the absolutist position he took regarding violence in Theology and Social Theory.56 He has gestured toward a more complicated view of the admixture of violence and peace in the saeculum. Thoroughgoing pacifism is ruled out57 and Milbank takes more seriously the idea of redemptive violence along the lines Augustine intimated in the City of God. In fact, he goes as far as to state that it is one’s responsibility to prevent violence using violence, arguing that one must prohibit a person contemplating murder from carrying out the deed even if it requires pre-emptively killing that individual, “for soon (now or hereafter) he may come to repent of his intentions, whereas it is far more difficult to repent of the actual deed.”58 Milbank suggests, rather charmingly, that the modification of his views on appropriate deployments of force might reflect the fact that he “has had children since I wrote Theology and Social Theory,”59 but in fact it reflects an important complexification of his position, as Hans Boersma observes: “Milbank has come to the acknowledgment that Augustine was right in his view that redemptive violence is a possibility. . . . The two Augustinian cities are no longer as clearly separate as they at first seemed to be: violence has found its way into the city of God.”60 Violence in the name of peace may be permissible to some extent, but this is no reason, Milbank thinks, to abandon the general commitment to non-violence or to posit the ontological priority of violence. He is simply more sensitive to the

55. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 416. 56. See especially Being Reconciled, pp.  26–43, and his extended conversation with Stanley Hauerwas, recorded in Kenneth R. Chase and Alan Jacobs (eds), Must Christianity Be Violent? Reflections on History, Practice, and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2003). 57. Chase and Jacobs, Must Christianity Be Violent, p. 203. 58. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 42. Milbank leaves unspecified the way in which a dead person might come to repent of an evil intention. 59. Chase and Jacobs, Must Christianity Be Violent, p. 202. 60. Hans Boersma, “Being Reconciled: Atonement as the Ecclesio-christological Practice of Forgiveness in John Milbank,” in Smith and Olthuis, p. 199.

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paradox of violence as a component of peaceableness in a way he formerly was not. This is true on the practical level but it is also true on the rhetorical level, as well. In theology, for example, violence finds a justifiable place. Its arguments are faith’s explications, not violent in the measure that they are true, violent, indeed, in their effect as critique upon what is false, on the selfgoverning, other-excluding citadel of reason. But this violence is not received from theology, but from this citadel’s own self-dissolution, the painful and curative undoing of its initial violent self-assertion. So there is no inconsistency, as many have claimed, in the occasioning of violence by a discourse of nonviolence: the violent result of this true persuasion has the beginning of its end in the moment of the reception of this true persuasion.61

If the rise of the secular was the result of an epistemological devolution, then the movement back to the ontology of peace and its animating metaphysic must occur on the basis of a reversal of that. Consistent with his semiotic construal of truth, Milbank argues for a narrative solution to the problem of secularity. Realignment with the ontology of peace must proceed by means of telling a different story than the one secularity–modernity tells. This story must be persuasive, not coercive, convincing on account of its beauty and excellence.62 It must allow its hearers to grasp that true understanding comes by resituating the human being and her works within the grand hierarchy of creation and that peace is achieved by re-ordering human aims toward the transcendent, their true telos. For this reason, as Stanley Hauerwas notes in a theological exchange with Milbank presented by Kenneth Chase and Alan Jacobs, Augustine is crucial for Milbank because Augustine rightly saw why Christian theology entails the presumption of the ontological priority of peace over conflict; a presumption, moreover, anchored not in universal reason, but in a narrative, a practice, and a . . . faith. That is why, finally, Christians cannot defeat narratives of violence in principle. Finally, we can only out-narrate them.63

The ontology of violence that has resulted in the metanarrative undergirding secularity–modernity “is only a mythos, and therefore cannot be refuted, but only

61. Milbank, Future of Love, p.  165. For an assessment of the violence in Milbank’s rhetoric, in his treatment of his interlocutors (including Augustine), and in his overall theological method, see Scott MacDougall, “Scapegoating the Secular: The Irony of Mimetic Violence in the Social Theology of John Milbank,” in Margaret R. Pfeil and Tobias L. Winright (eds), Violence, Transformation, and the Sacred: “They Shall Be Called Children of God” (annual publication of the College Theology Society, 57; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2012), pp. 85–98. 62. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 401. 63. Chase and Jacobs, Must Christianity Be Violent, p. 177.

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out-narrated, if we can persuade people—for reasons of ‘literary taste’—that Christianity offers a much better story.”64 Theological realism is key. Universals return to fill the emptiness ushered in by nominalism through what Milbank calls a “metanarrative realism.” The authentically Christian story is claimed as a metanarrative that, unlike those promulgated by postmodernity (despite postmodernity’s deluded claim to have eliminated them), provides a realistic basis for the understanding of history because it involves all of human history, not only privileged events, in its scope and understands the narrative and its interpretation to be still unfolding.65 This metanarrative realism brings together the reconstructed Neoplatonic, historicist, and empiricist strands in Milbank’s perspective to re-read the human and divine stories.66 Ontology also plays a pivotal role. There is no way to support the claim that a metanarrative has been justly identified without it. “It is, in fact, at the point where the metanarrative requires a speculative ontology to support its meta-status, that Christian counter-history is revealed as also a ‘Christian sociology.’ ”67 The ontological re-emerges as the explication of the metaphysical “setting” of the metanarrative, providing the theoretical basis for the metanarrative’s claims to realistically tell “how things are.” What that means for Milbank is that metanarrative realism necessitates re-narrating history, politics, culture, society, personhood— indeed, all areas and domains—in light of the ontologies of peace and violence. “In my view, a true Christian metanarrative realism must attempt to retrieve and elaborate the account of history given by Augustine in the Civitas Dei.”68 Postmodernity construes the various metanarratives currently in play, of which religion is one, as discourses that seek to obliterate the others by totalization.69

64. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p.  331; emphasis in original. D. F. Pilario, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s work, suggests that Milbank appears to be blithely unaware of the fact that his attempt to outnarrate modernity on the basis of persuasion and “taste” betrays his own elitism and violence by deleting socio-economic location from any consideration of what counts as “tasteful” (Pilario, Back to the Rough Grounds of Praxis: Exploring Theological Method with Pierre Bourdieu (Louvain, Belgium: Peeters, 2005), pp. 496–99). 65. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 390. 66. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 179. 67. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, pp. 390–91. 68. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p.  391. Gavin Hyman thinks that this is a fundamental flaw in Milbank’s theological perspective. Milbank, Hyman asserts, has read in the postmodern metanarrative a distinction between its form and its content—an ontology that animates its negativity and violence. What Milbank misses is that postmodernity claims there is no ontologizing possible and so the metanarrative of postmodernity does not have a setting but is its setting (Hyman, The Predicament of Postmodern Theology: Radical Orthodoxy or Nihilist Textualism? (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001), pp. 112–13). 69. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, pp. 260–61.

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There is nothing in this view, Milbank contends, but sheer nihilism resulting in a deconstructive impulse that has (in a backhandedly salutary way) revealed the violence embedded in every era of human history. In a way that seems hard to describe other than as being totalizing itself, Milbank asserts that the Christian metanarrative is the only hope against the ascendant nihilism of our age. “Only Christian theology now offers a discourse able to position and overcome nihilism itself. This is why it is so important to reassert theology as a master discourse; theology, alone, remains the discourse of non-mastery.” Christianity is interruptive. It causes cultural and epistemological discontinuity with all that came before it and it exists apart from those conditions.70 It can and does, therefore, interrupt the ontology of violence. As Good News, in fact, this is precisely the essence of Christianity. Theologians deviate from their charge to reveal the error of the postmodern metanarrative every time they attempt to offer “relevant” theologies as good, progressive, pluralistic, multicultural, politically correct citizens of a globalized and secularized world. “The pathos of modern theology is its false humility. . . . If theology no longer seeks to position, qualify or criticize other discourses, then it is inevitable that these discourses will position theology.”71 As Milbank points out on the very first page of Theology and Social Theory, this is a disaster. A theology “positioned” by secular reason suffers two characteristic forms of confinement. Either it idolatrously connects knowledge of God with some particular immanent field of knowledge—“ultimate” cosmological causes, or “ultimate” psychological and subjective needs. Or else it is confined to intimations of a sublimity beyond representation, so functioning to confirm negatively the questionable idea of an autonomous secular realm, completely transparent to rational understanding.72

No matter which of these results, it is a betrayal of Christianity. This does not mean that theology should not engage with postmodernity. Quite the opposite. But that engagement is not one of deference or acceptance but a deeply critical and urgent encounter with conditions that Christianity has a mission to ameliorate. “We must allow the very critical engagements with postmodernity to force us to re-express our faith in a radically strange way, which will carry with it a sense of real new discovery of the gospel and the legacy of Christian orthodoxy.”73 Only to the extent that Christian metanarrative realism gives the lie to the metanarratives of postmodernity and its underlying secularism, steeped as they are in the ontology of violence, will theology attend to its true task: explicating the ontology of peace and convincing through the beauty and truth of the story it tells that alignment

70. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, pp. 402–3. 71. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 1. 72. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 1. 73. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 196.

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with this way of being, one that is radically different than the deceptively liberal, rational, and “sensible” one generally on offer, is the one truly authentic and Godly way of being. The only alternative is self-destruction.

4.2 Milbank’s Ecclesiology: The Church as a Logic Milbank is not an ecclesiologist. This does not, however, mean that his theology lacks an ecclesiology. In fact, Milbank’s ecclesiology is the very summit of his theology. Only in and through church, Milbank argues, is the ontology of peace made available to the world. Only in and through church does the Christian narrative reveal itself in material terms, in all its goodness, truth, and beauty. Only in and through church are the nihilism and violence that have reached their climax in (post)modernity overcome. And only by participating in God in and through church can that nihilism and violence be definitively vanquished. Even when Milbank is not theologizing about church directly, he always has it in view. In his typical fashion, Milbank does not offer easy definitions or a description of what he means by “church.” He prefers to follow Paul, who, he contends, did not opine on the nature of church but characterized it narratively, not by specifying it formally but by explicating its logic.74 Riffing on Hauerwas’ famous aphorism, “The church does not have a social ethic; it is a social ethic,” Smith paints the broad outlines of that ecclesial logic in agreeing with that maxim and expanding it to state that, for Radical Orthodoxy, it is equally true that “the church does not have a cultural critique; it is a cultural critique”; that “the church does not have an apologetic; it is an apologetic”; and that “the church does not have a politics; it is a politics.”75 One might go further, contending that for Milbank the church does not have a social theory, a set of relational practices, or a logic and that, as the terminus of Milbank’s narrative theology, it is a social theory, a set of relational practices, and a logic. Above all, church is the one and only place of peace, where all difference is harmonized. Only in church do truth and peace co-exist in the fullness of mutual interrelatedness. Only there does universal agreement—which is peace—obtain.76 According to Milbank, “the Church is the community that is given to humanity and is constituted through the harmonious blending of diverse gifts.”77 It is the site where the “enclaves” in which we are trapped—those places of sinfulness (our own and others’) that we inherit and inhabit—start to be recognized for the ghettoes they are and the people in them begin to re-establish communion with one another

74. Milbank, The Future of Love, p. 139. 75. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, pp. 80, 181, 233, 253; emphases in original. Smith quotes Hauerwas (The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1983), 99; emphases in original) on page 233. 76. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 106. 77. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. ix.

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and with God.78 This is why Milbank denies that a church is ever being true to itself when it appears among “affinity groups” (in this passage, he mentions “sportspeople” and “youth”), stating that “the Church cannot be found amongst the merely likeminded, who associate in order to share a particular taste, hobby, or perversion. It can only be found where many different peoples possessing many different gifts collaborate in order to produce a divine–human community in one specific location.”79 There is no harmonizing of difference where there is no difference.80 Such harmonization is communion, and it is consistent with the hierarchical sensibility of Milbank’s metaphysics. In Christ, there is an affirmation of hierarchy, for in Christ the subordinate willingly obey and the superordinate exercise authority generously.81 The church is the place where that which Christ makes possible is actualized. But if only Christ reconciles us to each other—nation to nation, race to race, sex to sex, ruler to subordinate, person to person . . . then this can only mean that the specific shape of Christ’s body in his reconciled life and its continued renewal in the Church (where it is authentic, which must also be ceaselessly discerned) provides for us the true aesthetic example for our reshaping of our social existence.82

Church, once again, is a logic that emanates from a narrative of peace and reconciliation. In order to be authentic, it must remake our current forms of sociality, shot through as they are with violence, into one that accords with the ontology of peace. Church is the one and only place, being the ongoing location of the one and only Christ, where this is possible. Human beings cannot come together as such in the same way even in a mosque or a synagogue [as they can in a church]. This is because in a church we come together simply to join ourselves to perfected humanity which is transformed through the Incarnation as more than humanity and not in the name of any law, custom, or specific tradition. Nor do other religions conceive of a spiritual society like that of the Church which is in principle self-sufficient and allembracing.83

Extra ecclesiam, any difference is always and only pure difference, and so, violent. Only in church is difference harmonized into “diverse gifts,” coordinated in peace.

78. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 144. 79. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 271; emphases in original. 80. Of course, whether such groups are as homogenous as Milbank imagines is highly debatable. 81. Milbank, Being Reconciled, pp. 102–3. 82. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 103; emphasis in original. 83. Milbank, Future of Love, pp. 272–73; emphasis in original.

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Given this, Mary Doak must surely be right that, for Milbank, there is no salvation outside of the church.84 The gospel narrative is the counter-narrative to all rival claims to deliver salvation, such as those made by the state. As such, the gospel is the narrative not of Jesus but of his church. “The gospels can be read,” Milbank avers, “not as the story of Jesus, but as the story of the (re)foundation of a new city, a new kind of human community, Israel-become-the-Church.”85 This is a narrative that, while inaugurated and exemplified by Jesus Christ, surpasses the gospel accounts themselves in its ongoing unfolding. The metanarrative of Christianity is not that of Jesus but “the genesis of the Church, outside which context one could only have an ahistorical, gnostic Christ.”86 The life and mission of Jesus only makes sense as the necessary precursor to the establishment of the church. One might, therefore, be tempted to say that for Milbank the church does not have a logos; it is a logos. Milbank’s church is highly structured and organized, even if those structures and that organization go unspecified in his work. In his estimation, theology and canon law are mutually constitutive. Canon law is deeply informed by a theological—and, obviously, especially an ecclesiological—perspective, while theology is always already a reflection of the ecclesial practices of the very institution that canon law establishes.87 This complex of ecclesiology and canon law that is church “is already, necessarily, by virtue of its institution, a ‘reading’ of other human societies[. Through it], it becomes possible to consider ecclesiology as also a ‘sociology.’ ”88 Ecclesiology is a critical sociology that assesses the nonecclesial in light of the ecclesial on the basis of theo-legal norms.89 This also forms the basis for a critical reading of history, as demonstrated by Theology and Social Theory. In order for this to be possible, “one has to pass from Lindbeck’s ‘Kantian’ narrative epistemology of scheme and content to a ‘Hegelian’ metanarrative which is ‘a philosophy of history,’ though based on faith, not reason.”90 Just as ecclesiology

84. Mary Doak, “A Pragmatism without Plurality? John Milbank’s ‘Pragmatic’ New Christendom,” Contemporary Pragmatism 1 (2004), pp. 123–35 (123). 85. Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 150. Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt strenuously objects to this reading. He thinks that ignoring the messy complexities of Jesus’ life leads to ignoring the messy complexities of ecclesial life, as well. He thinks that shifting the import of the gospels from the story of Jesus to the founding of the church makes of these alternative rather than simultaneous possibilities. And he thinks that it also thrusts onto the church “a load it cannot bear” (Bauerschmidt, “The Word Made Speculative,” Modern Theology 15 (1999), pp. 417–32 (426)). 86. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 389. 87. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 109. 88. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 382; emphasis in original. 89. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 410. 90. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 390.

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is the only authentic sociology, church history is, in this way, perceived to be the only authentic version of human history—Christian and non-Christian—in its entirety.91 Milbank’s church is thus the embodied logic of a metanarrative descending from the ontology of peace, a logic that is a social ethic, a cultural critique, an apologetic, a politics, a social theory, and a set of relational practices normed by (unspecified) theo-legal structures that allow a reading of society and history in which the ecclesial emerges as the only authentic social mode and the only authentic history. Primarily, because church is the outworking of the ontology of peace, church is not a place but a time. Even more, it exists as time, a time of “gift and promise.”92 To find church, one need look no further than “the critical narration of its history.”93 To be in church, one needs to have been the recipient of authentic love and, on account of that, to stand in the position of being able to repeat that act of donation.94 For this reason, Milbank’s view is that church “is not particular, not primarily an institution at all, but a dissemination of love which is the repetition of the occurrence of complete love in the world, a bearing of evil and death within humanity to the point of exposure of their predatory unreality by the divine Logos itself.”95 Church is not a place. As the instrument and dispenser of grace, it is, like grace, everywhere.96 In Theology and Social Theory, Milbank puts this in Augustinian terms. He contends that Augustine understands salvation as liberation from present injustice and that the only sphere where that is possible is that of God’s redeeming action: church.97 Supplementing the Augustinian view,98 Milbank invokes Paul and Origen to claim that the early church understood itself to be the “continuing atonement” because it instantiated all that Jesus exemplified. “Hence to the Anselmian speculation one needs to add: only God incarnate could first make an adequate return of God’s glory to God, but the point of the incarnation was also to communicate to human beings both the spiritual power and the Christic idiom of an adequate return, so that this could be made universally.”99 Being “in” Christ’s church had nothing to do, as Augustine well understood, with being pure of heart but with participation in this continuing action of atonement.100

91. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 390. 92. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 133. 93. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 134. 94. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 166. 95. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 166. 96. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 138. 97. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 394. 98. Whether Milbank has adequately grasped Augustine’s view of church or has retooled it for his own purposes is a controverted question best left to specialists in Augustinian ecclesiology to resolve. 99. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 401. 100. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 406.

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Yet, even if church is a logic, a mode of time in which love is given, received, and given again as part of the ongoing work of atonement, it is, for Milbank, still also emplaced. Despite his saying that church is “everywhere,” it also is located. “The Church is not just,” Milbank writes, “as [Michel de Certeau] says, a mystical substitute for the lost real Israel and the living body of Christ: it also truly is in all its physicality and placement in cathedrae still exactly both those things.”101 Its embeddedness in a building on a certain site carries deep theological meaning. Milbank recognizes in this the paradox that the universal church is instantiated only in one place. “The accidental givenness of place is exactly what the Church must be primarily associated with. Only in one specific place can one erect a building which, as Maximus the Confessor taught, images at once the cosmos, the human person, and the transition of human history from old to new covenant through to the eschaton.”102 This is precisely why church never “goes out” to the people. “The idea that the Church should ‘plant’ itself in various sordid and airless interstices of our contemporary world, instead of calling people to ‘come to church,’ is wrong-headed, because the refusal to come out of oneself and go to church is simply the refusal of Church per se.”103 We participate in God through being “in” one another, Milbank asserts, adverting to Johannine spirituality.104 Where we are “in” one another is “in” church, a sequence of different members in reconciled peace that seeks to create new relationships and in so doing confers authentic personhood.105 Realizing “the perfect community”—among human beings and between human beings and God—is what salvation means. Augustine posits this is what church exists to do.106 It is the place where forgiveness and restitution are practiced as a means of re-establishing broken communion.107 It is the place where misdirected desire, resulting in actions that seek something other than God or God’s purposes and that thus deny the hope for real community, is corrected.108 It is the place where the saints are extolled, both because they are models of proper desire (one that does not seek the self) and because they live in the concord of communion, as church members must, as well.109

101. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 135. 102. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 272. 103. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 271; emphasis in original. 104. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 376. 105. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 409. 106. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 345. 107. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 428. Reading Augustine’s church as overly irenic is likely a misreading of Augustine (Pilario, Back to the Rough Grounds, p. 484). 108. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 440. 109. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 406.

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4.3 Milbank’s Eschatological Ecclesiology For Milbank, church membership is contingent upon one’s trusting in the eschatological promises of God. One’s trust in those promises indicates that one is trustworthy oneself and therefore eligible to participate in the new political– economic community that is the ecclesia.110 What is Milbank’s conception of those promises? And how does his theology connect them to church? In Being Reconciled, Milbank’s chapter on ecclesiology is subtitled “The Last of the Last.” This phrase refers to Augustine’s idea that during the time of the Antichrist, the number of the truly faithful will be whittled down until the final moments of history, making them “the last of the last.” Milbank’s implication in invoking this image seems to be that the end times are nigh and churches shelter the faithful remnant. But during the course of the essay, the referent changes from faithful church members to theologians. Theologians, Milbank suggests, may be the real last of the last, the only Christians able to effect the true ecclesia, one that supplements “high medievalism” with Christian socialism, “conceived in the widest sense.”111 Theologians are here almost eschatological prophets, the only figures capable of instantiating the ecclesial logic toward which the ontology of peace and the Christian narrative point. Setting aside the troubling elitism of this view, it is difficult to pin down here—and in many places in Milbank’s writing—whether the eschatology toward which he gestures is a futural or realized one. There are, to be sure, many instances in which Milbank speaks of the eschaton in futural terms and of church as its prefigurement. Incorporation into the relational network of the ecclesia effects a shift in the relations between members and the world at large,112 who, through churchly life, seek to use “historically contingent and malleable institutions and structures” to build a more just society modeled on the heavenly city, one that is characterized by “micro/macro cosmic isomorphism; . . . the non-subordination of either part to whole or whole to part; . . . the presence of the whole in every part; and . . . positioning within an indefinite shifting sequence rather than a fixed totality.”113 Church, Milbank writes, is a “collective foreshadowing” of “the Kingdom of realized peace through the infinite web of affinity,”114 where the donation of the Spirit through the Son provides the “indwelling power” necessary for church to “begin to realize the kingdom of love upon the earth.”115 In a judicious exercise of celibacy, Milbank asserts, some

110. John Milbank, “Paul against Biopolitics,” in John Milbank, Slavoj Žižek, and Creston Davis (eds), Paul’s New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2010), p. 54. 111. Milbank, Being Reconciled, pp. 133, 137. 112. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 372. 113. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 414. 114. Milbank, Being Reconciled, pp. 204–5. 115. John Milbank, “Alternative Protestantism: Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition,” in Smith and Olthuis, p. 38; emphasis added.

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people begin to “exhibit already the eschatological life of peace” that is coming,116 a “confidently anticipated future” that the Spirit allows us to glimpse now.117 To amend one’s life in the name of love “is tantamount to a commitment to change in anticipation of the eschaton.”118 It is a monumental error, Milbank contends, to assert that “there is no way at all in which you can build toward the coming of the Kingdom.”119 Despite these images of futurity, however, Milbank’s language tends more toward a realized eschatology than an anticipated one. Even where anticipatory language is employed, his eschatology is still functionally realized. For example, Milbank asserts that salvation is “fully anticipatory.” Yet in context, one is left with the opposite impression, that salvation is fully realizable, since “the present is only the promise of the future and has always already given way to the future.”120 The future is not here genuinely future at all, but a parallel mode of being in the present, in which the promises of God are realized. Future and present appear to have lost their meaning as temporal indicators and have become markers of either the ontology of peace or the ontology of violence. This collapsing of present and future into a totalized, perfected now under the auspices of the ontology of peace appears to be the general shape of Milbank’s eschatology. This notion, not made explicit anywhere in Milbank’s work, appears implicitly over and over. The gospels themselves, Milbank writes, present an “apparently ‘historical’ tale of a remarkable man who announced the arrival [not the coming] of a new sort of kingdom, the direct rule of God upon earth, which was still to come and yet already present [rather than prefigured or foreshadowed] in his own actions and those of his followers.”121 Milbank refers to church as “the realized heavenly city” and “the telos of the salvific process”122 toward which that “already present” kingdom that Jesus, as “the total realized collective character of the Church which [at that point was] yet to come,”123 proclaimed. Surely, Milbank does refer to Jesus’ work as the “inauguration” of the kingdom.124 But that kingdom is “the new universal community or Church,”125 “the heavenly divine temple

116. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 41. 117. Milbank, “Alternative Protestantism,” p. 39. 118. Milbank, “Double Glory,” p. 208; emphasis in original. 119. Ben Suriano, “Theology and Capitalism: An Interview with John Milbank,” The Other Journal, 4 April 2005, http://theotherjournal.com/2005/04/04/theology-andcapitalism-an-interview-with-john-milbank/ [accessed 22 July 2014]. 120. Milbank, “Sophiology and Theurgy,” p. 82. 121. Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 145. Obviously, this reading into Milbank’s diction on its own would demonstrate nothing. But in the larger context of his treatment of eschatology, it appears to be part of a pattern. 122. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 406. 123. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 349. 124. Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 146. 125. Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 148.

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(Jerusalem who always abides with God above),”126 which means that even if the kingdom–church was in the future for Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit, it is quite present and available to the world now.127 In fact, Milbank’s view of analogy posits access to a mode of being in which all that is desirable is “already realized.” What is taken to be “desirable” analogically participates in a plenitudinous supra-temporal infinite which has “already realized” in an eminent fashion every desirable effect. Otherwise, either everything truly desirable will be precontained in this process, as in an a priori idea, and the priority of language and cultural invention will be obfuscated, or we shall not truly be able to maintain the notion that certain human products are more desirable than others.128

Put differently, given Milbank’s theory of knowledge—that it is erotic and that truth requires that we desire to know only that which there is to be known (that is, that which has positive ontological status and so participates in the Neoplatonic Good)—analogical participation necessitates access now to a transcendent mode of being beyond time where the peace that is desired is already available. For Milbank, this is the eschatologically perfected church, the heavenly Jerusalem, the kingdom of God. For his system to work, that must be a present reality. His conception of eschatology is therefore a realized one and church is itself that realization. The dynamics to which this leads ecclesiologically can be observed easily in Milbank’s treatment of churchly judgment. Like God, Milbank asserts, the church must suffer the wrongs of its members rather than mete out punishment to them, until the power to do this has been given over to churches by God.129 The churches understand they cannot judge until the End. Yet paradoxically, it is precisely this knowledge that allows them to judge the world and their own members.130 In

126. John Milbank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate Concerning the Supernatural (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2005), p. 106. 127. “The Holy Spirit has descended as displaying the actively receptive, feminine and so perhaps most fundamental aspect of Sophia, while, equally, as in the case of Adam Kadmon, the eternal power collectively to deify humanity which is the celestial city, heavenly Jerusalem, has descended here on earth” (Milbank, “Sophiology and Theurgy,” p.  82). Milbank also refers to “the deified Church as Sophia or the heavenly Jerusalem,” again conflating church, the Holy Spirit, and the future (Milbank, Being Reconciled, p.  133). Bauerschmidt notes Milbank’s equation of church and kingdom (Bauerschmidt, “Word Made Speculative,” p.  424) and Aristotle Papanikolaou observes Milbank’s identification of church with the eschaton (Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), p. 142). 128. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 309; emphases in original. 129. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 428. 130. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 136.

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other words, functionally, if not explicitly, for Milbank, the parousia has already occurred and judgment is not only possible but required. “In the midst of history, the judgment of God has already happened. And either the Church enacts the vision of paradisal community which this judgment opens out, or else it promotes a hellish society beyond any terrors known to antiquity: corruptio optimi pessima.”131 Equally, the reverse side of judgment, reconciliation, also relies on a conception of realized eschatology. Reconciliation or forgiveness is “a participation in real, divine, eschatological finality.”132 To the extent that this is so, the ontology of peace—true being—shows up within time under the sign of forgiveness and reconciliation, which, for Milbank, demonstrates that “finite ontology does not yield to, but nonetheless coincides with, eschatology.”133 Once again, the present and the future collapse, shifting the character of eschatological tension away from being a temporal one to being an ontological one. That this is so for Milbank can hardly be surprising since, for him, eschatological promise from the outset has never been about the dawning of the new but the restoration of the primordial. The eschaton brings about the repristinization of creation, not its fulfillment. Futurity is simply not an eschatological category that he finds useful. Milbank reads Paul correctly when he acknowledges the central role that resurrection plays in his theology, but he reads him quite strangely in characterizing Paul’s theology of resurrection as a disclosure of “another and more original life—a prefallen [sic] life without death that has now been restored in its original possibility.”134 Fallenness, for Milbank, has to do with scarcity and limits. Overcoming these by entering into authentic relationality with others “reinvoke[s] true joy and original peace and plenitude . . . and restore[s] a hedonistic gratuity and mutuality prior to all need.”135 This “plenitude,” typically associated with eschatological fullness, is connected by Milbank not to an emerging future reality but to the “restoration of Creation as Creation.”136 Milbank sees this restoration, this return, as the eschatological goal.137 In some ways, the present seems to represent a threat for Milbank. Bishops, for example, are supposed to “preserve the resources of the past for the future against the likely ravages of the present.”138 This view makes sense if there was, as Milbank supposes, a fall from a primordial peace that is to be (or has been on the ontological level) restored. The further history moves away from that “original position,” the more corrupt the world becomes. The present “ravages.” The future is unsettlingly uncertain. Only the primordial past is secure.

131. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 442. 132. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 60. 133. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 71. 134. Milbank, “Paul against Biopolitics,” p. 42. 135. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. xviii. 136. Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 229. 137. Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 165. 138. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 129.

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While futurity is not accorded tremendous theological importance—Milbank goes out of his way, for example, to mock the relatively common theological notion that God is “ahead” of the world, in the future, luring it to its final fulfillment139—it does make some cameo appearances. Development and change, for example, have eschatological import, he asserts, to the extent that they require teleological assessment.140 To understand a thing is a narrative, teleological process of imagining what it might become.141 The same is true for human history. Milbank writes that “one must, with Taylor, not lose sight of the sense that there is no past golden age to go back to and that the history of Christianity is, unsurprisingly, the history of the failure to live up to the radicalism of ‘incarnation’ from the very outset.”142 Milbank also objects to the idea of causal chains as a replacement for Neoplatonic or Dionysian hierarchy specifically on the grounds that nothing truly new can emerge if the emergence is only the result of previous conditions.143 And Milbank does agree with Augustine that creation is not and was never “finished” but is ongoing,144 possibly implying an irreversible arrow of time. Yet, despite such overtures, Milbank’s eschatology does not function as futural, there is little emphasis on the new, and God’s ultimate purposes appear to be, figuratively speaking, a return to Edenic paradise rather than the establishment of a New Jerusalem. This shows itself in practical terms. Milbank contends that a just economic–social–political order is eschatologically disclosive of peace. But this is so as “an ontological participation of the temporal in eternal peace and justice; the ‘memory’ of a pre-fallen and uninterrupted mediation of this eternal peace to time; and finally the hope for an eschatological re-disclosure of this peace here on earth.”145 What is lost is remembered and raised,146 not as the new, but as the primordial, the “pre-fallen.” Eschatology is emptied of forward movement and is construed as a return.147

139. Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 263. 140. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 199. 141. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 362. 142. Milbank, “Closer Walk,” p. 80. 143. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p.  107. Whether this assertion should be accepted is highly debatable. 144. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 431. 145. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 252. 146. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 143. 147. In addition to some of the other practical implications of this to be considered hereafter, this also has odd theo-philosophical side effects. Milbank argues, for example, that it is theologically improper to assert that future redemption (which he does not deny explicitly but only functionally) has no effect on past suffering. Because finite moments in time are not eternal, there is no moment that is unaffected by the past or the future. This might sound something like a position J.-B. Metz might take, and indeed Milbank goes on to state that there are Hegelian insights that are important to maintain. But, Milbank also asserts that when future redemption or liberation is realized, that moment stretches back in

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Church is deeply implicated in this repristinization. According to Milbank, “The Church perpetuates or renews a Creation prior to all coercion and conflict,”148 which is part of its special genius. Salvation is the re-establishment of the prior peace.149 If this is so, then “peace names the eschaton,” an “intersubjective” peace that effects communal salvation.150 Milbank asserts that “there will be no individual preceding [sic] to heaven until the Fallen order of the earth is restored through a measured reconciliation.”151 “Salvation,” Milbank contends, “is only in common: it is only the peace of the altera civitas.”152 Establishment of the ecclesia is, essentially, that restoration of peace. Milbank explicitly states that his ecclesiology is “clearly marked by certain Jewish construals of salvation as ‘restoration of everything to its rightful place.’ ”153 Church, the logical outworking of the ontology of peace, is the only place where that restoration occurs. The beatific vision is also an aspect of Milbank’s eschatology with ecclesiological implications. As James Hanvey points out, one of the goals of Radical Orthodoxy is “to reconstruct an ontology and epistemology on the basis of the beatific vision. Sometimes this is argued in terms of an Augustinian ‘ontological peace’ but more circumspectly it is presented in terms of the goal of all human knowing.”154 In Milbank’s estimation, both reason and real knowing are rooted in the beatific vision, which makes reason and knowing eschatological in character. Intellection is participation in divine being, which means that reason reduces in the end to faith, and, not surprisingly for a Neoplatonist, “knowing” means one “must somehow already know what [one] seeks to know.”155 Knowing, then, is a restoration

time to reveal that the prior moment of oppression or captivity was actually an illusion. Evil, after all, has no ontological positivity and the “future” redemption was always already present. “The mere appearance of such confinement is simply the way the finitude of time can be distorted by the privative motion of evil (always contingent and never tragically necessitated) into the apparent spatial self-sufficiency of an immanent moment” (John Milbank, “The Programme of Radical Orthodoxy,” in Laurence Paul Hemming (ed.), Radical Orthodoxy? A Catholic Enquiry (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), p. 41). Metz would never want to say that the suffering of those eschatologically healed was illusory or perspectival. But this is a logical entailment of Milbank’s non-futural eschatology combined with his commitment to the idea of evil as a privation of being. 148. Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 185. 149. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, pp. 393–94. Perhaps it is ideas like this that lead Breyfogle to assert that “Radical Orthodoxy’s account of the Church derives less from Augustine than from Rousseau” (Breyfogle, “Is There Room for Political Philosophy,” p. 42). 150. Milbank, Being Reconciled, pp. 42–43. 151. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 48; emphasis in original. 152. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 440. 153. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 170. 154. James Hanvey, conclusion to Hemming, p. 154. 155. Milbank, “Programme of Radical Orthodoxy,” pp. 34–35.

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of prior knowledge,156 just as the beatific vision is a restoration of God’s peace. Anticipation of the beatific vision, the eschatological ground of all authentic knowledge for Milbank,157 is a crucial part of “the architectonic foundation for the possibility of justice,”158 a communion that it is ultimately the responsibility of the ecclesia to realize. The peace and justice that church instantiates by pursuing its eschatological vocation, as Milbank construes it, results from the ecclesial work of harmonizing difference. This harmonization is a critical component of the ontology of peace. Church, as the material locus of that ontological reality, is deeply involved in that activity. In ecclesial consensus, difference is “blended” and violence overcome, as all particulars become universalized and so part of the eschatological totality that is pure being.159 In light of the future (which, as has been shown, does not appear to be a temporal term for Milbank but an ontological one), differences are “pure, creative positings,”160 and eschatological hope consists precisely of hope in the harmonization of difference and in a resulting peace that shows itself in material reality in the present.161 In human terms, this means that the infinite return of the glory of God to the Father by the Son through the Holy Spirit “is now eschatologically identical with the setting of all human beings on the path of deification, itself a work of inter-human participation and exchange,”162 or communion. The place where that theosis163 is made possible and actualized through the necessary participation and exchange is, of course, church, the time–event of the realized eschaton. Milbank contends there is not yet a universal return of God’s glory to God, and so the priestly function of the Son in which church participates is partial—another gesture on Milbank’s part toward futurity in his predominantly presentist eschatology.164 Nevertheless, “the reality of reconciliation, of restored unity-indisparity, must presuppose itself if it is to be realizable (always in some very small degree [a welcome qualification]) in time and so must be always already begun.” Church, as the “concrete social realization of this always–already,” is thoroughly characterized by messy struggles and disputes at the same time that it figures the once-and-to-be-restored unity.165

156. As might be expected, in good Augustinian and Neoplatonic fashion, it is also a restoration of prior “memory,” experienced as a quasi-atavistic recalling of the prelapsarian harmony (see Milbank, Future of Love, p. 252). 157. Hanvey, conclusion to Hemming, p. 154. 158. Milbank, “Paul against Biopolitics,” p. 59. 159. Milbank, Word Made Strange, pp. 155–56. 160. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 119. 161. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 135. 162. Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 185; emphasis in original. 163. Theosis, it should be noted, is translated most appropriately, according to Papanikolaou, as “divine–human communion” (Papanikolaou, Mystical as Political, p. 2). 164. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 401. 165. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. xxxi; emphases added.

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4.4 Milbank’s Eschatological Ecclesial Practice Milbank focuses heavily on the theological rationale that drives his project. Relatively little space is afforded in his work to its practical implications in any sustained or programmatic manner. It is not always easy to discern what Milbank is asking Christian communities to do in light of his analysis and concerns. However, to conclude from his lack of specifics on this score that Milbank is unconcerned with the practical would be a serious misreading of his position. For Milbank,“religions are practices as much as beliefs,”166 and in that sphere, adherence to the proper narrative and to its underlying ontology are both required. Without this, there is “bad practice,”167 since, in the Christian context at least, narrative and practice are mutually constitutive.168 Theology itself, based upon its narrative and ontology, is “the explication of a socio-linguistic practice” or “the constant renarration of this practice as it has historically developed,” which is what makes it a “Christian sociology.”169 In light of this very practical concern, the task of Christian theology is “to tell again the Christian mythos, pronounce again the Christian logos, and call again for Christian praxis in a manner that restores their freshness and originality.”170 This is not a rote re-narration in the mode of recitation, nor a revisioning in accordance with the latest fashions, but an improvisation on the core theme within and in response to changing contexts.171 On the narrative level, what this means in the postmodern milieu is the articulation of a Christian “counter-history” to the story modernity tells about itself, a Christian “counterethics” that contrasts its way of doing things to those of others, and a Christian “counter-ontology” that provides the metaphysical framework in which the counter-history and counter-ethics are articulated.172 Doing theology is itself, then, essential ecclesial practice. In Theology and Social Theory, Milbank engages the work of George Lindbeck as a means of explicating his own position on the practical implications of narrative. Milbank agrees with Lindbeck that practice shapes the propositional

166. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 92. 167. Neal Blough, “The Church as Sign or Sacrament: Trinitarian Ecclesiology, Pilgram Marpeck, Vatican II and John Milbank,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 78 (2004), pp. 29–52 (44). 168. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 254. 169. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 383. Neil Ormerod suggests that there is a sense in which Milbank’s ecclesiology–sociology is precisely the kind of reductionist and functionalist sociology Milbank condemns. The church is reduced functionally to being the institution that secures ontological peace (Ormerod, “A Dialectic Engagement with the Social Sciences in an Ecclesiological Context,” Theological Studies 66 (2005), pp.  815–40 (839)). 170. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 383. 171. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 196. 172. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 383.

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and the experiential dimensions of theology, but Milbank places a higher premium on the propositional—or, in his terms, the ontological—than does Lindbeck.173 This is because Milbank maintains that Christian practice always refers itself to “the absolute,” having already imagined for itself what that is. The conception of the absolute is situated in a particular mythos, a network of propositions. It is this mythic narrative that gives rise to doctrine and grounds religious practice. Doctrine is always an interpretation of the narrative, and those interpretations must be adjudicated against that narrative’s propositional content. However, and here Milbank may again depart in certain ways from Lindbeck, the ideas that rise out of and feed back into the core narrative are also interpretive exceedings of the narrative itself. They transcend the story.174 They are “an inescapably ‘surplus,’ propositional element which contributes, in a distinct moment, to the overall ‘imagination of reference.’ ”175 So, for Milbank, in contrast to Lindbeck, it is not the “founding” narratives of Christianity (that is, the contents of the Bible)—the paradigmatic—alone that inform the imagination and practice of church, but the unfolding of that narrative throughout time and space as it continues—the syntagmatic.176 On this basis, Milbank contends that to believe rightly is already to practice rightly. Proper belief necessitates enacting the metanarrative that is its foundation. In precisely this way, the “counter-ontology” provides the “counterethics” that is the practice of the church.177 To love God at all is to love God properly. But the way to do this is not immediately specifiable and must be discerned, in conversation with the ways that Jesus, the church, and all believers since have done so, but not predetermined by them.178 What is necessary, then, is a re-narration, a “re-making” of the narrative in its trans-historical, syntagmatic wholeness through a “poetic” re-imagining. The act of “making” that Milbank refers to as poesis is a crucial element in this.179 Poesis, we now more clearly see, is an integral aspect of Christian practice and redemption. Its work is the ceaseless re-narrating and “explaining” of human history under the sign of the cross. To act at all is to re-narrate, and to act in the Church is to take this re-narration not as transparent and complete within supposed “bounds” of our finitude (the Kantian modern), nor yet as ecstatically indeterminate (the skeptical post-modern), but rather as an utterly concrete

173. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 384. 174. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 385. 175. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 387. 176. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 389. 177. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 429. 178. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 439. 179. Pilario points out that Milbank does not use the proper Greek term poiesis to denote the creative work that human beings undertake but “spells it as ‘poesis’ to make it one step closer to poetry and farther from [mere?] techne” (Pilario, Back to the Rough Grounds, p. 363).

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allegorical outline, which remains, precisely by that token, all the more a mere sign of that mystery into which it must still enter in order to define itself.180

This act is undertaken in full, humble realization of its dependence on the narrative and its underlying ontology, and seeks to add to it by embellishing it with yet more allegories of the love the narrative is meant to express and to motivate.181 This act of poesis is practice itself and it animates additional practice predicated upon it, but always with deference and reference to the central narrative and its ontological propositions. In his introduction to The Word Made Strange, Milbank writes: In all the following essays, I have hoped to be surprising, since otherwise I should have no chance at all of being authentic. And perhaps the most surprise, the most shock, should arise when what is said is really most orthodox and ancient, since the tradition is so rarely re-performed in practice today. Here rehearsal of ancient formulations (although they sustain an inexhaustible resistance), too often contaminate them by a corrupt context, while on the other hand any “contemporary garb” for Christian truth is of course the most puerile form of betrayal.182

This is the effort to which poesis contributes. It is the theological re-narration that, as a practice, undergirds and animates every other form of Christian practice. As the ultimate expression of the ontology of peace, of the restoration of peace that the ecclesia is called to effect, and of the reconciliation of difference in relational harmony, the principal practical expression of the Christian narrative and ontology for Milbank is always eucharist. Church is, quite simply, for Milbank “the continued event of the ingestion of the body of Christ.”183 Drawing on Pauline and Augustinian themes, Milbank asserts that church is constituted by receiving the eucharistic body of Christ even while offering the body of Christ to itself as the body of Christ.184 Christ is incarnated by Mary’s receptivity and continues to be incarnated by this churchly receptivity.185 The “authority of grace” granted to church is not deducible nor does it derive from its visible structures, but instead “arrives intrinsically, in the symbolism and liturgy of the Eucharist which ‘makes’ the Church,” Milbank writes, referencing the eucharistic ecclesiology of de Lubac.186 Eucharist is also what connects church to its eschatological vocation, as through it, “humanity enters in advance into the divine Sabbath, the eschatological banquet and the cosmic nuptial, into the realm where once again we can entirely trust our every act as good precisely

180. Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 32. 181. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 433. 182. Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 1. 183. Schneider, “Orthodox Paradox.” 184. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 134; Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 163. 185. Milbank, “Sophiology and Theurgy,” p. 83. 186. Milbank, Suspended Middle, p. 60.

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because we know that it will not merely follow our intention but be transformed and given back to us in a different and surprising mode.”187 The receptive liturgical practice of the community is the way the community knows anything about God or itself.188 Participants in the liturgy confess their “inherent nothingness” and receive life through the sacrament.189 The liturgical anamnesis recalls humanity’s reception of the divine in the incarnation, “the epiphanic descent of reason itself to humanity.”190 This, the only authentic reason available to the human subject, is safeguarded by the bishop, who, by virtue of his (always his) eucharistic role is the only true theologian; any non-episcopal theologian derives authority from the bishop.191 Eucharist is the only model for giving and forgiving, the only foundation for ethics as the model of “total surrender for renewed reception.”192 Eucharistic receptivity lies at the heart of church and is the source of its enduring mystery: “Only in its Eucharistic centering is it enabled to sustain a ritual distance from itself, to preserve itself, as the body of Christ under judgment by the body of Christ, which after all, it can only receive. In a sense, this ritual distance of the Church from itself defines the Church, or rather deflects it from any definition of what it is.”193 According to Milbank, “The Church is the brotherhood and sisterhood of the Grail: of those ceaselessly questing for the Eucharist which is the source of the Church, and so perpetually questing for the Church itself.”194 There is no legitimate aspect of ecclesial life or practice that is not eucharistic. This is because all of Christian practice is narratological. As such, it is always part of the process of poesis, and poesis is always referred to in Radical Orthodoxy as liturgical in character.195 Everything enacted in liturgy indelibly marks the lived lives of its participants.196 The esoteric facet of church is its mystical theology, made available in and through reception of eucharist, but the exoteric facet of church is the “dispersed life of the ecclesial community.”197 This mystical, eucharistic ecclesiology molds the human affective and rational capacities to practice the liturgical narrative in all aspects of worldly life.198

187. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 161. See also Milbank, “Sophiology and Theurgy,” p. 82. 188. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 341. 189. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 161. 190. Milbank, “New Divide,” p. 30. 191. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p.  123. This is consistent with Milbank’s notion that “authority in the Church is . . . an hierarchical flow through time” (Milbank, Suspended Middle, p. 60). 192. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 161. 193. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 133; emphasis in original. 194. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 105. 195. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. x. 196. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 138. 197. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 108. 198. Milbank, “New Divide,” p. 31.

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Milbank understands the Holy Spirit as “endless communitarian praxis,” and asserts that it is eucharistic reception of this relational Spirit of practical engagement that paves the way for the “divinized practice” of church members.199 Church is most authentically present, therefore, Milbank contends, in the lives of “ordinary men and women who, unrecorded, have gone away from receiving the Eucharist and loved and forgiven their neighbor.”200 For Milbank, as for Augustine, love and reconciliation are the pinnacles of Christian practice.201 Eucharist is simultaneously the reception of “the signs of atonement” and “the repetition of an atoning practice.”202 Participation in it is communion with the peace of God, the ontology of peace, and the Christian metanarrative, and this is inscribed in all Christian practice. For him, then, church exists “not as a peace we must slowly construct, piecemeal, imbibing our hard-earned lessons, but as a peace already given, superabundantly, in the breaking of bread by the risen Lord, which assembles the harmony of the peoples then and at every subsequent Eucharist.”203 Every human economy is ultimately part of this divine economy, which means for Milbank that “every process of production and exchange prepares the elements of the cosmic Eucharist.”204 Nothing escapes it. Worship life bleeds over into social life, which is then always already eucharistic.205 If the “long answer” to the question “Where is Milbank’s church?” was “in the critical narration of its history,” as was indicated above, then “the short answer . . . might be, on the site of the Eucharist, which is not a site, since it suspends presence in favor of memory and expectation, ‘positions’ each and every one of us only as fed—gift from God of ourselves and therefore not to ourselves—and bizarrely assimilates us to the food which we eat, so that we, in turn, must exhaust ourselves as nourishment for others.”206 Beyond participation in eucharist and loving and forgiving others, Milbank does not offer much in the way of concrete examples with regard to the shape of Christian practice. In some ways, this may be because he is as unclear as many other theologians about how to specify wider Christian practices. For all the current talk of a theology that would reflect on practice, the truth is that we remain uncertain as to where today to locate true Christian practice. This would be, as it has always been, a repetition differently, but authentically, of what has always been done. In his or her uncertainty as to where to find this, the theologian feels almost that the entire ecclesial task falls on his own head: in the

199. Hankey, “Theoria versus Poesis,” pp. 396–97. 200. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 168. 201. Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, p. 260. 202. Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 161. 203. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 133. 204. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 258. 205. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 173. 206. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 134.

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meager mode of reflective words he must seek to imagine what a true practical repetition would be like. Or at least he must hope that his merely theoretical continuation of the tradition will open up a space for wider transformation.207

In other words, the poesis that is a theologian’s vocation provides the impetus for ever-new Christian practices that repeat differently the Christian metanarrative in living form. Practice originates in discourse for Milbank, and this should not be at all surprising. Discrete practices are hard to come by in Milbank’s work because, given the foregoing, they are nearly impossible to specify in advance. What he can say with certainty is Christian practice must not involve an ecclesial withdrawal from the world or an idealization of church.208 Church may reject worldly ways of knowing and of exercising power and authority,209 but ecclesial peace does not require excluding others or their practices, but only that which is violent.210 There can be, indeed must be, a distinctive Christian social theory, but its existence relies upon “a distinguishable Christian mode of action, a definite practice.” This social theory is ecclesiology and it proceeds by assessing other modes of human community by ascertaining the extent to which their practices are continuous or discontinuous with church-based social practice.211 So, although Milbank may assert the ecclesia can rightfully import practices from the outside, this is only because they comport with extant ecclesial practice and, because of their participation in the “cosmic Eucharist” and alignment with the ontology of peace, are already Christian practices in spite of themselves.212 Human sociality, for example, is Christian practice because, in Milbank’s estimation, authentic human sociality is worship. Milbank’s view is that “the divine work of the incarnate Son in perfect worship of the Godhead is completed in an active human social response under the prompting of the Spirit, which also aims to complete this worship universally (in a non-identically repeated fashion), even if this must in reality await the eschaton.”213 In other words, the import of human sociality in the teleological sense is divine worship. This is deferred until God is All-in-all, but where it takes place now, it is authentically

207. Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 1. 208. Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, p. 135. 209. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 136. 210. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 342. 211. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 382. 212. Gregory thinks Milbank may here be drawing a church–world boundary more sharply than he imagines. The church and the world, this side of the eschaton, as Karl Barth and theologians in his line tend to point out, are both the site of God’s work and the site of human failure. God’s basileia is larger than the church, and the church is marked by the sinfulness of the world at large. Church and world can learn from one another in a mutual way that Milbank seems not to accept (Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, p. 129). 213. Milbank, foreword to Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, p. 20.

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Christian social practice, even when it is extra-ecclesial. While it may be true, then, that for Milbank, “the unicity of Christian praxis as exemplified by Christ entails a speculation about the universal participation of the finite human in the divine infinite and the particular social practices that embody this participatory vision,”214 which leads him to assert that “social celebration, to be genuine and secure, must take the form of worship,”215 exactly what this looks like in concrete terms remains unspecified. The same is true of another of Milbank’s key Christian practices: forgiveness. Forgiveness is rooted in Jesus’ own practice of forgiving sin and re-establishing proper relationships as a result.216 The ability to forgive is infused into Jesus’ humanity by the entire Trinity and passed on to Christians in eucharist.217 Forgiveness is a relational “fusion” that takes place in reconciliation, a reconciliation that takes the economic form of gift exchange.218 The Christian narrative discloses the “shape” of Jesus’ non-violent practice of forgiveness, enabling the possibility for his followers to do likewise.219 To Milbank, consistent with his realized eschatological perspective, “the Kingdom means (speculatively) and illustrates (practically) bearing the burdens of others, even our accusers. Thus it is Jesus’ end, as well as his life, that we are to imitate.”220 This is carried out, as Augustine made clear, in Christ’s church, which is precisely what separated the Christians from the pagans.221 Forgiveness, the only virtue that obtains in the civitas Dei, is a collective virtue. It is possessed in common or not at all. Precisely because it is not presently a common characteristic, the only thing really like heavenly virtue is our constant attempt to compensate for, substitute for, even short-circuit this total absence of virtue, by not taking offence, assuming the guilt of others, doing what they should have done, beyond the bounds of any given “responsibility.” Paradoxically, it is only in this exchange and sharing that any truly actual virtue is really present.222

This practice of forgiveness grants to others the space to be different, and actually confers being upon them. This “space of freedom,” Milbank contends, is existence.223 Even here, however, while we have a narrative template for practical forgiving, and

214. Pabst and Schneider, Encounter between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy, pp. 18–19. 215. Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 155. 216. Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 156. 217. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 62. 218. Milbank, Being Reconciled, pp. 70, 100. 219. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 399. 220. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 401. 221. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, pp. 402, 415. 222. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 417. 223. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 422.

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even have some descriptive qualifiers (“not taking offence, assuming the guilt of others, doing what they should have done”), no real specifics are supplied. The theological poesis that gives rise to reflection on practice thus appears to present practical considerations in the abstract throughout Milbank’s work. The same is true of discernment, another ecclesial practice of great importance to him. Church is an exponent of the ontology of peace and, as such, everything in it has a place in the heavenly, hierarchical sequence. Discernment of that place is the task of oneself and of others.224 Criteria for this, however, are not given. Likewise, Milbank advocates discerning the eternal in each moment in a manner we generally do not. By employing what he calls “a politics of time,” processes—such as work or education—are freed from their instrumentality and become not means to some other end but ends in themselves, as sites of plenitude participating in eternal flourishing, and thereby making time flow musically, in Augustinian terms.225 Yet, by what means this discernment occurs and the larger contours of the practice are unarticulated. Furthermore, phronesis itself is a corporate practice requiring discernment. Ancient patterns for non-identical repetition are to be advanced, “yet what is ultimately exemplary here, what must be ‘done again,’ is nothing specific and definable.” What constitutes “doing right” is continuously being discerned,226 yet with little help offered for making such choices. “What is to be done?” is always a circumstantial and contextual question, a question of justice, and cannot be answered in advance.227 The practical component in Milbank’s work is quite strong at the theoretical level, at the level of abstract theologizing. It is less so—though consciously and with a stated theological reason—on the concrete. The exception to this is Milbank’s attitude toward the modern, secular world. Milbank’s theology contains an explicit politics and a specific economic perspective. Politically, Christianity is most compatible, in Milbank’s view, with democracy. Politics is the effort to save what is salvageable by just and charitable action in every moment,228 and the right form of government to effect this goal is a mixture of democracy and aristocracy (as the need for elites is unavoidable).229 Thus, Christianity favors democracy in this qualified sense. It does so because democracy reflects the theological reality that “the entire truth of Christianity exists in harmonious dispersal amongst the body of Christ (eschatologically the entire human race and the entire human cosmos) and that agreement in the truth requires ideally a free consensus.”230 Attaching a political modality to an eschatological vision is a risky proposition,231

224. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 135. 225. Milbank, Being Reconciled, pp. 177–80. 226. Milbank, Word Made Strange, p. 155. 227. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 351. 228. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 143. 229. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 245. 230. Milbank, Future of Love, p. xiv. 231. And that Milbank’s eschatology here only includes “the human” is deeply troubling.

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but democracy also accords with Milbank’s metaphysics and ecclesiology, which understand truth as the upshot of the ontology of peace, the harmonized difference of the cosmos.232 It is not at all the idea that processes of “arbitration” effect the best outcomes that validates democracy for Milbank, but rather that for him, “vox populi, vox Dei.”233 The theological basis for extolling the virtues of democratic government emerges from Milbank’s conviction that “true society implies consensus, agreement in desire and harmony amongst its members, and this is exactly (as Augustine reiterates again and again) what the Church begins to provide, and that in which salvation, the restoration of being, consists.”234 Similarly, Milbank’s economic views derive from his theological convictions. Like politics, economics is about justice, not in the sense of a “planned economy,” but in the ecclesial sense of authentic community.235 Indeed, members of the church confer grace upon one another through material practices—mutual upbuilding, equitable exchange, use of fair-trade goods, and the like.236 Extending this outward from an ecclesial base, Milbank thinks there is only one economic option available for Christian practice: socialism, which for him is a “liturgical” resistance to the evils of capitalism.237 As Milbank puts it, “I believe, along with Radical Orthodoxy in general, that only the Church has the theoretical and practical power to challenge the global hegemony of capital and to create a viable politico-economic alternative.”238 Just as Milbank is convinced that proper Christian practice results in a modified democracy as the preferred political theory, so it results in a modified socialism as its economic program. This uncharacteristic specificity is in service to a larger Christian practice that Milbank’s work as a whole aims to advocate and, in some ways, effect: the (re-) Christianizing of the secular. As Milbank says, “One has to integrate one’s politics with one’s ecclesiology,” for “political theory and ecclesiology must finally . . . be of one piece. Both involve a classical mixture of democracy, aristocracy, and kingship, even if the Christian demos is paradoxically anointed and Christian ‘kingship’ is paradoxically kenotic.”239 Likewise, economic socialization and Christianization are one and the same. Socialization of public utilities and the media is part and parcel of “the Christianization of the state and subsumption within the ecclesia: its rule begins to be pastoral.” As an establishmentarian (“I am an Anglican, not an Anabaptist!”), Milbank maintains that the church and a properly socialized economy are co-extensive.240

232. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 144. 233. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 245. 234. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 406. 235. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 428. 236. Suriano, “Theology and Capitalism.” 237. Milbank, Being Reconciled, pp. 162, 186. 238. Milbank, Future of Love, p. xi. 239. Milbank, Future of Love, pp. xiv–xv. 240. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 216.

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“The point of the Church,” Milbank proclaims, “is the assembly of humanity as such in order that it might govern itself by love. Once one has this ‘church’ idea, no other basis for human society can be regarded as fully legitimate.”241 It is for this reason that the ecclesial must be mapped on to the sociopolitical. How else might the ontology of peace be totally and effectively realized? Besides, the secular itself is a heretical theology. Society already desires to be what the church is.242 The church, as “the exemplary form of human community,” is able to “read, criticize, say what is going on in” all other human groups, including the state.243 Milbank contends that Augustine saw no separation between the two and that while Aquinas might have, in doing so he abetted the birth of the secular. “Better, then,” Milbank concludes, “that the bounds between Church and State be extremely hazy, so that a ‘social’ existence of many complex and interlocking powers may emerge, and forestall either a sovereign state, or a statically hierarchical Church.”244 The base communities that have sprung up out of Latin American liberation theology, “where the lines between Church and world, spiritual and secular are blurred, and relative independence and mutual nurture within small groups [like the medieval guilds] is pursued,” exemplify the kind of Christian socialism—and hence the type of church–state relationship—that Milbank advocates.245 To those

241. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 273. 242. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 169. Of course, as Breyfogle points out, “in replacing politics with the Church, Radical Orthodoxy suppresses the temporal necessity of political rule and sets itself on the quixotic course of ameliorating the effects of sin and the Fall,” which is at best a tremendous ecclesial overreaching (Breyfogle, “Is There Room for Political Philosophy,” p.  45). Nevertheless, in another of Milbank’s uncharacteristically concrete moments—and one in which he construes church as a sign of the coming kingdom in unambiguously futural terms—Milbank contends that more must be made of the idea of the Body of Christ as positively foreshadowing an eschatological social order—the new Jerusalem—and not just in the mode of monasticism, but also in the mode of families, lay fraternities, guilds, credit-associations, ethical businesses, nonprofit enterprises and so forth. Only this emphasis does justice to the Pauline and Augustinian claim that the Church (Ecclesia—which implies in Paul something like “the ruling council of the cosmopolis”) is itself a super-polity that is not more particular than the State but rather more universal than the State in its very concretion, and within its super-polity protecting many diverse but collaborating individuals and subgroups (Milbank, “Multiculturalism in Britain and the Political Identity of Europe,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 9 (2009), pp. 268–81 (280)). 243. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 390. 244. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, pp. 410–13. 245. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p.  413. Milbank holds these groups up as exemplary despite the withering attacks he levels at liberation theology itself, which he takes to emanate from an erroneous turn to the subject via Karl Rahner and, before him, the dreaded Kant.

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who wonder what might become of other religions under such a regime, Milbank is swift to reassure that, because Christianity places such a high premium upon “the integrity of a religious body,” other religions would flourish in a Christianized state even better than under liberal regimes of reason: “Pluralism is better guaranteed by Christianity than by the Enlightenment.”246 Undoubtedly, Radical Orthodoxy desires to articulate a theology and initiate a practice that moves “towards renewing Christian Europe as the most European Europe and . . . envision[s] a global Christendom that can confront secularism and fundamentalism and promote Christian ideals based on the promise of God’s Kingdom on earth.”247 Milbank is uncharacteristically specific about what those “Christian ideals” might include: resistance to Malthusian state policies by emphasis on marriage and gay partnerships (not marriage) over sexual freedom, as the state promotes sexual freedom as a means of controlling reproduction through heightened sexual individualism and self-seeking; communitarian social programs and economic redistribution; decentralized government and a vigorous civil society; a “moral market” oriented not to profit but to human flourishing and ownership; excellence in education that is universally accessible; high aesthetic culture; conservative ethics and morals; egalitarianism; and a re-emphasis on hierarchy, which is crucial for proper paideia.248 Despite his stated intention to bring about the kingdom of God on earth—language that should send alarm bells to ringing—very little of this would accompany the eschatological viewpoint to be advanced hereafter. Yet, for Milbank, it is a logical outgrowth of his view of church, which provides an “alternative” way of doing things.249 Milbank’s ecclesial practice, however, when it moves from the abstract to the concrete, finally makes it clear that his ecclesiology does not so much propose a church that is an alternative to “the world” so much as it does a church that exists over against the world,250 as his various “counters”—to ontology, history, ethics, narrative, empire—testify. This cannot but be expected, given his underlying metaphysical system. His competing ontologies posit an intensely agonistic scenario in which church (peace) and world (violence) are pitted against one another and only one can prevail. The ultimate practical ecclesial act, in Milbank’s estimation, is to re-create the world in the image of church. Milbank’s view of church features many of the characteristics of communion ecclesiology surveyed in Chapter 2. It is rooted in patristic sources, in Augustine above all. There is an emphasis on visible unity, in that the incorporation and reconciliation of individual believers into the differential “sequence” that is church

246. Milbank, Future of Love, p. 170. History, of course, makes this a risible assertion. 247. Pabst and Schneider, Encounter between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy, p. 25. 248. Schneider, “Orthodox Paradox.” 249. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, p. 237. 250. Christopher McMahon, “Theology and the Redemptive Mission of the Church: A Catholic Response to Milbank’s Challenge,” Heythrop Journal 51 (2010), pp. 781–94 (786).

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takes material form as the sociopolitical structure of established Christian community, which, in its trans-spatial, trans-temporal, non-identical repetition of the core Christian narrative, stands as witness against and alternative to the world in which it is placed. His reading of Augustine’s Neoplatonism provides him with resources for addressing the ecclesial questions of unity-and-diversity and churchand-world in a manner that accents “participation” as a mode of communion. The members of the earthly church participate in one another and in Christ, as and through church. The earthly church itself participates in the celestial church, which in turn participates in the communal relationships among the divine persons. These interlocking modes of bodily and spiritual participation—in being and receiving the body of Christ in the ontological, social, and eucharistic senses— effect ecclesial communion across space and time, horizontally and vertically. For Milbank, church is the spatio-temporal site of this multifaceted participation. Essentially, as participatory, Milbank’s church is communion. Eschatologically, it is abundantly clear that his approach is ecclesiocentric, somewhat Johannine, overly realized, and restorationist in its strong emphasis on repristinization and the re-establishment of the prelapsarian order. Church is where this happens because it maintains the proper hierarchical order, one that not only reflects but itself is the work of the Trinity. Practically, this necessitates living a eucharist-shaped life: giving and receiving to one another on the model of the flow of divine grace in a manner marked by the ecclesial form this takes in a hierarchical and institutional church. Additional practices, including baptism, that open Christian discipleship to forms and modes complementary to the eucharistic model, are marginalized, to the detriment of both the Christian church and the world it is called to serve.

Chapter 5 C H U R C H I N T H E WO R L D : A N E S C HAT O L O G IC A L I M AG I NAT IO N F O R C H R I S T IA N C OM M U N I T I E S

In Chapters  3 and 4, we saw that Zizioulas and Milbank advance eschatologies that are logically consistent with their theological commitments to their specific ideas of communion. For Zizioulas, the eschatological promise of God is fulfilled in eucharist, the act that constitutes church and is the sole source of authentic personhood. During eucharist, communion with divine Being is made available and enters creation as a transformative power in the world, guiding it into everdeeper communion with the trinitarian communion. Milbank contends that the ontology of peace is characteristic of both creation’s beginning and its final end. Perfect communion is the condition to which the cosmos will ultimately return, a communion of fully reconciled difference in which all diverse expressions of being are harmonized according to their assigned positions in the ontological hierarchy of Being in the light of the beatific vision. Again, eucharist is the enactment and manifestation of this. As we also saw, Zizioulas’ and Milbank’s eschatological ecclesiologies create problematic relationships between church and world. Zizioulas’ church is located beyond the world, outside of history, focused so exclusively on the “heavenly” communion that concern for the material realities of earthly life almost slip out of view. Milbank’s church is situated over against the world, the only earthly manifestation of an “ontology of peace” that stands as a communal bulwark of divine harmony against the juggernaut of nihilistic atomization effected by the “ontology of violence” that permeates the postmodern, secular world. My contention is that developing an eschatological imagination that differs significantly from the overly realized eschatology offered by the majority of communion ecclesiologies, exemplified here by Zizioulas’ and Milbank’s, when put into conversation with communion as a dominant theological value, opens communion in new ways and, as a result, leads to more fruitful understandings of church and of the church–world relationship. Specifically, I claim that nurturing an eschatological imagination that stresses the balance of and the tension between the eschatological already and not yet produces an understanding of church that values communion as highly as the current models do but adds back to communion ecclesiology aspects of church that those approaches often miss. This requires an eschatology that affirms that the eschatological future enters into 141

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and affects the present, now, in real and significant ways—as ecclesiologies of communion maintain—while leaving room in the theological imagination for actual, genuine, eschatological futurity, not a future that abandons its futureness by coming fully into the present in the eucharistic celebration, as in Zizioulas, or that has lost its temporal quality in becoming a parallel possibility to the present, as in Milbank. To that end, in this chapter I articulate an eschatological imagination adequate for accomplishing this task, specifying the form and content of such an imagination as it applies to the ecclesiological endeavor. In doing so, I show how this version of eschatology redresses gaps in the eschatological thinking of both Zizioulas and Milbank, above all by situating church in the world, rather than beyond or over against it. This does not erase the facets of communion that Zizioulas, Milbank, and ecclesiologists of communion prize. It strongly asserts, however, that how we imagine communion cannot stop with those aspects of it. If we do, if we allow those features of communion to become theologically hypertrophied, affording no space to the other conditions that communion encompasses, communion is construed in a lopsided manner that is both conceptually problematic and deleterious for the life of individual Christians and of churches. Bringing to light the “more” to communion, then, does not replace the understanding of communion or eschatology in ecclesiologies of communion so much as it recovers a more balanced, healthful, and theologically sound imagination of them. My argument is advanced, in large part but not exclusively, by drawing selectively and critically upon the work of a group of theologians noted for developing constructive eschatological positions during the latter half of the twentieth century: Wolfhart Pannenberg, Johannes Baptist Metz, and above all, Jürgen Moltmann. These theological perspectives are supported by an eschatological reading of the Synoptic gospels and the authentic letters of Paul, but in a way that complements rather than denies the importance of the Johannine corpus and other New Testament material. In order to demonstrate how this more robust eschatological imagination shifts our understanding and practice of church in more positive directions, the subsequent two chapters explicate how, respectively, conceptualizing and practicing ecclesiology within the framework provided by this revised eschatological imagination reveals the crucial “more” to being church that ecclesiologies of communion do not address. This clarifies not only how the Christian church is rightly conceived of as in the world, but also as being very much for the world, as the anticipatory witness to and agent of God’s promised future.

5.1 Eschatological Imagination 5.1.1 The Provisional Character of Eschatological Imagination Eschatology is—literally and figuratively—sketchy. Scripturally speaking, our theology of “the end” is based on a mosaic of fragmentary, non-harmonious

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“pictures” that attempt to express this ultimately inexpressible divine mystery.1 These pictures cannot always be harmonized with one another because they represent disparate attempts by diverse communities to express the reconciliation of creation to God in Christ, which exceeds all attempts at discursive description.2 As a result, the fruits of the eschatological imagination will be “by necessity inadequate approximations of what the eschaton is all about.”3 What is said about eschatology is “by its very nature preliminary.”4 It is sketchy because it is—and must always be— incomplete. But eschatology is also sketchy in a figurative sense. John Thiel observes: “Modern theology has been reluctant to engage the eschatological imagination for several reasons. The Kantian critique of metaphysics is one. Another reason, quite frankly, is the fear that any detailed account of the afterlife would simply be vulgar.”5 Eschatology is thus also sometimes seen as sketchy in the sense of “dodgy,” as vaguely threatening and outré, something about which to be wary, something not to be trusted. The sketchiness of eschatology is crucial to keep in mind. Eschatology can deliver no more than a preliminary understanding of “the end” that always stands in need of revision and supplementation. Scripture attempts to fill out the sketchiness of the eschaton by coming at it repeatedly from different angles— various resurrection appearances, visions of the future, and assertions about the final destiny of creation—without presenting a unified picture. My theology does no better. Moreover, it must contend with the Kantian critique of metaphysics without allowing itself to be cowed by it. It must confidently refute the charge of vulgarity, a reproach often leveled at anything concerned with materiality and the body, which an eschatology informed by the resurrection hope must necessarily be. And it must guard itself against projectionist metaphysical idolatry, a tendency to which, given its underdetermination—its sketchiness—eschatology can be prone.6 Keeping its sketchiness in mind, a robust eschatological imagination needs to be developed and integrated into one’s broader theological perspective. While it is true that “imagination strains and language buckles in the attempt to speak

1. James William McClendon, Jr., Doctrine (Systematic Theology, 2; Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1994), pp. 75–89. 2. Karl Rahner, “The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions,” in More Recent Writings (Theological Investigations, 4; Baltimore, MD: Helicon, 1966), pp. 335–36. 3. Hans Schwarz, Eschatology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000), p. 248. 4. Christofer Frey, “Eschatology and Ethics: Their Relation in Continental Protestantism,” in Henning Graf Reventlow (ed.), Eschatology in the Bible and in Jewish and Christian Tradition (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series, 243; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997), p. 72; emphasis in original. 5. John E. Thiel, “For What May We Hope? Thoughts on the Eschatological Imagination,” Theological Studies 67 (2006), pp. 517–41 (525). 6. Thiel, “For What May We Hope,” p. 525.

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of the eschaton,” it is also the case that this is true of theology in general, all of which “ultimately flows from the same holy mystery.”7 Garrett Green attempts to mitigate the risks involved in imagining eschatological ultimacy by inquiring into the foundations of a Christian eschatological imagination.8 His finding is that it must be rooted in theological tradition, especially scripture.9 The contemporary eschatological imagination must be conditioned by and built on the eschatological imaginations of our theological forebears.10 Of course, what we theologically do with the witness of this tradition is partially a matter of our hermeneutics. With regard to the scriptural sources for eschatological imagination, Green suggests that it is served best by balancing a “liberal” acknowledgment that eschatological images are not to be taken literally with an “orthodox” reverence for the priority of biblical language in theology.11 Whatever we make of our sources, however—biblical, traditional, or experiential— our eschatologies can only ever be provisional, as they are built on the partial and the fragmentary from the start. 5.1.2 The Theological Role of Eschatological Imagination What is the theological role of this provisional eschatological imagination? Trevor Hart suggests there are at least four crucial functions that eschatological imagination serves. The first is making the absent present.12 Because eschatology deals with a reality that is not yet existent, imagination is the only way to make the subject of eschatology present.13 Moreover, in making this future present, in its contrast to present reality, its imaginative appearing puts the present under judgment for its deficits vis-à-vis the imagined future.14 Consistent with the provisionality of eschatology, however, this is a disciplined, careful exercise of imagination that guards against the projection and idolatry that stems from over-certainty.15

7. Brian D. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection: A Christian Theology of Presence and Absence (New York: Herder & Herder, 2009), p. 365. 8. Garret Green, “Imagining the Future,” in David Fergusson and Marcel Sarot (eds), The Future as God’s Gift: Explorations in Christian Eschatology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), p. 75. 9. Green, “Imagining the Future,” p. 77. 10. Green, “Imagining the Future,” pp. 78–79. 11. Green, “Imagining the Future,” p. 86. 12. Trevor Hart, “Imagination for the Kingdom of God? Hope, Promise, and the Transformative Power of an Imagined Future,” in Richard Bauckham (ed.), God Will Be All in All: The Eschatology of Jürgen Moltmann (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001), p. 54. 13. Green, “Imagining the Future,” p. 79. 14. Thomas P. Rausch, Eschatology, Liturgy, and Christology: Toward Recovering an Eschatological Imagination (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2012), pp. 158–59. 15. John Panteleimon Manoussakis, “The Promise of the New and the Tyranny of the Same,” in Neal De Roo and John Manoussakis (eds), Phenomenology and Eschatology: Not Yet in the Now (Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), p. 88.

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A second critical function of the eschatological imagination is discerning the meaning of things.16 Envisioning the ultimate “end,” in the teleological and eschatological senses, allows us to grasp their ultimate significance (an insight that goes back to Aristotle), which influences greatly how they are understood and experienced in the present.17 Imagining the future creates a temporal “space” that we “inhabit,” a meaningful space for living into what is envisioned. Imagining the future as amounting to nothing can render the world and life in it meaningless and changeless; imagining it as good and destined for divine perfection can effect the opposite.18 The eschatological imagination also supplies a way of envisioning new life. As with its meaning-making function, this has distinct implications for living in the present. The reality of the future fulfillment of the promises of God—not its content, which is in large part unknowable, but the “fact” of its promised coming— “capture[s] our imagination and . . . open[s] up for us a new vision of God’s promise and the present it illuminates, thereby stimulating alternative ways of being in the world in the present, [and] living towards the future. Imagination is thus a vital category in eschatology as in theology more generally.”19 Moltmann agrees, writing that theology as a whole “is imagination for the kingdom of God in the world, and for the world in God’s kingdom.”20 The new life that is envisioned is closely connected to the judgment on the present order that is produced by eschatological

16. Hart, “Imagination for the Kingdom,” p. 54. 17. Christoph Schwöbel, “The Church as a Cultural Space,” in John Polkinghorne and Michael Welker (eds), The End of the World and the Ends of God: Science and Theology on Eschatology (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000), pp. 109–10. 18. William Schweiker, “Time as Moral Space: Moral Cosmologies, Creation, and Last Judgment,” in Polkinghorne and Welker, p.  124; Hart, “Imagination for the Kingdom of God,” p. 59. None of this, of course, denies a troubling scientific cosmology that maintains our planet is destined to be either baked dry or entirely engulfed by an eventual swelling of the sun and that the solar system as a whole faces “heat death” as a result of entropy. A realistic eschatology is required to confront this. Such an eschatology may allow us to claim there is more to be said than these scientific pictures alone are able to provide. Delving into this aspect of eschatology, however, would take us too far afield of the present project. For an excellent collection of essays on the subject, see Polkinghorne and Welker, and see also David Wilkinson, Christian Eschatology and the Physical Universe (New York: T&T Clark, 2010). 19. Hart, “Imagination for the Kingdom,” p.  75. All of this verges toward the typical understanding of “imagination” as conjuring mental pictures of something. But even if this is what Hart has in mind, we can extend his use of “imagination” to include the broader sense of it with which I am working: a pre-thematized, embodied, “background” understanding of how to move in and perceive one’s world that has interrelated conceptual and practical aspects. 20. Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1996), xiv; emphasis in original.

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imagination. Living into the imagined future makes available, as Metz puts it, ways of “reducing the gap between the inhumanity that is all around us and the humanity that is possible for us.”21 Finally, imagination is the seat of the human capacity for activating hope.22 Pannenberg writes that through our eschatological imagination we hope for “the impossible,” a condition of perfection not only for ourselves but for all of creation, one we know no human power can effect.23 Because eschatology is sketchy, humans have had to imagine this future in many ways, each of which contributes something valuable.24 For my purposes, the imaginative presentation of the hopeful future will be treated under the scriptural symbol of the basileia tou theou. For now, it is important to note that, given eschatological sketchiness, imagining the basileia may require not so much a “logic” as a “poetics,” as John Caputo suggests.25 Such a poetics is consistent with the paradox of relying on disparate images to imagine the unimaginable, an exercise that makes the present meaningful and impels us in hope toward new ways of living that look more like the promised fulfillment. In its “openness and ambiguity,” its “indirectness,” its emphasis on “continuity and discontinuity,” its use of “metaphor, simile, personification, and the like,” it could be that poetry itself, in its very indefiniteness and capacity for inspiring passionate hope, is not only “the original form of eschatological speech in scripture,” but “also the final language of eschatological thinking.” The eschatological imagination, in form and function, cannot proceed in a straightforwardly discursive manner. Its “elusive, and possibly illusive,” subject matter will not allow it.26 5.1.3 The Grammar of Eschatological Imagination Given the poetics of an eschatological imagination and the mysterious and hidden referent to which it points, it proceeds on the basis of analogy.27 The foundational basis for the eschatological analogy has to be the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, the eschatological event par excellence. If eschatology is to avoid undue speculation, it must be thoroughly conditioned by the Easter revelation.28 The resurrection is the only solid basis for an analogy that allows us to advance a preliminary imaginative

21. Johann[es] Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology (New York: Crossroad, 2007), pp. 107–8. 22. Hart, “Imagination for the Kingdom,” p. 76. 23. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology (vol. 3; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 177–81. 24. Richard Bauckham, “The Millennium,” in Bauckham, p. 143. 25. John Caputo, “The Poetics of the Impossible and the Kingdom of God,” in Graham Ward (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 470–71. 26. Patrick D. Miller, “Judgment and Joy,” in Polkinghorne and Welker, p. 156. 27. Green, “Imagining the Future,” p. 79. 28. Christian Link, “Points of Departure for a Christian Eschatology,” in Reventlow, p. 109.

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theological claim about the ultimate end of present reality.29 Paul makes this quite clear in 1 Corinthians 15, a locus classicus of eschatological imagining in scripture. There, he asserts that the bodily resurrection of Christ indicates that the eschatological promise of God is for the fullness and preservation of all life, of all creation.30 The specifics of this—the “how” of it—are not elaborated. Paul denies possessing concrete knowledge of the undetermined future. But he has no trouble imagining the “what” of it—the kind of future and the theological implications of it—on account of the resurrection. This mode of analogizing from the resurrection to the eschatologically ultimate is what Moltmann calls “Easter seeing,” and it not only serves as the paradigm for eschatological imagination,31 but according to him it also characterizes the structure of the gospel, the sacrament of eucharist, and Christian faith in general.32 Green writes that the theologian’s task is not to “translate” scriptural images into required beliefs but rather “to help the church speak more faithfully the language of the Christian imagination” by providing it with a theological “grammar.”33 As Brian Robinette argues, the resurrection is the syntactical structure of New Testament thinking in general34 and provides the grammatical syntax of eschatological imagining specifically. Everything we say about eschatology must therefore conform to the eschatological “resurrection rule.”35 Following Robinette, we can delineate at least seven principles of this resurrection grammar. 1. The already–not yet structure is built in to the resurrection event. The resurrection, as “the absolute future of history made present within history,” requires that all eschatological analogies built upon it affirm that, in ways that can be debated and variously understood, the eschaton is simultaneously present and future.36 2. Downplaying the importance of eschatology imperils the integrity of one’s entire theological project. If the resurrection, “the condition of the possibility of [all] Christian speech,” is forgotten or downplayed in favor of other theological considerations, the theology that results is weakened. It has been cut off from its proper source.37

29. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology (London: SCM, 1967), p. 180. 30. Link, “Points of Departure,” p. 110. 31. Hart, “Imagination for the Kingdom,” pp. 68–69. 32. Jürgen Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, Arise! God’s Future for Humanity and the Earth (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2010), p. 47. 33. Green, “Imagining the Future,” p. 86. 34. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, p. 7. 35. Dermot A. Lane, Keeping Hope Alive: Stirrings in Christian Theology (New York: Paulist, 1996), pp. 18–20, 68–71. 36. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, p. 8; emphases in original. 37. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, p. 13.

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3. No Christian theology can denigrate the eschatological status of the material creation. The resurrection, which is not the reanimation of a corpse but the bodily transformation of a human life into a new form, reveals that “ ‘body’ and ‘world’ are inextricably bound, so that what we say of the eschatological future of one inevitably pertains to the other.”38 4. The bodily resurrection of Jesus bars abstract construals of the Easter event that would have Christ resurrected solely into structures, institutions, corporate memory, or practice. While Jesus’ resurrection marks his entrance into an eschatological mode of relationality that allows him to be present in radically new ways, it also maintains his absence (as the coming One), which bars his absorption into any social or political, or indeed any theological or even ecclesial, structure or agenda.39 5. The “both–and” character of the resurrection appearances condition eschatological assertions. The various eschatological images in scripture express precisely the same truth that the resurrection does: that present reality and the eschatological future are both continuous and discontinuous, the same and very different, historical and extra-temporal, present and future.40 6. Encountering the eschatological future is a “saturated phenomenon,” an experience that exceeds human ability to cause, predict, determine, describe, or express. Following Jean-Luc Marion’s description of the saturated phenomenon, Robinette asserts that eschatological experience is always “unforeseeable, unbearable, unnamable, and unconstitutable by the subject.” Jesus’ resurrection was not foreseen, even by himself. The reactions to the empty tomb and the post-resurrection appearances—confusion, misunderstanding, emotional overflow, wonder, worship—depict the unbearable character of the presence of eschatological ultimacy. What has happened cannot be named or adequately described. All that is attested of it is immediately disavowed. The witnesses to it do not agree. They cannot agree because of the multivalence and excess of the experiences. The apophatic and the cataphatic become virtually inseparable. The disparate accounts are neither consistent nor contradictory but complementary. Encounter with the eschatological destiny of creation is not constituted by the subject but arrives as a gift given to its witnesses, who are transformed by it.41 7. The eschatological example of the resurrection demands courage to resist and persist against present circumstance. “Jesus’ resurrection (read: the divine vindication of a criminal crucified under the rule of law) represents a narrative of subversion that might only embolden others who, with the hope of being

38. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, p.  22. Robinette contends that “the glorified body of Jesus is the future of creation” (Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, p. 372). 39. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, pp. 92–93. 40. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, pp. 103–6. 41. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, pp. 67–115; quote at p. 76.

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vindicated in their practice of the faith, even unto death, might sound the same kind of revolutionary song as their so called ‘king.’ ”42 These grammatical “rules” condition a coherent and responsible eschatological imagination, one that fulfills its function of making the absent present, discerning ultimate meaning, envisioning new life, and generating hope. In order for such an imagination to cohere with scriptural witness and to be theologically convincing, temperate, judicious, non-idolatrous, and as free from self-projection as possible, Jesus’ resurrection must provide the analogical basis for all eschatological utterances. These seven grammatical principles are intended to achieve and maintain just such an eschatological perspective. Whether explicitly referenced or implicitly assumed, this grammar is therefore operating underneath all that follows.

5.2 Eschatological Considerations for Ecclesiology Having outlined the function and grammar of the eschatological imagination, I must clarify what is and is not in view here when “eschatology” is invoked. Which themes are important for ecclesiologists concerned about an adequate articulation of communion? And why? 5.2.1 Not Apocalyptic, But Not Non-apocalyptic Christian eschatology is not apocalyptic, although it is informed by apocalyptic.43 The apocalyptic impulse, which construes the eschatological end as God’s destruction of the world in order to replace it with a new and better one, must be taken seriously. There is no new without the end of the old. There is no resurrection without the cross.44 At the same time, it is important to heed the warning of scholars who see apocalyptic scenarios as resulting from a severe case of projection, in which prognostications of divine retribution for earthly wrongdoing are a form of wishfulfillment.45 Moreover, apocalyptic thinking tends to claim that the end is imminent, and standing close to what they take to be the final moment of history enables apocalypticists to survey history’s overall meaning, resulting in what Gerhard von Rad calls “a great cosmological gnosis.”46 Apocalyptic tends to be a mode of eschatological thinking favored by theologians whose eschatology leans toward the realized. Rudolf Bultmann, for example,

42. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, p. 122. 43. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 193. 44. Moltmann, Coming of God, p. 227. 45. Link, “Points of Departure,” p. 107. 46. Gerhard von Rad, The Theology of Israel’s Prophetic Traditions (Old Testament Theology, 2; New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 308, quoted in Schwarz, Eschatology, pp. 53–54.

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characterized eschatology as a whole as reducible to apocalyptic: “Eschatology is the doctrine of the ‘last things’ or, more accurately, of the occurrences with which our known world comes to an end. It is the doctrine of the end of the world, of its destruction.”47 Realized eschatology is congenial to theologians like Bultmann, who construe the eschatological future not as a coming reality so much as the “moment of decision” for or against participating in the basileia as it is offered to us now, in the present, a decision that can only be imaginatively expressed as the apocalyptic end of one form of life and entrance into new life with God. Certainly, neither Zizioulas nor Milbank can be considered apocalypticists. However, one could legitimately ask whether their various metanarrative construals of history as decay and decline (which claim to know with more certainty than the provisionality of the eschatological imagination allows what history up to now has “meant”) and their visions of the intervention of an utterly transcendent God into the wayward affairs of the world in order to radically redirect creation toward a purpose from which it has strayed are not similar in tone and intent to apocalyptic. One could legitimately ask whether their tendencies toward a realized eschatological imagination—in which they assert that the present world (the biological hypostasis, the ontology of violence) is essentially brought to an end and the eschatological basileia (the ecclesial hypostasis, the ontology of peace) is realized by a choice to turn away from the world and toward God—is not also consonant with this perspective. Although Christian eschatology cannot be reduced to apocalyptic, it does need to retain the accent on discontinuity between the present and the future that apocalyptic provides if it is to be faithful to the both–and structure of eschatological imagination and its resurrection grammar.48 If eschatological finality is to effect the reconciliation that results in peace and justice, there are important moral reasons to affirm this discontinuity, which is why Metz’s eschatology can be considered an apocalyptic one.49 As the eschatological horizon is imagined as extending outward to encompass and reconcile the entire lived life of the cosmos across time and space, the apocalyptic end of certain aspects of the old in order to usher in a new and fuller mode of being will inevitably become part of the eschatological picture.50 Moltmann calls this “apocalyptic” turn toward the future “conversion,”51 a transformative, dialectical complement to the crucifixion–resurrection paradigm,

47. Rudolf Bultmann, History and Eschatology (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1957), p. 23. 48. Brian D. Robinette, “Heraclitean Nature and the Comfort of the Resurrection: Theology in an Open Space,” Logos 14 (2011), pp. 13–38 (31). 49. J. Matthew Ashley, introduction to Metz, Faith in History, p.  19. Likewise, see Moltmann, Coming of God, p. 230; and Jürgen Moltmann, Ethics of Hope (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2012), p. 55. 50. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, pp. 130, 138. 51. Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, p. 55.

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in that it analogically imagines a transition between death (of the old) and life (of the new).52 In doing so, it also affirms the important place of the “now,” including the role of personal decision within it, as part of a balanced eschatological imagination, without allowing eschatology to be reduced to it. For all of these reasons, the eschatology to be advanced here will not be apocalyptic, but it will retain the crucial intuitions that arise from it. 5.2.2 Not Individual, But Including the Individual Early Christian hope was for the establishment of the basileia tou theou on earth. During Christianity’s first centuries, however, there was, for complicated historical and theological reasons,53 a shift from expectation of the basileia toward “a greater emphasis on the transcendent realm as the goal of the Christian soul,”54 a de-emphasis of the eschaton and greater emphasis on the eschata, the “four last things”: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Thomas Rausch thinks that this accent on the “symbols for the completion of our personal stories” is very much in line with the individualizing and spiritualizing tendency of Western culture.55 This focus on the individual destiny at the expense of equal attention to the eschatological fate of the entire created order resulted in the escapist, self-centered version of the faith that “Marx attacked as being merely the ‘opiate of the people.’ ”56 Such a reduction of Christian hope can only result in what Moltmann calls a “gnostic yearning” to be redeemed out of a world of evil.57 Not only does this downplay the status of God’s good creation, it also reflects a deficient theological imagination: “The notion that this life is no more than a preparation for a life beyond, is the theory of a refusal to live, and a religious fraud. It is inconsistent with the living God, who is ‘a lover of life.’ In that sense it is religious atheism.”58 Eschatology is most meaningful when its frame is expanded beyond the individual.59 Such a frame will necessarily include the individual. But it will do so as an implication of the cosmic eschatological perfection, which provides the context for meaningful talk about the fate of individuals in the eschatological

52. Hart, “Imagination for the Kingdom,” p. 74; Moltmann, Coming of God, p. 22. 53. See Brian E. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003). 54. Christopher Rowland, “The Eschatology of the New Testament Church,” in Jerry R. Walls (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 69. 55. Rausch, Eschatology, Liturgy, and Christology, pp. 99–122; quote at p. 121. 56. Andrew Chester, “Eschatology,” in Gareth Jones (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Modern Theology (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), p. 253. 57. Moltmann, Coming of God, p. xv. 58. Moltmann, Coming of God, p. 50. 59. Metz, Faith in History, pp. 164–65.

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transformation. We would be on solid exegetical ground to take this tack, as it is certainly how Paul treats the matter.60 Such a view is also required by the resurrection grammar of the eschatological imagination and the principles derived from it. The eschatological transformation of human life is part and parcel of the transformation of all material reality in which it and its constitutive relationships are embedded, as Jesus’ post-Easter appearances attest. Pointing to Romans 8 and also to 1 Corinthians 15, Ben Witherington holds that in Paul’s view, “the kingdom will be inherited on earth and that requires not only transformed persons but also a transformed earth.”61 There is no place in the eschatological imagination for construals of the eschaton that posit an individual “soul” that sloughs off an inconsequential material “body” in order to proceed to a “heaven” (or “hell”) beyond the world. The destiny of the individual is bound up with the destiny of God’s entire created order, the “very good” creation of God’s desiring. Neither Zizioulas nor Milbank have much to say about the traditional “four last things” (except perhaps for judgment).62 Both theologians, as thinkers committed to communion and to combating the perils of individualism, certainly take salvation to be a relational reality. However, one might question the extent to which the material creation is imagined by them as possessing eschatological value. Despite Zizioulas’ marked emphasis on ecological matters, his major set of lectures on the subject, published as “Preserving God’s Creation,” argues that the world is “referred” to God solely through the priestly mediation of human worship, not because it holds intrinsic worth for its Creator, and that without human priestly activity, creation would be “subject to its natural mortality.”63 The fact that the human “biological hypostasis” must be supplanted by taking on an “ecclesial hypostasis” in order to arrive at authentic personhood, likewise, indicates a lessthan-positive view of creation. Similarly, Milbank’s eschatology is criticized for its construal of the eschaton as immediate access to the “light” of the beatific vision, which obviates the need for a material world. Bodies are an unnecessary “carapace” that is thrown off and the material creation is eschatologically “outgrown.”64 Neither theologian imbues creation with eschatological value as the context for individual perdurance. For Zizioulas, if creation continues into the basileia, it does so only

60. J. Christiaan Beker, The Triumph of God: The Essence of Paul’s Thought (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1990), pp. xiii–xv. 61. Ben Witherington, III, Jesus, Paul, and the End of the World: A Comparative Study in New Testament Eschatology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1992), p. 202. 62. There is also some attention to the idea of heaven, but not as the destination of souls in the afterlife so much as a realm that functions as the alternative to “earth.” 63. John D. Zizioulas, The Eucharistic Communion and the World (Luke Ben Tallon (ed.); London: T&T Clark, 2011), pp. 143–75; quote at p. 174. 64. James K. A. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-secular Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), p. 200.

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derivatively, through human mediation. For Milbank, it appears to be eschatologically superseded. Consistent with their wider theological projects, the world is for the most part eschatologically insignificant for them. Christian eschatology has to affirm what is commonly called an “afterlife.” Without it, “neither final justification nor the final social reconciliation [are] possible.”65 But this must be an embodied afterlife, as 1 Corinthians 15 makes plain. Creation is not inconsequential. As Robinette puts it, “because personal identity is embodied identity, and because my body, as an ‘open system,’ is woven into the fabric of other bodies, social and cosmic, the fulfillment of my existence is coextensive with the eschatological destiny of other persons—indeed, all of creation.”66 Because the eschatological destiny of the human being is resurrection, not the disembodied existence of an immortal “soul,” this necessarily means each person is eschatologically connected to all others and to the creation, and—precisely as such—to eternal communion with God.67 For this reason, “the kingdom of God is a more integral symbol of the eschatological hope than eternal life.”68 Moltmann makes this claim because individual eternal life is entailed in the communal basileia. The ultimate hope is the new creation, in which the basileia and eternal life are established.69 While ecclesiology is obviously not unconcerned with the fate of the individual, as a perspective on community it is best for its eschatological focus to be trained on the intersubjective, transpersonal, cosmic fulfillment, in the context of which survival of the individual after death comes to have even richer theological significance. Eschatological imagination for our purposes will thus center primarily on the cosmic dimension of “the end.” 5.2.3 Not Historical, But Involving History History is not predetermined. “That idea would condemn God to boredom and humanity to fatalistic passivity.”70 But neither is God absent from the course of history: neither a “liberal evolutionism,” in which history travels inevitably upward toward the better,71 nor Marxist or other utopias produced by historical dialectics, which are brought about solely by human effort and produce decidedly mixed results,72 can be seen as truly eschatological. To an eschatological imagination,

65. Miroslav Volf, “Enter into Joy! Sin, Death, and the Life of the World to Come,” in Polkinghorne and Welker, p. 264. 66. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, p.  160; emphasis in original. See also Lane, Keeping Hope Alive, p. 70. 67. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, p. 178. 68. Moltmann, Coming of God, p. 131; emphasis in original. 69. Moltmann, Coming of God, p. 132. 70. John P. Manoussakis, “The Anarchic Principle of Christian Eschatology,” Harvard Theological Review 100 (2007), pp. 29–46 (34). 71. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom of God (Richard John Neuhaus (ed.); Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), p. 115. 72. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom of God, p. 82; Metz, Faith in History, pp. 25–26.

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even Heilsgeschichte is seen to raise the right questions but to answer them poorly, as it suggests in a quasi-deistic fashion that salvation emerges as a result of historical processes.73 The grammar of eschatological imagination requires that eschatological eternality enters into the temporal order. Moltmann, for one, insists upon the necessity of this.74 Maintaining that the eschaton appears fragmentarily and partially within history preserves both the apocalyptic discontinuity and eschatological fulfillment of the world, as the already–not yet structure of eschatological imagination demands. History must be seen as undetermined and open, a realm of contingency within which the rule of God is immanent and to which the ultimate future is transcendent. Without the transcendent future, the immanent power would be directionless. Without the transformative dynamism of the immanent power, the transcendent future would be non-realizable.75 Unless the eschaton is simultaneously transcendent to, yet immanent within, history, salvation can only be a personal liberation from history rather than being the universal redemption of history.76 If we turn to the eschatologies of Zizioulas and Milbank, is this the view of history we find? Zizioulas asserts that anything sacramental is such because it instantiates “the dialectic between history and eschatology, between the already and the not yet.”77 History is thus the already, eschatology is the not yet, and they are related dialectically, over against one another, rather than being paradoxically inseparable. Zizioulas admits that Orthodox worship, which claims to be an image of the eschaton, “is often thought of, or presented by its spokesmen, as a sort of Christian Platonism, as a vision of the future or heavenly things without an interest in history and its problems.”78 Because Zizioulas construes history as the arena in which human beings improperly attempt to secure immortality for themselves,79 and given that he dialectically opposes this negative history against the positivity of the eschaton, his view does seem to take the tone of the “platonizing” Christian eschatology that Volf warns—and Zizioulas himself admits has—theologically relegated history to non-redemption.80

73. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 75. 74. Richard Bauckham, “Time and Eternity,” in Bauckham, p. 157. 75. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993), p. 190. 76. Miroslav Volf, “After Moltmann: Reflections on the Future of Eschatology,” in Bauckham, p. 247. 77. John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), p. 138. 78. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 19. This is a tendency he flags again in The One and the Many: Studies on God, Man, the Church, and the World Today (Gregory Edwards (ed.); Alhambra, CA: Sebastian, 2010), p. 133. 79. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, pp. 34–35. 80. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 133.

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Milbank also sets up an eschatological opposition, but not a dialectical one. According to Mayra Rivera, he thinks there are only two options for resolving the history–eschatology question: “either the future emerges from ‘mere’ causality, totally given from the beginning, or it comes from an absolute exteriority. He chooses the latter.”81 Milbank takes this route because he contends that nothing that emerges from inside of history can in any way be thought of as a manifestation of eschatological transformation. That which is properly eschatological is an instance of the “eternal” breaking into history from the outside. Everything else is a pre-existing potential, already given at the origin of creation, and has nothing to do with subsequent divine action.82 Because humanity is simply a created nothingness, neither it nor its efforts have lasting significance. The only thing that can save the world from its inherent meaninglessness is the inbreaking of the ontology of peace, from the outside.83 History is the material manifestation of the ontology of violence. It possesses no positive value of its own. As such, history is outside the scope of eschatological redemption.84 Milbank “collapses ontology and history precisely because [he] fails to recognize history as always implicated in between ontology and eschatology.”85 In more realized eschatologies, there is an emphasis on discontinuity. In such cases, history is read as the story of degeneration, often described by a complex, totalizing narrative of decay. The life of faith removes one from history and the world, bringing about “liberation” from the “crisis” of history.86 Zizioulas’ and Milbank’s eschatologies treat history this way. For them, history is the realm of sin, death, and futility. The apocalyptic inbreaking of God—by the translation of the individual out of the biological hypostasis into the ecclesial hypostasis (Zizioulas) or by the transcendent appearance of the eternal as a disruption of or eruption into the ontology of violence by the ontology of peace (Milbank)—simply nullifies rather than redeems the agonistic history of the created realm. History has its autonomy, yet God is not completely absent from it. History is not closed and so cannot be assigned definitive meaning. Neither can its outcome

81. Mayra Rivera, “Radical Transcendence? Divine and Human Otherness in Radical Orthodoxy and Liberation Theology,” in Rosemary Radford Ruether and Marion Grau (eds), Interpreting the Postmodern: Responses to “Radical Orthodoxy” (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), pp.  123–24; emphases in original. She is here pointing specifically to Milbank’s treatment of transcendence in Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 171, 177, 180, and 211. 82. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 180. 83. Rivera, “Radical Transcendence,” p. 133. 84. Recall that we saw in the previous chapter (p. 126, n 147) that Milbank denies any possibility of the future redemption of past suffering precisely on these grounds. 85. Todd Breyfogle, “Is There Room for Political Philosophy in Postmodern Critical Augustinianism?” in Wayne J. Hankey and Douglas Hedley (eds), Deconstructing Radical Orthodoxy: Postmodern Theology, Rhetoric and Truth (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 36. 86. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 150.

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be described. “Instead,” writes Volf, “eschatology should take on the prophetic task of explicating the hope for the future ultimate redemption and reading and changing the present in light of that hope.”87 A theology that provides resources for those who struggle to anticipate under the conditions of history the quality of being that the eschatological fulfillment promises takes the world and its history to be fruitful and meaningful in light of the future. It is the future that “interprets” the present and the past, and current interpretations of history are valid mostly as anticipations of the future.88 It is only the horizon of the future that “reveals the world as history, history as final history (Endgeschichte), faith as hope, and theology as eschatology.”89 5.2.4 Fulfillment of the Promise of God I have said that the eschatological imagination in play here will not be apocalyptic (though it will affirm the importance of the apocalyptic impulse), that it will not be individual (though it will include individual destiny in its wider cosmic frame), and that it will not be a historical eschatology of progressive evolution or emergence (though it will maintain the importance of history as a graced realm of basileia-oriented endeavor). It is now time to stop declaring what this eschatological imagination will not be, and to specify what it will be. It will be an eschatology centered squarely on a vision of the fulfillment of the promise of God. Eschatology must be cosmic if it is not to underwrite a flight from the world and the body, and if it is to be about more than an individual existential choice for personal redemption, as it tends to be in overly realized construals.90 In this sense, it must be a “materialist” eschatology, one tasked with “affirming the eschatological fulfillment of the whole community of creation.”91 This must mean that, at its heart, eschatology is a theology of the completion of God’s creative act.92 After all, “in the beginning of what did God create heaven and earth? Every beginning raises the question about its goal, every bereshith (in the beginning) has its corresponding acharith (in the end).”93 We too often oppose creation and eschaton, situating one at the start and the other at the finish, and thereby blind ourselves to the fact

87. Volf, “After Moltmann,” p. 257. 88. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, p. 60. 89. Johannes Baptist Metz, “An Eschatological View of the Church and the World,” in Johannes Baptist Metz, Theology of the World (New York: Herder & Herder, 1969), p. 82. 90. Moltmann, Coming of God, pp. 259–60. 91. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, p. 150. 92. Jürgen Moltmann, “Is the World Unfinished? On Interactions between Science and Theology in the Concepts of Nature, Time and the Future,” Theology 114 (2011), pp. 403–13 (410). 93. Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, p. 203; emphasis in original.

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that they are two interrelated facets of one whole.94 What is eschatologically ultimate is the achievement of God’s creative will. This is precisely why the creation is not left behind in the eschatological perfection in favor of “heaven.”95 Rather, what is promised is resurrection to new life within creation, as the fulfillment of God’s primal, ongoing, still-to-be-completed act of cosmic making. That is why theologians with a keen interest in the “kingdom” of God, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, assert that devotion to the basileia can mean neither thinking of it as a realm apart from the world or a replacement for it, nor as something constructed by human hands, but—this side of its full arrival—can mean only taking a faithful, worldly wandering in the tension between these two, seeking to do the will of God as individuals and corporately, in a form that coheres with the qualities of the basileia Jesus preached and instantiated during his ministry.96 And what constitutes the eschatological completion of creation that brings resurrection and new life that is the full basileia? It is nothing other than communion.97 Jesus’ resurrection, as the basis of what we say eschatologically, means not only that in the end “God remains faithful to his creation in spite of the many ways in which human creatures contradict their Creator,” but also that “in reconciling those who are estranged from God and are thus cut off from the source of eternal life, God brings about the communion of creation with its Creator, and so maintains his original intention for creation, bringing about the perfect communion of the reconciled creation with its Creator and so perfecting the destiny of creation.”98 The Christ event is “not an absolutely new beginning in God’s story with his creation, but the decisive step towards the fulfillment of God’s primordial creative will to be in communion with his creation.”99 Moltmann contends that this is precisely what Paul meant in 1 Cor. 15.28, where he writes of God eschatologically becoming All-in-all.100 The final eschatological vision is of God’s complete shekinah—indwelling—within God’s own creation.101 If the beginning of creation and time involved the self-limiting of God, a kind of withdrawal on God’s part so that something not-God would have leave to come into existence (however we choose to construe this), then the ultimate end of creation is God’s own “derestriction,” the flowing of Godself into

94. Rausch, Eschatology, Liturgy, and Christology, p. 20. 95. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, p. 642. 96. Jan Milic Lochman, “Church and World in the Light of the Kingdom of God,” in Gennadios Limouris (ed.), Church Kingdom World: The Church as Mystery and Prophetic Sign (Faith and Order paper 130; Geneva, Switzerland: World Council of Churches, 1986), pp. 58–60. 97. Lane, Keeping Hope Alive, p. 41. 98. Schwöbel, “Church as a Cultural Space,” p. 115. 99. Christoph Schwöbel, “Last Things First? The Century of Eschatology in Retrospect,” in Fergusson and Sarot, p. 238. 100. Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, p. 32. 101. Moltmann, Coming of God, pp. xiii, 266.

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creation, not without remainder, certainly,102 but with such a degree of fullness that God’s presence confers everlastingness upon it, without thereby erasing its finitude.103 This indwelling of God within creation, thereby effecting its reconciliation, completion, and everlastingness, is precisely what is meant by the image of the “kingdom of God” or “lordship of God.”104 The establishment of God’s basileia is the indwelling of God within creation and simultaneously the establishment of salvific communion.105 This thoroughgoing communion is “the reconciliation of all things (Col. 1.15–20)—reconciliation between human beings and God, reconciliation among human beings themselves, internal reconciliation within human beings, and reconciliation of human beings and the nonhuman environment.”106 This four-fold communion preserves the distinction between individuals, analogously to the manner in which the trinitarian persons remain distinct within the Godhead, yet the faithful are bound intimately together, as one body, with God,107 in “a world in which the lived life in communion with God and the whole creation has itself become, in all its lived dimensions, its own neverending end.”108 This is neither a vision of an apocalyptic destruction of the world and its history nor of the amalgamation of everything into a totality, but of the establishment of complete salvific communion between humanity and God, among human beings, within human persons, and between humanity and the rest of creation, “the final reconciliation of ‘all things,’ grounded in the work of Christ the reconciler and accomplished by the Spirit of communion,” the final “state of eternal peace and joy in communion with the Triune God.”109 The eschatological promise, then, is God’s promise of Godself. The eschatological promise is “the promise of God’s own communion with creation.”110 This is “the end for which all creation secretly yearns,” “the ultimate telos of creation,” as Robinette observes. “Indeed,” he continues, “creation already participates in that communion, albeit proleptically, and so is moved from within by its momentum and directionality.”111 The proleptic presence of this eschatologically ultimate communion is the “now” in the “not yet,” the immanent presence of God within the flux of earthly history.

102. This is close to the reasoning of John Polkinghorne when he states: “I do not accept panentheism as a present reality, but I believe it will become an eschatological reality” (Polkinghorne, “Eschatology: Some Questions and Insights from Science,” in Polkinghorne and Welker, p. 40). 103. Moltmann, Coming of God, pp. 259, 294. 104. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 216. 105. Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, p. 184. 106. Volf, “Enter into Joy,” p. 275; emphasis in original. 107. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, p. 630. 108. Volf, “Enter into Joy,” p. 276. 109. Volf, “Enter into Joy,” p. 278. 110. Schwöbel, “Church as a Cultural Space,” p. 117. 111. Robinette, “Heraclitean Nature,” p. 25.

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Among the many important things this means is that communion is precisely that which we long for, hope in, await, attempt to anticipate. It is not a fully present reality for the world or for Christian community.112 As Rausch puts it, “We look forward to that communion of love and life that is the Body of Christ, reunited with all those who have shaped our lives and who in turn we have helped shape.”113 As an eschatological reality, communion is not ready-to-hand, something we can simply avail ourselves of in developing an ecclesiology without further ado. An ecclesiology of communion requires our imposing a serious eschatological proviso upon it. This is what ecclesiologies of communion often miss, either by not acknowledging it or by neglecting to incorporate the required eschatological reticence into their theologies. This will not do. If the “perichoretic” indwelling of God in the world and the world in God “is the church’s all-embracing hope for the kingdom of God, then its universal mission is to prepare the way for this future.”114 Clearly, churches cannot make such preparations if their construal of the basileia tou theou—of communion—is faulty. The remainder of this chapter will be devoted to developing an imagination of eschatological fulfillment that corrects the deficiencies of communion ecclesiologies that employ overly realized eschatologies. This will be done in accordance with the provisional character, theological function, and resurrection grammar of such an imagination, as described in the first part of the chapter, and with the core eschatological concepts presented in this section. It will also be done with continued reference to the theologies of Zizioulas and Milbank, which exemplify some of the problems that my eschatological proposal overcomes. This imagination will then be applied to the theological conceptualization and practice of church.

5.3 Imagining an Eschatology of Fulfillment An eschatological imagination of final perfection that envisions the basileia as the realization of the four-fold communion I have just described will have two basic features: commitment to a real future based on divine promise and an already–not yet structure. The first affirms that there is a coming future that will complete the story of creation and effect the reconciliation of individual lives, universal history, and the relationship of the creation to Creator. This is important because it draws out the importance of thinking of communion as a promised reality rather than a fully present and available one. The second affirms that, while the communion that all creation longs for is a promised future, and so we struggle under the standard of a theologia crucis until the time of final joy, it is not only possible to anticipate the communion that is promised and the theologia gloriae that attends on it, but

112. Neil Ormerod, “The Structure of a Systematic Ecclesiology,” Theological Studies 63 (2002), pp. 3–30 (29). 113. Rausch, Eschatology, Liturgy, and Christology, p. 143; emphasis added. 114. Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, p. 32.

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it is our responsibility to do so. This is necessary in order to counteract any eschatology that would stave off the radical effects of the eschatological promise to some distant and therefore, for all intents and purposes, presently irrelevant future. This survey will provide us with an eschatological imagination that will clearly suggest how important it is that church be construed as in the world, not beyond or over against it. The resulting insights will be applied specifically to ecclesiology in the following two chapters, which will show that church is not only in the world, but for the world, as an agent of the basileia. 5.3.1 A Real Future Based on Divine Promise The Future in Eschatology The New Testament insists “on a ‘concrete’ future,”115 and so must eschatology. This does not, however, mean that the eschatological future is simply the culminating moment of chronological time. Moltmann distinguishes these two concepts of “future” by referring to the first as adventus and the second as futurum. “Unlike Latin,” Bauckham explains, “neither German nor English have two nouns embodying this distinction, but nevertheless both ways of thinking about the future are familiar in ordinary speech. The future not only ‘will be’ [futurum] but also ‘is coming’ [adventus].”116 The eschatological future does not simply emerge from past conditions, but is “an advent in which a new reality comes into the present that is not accounted for as an extrapolation from any available residue of what has gone before.”117 If eschatological imagining is characterized by the futurum, the theological accent falls on the telos of historical processes and optimism becomes its principal affect. If it is marked by the adventus, however, the focus becomes God’s interruptive promise for relational perfection that comes as a gift from outside of history and hope, not optimism, is such an imagination’s dispositional mode.118 Moreover, the adventus, the promised arrival of God’s very self, is the transcendent source of chronological time itself, which allows history an authentic openness with regard to the future, free from mere determination by the past. “It is open to the unpredictable and the genuinely new that are not prolongations of the past and the present, but come from the potentiality of the future.”119 The 115. Schwarz, Eschatology, p. 397. 116. Bauckham, “Time and Eternity,” p.  164. For Moltmann’s presentation of this distinction, see The Coming of God, pp. 25–26. 117. Christopher Morse, The Difference Heaven Makes: Rehearing the Gospel as News (London: T&T Clark, 2010), p. 46; emphasis in original. 118. Lane, Keeping Hope Alive, p. 186. 119. Bauckham, “Time and Eternity,” p. 164. The eschatological relationship of time and eternity is a highly speculative and controverted topic. How it is imagined by Moltmann is laid out nicely in Bauckham’s essay. Moltmann’s own treatment can be found in The Coming of God, pp. 279–95. Volf ’s “Enter into Joy” provides a crucial critique of this construal to

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eschatological future, reconciliation in perfect communion, is what imbues the past and present with meaning. “Understood as adventus, it is the promised future that ultimately determines what becomes of the past and present, and not the other way around, as the idea of futurum implies, with all prospects for what will become of things considered to be determined by their past.”120 This only makes sense if “the God of Israel is not a God of the past but of the future.”121 God, self-revealed as “I am who I will be” or “I will be who I will be” (Exod. 3.14),122 in some theologians’ estimation is the future, is the new reality that is coming into being.123 While still other theologians might find this identification of God and the future to be problematic,124 all who are committed to characterizing God as the God of the future remain equally committed to the dual claim that God’s promised future (adventus, coming) is the gift of Godself in communion and that this future dawns on its own terms, outside of technological, teleological, or merely logical processes or extrapolations, leaving history open, its progress provisional, and our knowledge of the eschaton—like all of our knowledge of the things of God—partial, fragmented, and grossly incomplete.125 Part of the genius of the Abrahamic conception of time was to understand it as an arrow rather than as a circle or a spiral. In the Semitic mind, “the arrow of time pierces and breaks through the circle of time,” writes Moltmann. He points out that, while Newtonian physics presented the view of a stable world of fixed processes that theoretically could be reversed, modern physics has discovered the Second Law of Thermodynamics, revealing a cosmic entropy that removes even the theoretical possibility of reversible time. The ancient intuition of linear, forward-moving time toward an open, unpredictable future has a scientific reality that corresponds to it.126 Moreover, not only do chemical and physical processes

which it is well worth attending. Doing so, however, would not negate the narrow point being made here, and delving into the intricacies of this theme would take us too far afield of my present purpose. 120. Morse, Difference Heaven Makes, p. 46. 121. Schwarz, Eschatology, p. 10. 122. This translation of “the theophanic Name” is important to eschatologists. See for example Lane, Keeping Hope Alive, pp. 75–76; Schwarz, Eschatology, p. 35; and Manoussakis, “Anarchic Principle,” p. 32. 123. This is the case for Pannenberg, for instance. See Carlos Blanco, “God, the Future, and the Fundamentum of History in Wolfhart Pannenberg,” Heythrop Journal 54 (2013), pp. 301–11 (302). 124. Moltmann, for example, nuances this intuition by claiming that “God’s Being is in his coming, not his becoming” (Moltmann, Coming of God, p.  23), as the God-as-future position might be taken to imply. 125. Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God (New York: Crossroad, 1996), p. 231. 126. Moltmann, “Is the World Unfinished,” p. 408.

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appear to move ahead in non-reversible and unpredictable ways, but life forms seem to do the same. Science has not been able to resolve the question of whether life, as an evolutionary reality, is reducible to or exceeds the constraints of “laws.” There are good scientific grounds to claim that life exceeds such theoretical laws, implying that “not only our knowledge of the future but the future itself is underdetermined by the past, although it is also true that this unpredictability is constrained by the boundary conditions of underlying processes.” This means it is impossible to foresee what it is biologically possible for life to become, as emergence piles upon emergence in unpredictable and genuinely novel ways. “Thus, we do not know what is eschatologically possible—even within the domain of current natural reality—until it happens.”127 None of this should be taken as grounds for a natural-theology-as-eschatology, nor is it to imply that God should be understood as the immanent force of evolution within creation. It is offered to suggest that the world itself appears to be consistent with the notion that an authentic future of genuine newness that is anything but the “the return of the same” is a supportable and realistic position and that this future is open and undetermined. This makes sense if, as Christian theology maintains, God is continually at work in creation through the presence of the Holy Spirit, who does not direct the world to some predetermined end, but who “grounds not only life’s regularities but also the novel occurrences that open up the status quo, igniting what is unexpected, interruptive, genuinely uncontrolled, and unimaginably possible.”128 Ecclesiologies of communion, by contrast, tend to understand the world as the place where everything meaningful has already happened. The Christ event is not the promise of the perfection of God’s communion with creation but the turning point of history, the commencement of the new reality, which simply needs to be appropriated in order to enter heaven on earth. There is nothing new on the horizon that will add anything to that. A theology that emphasizes imagining the future only blinds us to the urgency of making the choice to enter the heavenly alternative to worldly reality that is available right now. Zizioulas, for instance, claims that holding to a linear, “Jewish” idea of time, in which “the future constitutes a reality still to come,” is a “radical depart[ure]” from the New Testament idea of truth.129 This notion runs so deep in such construals of eschatology that even continued biological evolution becomes suspicious. Zizioulas appears to believe that the evolution of the human mind may have ceased, given that we have

127. Jeffrey P. Schloss, “From Evolution to Eschatology,” in Ted Peters, Robert John Russell, and Michael Welker (eds), Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), pp.  80–81. See also John F. Haught, “Evolution, Ecology, and the Promise of Nature,” in God after Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2000), pp. 145–64. 128. Elizabeth A. Johnson, Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), p. 173. 129. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 71.

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developed the capacity for hearing and responding to God’s divine call. No further development is necessary.130 Milbank, as we have seen, does not question whether there is biological development, but he does think that evolutionary thinking has led to imagining violence as somehow “natural” and inherent to creation, and thus approaches it with a great deal of suspicion. Should we be so ready to believe that what is now is what will always be? Is the future really so predictable and life in it so easy to specify? Extending beyond the merely biological, the eschatological destiny of creation is a saturated phenomenon, exceedingly rich with possibilities that we cannot fully anticipate.131 This is a genuine future and must be theologically imagined and treated as such. How does the adventus exert its force upon creation? While there may be a telos in the material order, “such directionality cannot be thought of as inexorable. It is not a mandatory march toward some implacable end. It is much more like a ‘lure,’ a noncoercive impulse at the core of things that, while beaconing and summoning and gently assisting, continues patiently and graciously to allow an ‘open space’ for creaturely self-determination and active participation in its realization.”132 We have previously observed Milbank’s ridicule of the very common “lure” concept, a dismissal that Catherine Keller notes prevents him from perceiving the power of the resurrection as a source of authentically new life.133 In Milbank’s vision of the future, the eschaton is the reconciled harmony of individual items, arranged peacefully in proper sequence, slotted in at the appropriate levels of the cosmic hierarchy. This abstraction serves, in Graeme Smith’s view, as an eschatological basis for his attack on the nihilism of postmodernity.134 If this is “eschatological,” however, it is so only in a negative sense. It is an overly specified, closed, confident prognostication of the future. There is no openness here. In Milbank’s system, everything meaningful has already occurred. All that remains is for God to put what is out of place back where it belongs and for us to turn to the ontology of peace. Not coincidentally, Milbank claims that his Platonically informed reading of Augustine proves that knowledge is

130. John D. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (New York: T&T Clark, 2007), pp. 41–42, n 82. 131. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, p. 173. 132. Robinette, “Heraclitean Nature,” p. 26. 133. Catherine Keller, “Is that All? Gift and Reciprocity in Milbank’s Being Reconciled,” in Ruether and Grau, p. 30. It is important to note, however, that as a thinker who is herself suspicious of eschatological imagining, Keller contends Milbank has missed understanding the resurrection power as a lure for experiencing “eternal life” in the present by deferring it to the future. What she has not adequately grasped is that in Milbank’s thinking the future is now. It is functionally present in the ontology of peace instantiated by the universal church. Milbank does not denigrate the “lure” notion because he “performs the standard eschatological postponement,” as Keller claims, but because his theology lacks the imagination of a real future in which such a concept would make sense. 134. Graeme Smith, “Mission and Radical Orthodoxy,” Modern Believing 44 (2003), pp. 47–57 (50).

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solely a recovery of that which we already know.135 There is no future, even for the intellect. Karl Rahner makes plain that if anything contravenes the New Testament and church tradition regarding eschatology, it is reducing our imagination of the eschaton to an existential choice for or against God, as this denies the reality of the eschatological future.136 One might wish to argue that in actuality we are obsessed with the future from an existential perspective. Yet, as Metz points out, our preoccupation with the future concerns futurum, not adventus. The world’s future has become for us a kind of “quarry” of possibilities that we can mine for material to use in constructing our self-interested lives. As a result, the ironic truth is that only the present—the sphere of our self-determination—matters to us. “The present alone dominates. There is no real future! Exempla gratia: Bultmann!” Metz exclaims, invoking the very don of realized, existential eschatology.137 In realized eschatology, even what is offered as “future” is not a genuine future. There is a real future that is transcendent to time but that is nevertheless present to it. It is this future that reveals to us our human nature,138 not Zizioulas’ communion–truth beyond the world or Milbank’s Platonic phronesis. We see it in the Christ event and experience it proleptically through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who makes the adventus present to human hearts within history. “Thus we are to view the presence of the eschatological future by the Spirit as an inner element of the eschatological consummation itself, namely, as a proleptic manifestation of the Spirit who in the eschatological future will transform believers, and with them all creation, for participation in the glory of God.”139 The Future as Eschatological Promise It is certainly true, as Harriet Harris reminded her colleagues at a 1999 meeting of the Society for the Study of Theology, that responsible eschatology must be sensitive to the feminist suspicion of eschatology as a flight from the female, from bodiliness, and from the materiality that has historically been associated with women.140 This can be accomplished by attending to the nature of the promise that an eschatology imagines. Consistent with the demands made by the provisionality, role, and grammar of the eschatological imagination, the character

135. John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2nd edn., 2006), p. xxiii. 136. Rahner, “Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions,” p. 326. 137. Metz, “Eschatological View of the Church,” pp. 83–87; quote at p. 86. 138. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 286. 139. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, pp. 552–53. 140. Harriet A. Harris, “Living with Eschatological Hope,” in Fergusson and Sarot, pp. 147–48. See Valerie A. Karras,“Eschatology,” in Susan Frank Parsons (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 243– 60, for a detailed account of the reasons that feminist theology has tended to distrust eschatology, has generally opted to favor a realized version of it when it treats eschatology at all, and Karras’ own attempt at a feminist eschatology that is both realized and futurist.

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of this promise can be specified, but the form and discursive content of it cannot. (How could it be otherwise, if the future truly is radically open?) God is revealed in the Hebrew Bible as the one who promises and fulfills, the one who leads Israel into a new future.141 The promise God makes is to bring about “a not yet existing reality from the future of the truth.”142 The promise is the core expression of God’s nature and of the human story of relationship with God. “The real language of Christian eschatology . . . is not the Greek logos, but the promise which has stamped the language, the hope and the experience of Israel. It was not in the logos of the epiphany of the eternal present, but in the hope-giving word of promise that Israel found God’s truth.”143 Because history is open to the future, the promise of God does not establish a predetermined fate but provides an opening for traveling toward a new mode of being,144 a promised flourishing that neither negates current reality nor simply prolongs it into eternity.145 The promise of God for newness of life is what both connects and separates the present and the future. This is a function of its already– not yet structure,146 a structure undergirded by its resurrection grammar. That grammar reveals the promise to have been made manifest in the Christ event, composed of Jesus’ mission (embodying the life-giving promise of God) and the resurrection itself (vindicating that mission and displaying the character of the fulfilled promise).147 The resurrection stands as God’s pledge to fulfill the divine promise to be in communion with creation, and thereby to transform, reconcile, and preserve it in goodness eternally.148 The resurrection appearances confirm that this state is material, embodied, sexed, intersubjective, markedly social, and deeply relational149—qualities that feminist theologians rightly criticize too much eschatology for denying. This communal reconciliation is so thoroughgoing that even the dead are inside of its horizon.150 None of the relationships that constitute the identities of unique human subjects will be lost. How this will occur is outside of our knowing; that it will occur is sealed in the promise. The gap between present and promise is the “tension” between the already and the not yet.151 The promised wholeness stands in judgment against the present conditions that fall short of it. The promise of the four-fold communion—the imagined eschatological perfection of creation—can effect the very thing that

141. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 100. 142. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 85. See also p. 103. 143. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, pp. 40–41; emphasis in original. 144. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 120. 145. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, pp. 175–76. 146. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, p. 545. 147. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 203. 148. Robinette, “Heraclitean Nature,” pp. 25–26. 149. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 88. 150. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 132. 151. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 104.

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feminist theologians would have it do: action in the present to create a situation that looks more like the basileia tou theou than not.152 I will have more to say about this in the next chapter. For now, it is crucial to note that it may not be proper eschatology that feminists critique, but one lacking an imagination of a genuine future—not the “Pie-in-the-Sky-When-You-Die” future, that eschatological “opiate” rightly denounced by feminist and liberation theologians as merely justifying present suffering and abuse,153 but an active, lively hope in God’s own future, in which the full flourishing of all life will be effected. When an overly realized eschatology forestalls envisioning such a future, the spark of hope that can inflame Christian resistance is extinguished and a rich source of theological capital for energizing present action is squandered. The Future as Fulfillment If something is promised, it has yet to be. This has critical theological ramifications. An eschatological promise “breaks the bounds even of that which etiology had hitherto considered to be creation and cosmos, with the result that the eschaton would not be a repetition of the beginning, nor a return from the condition of estrangement and the world of sin to the state of original purity, but is ultimately wider than the beginning ever was.”154 Too often, the eschaton is conceived of as a return, a restoration, or a recapitulation.155 I have already noted this tendency in Zizioulas, who claims that priestly referral of creation back to God in eucharist eschatologically “restores” the broken communion between God and the world, and in Milbank, who not only longs (despite his denials) for a return to pre–1300 European Christendom, but sees eschatological peace as the restoration of Edenic harmony. As D. F. Pilario observes, employing descriptive phrases from Raymond Williams to make his point, Milbank’s entire approach is consistent with this backward-looking imagination: “What Milbank’s social theory (i.e., civitas Dei) does is to refer us not only to a selective past but also to ‘an irrecoverable world’—to ‘a safer world of the past: to a world of books and memories in which the scholar can be professionally humane but in his own real world either insulated or indifferent.’ ”156 This will not do for eschatology, which looks forward to “the new heaven and new earth,” a way of being that has never been before. The metaphor of eschatology, then, is not that of Ulysses returning to his Ithaca, but that of Abraham leaving the land that was familiar to him for the

152. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 86. 153. James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 20th anniversary edn., 1990), pp. 135–42; Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 15th anniversary rev. edn., 1988), pp. 91–97. 154. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 136. 155. Schwarz, Eschatology, p. 27. 156. D. F. Pilario, Back to the Rough Grounds of Praxis: Exploring Theological Method with Pierre Bourdieu (Louvain, Belgium: Peeters, 2005), p. 489.

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new, the unknown, and the promised. The redefinition of protology in light of eschatology liberates us from two pathologies: (a) the illusion of a past perfection that we enjoyed at some immemorial time but have now lost, and (b) the nostalgia for a return to this perfect state that was never attained but always already lost.157

Obviously, this must be the case if the promised full communion with God is understood theologically as the final victory over sin. “The grace of God which overcomes sin and the consequences of sin does not lead back to the creation of the beginning, but completes and perfects what that creation was made and destined for.”158 Moreover, to deny that the adventus ushers in a new condition and is instead a return to a previous state not only negates the construal of the end as promise but signals a return to a pre-Jewish conception of history as cyclical, reanimating the myth of eternal return.159 This cannot possibly be an appropriate way of reflecting in theological terms the fact that the arrival of the eschaton marks the fulfillment of God’s desire for creation and the achievement of God’s ends in having created.160 To preserve the future as the advent of a genuinely, qualitatively new mode of being, it is helpful to imagine the new creation neither as the wiping away of the old to make way for something utterly different nor as the continuation of the present order with minor tweaks, but as a radical re-creation, as a creatio ex vetere that is analogous to the original creatio ex nihilo. This preserves the balance between continuity and discontinuity eschatology demands,161 the eschatological requirement for an authentic future, and the vision of trans-temporal and transspatial reconciliation that the full indwelling of God within creation necessitates. The new creation is not a return of the old but the fulfillment of creation in its becoming. To this end, “everything is brought back again in new form. The creatio ex nihilo, the creation out of nothing, is completed in the eschatological creatio ex vetere, the creation out of the old.”162 The resurrection of the dead, the renovation of the material realm, the reconciliation of history, the establishment of perfect communion between creation and Creator—all of these are implications of the creatio ex vetere. As Bauckham puts it, “the idea of completion serves to explicate the idea of redemption: it makes clear that redemption is not a mere restoration of the original state of creation, but the perfecting in glory of the originally imperfect [because incomplete] creation.”163 Thus, in contrast to eschatologies of return or recapitulation, an eschatology that envisions a robust future can only reach one conclusion vis-à-vis the material

157. Manoussakis, “Anarchic Principle,” p. 45. 158. Moltmann, Coming of God, p. 91. 159. Schwarz, Eschatology, p. 284. 160. Moltmann, Coming of God, p. 263. 161. Richard Bauckham, “Eschatology in The Coming of God,” in Bauckham, p. 6. 162. Moltmann, Coming of God, p. 265. 163. Bauckham, “Eschatology in The Coming of God,” p. 18.

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order: “The true creation is not behind us but ahead of us.”164 Our hope is not in “some primeval, original event,” and “we do not drift through history with our backs to the future and our gaze returning ever and again to the origin,” but instead “we stride confidently towards the promised future.”165 This, in short, is why eschatology must affirm a future, a future of promise, the promise of fulfillment, the fulfillment of perfect communion—the communion of humanity with God, among human beings, within human persons, and between humanity and the rest of creation. This reconciliation is the form of being that is coming. But, its coming, which will change us radically then, can also change us proleptically now. This is why the eschatology of fulfillment I am affirming needs not only to imagine a genuine future, but must do so as a component of an already– not yet structure that allows that future to become active by anticipation in our lives today, and in so doing, to root us in and transform our world. 5.3.2 An Already–Not Yet Structure I have already noted that if there were no “already” in the “already–not yet” tension, there would be no assurance of continuity between the present creation and the new creation.166 I have also hinted at the fact that this balance also serves crucial practical functions theologically. This needs further explication. Without the “already,” it is doubtful that the eschatological imagination would impress most Christians as being terribly meaningful. Without the “not yet,” however, the futural aspect that makes hope in the promise of a reality different from this one is abandoned.167 As Fraser Watts observes, realized eschatologies present no object of hope. Completely futuristic eschatologies, on the other hand, make the future too inevitable and do not require our involvement, which erases any need for hope. “Hope thrives on a sense of what is inaugurated and possible, but always still coming into being.”168 The fruitful flowering of the eschatological imagination requires the fertile soil found in the region where the now and the not-yet overlap. This is what a careful reading of the New Testament and avoiding the problematic effects of realized eschatology in theological conceptualizing and practice allow us to discover. A Scriptural Consistency: The New Testament Witness Tension in the New Testament The consensus of the New Testament is that we are living now in a liminal period between God’s clearest self-revelation in the

164. Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, p. 129. 165. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 298. 166. See also Moltmann, “Hope and Reality,” p. 84. 167. Rahner, “Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions,” p. 342. 168. Fraser Watts, “Subjective and Objective Hope: Propositional and Attitudinal Aspects of Eschatology,” in Polkinghorne and Welker, p. 51.

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Christ event and the eschatological perfection of all things.169 “The tension between present and future, the ‘now’ and the ‘not yet,’ pervades almost the whole New Testament.”170 The theological meaning of existence under these conditions is treated at length in scripture. Witherington notes that Jesus and Paul are scripturally depicted not as apocalyptic but as eschatological thinkers, concerned not with the end of either history or the world but with salvation within history and the world. This imbues their thinking with the already–not yet tension, which is an eschatological impulse, not an apocalyptic one. Of course, Jesus, Paul, and the writers of the gospels were hardly divorced from the thought-world of Jewish apocalyptic (which is why Christian Link claims that where apocalyptic images do surface in the New Testament, they are there to emphasize radical newness, a concept that could only be expressed by them using the one available set of symbols: Jewish apocalyptic171). Yet, in a manner that apocalyptic does not, Jesus and Paul emphasized both futurity and transformation within history.172 They do this by presenting an already–not yet eschatological imagination. Both Jesus and Paul speak of the basileia in tensive terms. It is announced now, but it is not entered until later.173 Jesus’ characterization of the basileia is consistently that its future and present realities are inseparably linked. More specifically, to the extent that the basileia is imagined as present, it is imagined as the basileia-that-is(in the process of)-coming.174 “Jesus did speak of a future basileia that would bring goodness beyond expectation to this world, but he also made clear that those who do not dream the dream of hope and see it as in part already realized now in his ministry cannot hope to be part of the dream when it fully becomes reality.”175 Paul’s eschatological imagination, too, is both future-oriented and presentist.176 Witherington derives two principles of Paul’s view of the already–not yet dynamic from his reading of the Pauline literature: “First, Paul does not suggest that anyone enters or inherits the basileia in the present. This language he reserves for the future basileia. Second, Paul speaks of the power of the basileia being present, and the effects of that power on people being evident in the present. He does not say that the basileia is already present per se.”177 James D. G. Dunn thinks that this already–not yet perspective was an innovation on Paul’s part. Eschatological schema and perspectives were common currency in

169. Schwarz, Eschatology, p. 82. 170. Chester, “Eschatology,” p. 244. 171. Link, “Points of Departure,” p. 105. 172. See Witherington, Jesus, Paul, and the End of the World, passim. 173. Witherington, Jesus, Paul, and the End of the World, p. 52. 174. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, pp. 53–54. 175. Witherington, Jesus, Paul, and the End of the World, p. 68. 176. See Craig C. Hill, In God’s Time: The Bible and the Future (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), pp. 184–86. 177. Witherington, Jesus, Paul, and the End of the World, p. 57.

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Paul’s world. What was not common, argues Dunn, following Oscar Cullmann, was to express an eschatological imagination comprising a distinction between a now and a not yet and positing a tension between the two.178 If Hans Schwarz is correct in asserting that Paul “probably comes closest to the eschatological message of Jesus of Nazareth,”179 this is undoubtedly one of the ways in which that is so. The whole point of Paul’s letters is to provide contextualized, pastoral responses to particular, contingent situations in light of Paul’s theological and practical commitment to the promise of God’s eschatological transformation of all creation, a promise that, established firmly on the grounds of the resurrection that has already occurred, demands and makes possible a certain mode of living in the present,180 a mode of life exemplified by the already–not yet tension. “Paul’s theology of salvation is not a theologia gloriae alone, but also a theologia crucis. The way to the glory of the resurrection is through the suffering of the cross, through a growing conformity to Christ’s death as a continuing feature of the not yet.”181 What’s the matter with John? Andrew Chester claims that the synoptic gospels are the best evidence of the “overwhelmingly eschatological” tone of earliest Christianity,182 thereby suggesting that the Gospel of John is something less than eschatological. As I observed earlier, the Johannine literature has often been noted for its overly realized eschatology.183 Despite some marginal overtures toward futural eschatology, “in the Gospel of John, the emphasis is on the new life which can be experienced now through belief in Jesus (Jn 5.24).”184 The realized Johannine eschatological perspective, rather than the tensive one of the synoptics and Paul,185 is certainly the one shared by Zizioulas and Milbank. As we have seen in previous chapters, Zizioulas’ eschatological sensibility is deeply informed by Johannine language and ideas; there is no need to traverse the same ground here. For his part, Milbank hardly draws on the scriptures for theological support at all, preferring patristic and philosophical literature instead. Yet, Milbank maintains

178. James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), p. 465. 179. Schwarz, Eschatology, p. 91. 180. Beker, Triumph of God, pp. 16–17. This entire book is centered on this important eschatological reading of the Pauline letters. Witherington wishes to correct Beker, however, on his use of the term “apocalyptic” as a description of Paul’s perspective, since what he actually means is “eschatology” (Witherington, Jesus, Paul, and the End of the World, p. 185), a suggestion with which I am in full agreement. 181. Dunn, Theology of Paul, p. 494. 182. Chester, “Eschatology,” p. 243. 183. See p. 46, n 203. Hill agrees with this assessment (Hill, In God’s Time, p. 173). 184. Rowland, “Eschatology of the New Testament Church,” p. 66; emphasis in original. 185. Dermot Lane marks exactly this distinction between “Johannine realized eschatology and Pauline futurist eschatology” (Lane, Keeping Hope Alive, p. 3).

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that it is only in John’s gospel that Jesus is presented as being the message that God wishes to communicate to the world and claims John indicates that “Jesus realizes in his own person the Father’s work because he is the Father’s proper work, the radiance and glory which is not dissociable from the Father’s very being.”186 Jesus, Milbank avers, is best known by the metaphors he applies to himself: Jesus is the way, the word, the truth, life, water, bread, the seed of a tree and the fully grown tree, the foundation stone of a new temple and at the same time the whole edifice. These metaphors abandon the temporal and horizontal for the spatial and vertical. They suggest that Jesus is the most comprehensive possible context: not just the space within which all transactions between time and eternity transpire, but also the beginning of all this space, the culmination of this space, the growth of this space and all the goings in and out within this space.187

Milbank gives no scriptural references for these metaphors, but they are virtually all taken from the Gospel of John and the exalted language referring to Jesus as the “comprehensive context” for all space and divinity’s interaction with it comes from John’s prologue. If this is in doubt, one need only observe Milbank’s assertion that “what they [the gospels] seek to present is the Logos become flesh.”188 Of course, such a statement is absurd—unless one has taken John alone to be the gospels, as Milbank’s theology basically does. In explicating anything like an eschatology, Milbank does at one point specifically advert to a Johannine notion of intersubjectivity. He describes how human beings “participate” in God—an eschatological phenomenon, in his view—by locating themselves “in” one another by being “in” the ecclesial body.189 Clearly, the Johannine perspective is deeply infused in Milbankian theology. In John, the phrase “kingdom of God” appears only twice (3.3, 5) and “kingdom” alone only three times—all in the same verse (18.36). John’s Jesus talks instead about “heaven,”“eternal life,” and his “Father’s house.”190 These concepts are deployed to emphasize the need for contemplation, not action, as the basileia language of the synoptics is meant to do.191 For John, the eschatological event is “radically” present; everything—the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment—has already taken place in the Christ event.192 Understanding, acknowledging, and accepting this reality is what brings salvation. As I have also observed, both Zizioulas and Milbank give salvation a markedly noetic flavor, consisting in large part of an epistemological

186. John Milbank, The Word Made Strange: Theology, Language, Culture (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997), p. 135. 187. Milbank, The Word Made Strange, pp. 149–50. 188. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 94. 189. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 376. 190. Schwarz, Eschatology, p. 88. 191. Schwarz, Eschatology, p. 90. 192. Bultmann, History and Eschatology, p. 47.

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reorientation to communion–truth in Zizioulas’ case and assent to the ontology of peace that humankind once knew but subsequently lost in Milbank’s. Concepts of “heaven” and “beatific vision” are largely associated with Johannine eschatologies, particularly in their medieval manifestation and through a Platonic lens. The “kingdom” is spiritualized in these theologies, taking the form of the institutional church, and stress is laid on the individual soul in its immortal afterlife.193 While I have already acknowledged that neither Zizioulas nor Milbank are terribly interested in “souls,” both are exercised by the concept of heaven, and Milbank is especially enamored of the beatific vision—particularly as articulated in the high medieval synthesis of Thomas Aquinas. That their theologies are each, though to varying degrees, Platonic has been made abundantly clear, as has their pronounced emphasis on the importance of the institutional church, and its structure, hierarchy, and liturgy, and all of this for strongly eschatological reasons. Finally, it is important to note, as Craig Hill does, that Johannine realized eschatology makes a marked insider–outsider distinction, one in which insiders enjoy the benefits of God’s blessing and outsiders suffer the effects of divine judgment—now.194 Zizioulas, too, avers that to the extent that we remain in the biological hypostasis, we are subject to death, a circumstance remediated only by taking on the ecclesial hypostasis, which results in eternal life in communion with God. Milbank maintains that we can either condemn ourselves to continued strife in the war-of-all-against-all that characterizes the ontology of violence that obtains in the world or we can avail ourselves of God’s ontological peace by entering church and in so doing take our place in the ordered harmony of the cosmic hierarchy. While neither theologian would deny that church is a corpus permixtum, the manner in which their theologies, particularly their Johannine eschatologies, function tells a different story. In John, the emphasis is on realized eschatology. This does not mean there is no future eschatology whatsoever in the Fourth Gospel. There is a future. It is just that this future is actualized by the Christ event, which “bridges” the two times and the “opposition” between the world and God.195 In contrast to the eschatological view of the synoptics and Paul, the realized eschatological perspective of the Johannine literature, which often informs the eschatological imagination of communion ecclesiologists, is highly problematic. Its emphasis on realized eschatology loosens

193. Chester, “Eschatology,” pp. 252–54. 194. Hill, In God’s Time, p. 188. 195. Schwarz states: “It would be a serious misunderstanding to assume that John eliminated all future eschatology and concentrated solely on the present as the time of salvation” (Schwarz, Eschatology, pp. 88–89). Similarly, Robinette cautions: “We should . . . avoid thinking that John is absent of all futuristic eschatology, or that the synoptic gospels lack all sense of realized eschatology. The difference is a matter of modal emphasis” (Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, p. 324). That difference in modal emphasis, however, has crucial implications that require careful attention.

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the already–not yet tension by downplaying the coming of a genuine future of new life in communion with God. Resisting Overly Realized Eschatology: A Theological Imperative In 1935, C. H. Dodd, appealing “above all to the overall thrust of John’s Gospel,”196 coined the term “realized eschatology”197 to denote the position that “in Jesus the eternal entered decisively into history. The eschaton was realized in the coming of the kingdom of God,” and the “coming of the kingdom” took place in the Christ event.198 A realized eschatology thus emphasizes what Christ has already done, or realized.199 In a realized eschatology, the basileia no longer arrives from the future. It comes from heaven and comes now, as a manifestation of “the eternal present,” the existential depth dimension of every moment of time, in which a choice can and must be made for or against God (for or against the church, for or against the communion–truth, for or against the ontology of peace).200 In a realized eschatology, “every instant has the possibility of being an eschatological instant and in Christian faith this possibility is realized.”201 (This is exactly the kind of thing we saw Milbank advocating in his “politics of time.”) There is much to appreciate in an eschatology of such a stamp. However, there is nothing it offers that is not also offered—and in a better way—by an eschatological imagination that features the already–not yet structure. And there are perils associated with realized eschatology that must be avoided. An overly realized eschatology, which often theologically moves directly to the resurrection without tarrying long enough with the realities of the cross, many times becomes a theologia gloriae. This is highly problematic. A theology of glory corresponds to vision (the direct sight of the One in one’s nous) rather than to hearing (God’s mighty acts mediated in historical and material ways together with the witnessing community). Both crass identification of God with a human artifact (idolatry) and the craving for a direct sight of God in majesty (beatific vision) spring from the same source: the desire to see— without mediation—and not to hear; to possess everything now and avoid the cross. There is for this reason a sturdy link in the biblical text between idolatry and over-realized eschatologies.202

Notice how many of the themes associated with Zizioulas’ and Milbank’s eschatologies are mentioned here: intellection over experience, beatific vision and

196. Lane, Keeping Hope Alive, p. 80. 197. C. H. Dodd, Parables of the Kingdom (New York: Scribner, 1961), p. 159. 198. Schwarz, Eschatology, pp. 120, 130. 199. Hill, In God’s Time, p. 173. 200. Moltmann, Coming of God, p. 15. 201. Bultmann, History and Eschatology, p. 154. 202. Michael Horton, “Eschatology after Nietzsche: Apollonian, Dionysian or Pauline?” International Journal of Systematic Theology 2 (2000), pp. 29–62 (49).

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contemplation over action, immediacy over the mediated, the abstract over the concrete.203 In addition, there is no room here for the world at all, let alone for its future. Another problem is that realized eschatologies are often associated with theologians “who consider Christians to be of a fundamentally different character from other people.”204 At least in part, this is a function of the in-group–out-group dynamic we already noticed is a feature of the Johannine point of view that often informs such eschatologies. Zizioulas, for example, writes about the eucharistic gathering as a “closed community” and eucharistic observance as “a celebration with its ‘doors closed’ to the world.”205 For both Zizioulas and Milbank, Christians are not only of a “fundamentally different” character from non-Christians, they belong to different orders of being. They are, in these theologies, ontologically distinguished. In Zizioulas’ case, as we have seen, this has led some people to question whether non-Christians can even be considered authentic persons, according to Zizioulas’ definition. When Volf writes, “Zizioulas has been charged— correctly, in my opinion—with having presented ‘overrealized eschatology,’ ”206 it is precisely the ontological distinction Zizioulas makes between human beings that Volf has in view. The “realized eschatology” (Pilario’s words) that is Milbank’s church is the civitas Dei, where the ontology of peace is made real and those belonging to the ontology of violence that rages outside its perimeter are left to shift for themselves.207 It is not coincidental that, as we have seen in previous chapters, both Zizioulas and Milbank have been suspected of advocating different versions of the old extra ecclesiam nulla salus idea. All of this is not only contradictory to the work of a savior who clearly abolished such divisions, but it highly inconsistent with an eschatology of relational fulfillment, in which the eschaton is imagined to be the reconciling four-fold communion of and with God, in which no such divisions could possibly be made. Witherington is representative of a position that understands the early church’s movement away from its original already–not yet eschatology to one of a more realized cast as connected to the reversal of its sociopolitical radicalism, a betrayal of its original challenge to the social role of women, to plutocracy, to institutional hierarchies, to colonial power, and so on.208 Realized eschatologies are often conservative eschatologies precisely because a new and unpredictable future is

203. Notice, too, the invocation of idolatry, an idea that we saw Carl Raschke connect to metaphysical systems—such as Neoplatonic communion ecclesiologies—in Chapter 2. I suggested there that such “idolatry” is often bolstered by a defensiveness that results in a series of theological closures, a notion to be explored more fully momentarily. 204. Hill, In God’s Time, p. 181. 205. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 36; emphasis in original. 206. Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), p. 101. 207. Pilario, Back to the Rough Grounds, p. 484. 208. Witherington, Jesus, Paul, and the End of the World, p. 238.

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perceived to be a threat to those in power. An imperial church does not pray for the parousia (“Thy kingdom come”) but for its delay.209 For this reason, Rowan Williams thinks realized eschatologies are particularly subject to manipulation by “ideology.”210 An already–not yet eschatology, by contrast, is better at preventing this: “Without other, countervailing influences from the ‘not yet’ pole of the eschatological spectrum, the ‘already’ realized eschatology that often attends strongly incarnational theologies [of which communion ecclesiologies are a variety] is susceptible to legitimizing (or being co-opted by) the present order of things.”211 Zizioulas’ theological conservatism has already been well-attested. Milbank, as a Christian socialist, considers himself a progressive in many ways, but his construal of ethics and morals is of a piece with his nostalgia for the Middle Ages and with his narrative of (post)modern decay and decadence. Robinette observes, “The transposition of eschatology into the eternal present, whether of a mystical or an existentialist kind, effectively makes individualistic and subjective what is social and concrete.”212 Of course, this is the very opposite of what Zizioulas and Milbank wish to achieve. Yet, their theologies accentuate the importance of the transformation of the individual, either from one hypostasis to another or out of one ontological scheme to another, and they stress one’s communion with the Trinity or contemplation of the beatific vision as the culmination of the life of faith. There is certainly a relational component in all of this. But its touchstone is not intersubjectivity to the extent that this is true in eschatologies of relational fulfillment, where the four-fold communion is of paramount importance and the embeddedness of every being within a transtemporal and trans-spatial cosmic nexus is front and center. Finally, and critically, a realized eschatology evacuates faith of hope and stymies worldly action that could spring from it. As Moltmann recognizes, “People who think that they are living in an already fulfilled hope cannot tolerate any still open hope for the future.”213 But such hope is not optional for a faith that looks to the promise of God for a fulfilled creation. Some think that eschatology is only about life in the “great beyond” and has nothing to do with life here and now. Some reduce eschatology to being only the here and now, locating it in the depth dimension of every moment. Neither of these will do because neither of these is attentive to the already–not yet structure built into the Christian faith itself by the bodily resurrection of Christ, and because it thereby denies the hope this inflames for acting decisively in the world to transform the world.214

209. Moltmann, Coming of God, p. 162. 210. Rowan Williams, Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction (Making of the Christian Imagination, Stephen Prickett (ed.); Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008), pp. 60–61. 211. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, p. 16. 212. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, p. 39. 213. Moltmann, Coming of God, p. 154. 214. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 16.

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This eschatology of final perfection in communion comports better with the provisional character, theological role, and resurrection grammar that an eschatological imagination requires than does the overly realized eschatological imagination often featured in ecclesiologies of communion. By refocusing eschatological hope on this world, it centers Christian faith in this world, not beyond it or over against it. All of this part of the “more” that communion ecclesiologies miss. Just as the ecclesiologists of communion allow their eschatologies to interact with their overall theological visions to produce a doctrine of church, this imagination of eschatological perfection can do the same. Having observed the problems associated with realized eschatologies, I can now use this revised eschatological imagination of final fulfillment in the four-fold communion to establish a view of church that, consonant with this eschatology, locates church in rather than beyond or over against the world. Further still, it will find church to be not only in but for the world, as a witness to and agent of God’s promised and coming basileia. This will bring to light facets of the ecclesial “more” to communion that ecclesiologies of communion, in their current form, are too often unable to perceive, thematize, or develop.

Chapter 6 C H U R C H F O R T H E WO R L D  P A RT I  : R E  I M AG I N I N G E S C HAT O L O G IC A L E C C L E SIO L O G Y

An eschatology that imagines the eschaton as the future establishment of the basileia, conceived of as the coming indwelling (shekinah) of God within creation, gives communion a different inflection from the one it receives from the more realized eschatology of most ecclesiologies of communion. Instead of a conception of communion that, commonly, is relatively abstract, somewhat Platonic, often ahistorical, a bit immaterial, essentially dualistic, limited to an elect, contemplative, and generally institutional, hierarchical, and liturgical, imagining the coming realization of the four-fold communion of reconciliation—between humanity and God, among human beings, within human persons, and between humanity and the rest of creation—leads to an imagination of communion that is more concrete, historically contextualized, embodied, tensive, active, and cosmic. Under such conditions, the future realization of the basileia tends to be construed as an intersubjective relational excess, the anticipation of which overflows institutions, structures, and sacred rites. The previous chapters have demonstrated that communion ecclesiologies are often founded on overly realized eschatological imaginations, and we have glimpsed some of the critical theological problems that arise when eschatological tension is relaxed. What now remains is for me to explore how this more generous eschatology, while including the concerns that realized eschatologies seek to validate and protect, affirms the coming of a genuine future that we are nevertheless able to participate in now by anticipation, and how the more plenteous understanding of communion that this elicits supports a doctrine of church that adds back to ecclesiology what many ecclesiologies of communion allow to fall away. This chapter begins attending to that task. In its first section, I propose an ecclesial vocation based on an eschatology of future relational fulfillment, arguing that the mission of church is to serve as the anticipation of the coming four-fold communion called the basileia of God, that this requires its deep immersion in the world, and that this is the basis for an enhanced ecclesiology of communion. In its second section, I make an initial overture toward presenting that re-imagined ecclesiology, developing a five-point theology of church that allows Christian community to manifest clearly its eschatological vocation. As before, I continue to 177

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engage the work of John Zizioulas and John Milbank as my argument proceeds, to demonstrate the implications of their ecclesiologies of communion and how the view being advanced here could provide the “more” to our way of conceptualizing church.

6.1 The Missio Ecclesiae: Eschatological Anticipation 6.1.1 Called to Anticipation Christiaan Mostert has observed that “the idea of the church as eschatological community has not been prominent in ecclesiology over the centuries, though it has re-emerged more recently.”1 The mode in which it has most authentically reemerged, even if only partially so, is the one he himself names in the title of his article: “the kingdom anticipated.” By the mid-1960s, Dutch theologian J. C. Hoekendijk had already argued that after Christendom, a church could only carry out its mission by anticipating the quality of life represented by the basileia in and for the world in modes of being church that had yet to emerge and develop, but that would be marked by a koinonia he characterized much more as the “fellowship” advocated by Andrew Lincoln rather than in the metaphysical–ontological participatory sense of most communion ecclesiologies.2 By 1969, Richard John Neuhaus could make the bold claim, based on the groundbreaking work of Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jürgen Moltmann, and other theologians engaged in reconceptualizing the relationship between eschatology and church, that “the Biblical statements about the Church, and about the world for that matter, are either false or nonsense, unless they are understood as statements of a future hope anticipated in the present.”3 As churches of Christ, this has to be so. As followers of the risen Lord, “ ‘Christ in us’ makes ‘us’ the anticipation of redeemed humanity, and the overture to the new creation of all things. ‘We in Christ’ brings us into the space of movement of God’s coming kingdom.”4 As a body, therefore, “the church acquires her existence from Christ’s messianic mission and the eschatological gift of the Spirit,” which makes what are commonly known as the four “marks” of church no longer mere creedal assertions, but “statements of hope”: the Christian church is one in the unity of the coming basileia, holy with the holiness of that basileia; 1. Christiaan Mostert, “The Kingdom Anticipated: The Church and Eschatology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 13 (2011), pp. 25–37 (32). 2. J. C. Hoekendijk, The Church Inside Out (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966). 3. Richard John Neuhaus, “Wolfhart Pannenberg: Profile of a Theologian,” in Theology and the Kingdom of God (Richard John Neuhaus (ed.); Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), p.  42. See also Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), p. 140. 4. Jürgen Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, Arise! God’s Future for Humanity and the Earth (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2010), p. 166; emphases in original.

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catholic with the universality of the four-fold communion; and apostolic as the community of “the last days,” living between the times.5 If the all-toohuman church can be considered divine, it is as the institutional community that, enlivened by the Holy Spirit, remembers and carries forward the eschatological message and work of Jesus on its exodus–pilgrimage from slavery and death toward the horizon of the eschaton, anticipating in its life and ministry the dawn of the new creation.6 To be very clear, the eschatological church can never claim to be the basileia but only its provisional and proleptic anticipation in history,7 a place where human beings are sacramentally “ordained” for “fellowship in God’s kingdom,”8 and “the symbol of the future in which eschatological hope is kept alive, as the semblance of the whole people of God, and as the anticipation of the heavenly city.”9 Consistent with the already–not yet structure of its underlying eschatology, it can also claim that the “eschatological reign of God is already present in it,” but not fully so.10 Church is a community of disciples that anticipates the basileia.11 It is precisely to the extent that the basileia is anticipated in history that the basileia is present in history. The anticipation of the eschaton is the “already” in the eschatological tension. Christian community, as anticipatory, is a function of this already, of this partial presence of communion. In its anticipatory activities, it remains fully cognizant of the fact that establishment of the basileia is a divine prerogative and does not occur on the basis of human effort.12 Churches do not realize or even “build” the basileia. They provide only an anticipation of it, a partial yet authentic foretaste of the quality of relationality that fulfillment of God’s promise entails. Church, as anticipation

5. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993), p. 339; emphases in original. 6. Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God (New York: Crossroad, 1996), p. 156; Johann[es] Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology (New York: Crossroad, 2007), p. 92; Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 84. As Volf puts it, “The relationship between the church and the new creation is, if one follows the New Testament witnesses, best understood with the aid of the concept of anticipation” (Volf, After Our Likeness, p. 267; emphasis in original). 7. Jürgen Moltmann, “The Liberation of the Future and Its Anticipation in History,” in Richard Bauckham (ed.), God Will Be All in All: The Eschatology of Jürgen Moltmann (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001), p. 286. 8. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology (vol. 3; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), p. 292. 9. Hans Schwarz, Eschatology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000), p. 370. 10. Mostert, “Kingdom Anticipated,” p.  36. See also Jürgen Moltmann, Ethics of Hope (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2012), p. 55. 11. Schillebeeckx, Church, p. 155. 12. Thomas P. Rausch, Eschatology, Liturgy, and Christology: Toward Recovering an Eschatological Imagination (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2012), pp. 152–53.

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of the basileia, attempts to demonstrate what it conceives the realization of the four-fold communion to be like, invites people to participate in it in a specific and intentional way, and, in so doing, becomes a genuine opening through which God’s future is able to enter the world even now, as a “communion with the power of the future.”13 Composed of creatures subject to sin, churches can only effect (present) communion with (eschatological) communion in a broken way.14 Despite many shortcomings in pursuing it, however, such anticipation has been the core ecclesial vocation of Christian community since its inception.15 If it is true that “Christianity is designed to be the healing beginning of the healed creation in the midst of a disrupted and sick world,”16 the job of church is to respond to the hope and longing for the fulfillment of creation in the four-fold communion, an existential longing inherent in the human condition and experienced by every person on some level.17 Jesus’ mission was to direct human longing toward its fulfillment in the coming basileia. Church has the same mission. This requires a qualitative shift in human relationships.18 Such a transformation comes about in the Christian imagination through remembering and enacting the “dangerous memory” of Jesus, who preached and manifested the coming basileia of communion. This memory is not the nostalgic memory of a past stripped of hardship and challenge but the memory of a past that often indicts the present in pointing toward its perfect future. This is a highly subversive memory.19 In carrying Jesus’ mission forward, churches seek to transform the world by directing it toward its promised end, always an endeavor that is highly threatening to regnant interests and powers. Yet, this is unavoidable when churches are faithful to the anticipatory calling.20 Do current ecclesiologies of communion understand this to be the ecclesial vocation? Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder write that, throughout the twentieth century, the statements of the World Council of Churches (WCC) emphasized church’s “identity as the witness to and embodiment of the reign of God,” but not so much in the mode of anticipation as “establishing God’s reign within God’s creation.”21 Zizioulas, who has been so instrumental in advancing communion ecclesiological ideas at the WCC and more widely, has stated that “the Church exists not because Christ died on the Cross but because He has risen from

13. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, p. 117. 14. Volf, After Our Likeness, p. 235. 15. Schillebeeckx, Church, p. 157. 16. Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, p. 69. 17. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, p. 527. 18. Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 80. 19. Metz, Faith in History, pp. 105–6. 20. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, p. 74. 21. Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, “Mission as Liberating Service of the Reign of God,” in Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004), pp. 307–8; emphasis added.

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the dead, which means, because the Kingdom has come,”22 exemplifying the ecclesiological implications of his realized eschatology, one that can easily lead to the mistaken view that Zizioulas simply equates basileia with church. Although Milbank has referred to church as “in some measure an anticipation of the eschaton,”23 we have already seen that, in Milbank’s theology, church functions as the realization of his eschatological ontology of peace. Even Rowan Williams, who, we saw previously, warns that realized eschatology is to be eschewed as overly subject to manipulation by “ideology,” finds church to be “something that realizes [not anticipates] the future God intends,” “the sign of God’s realized purpose,” especially in eucharistic worship, in which, he claims, quoting Alexander Schmemann, “for those who have believed in it and accepted it, the kingdom is already here and now, more obvious than any of the ‘realities’ surrounding us.”24 The connection between realized eschatology and views that understand the basileia to be present in church in more than an anticipatory mode is a strong one. If church is the “realization” of anything, it is “the present realization of the remembrance and hope of Christ,” a remembrance and hope manifested concretely as the imperfect communion that presently exists between church and God, among and within its members, and between its members and the rest of creation. Mediating between history and eschatology, it remembers Christ in the light of hope for the coming of God. In its fellowship, it anticipates God’s coming, attempting to liberate humanity for participation in this future.25 6.1.2 A Worldly Vocation This ecclesiology of eschatological anticipation finds churches pursuing the ecclesial mission not in situating themselves or leading their people out of the world or by positioning themselves and their people over against the world, but by immersing themselves ever more deeply in the world that God loves and will bring to perfection in the four-fold communion. As Hoekendijk puts it, “We must maintain the right order in our thinking and speaking about the church. That order is God—World—Church, not God—Church—World.”26 “World,” here, means the entire trans-temporal and trans-spatial creation brought into being ex nihilo by God, divinely invested with its own ontic integrity and autonomy,

22. John D. Zizioulas, The One and the Many: Studies on God, Man, the Church, and the World Today (Gregory Edwards (ed.); Alhambra, CA: Sebastian, 2010), p.  139; emphasis added. 23. Kenneth R. Chase and Alan Jacobs (eds), Must Christianity Be Violent? Reflections on History, Practice, and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2003), p. 211. 24. Rowan Williams, “The Church as Sacrament,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 10 (2010), pp. 6–12 (9, 12, 11–12). The quote from Schmemann is from The Eucharist (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1988), pp. 41–42. 25. Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, pp. 75, 196. 26. Hoekendijk, Church Inside Out, pp. 70–71.

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which allows it to unfold into an open, undetermined future, yet in a manner that is not free of God’s involvement and sustenance. While God’s promise to effect the perfect communion that seems (on biblical, traditional, and experiential accounts) to be the divine purpose in creation is in some way the final destiny of this world, the exact form that this will take is radically open as part of the freedom afforded to creation by its creator. The promise of relational fulfillment in perfect communion is a promise made to the world for the world. The promised reconciliation and communion do not arise alongside or apart from the world, but in it. The promise, therefore, is not contrasted to “the worldly” but is its fulfillment. Expressed in the common eschatological terminology of continuity and discontinuity, the realization of the promise of the eschatological transition—that is, the coming of the basileia—fulfills and perfects that in the world which is consonant with that destiny, preserving it as a continuity between the present world and the new creation. It also reconciles and redeems that in the world which is inconsonant with that destiny, transforming it in the divine mercy of judgment and salvation, effecting a discontinuity between the present world and the new creation. When the eschatological future breaks into the present in the first of these two aspects, it is experienced as a confirmatory, anticipatory, and joyful prolepsis of the quality of communion that the basileia effects and perfects. To the extent that the second appears, it is experienced as an apocalyptic judgment against current conditions for falling short of the future basileia, sharpening the tragedy, horror, and guilt of damage done that will be judged and reconciled by the communion the basileia effects and perfects. In both cases, it is the one promise that is in play and the one world that is the field of its operation and appearance. The promise is always a promise for the world and the establishment of the basileia in the world,27 imaged in scripture as the cosmic shekinah. The promise is the promise of God’s complete indwelling of the world, not erasure of it, which brings about the full communion of the All-in-all. Because the basileia of God is the fulfillment of the world, church, as the anticipation of the basileia, must understand itself as a component of the created whole to which God’s reconciliation is promised.28 The resurrection grammar and the reconstructed “materialism” that can be said to derive from it29 connect protology and eschatology, creation and fulfillment.30 Christian community is called to identify itself as ingredient to God’s universal future, not as separate

27. Hoekendijk, Church Inside Out, p. 32. 28. Robert W. Jenson, “The Church as Communion: A Catholic–Lutheran Dialogue– Consensus-Statement Dreamed in the Night,” Pro Ecclesia 4 (1995), pp. 68–78 (75). 29. Brian D. Robinette, “Heraclitean Nature and the Comfort of the Resurrection: Theology in an Open Space,” Logos 14 (2011), pp. 13–38 (27). 30. Brian D. Robinette, “The Difference Nothing Makes: Creatio Ex Nihilo, Resurrection, and Divine Gratuity,” Theological Studies 72 (2011), pp.  525–57 (550). See also Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology (London: SCM, 1967), p. 130.

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from it, on the one hand, or as its focal point, on the other. Moreover, it anticipates the coming cosmic communion on creation’s behalf. “The church has to represent the whole cosmos, so it must bring before God the ‘groanings of creation’ (Rom. 8.19ff.) as well as hope for the coming of God to everything created.”31 In this representative and intercessory mode, church sinks itself deeply into the world it is called to serve. If it is the case that the incarnation is a particularizing principle and eschatology a universalizing one, that eschatology unfolds what incarnation has initiated,32 then “hopes and anticipations of the future are not a transfiguring glow superimposed upon a darkened existence, but are realistic ways of perceiving the scope of our real possibilities.”33 And what the eschatological unfolding of incarnation reveals is that we, individually and together, are already in “communion” with the world—even if imperfectly—by virtue of our embodiment, an embodiment that Jesus’ resurrection affirms is essential to our identities in the eschatological transformation.34 The “possibilities” of our world cannot be discerned or realized unless the world is given capacity to grasp its eternal value and unless it is directed to the worldly fulfillment of its inarticulate longing. Churches are uniquely positioned to offer this on account of the creation-positive eschatological imagination. The risen Christ sends churches into the world for the sake of the world.35 For this reason, church takes up the dual task of ministering to a world in agony while testifying—promising on God’s behalf—that such conditions will not always obtain.36 This cannot happen if churches lose sight of the eschatological future as a genuine reality or if they forget that they are eschatological entities.37 A deficient eschatology too easily allows Christians to become comfortable with the status quo.38 An eschatology limited to an imagination of an “immortal soul” surviving in “heaven” or to the apocalyptic moment of present existential decision often claims that church is apolitical and supernatural. But such religiously motivated quietism is political despite itself, in tacitly approving the “way things are.”39 This is an abdication of the eschatological responsibility for church to

31. Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, p. 139. 32. Daniel Izuzquiza, Rooted in Jesus Christ: Toward a Radical Ecclesiology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2009), p. 37. 33. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 25. 34. Robinette, “Heraclitean Nature,” p. 29. 35. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 325. 36. Schwarz, Eschatology, p. 371. 37. Douglas Farrow, “Eucharist, Eschatology and Ethics,” in David Fergusson and Marcel Sarot (eds), The Future as God’s Gift: Explorations in Christian Eschatology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), p. 199. 38. John P. Manoussakis, “The Anarchic Principle of Christian Eschatology,” Harvard Theological Review 100 (2007), pp. 29–46 (33). 39. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, pp. 83–84.

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publicly anticipate the basileia.40 Christian faith is public because it is concerned with the universal destiny of creation. The embeddedness of church in and its service to the world are built in to its eschatological charge. Church cannot be for the basileia without being for the world.41 A deficient eschatology can also set church in opposition to world. We see this in Milbank’s theology, where the present fulfillment of God’s promise of communion is manifest in church, the entity opposed to the atomizing, individualizing “world.” That church and world are opposed carries some truth. As already noted, to the extent that the basileia is proleptically present within history, it judges that which does not correspond to it. Just as Jesus came not to bring peace but a sword (Mt. 10.34; Lk. 12.51), acting in accordance with the coming basileia creates critical tension between church and world.42 Jesus’ mission was perceived as an affront to “the world” and the churches’ will be, too.43 This, however, is not the last word that can or should be said on the church–world dynamic.44 Sectarian views that postulate antagonism between church and world and that advocate ecclesial withdrawal can result in a failure to actively confront the world with the countervailing vision of its own eschatological destiny, which means losing the opportunity to invite the world to transformation in light of it.45 An eschatological imagination that neglects the already–not yet dynamic of a real future of consummated communion contravenes the worldly eschatological vocation and responsibility of church. Often the result of “over-realized eschatology,”46 this generates perspectives that forestall ecclesial solidarity with the world. Eschatological imagination allows churches to suffer as the world suffers, to rejoice as the world rejoices, and to love the world with God’s love, a love that seeks the world’s full flourishing in the promise of communion. Whereas views such as Zizioulas’ and Milbank’s seem to echo the old “no salvation outside of the church” idea, for an ecclesiology of eschatological perfection, there can be no salvation outside of the world, as Edward Schillebeeckx observes.47 Worldly engagement is part of the ecclesial anticipatory commission and of the “social significance” of church.48 An eschatological church is the “institutionalized

40. Brian D. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection: A Christian Theology of Presence and Absence (New York: Herder & Herder, 2009), p. 42. 41. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 327. 42. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 21. 43. Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 68; Harriet A. Harris, “Living with Eschatological Hope,” in Fergusson and Sarot, p. 146. 44. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, p. 73. 45. Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, p. 32. 46. Edward Russell, “Reconsidering Relational Anthropology: A Critical Assessment of John Zizioulas’s Theological Anthropology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 5 (2003), pp. 168–86 (186). 47. Schillebeeckx, Church, pp. 5–15. 48. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, p. 74.

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interest” of a freedom that seeks the well-being of others and enters into their suffering.49 The more church lives into and out of this vocation, the more its authority grows50 and the more its witness reminds secular society of its own provisionality in light of the coming fulfillment of God’s promise.51 “The pro-missio of the kingdom is the ground of the missio of love to the world.”52 A proper exercise of eschatological imagination means this will take concrete, public shape. Harriet Harris, who, we observed, warned her co-conferees at a meeting in 1999 to attend carefully to feminist critiques of eschatology for being too otherworldly to effect present transformation, also upbraided them for failing to apply to the sufferings of the world around them the insights of the eschatological imagination they had articulated, even as bombs were falling on Kosovo.53 The ecclesial eschatological imagination must be worldly, must be concerned with creation as the object of God’s promise, as the field in which the basileia is presently anticipated and will be established. It has to be what Johannes Baptist Metz calls a “creative and militant” eschatology. According to Aquinas, Metz points out, Christians hope in and for the world. This is not to deny the importance of certain renunciations of “things worldly,” but such an ascesis is a renunciation of the world as it is—full of sin and violence—not of the world as it will be. This renunciation is “not a flight out of the world, but a flight with the world ‘forward,’ ” toward its promised future. This renunciation is of our human desire to master the future, replacing it with a desire to live in solidarity with the world. Christian community must sometimes denounce the present form of the world—sometimes at great cost—for the sake of the world’s future. In its sacramental life, church proclaims faith and hope in both the Christ who was, who is, and who is to come, and in the coming basileia of God, the perfection of communion. This is a cosmic, universal, social, trans-temporal hope, not an individual, localized, atomistic hope enjoyed by the victors of history. Acting in the light of such a hopeful faith, we become co-workers with God in removing the barriers to the abundant flourishing of life by envisioning and anticipating the basileia. This ecclesial eschatology is creative in its imagination and engagement, and militant in its active denunciation and renunciation of that which inhibits “life abundant” (Jn 10.10).54 An ecclesiology thoroughly imbued with a properly tensive eschatological imagination is already a communion ecclesiology. The four-fold communion—of 49. Metz, Faith in History, p. 94. 50. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, p. xv. 51. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, p. 92. 52. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 224. See also Schillebeeckx, Church, p. 234. 53. Harris, “Living with Eschatological Hope,” p. 145. 54. Johannes Baptist Metz, “An Eschatological View of the Church and the World,” in Theology of the World (New York: Herder & Herder, 1969), pp.  91–97; quote at p.  92; emphases in original. I have purposefully invoked the realized eschatology of John, here, to evoke the eschatological flourishing that is, in fact, proleptically available to us now, as we live in such a way that we actively anticipate the future.

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humanity with God, among human beings, within human persons, and between humanity and the rest of creation—being its guiding vision, its mission and purpose is to actively anticipate that coming reality, provisionally, under the sign of the cross, by being in the world in transformative love. This anticipation is participation in the missio Dei in and to the world, which includes churches themselves. Such an eschatological ecclesial imagination—in its universality, expansiveness, and excessiveness—adds balance to the implicit, and sometimes explicit, emphases of ecclesiologies of communion stemming from their more attenuated eschatologies: institution, hierarchy, doctrinal and structural unity, verticality, and eucharist as the—not a—Christian practice.

6.2 Five Marks of an Eschatological Ecclesiology A communion ecclesiology in conversation with an eschatological imagination of future eschatological fulfillment can be elaborated with reference to five qualitative “marks”: tensiveness, openness, risk, trust, and hope. These marks emerge directly from putting an imagination of the eschatological fullness of communion into conversation with an understanding of the missio ecclesiae that construes being church as the worldly anticipation of the basileia. What each of the marks implies for Christian community is developed by way of supplementing current approaches to communion ecclesiology, exemplified by the work of Zizioulas and Milbank. Doing this makes a constructive ecclesiological proposal for a theology of church that includes the conceptual “more” that communion ecclesiologies often leave out. 6.2.1 Tensiveness Tensiveness in Ecclesiological Perspective Church, the anticipation of the new creation’s four-fold communion, reflects the tensiveness that arises from living between the now and the not yet (1 Cor. 13.12). Consistent with the both–and structure of the eschatological imagination, the tensiveness arising from church’s indefinite emplacement within the already–not yet overlap disallows reaching closure on the “definitive” character of church, and bars all dualisms (temporal, ethical, ontological, hierarchical, sexual, and so on) that demand Christian community must be either this or that, rather than being both this and yet somehow still that. Accordingly, church, part of the ongoing narrative of God’s fulfillment of creation, imagines itself best by looking to the future of promised communion so as to re-interpret the past and discern appropriate action in the present. The future itself being communion, and Jesus’ basileia ministry of communion being what church at its best instantiates, ecclesial vocation between the times is honored when ecclesiology looks to the future as the ground for present ecclesial action. In this way, churches discern how to love God properly by loving the

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world into its relational destiny. Of course, because the final future can never be decisively articulated, this hermeneutical, communion-shaped envisioning process is continual, producing perspectives that are always revisable and necessarily to be revised. Guided by awareness of the contingency of its knowledge and insight, such an ecclesiology avoids dualisms and overly hard boundaries that attempt to specify in advance what church is and is not and should and should not be or do. All of this is a function of the tensiveness of ecclesial communion. And it is all too often missing from most construals of communion ecclesiology. Another important implication of the tensiveness of church is that, laboring as it does under the conditions of sin that affect it and its world, it must understand itself primarily through the lens of a theologia crucis, not a theologia gloriae. It therefore cannot subscribe to any ecclesiology that construes church as even a “realization” of its own vocation, let alone of the eschaton. Yet, this is precisely what Avery Dulles, an eminent theologian with strong communion-ecclesiological leanings, claims is the case. Dulles avers that church must instantiate the “realized” eschatology of “the Fourth Gospel” by providing for members “an earthly preview of the joys of heaven.”55 Leaving aside Dulles’ heaven–earth dichotomy, for many people the sinful Christian church has provided anything but “an earthly preview of the joys of heaven.”56 Empirical observation plainly shows that it is absurd to announce the realization of eschatological communion in any church. Moreover, one does not need religious conviction to perceive that the world and the human lives and institutions within it fall far short of any ideal. To perceive this is, as Schillebeeckx says, to undergo a “negative experience of contrast.” Drawing on critical theory, Schillebeeckx uses this term to denote “a basic human experience which as such I regard as being a pre-religious experience and thus a basic experience accessible to all human beings, namely that of a ‘no’ to the world as it is” (a phrase echoing Metz’s). Such experiences are “refractory for thought,” disrupting comfortable sureties, known truths, and theoretical systems.57 The disorientation and horror that it produces cause us to pronounce a countervailing “yes” to an inchoately glimpsed future, to the bare proposition and vague suspicion that there has to be a

55. Avery Dulles, Models of the Church (New York: Doubleday, expanded edn., 2002), p. 104. 56. As Aristotle Papanikolaou puts it, “The claim that the Eucharist is the experience of the kingdom of God simply does not resonate with human experience” (Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), p.  81). He is clear, however, that just because eucharist is not experienced as the basileia does not mean it is false to claim that eucharist, the realization of the body of Christ, is the basileia in some sense, a subtle and persuasive distinction. 57. Brian D. Robinette, “A Gift to Theology? Jean-Luc Marion’s ‘Saturated Phenomenon’ in Christological Perspective,” Heythrop Journal 48 (2007), pp. 86–108 (102).

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better reality.58 In Christian terms, the negative experience of contrast arrives as a gracious inbreaking of future communion, an apprehension of what is coming that reveals the deep brokenness of current conditions: “According to the popular proverb ‘You don’t miss what you never had.’ But to imagine is, for all practical purposes, already to have had, to have tasted the fruit which lies beyond, to have one’s appetite for the possible thoroughly whetted so that the actual begins to taste sour by comparison.”59 The anticipatory experience of communion positively opens new possibilities for eschatological imagination60 and negatively reveals the brokenness of our condition. The negative experience of contrast is predicated upon the already–not yet structure, the tension between present evil and future reconciliation. It reflects the eschatological dynamic that places the present under judgment. It spurs transformation. And it cannot occur if the future is imagined as realized. Both the already and the not yet are necessary. “We must not then sleep on peacefully as though the state in which we now find ourselves were a comfortable bed, trusting in the conviction that this state suffices for our nature. Nor should we think that we do not now have nor will ever have in this life anything of what will be ours in the life to come. How would we know what to strive for if we did not already possess something of it?”61 The already–not yet dynamic makes at least this much eschatologically certain: (1) we do and do not have communion in and of church now; and (2) anything like its full “realization” is impossible this side of the eschaton. To the extent that communion characterizes church at all, it does so as an inbreaking of the eschatological future, an adventus of the coming perfection that prefigures the basileia rather than realizes it. After all, it can only appear to us as the inbreaking that it is precisely because the state it promises has not yet been realized. The Tensiveness of the Sacraments The already–not yet dynamic is particularly pronounced in the way the sacraments, especially baptism and eucharist, are understood. Eschatologically, baptism is the rite that “seals man for the future of the kingdom that is being brought by the risen Christ.”62 As such, baptism is “conversion,” an interruption of the present that reorients a person toward the coming future:63 “Baptism points to the liberation of man which took place once and for all in the death of Christ. At the same time it reveals the crucified Lord’s claim to new life and anticipates in man the future of God’s universal glory.”64

58. Schillebeeckx, Church, pp. 5–6. 59. Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart, “The Shape of Time,” in Fergusson and Sarot, p. 62. 60. Dermot A. Lane, Keeping Hope Alive: Stirrings in Christian Theology (New York: Paulist, 1996), pp. 16, 134. 61. Dumitru Staniloae, Theology and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), p. 176. 62. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 326. 63. Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 235. 64. Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 240.

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From an eschatological perspective, to baptize is to commission a new Christian for proceeding out of the church into the world in service. It is a sign and seal of the promise, not a shift from the worldly (biological hypostasis) to the churchly (ecclesial hypostasis).65 Baptism is the inbreaking of God’s future to empower human beings to witness to and anticipate that coming reality. The already–not yet is its core structure. That same eschatological structure supports eucharist. Eucharist does not usher congregants into the immediate presence of the eschaton or the parousia of Christ, but Christ is truly present during the sacrament, appearing by the power of the Holy Spirit through the remembrance of Christ’s past and through the invocation of and hope in Christ’s coming future. This memory of the past and hope for the future make Christ really present, yet proleptically so (partially, by anticipation), even in his absence. Phenomenologically, in eucharist Christ is paradoxically present as the presence of the absence of his full eschatological presence.66 This presence, the authentic presence of a kind of absence that stands in the place of a fully realized presence, has the already–not yet inscribed deeply in it.67 Eucharist is the continuation, not the fulfillment, of the baptismal commission: “Just as baptism is the eschatological sign of starting out, valid once and for all, so the regular and constant fellowship at the table of the Lord is the eschatological sign of being on the way. If baptism is called the unique sign of grace, then the Lord’s supper must be understood as the repeatable sign of hope.”68 Eucharist anticipates the arrival of the basileia and celebrates the hope of the fulfillment of the promise by prefiguring the great eschatological feast of reconciliation.69 Communion ecclesiological theologies of eucharist, however, often do not emphasize the tensiveness of the sacrament. This is particularly so when eucharistic celebration is understood as the act by which church becomes “the image of the eschaton.”70 Imagining eucharist in this way too easily slides into a realized eucharistic eschatology. Zizioulas’ sacramental ecclesiology is a case in point. Zizioulas contends, as Paul Nègre observes, that “in the eucharist, it is the fullness of the eschata that is manifested: the Kingdom, that is to say, the whole and total Body of Christ.”71 Even if, as Nègre points out, Zizioulas places the basileia “resolutely in the future” its futurity is neutralized on account of its full realization in the present, since “the Church’s eucharist makes present the Kingdom that

65. Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, pp. 241–42. 66. Jean-Yves Lacoste, “Presence and Parousia,” in Graham Ward (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), p. 395. 67. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 326. 68. Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 243; emphases in original. 69. Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, pp. 243, 248. 70. Mostert, “Kingdom Anticipated,” p. 36. 71. Pascal Nègre, “Ceci est mon corps: traversée de l’ecclésiologie eucharistique de Jean Zizioulas,” Nouvelle Revue Theologique 130 (2008), pp. 194–219 (216); author’s translation.

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will be.”72 Zizioulas also maintains it is a mistake to understand the church as occupying an “interim” between the now and the not yet because the church manifests the fullness of time, indeed “the totality of the Economy,” in its eucharistic practice, which is what redeems history.73 Furthermore, although Gaëtan Baillargeon criticizes Zizioulas for identifying Christ and church so closely that his theology pays scant attention to concrete, historical churches on pilgrimage toward the eschaton, Paul McPartlan claims that Zizioulas escapes this criticism because, while he does make such an identification, it is only a momentary one: Christ and church are the same only during eucharist.74 This turns out to be a distinction without a difference, since for Zizioulas, church is eucharist, as we saw in Chapter  4. In eucharist, church is revealed as “being linked with the pre-eternal will of God concerning the course and outcome of the divine economy and will extend ‘unto ages of ages’ as the Kingdom of God.”75 Eucharist has become a revelation not of the coming eschatological transformation of all creation but of the truth of the universal church—of its pre-existence, of its eschatological perdurance, and of its identification with the basileia of God. In fact, for Zizioulas, eucharist is more than an “icon” of the basileia because it is the gathered saints worshipping before God in heaven: “There is no room for the slightest distinction between the worshipping eucharistic community on earth and the actual worship in front of God’s throne.”76 It is no wonder, therefore, that Douglas Farrow points to Zizioulas’ communion ecclesiology to support the position that: (1) thinking about eschatology in material, futural terms is actually a futurological projection because it is church that is the future; (2) this is so because the future is the full manifestation of the body of Christ, which is the eucharistic community; (3) the realization of Christ’s body effects an eschatological recapitulation, not a transformation; (4) it is eucharist alone “that ought to provide the context for eschatological thought”; and (5) the Johannine literature is the scriptural basis for this perspective.77 Any sense of “anticipation” in these Zizioulan expressions of eucharistic theology has been eliminated, along with the already–not yet structure that characterizes the sacrament.

72. Nègre, “Ceci est mon corps,” p.  201 and p.  203 respectively; emphasis in original; author’s translation. 73. Paul McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue (Fairfax, VA: Eastern Christian Publications, 2nd edn., 2006), p. 191. McPartlan is quoting John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), p. 211; emphasis in original. 74. McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church, pp. 265–66. 75. John D. Zizioulas, The Eucharistic Communion and the World (Luke Ben Tallon (ed.); London: T&T Clark, 2011), pp. 67–68. 76. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 233. 77. Farrow, “Eucharist, Eschatology and Ethics,” pp. 199–215; quote at 203.

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There is no question that the Christ who is present in eucharist is truly present. But Christ is present, in Jean-Yves Lacoste’s words, “under the conditions of the temporary.” Celebration of eucharist in the unredeemed world necessarily takes place in a reality that is unredeemed. Worshippers experience this nonredemption—even in the midst of worship—within their consciousnesses, bodily experiences, and affections. In this nexus of anticipation and its proleptic fulfillment in the partial presence of Christ, Christ comes, but comes (on account of the experienced contrast) as the One-on-the-way.78 This absence-as-presence is not abandonment on God’s part.79 It is a partial-presence-as-partial-absence that inspires hope for transformation in the coming of his full presence. Eucharist cannot be understood as an experience of presence in the way that Zizioulas would have it be. Zizioulas’ identification of earthly and heavenly worship seeks to establish a fullness of presence that is available only in the parousia, which sacramental worship in history can never completely manifest. Christ is present in eucharist by anticipation, a presence that is always partial and provisional. This is why the sacraments are anticipatory (not yet), despite the presence (in absence) of Christ (already) in them.80 Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again. We affirm this during eucharist not as a mystery of the faith but as the mystery of the faith.81 This requires upholding the genuine futurity of the fulfillment of the divine promise of communion. It demands an ecclesiology that honors and lives into that tensiveness as a crucial (in both senses) component of the eschatologically anticipatory vocation of church. 6.2.2 Openness Openness to the Undetermined Future The tensiveness of the church can only become operative when the church is open to the futurity that is the hallmark of the not yet. The realization of the four-fold communion promised in the resurrection of Jesus demonstrates the future of all creation: peace, justice, wholeness, flourishing, and the profound interrelationality of beings across time and space. The “how” of this, the form that the actualization of this promise will take, is, along with the timing of its advent (Mt. 24.36, Mk 13.32), open and

78. Lacoste, “Presence and Parousia,” p. 397. 79. Lacoste, “Presence and Parousia,” pp. 397–98. 80. Jean-Yves Lacoste, “The Phenomenality of Anticipation,” in Neal De Roo and John Manoussakis (eds), Phenomenology and Eschatology: Not Yet in the Now (Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 15–33. 81. Holy Eucharist, Rite II, Eucharistic Prayer A, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, Together with The Psalter or Psalms of David, According to the Use of the Episcopal Church (New York: Church, 1979), p. 363.

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undetermined. As such, the tensive church must be watchful for the provisional signs of the basileia’s coming in history: new possibilities, new insights, new opportunities to carry forward God’s mission, especially in areas and in ways such a thing might be considered “impossible,” since “impossibility” is characteristic of the basileia. Sarah Coakley announced during her 2012 Gifford Lectures that Romans 8, a locus classicus of eschatological imagining, would be the “starting point and fulcrum” of her forthcoming systematic theology because it depicts the “difficult” work of a “practiced dispossession” at the heart of Christian prayer guided by the Holy Spirit, a dispossession that opens one to the “emergence of a truth which may surprise, inform, or disturb” us and our certainties, drawing us “more deeply into creation’s groanings towards Christ’s more complete manifestation in it.”82 One of the many eschatological paradoxes is that we should expect to be surprised by the inbreaking of a future not entirely of our own making nor completely in our control. We cannot leave room for surprise without remaining open to encountering what we cannot yet see. This openness to this inbreaking future, openness to the new, is the second mark of an eschatological ecclesiology. Hans Schwarz notes Leonardo Boff ’s apt phrase, “The kingdom of God is not a completely different world, but a completely new one,” an aphorism that demonstrates the surprising admixture of continuity and discontinuity, and the worldly, material object of eschatological transformation.83 In the Christian context, hope in and for the new creation is instrumental in “providing an alternative to the present which enables resistance,”84 resistance to all that which appears to contravene what is corporately discerned to accord with God’s purpose. Because of this, the category of the new—meaning not trivial novelties or curiosities but previously non-existent or unperceived openings through which the promised future arises—is of deep theological significance, eschatologically and ecclesiologically. The new can be the mark of the presence of the eschaton under the conditions of history, “the historical side of eschatological openness to the future,” as portrayed in the scriptural accounts of the resurrection appearances.85 Being proleptic instances of creatio ex vetere, emergences of the new are deeply related to the old (continuity), but are also analogically related to creatio ex nihilo, and so are also

82. Sarah Coakley, “Reconceiving ‘Natural Theology’: Meaning, Sacrifice and God,” 2012 Gifford Lectures, lecture 6, University of Aberdeen, 3 May 2012, http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=VlnLvzPNMv8&list=PL4DB23FD6CCABD62F, at 7:28 [accessed 13 August 2014]. 83. Schwarz, Eschatology, p. 159. The quote is from Leonardo Boff, Was kommt naccher? Das Leben nach dem Tode (Salzburg, Austria: Otto Müller Verlag, 1982), p. 28. 84. Richard Bauckham, “The Millennium,” in Bauckham, p. 138. 85. Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1996), pp. 22, 27, 28.

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radically other than the old (discontinuity) and stand in eschatological judgment upon it.86 God makes the impossible possible, brings about the “new thing” (Isa. 43.19). Eschatology without room for a genuine future is cut off from the new. In acceding to such a view, “we [exclude] ourselves from the wonderfully subversive effects of the future, of the reversals that the new might bring. Without an eschatological awareness in our interaction with the everyday, we cannot but become immune to surprise and, therefore, to the kingdom of God, which has surprise as its very mode of manifestation (Mt. 24.27, 50; Mk 13.36; Lk. 12.40; 17.24).”87 Without openness to the new, there can be no hope.88 Openness to the new is precisely the reason why Metz eschews metaphysics, which he understands to be an inherently closed system, unable to express the novelty of the future in the way that narrative and poetry can.89 Similarly, Nikolaos Loudovikos claims that Platonic forms of eschatology, generally characterized by imagining the return of an individual subject to some type of original state through contemplation, do not generally emphasize the new.90 Ecclesiologies of communion, which are often metaphysical–ontological and Platonizing theologies, as both Zizioulas’ and Milbank’s ecclesiologies attest, display little openness to the new and to the world. In fact, the new is often perceived as a kind of threat. Patricia Fox observes that “Zizioulas rightly recognizes that fear of the ‘other’ is pathologically inherent in our existence as contemporary persons and that it results not only in the fear of the other but of all otherness.”91 Both she and Zizioulas are right about this. What Zizioulas appears not to see is that in his theology, the otherness that he himself appears to fear is the otherness of the future, the new, in the sense of change and development.92 The church

86. Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 27. 87. Manoussakis, “Anarchic Principle,” p. 33. 88. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 92. 89. John Marsden, “The Political Theology of Johannes Baptist Metz,” Heythrop Journal 53 (2012), pp. 440–52 (449). It should be recalled that Patrick Miller also suggests poetry may be a better means for thinking eschatologically than metaphysical conceptualizing. 90. Nikolaos Loudovikos, A Eucharistic Ontology: Maximus the Confessor’s Eschatological Ontology of Being as Dialogical Reciprocity (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2010), p. 8. 91. Patricia A. Fox, God as Communion: John Zizioulas, Elizabeth Johnson, and the Retrieval of the Symbol of the Triune God (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2001), p.  205; emphasis in original. 92. Change and development have a minor place in Zizioulas’ theological viewpoint, specifically where conversion and the movement from the biological hypostasis to the ecclesial hypostasis are concerned. Zizioulas also does not deny that there is room to “repeat differently” the apostolic witness of the early church. Nevertheless, consistent with many ecclesiologies of communion, Zizioulas’ overall perspective tends to be conservative and resistant to “innovation.”

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presents the world with a total ontological schema of “Truth,” which, in order to enter into communion with God, it must accept. Nothing “new” can add to or subtract from it. Milbank’s metanarrative—the story he tells about the warring ontologies—is, like Zizioulas’ metaphysic, a closed system, a totality, despite his claim to having avoided this. It cannot be eschatological by virtue of its closure.93 The use of ontology and metaphysics as a hedge against the new tends to feature prominently in communion ecclesiologies. It is true, of course, that the increasing complexity that new emergences bring renders the world as we know it less secure and more chaotic. This can effect a reaction against the perceived destabilizing effect of complexity, which generally takes the form of grasping at “certainty.” Complexity, though, is the fertile ground from which the new grows. Not only is this borne out by science, but in eschatological terms, increasing complexity, precisely as the ground of the new, is also the ground of hope. As such, the emergence of the new bears a “family resemblance” to the “growth” that anticipates the basileia—not that leads to the basileia, for the four-fold communion results from divine initiative not worldly processes, but that reveals and points toward it. The relationship is metaphorical and interpretive—poetic, perhaps—not an identification resulting in a natural theology–eschatology.94 It derives from the resurrection grammar of eschatological imagination.95 As Trevor Hart puts it, “The new creation does not come simply to perfect the old creation, but to do something radically new which transcends any capacities latent within it. There is no natural capacity for the new within the old.”96 One might say that increased complexity and the newness to which it gives rise are analogically related to the eschaton by way of being the condition for the emergence of the new, the proleptic manifestation of the basileia under historical conditions. One could then posit, analogically, that the evolving, emerging, ever-increasing capacities of the human mind for “self-consciousness, freedom, and . . . personal relatedness” that are part of the process of complexification97 are, as instances of the new, inbreakings of the basileia, openings toward deeper communion. To affirm this would take a good deal of theological work. But this is work that would be foreclosed upon from the outset by a view such as Zizioulas’, which, as we have seen, assumes that the development of the human mind may have ceased with the emergence of our capacity to hear God’s call, and that promotes a theological

93. Garret Green, “Imagining the Future,” in Fergusson and Sarot, p. 78. 94. Hans Weder, “Hope and Creation,” in John Polkinghorne and Michael Welker (eds), The End of the World and the Ends of God: Science and Theology on Eschatology (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000), pp. 184–202. 95. Moltmann, Coming of God, p. 28. 96. Trevor Hart, “Imagination for the Kingdom of God? Hope, Promise, and the Transformative Power of an Imagined Future,” in Bauckham, p. 68. 97. See Henry Novello, “Heaven in Evolutionary Perspective: The New Creation in Process,” Irish Theological Quarterly 76 (2011), pp. 128–49 (131).

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imperative to seek ecstasis out of nature rather than the ecstasis of nature itself into the newness that is in the offing.98 Zizioulas construes freedom as freedom from the necessity of being, from the createdness that “constrains” human beings to exist, by participating in God’s selfcaused, uncreated being through communion with the Trinity. The more eschatological view above, however, understands freedom as the ability to enter more deeply into relationship with God, self, other, and world. This is what Moltmann makes of freedom, as well: “Freedom is nothing else than being open for the genuine future, letting oneself be determined by the future.”99 Accordingly, freedom is not an existential “choice,” but the ability to enter into community. Freedom is the freedom to relate. Freedom exists where obstacles to mutual relatedness are removed. “In the Christian community we call this ‘love’—in Christian social doctrine ‘solidarity’—in the political sphere ‘equality,’ and summing them up: community in solidarity.”100 Without eschatologically inflected openness to the newness of the coming basileia, and its proleptic manifestations here and now, such freedom is unrealizable.101 The coming of the basileia is a messy affair. The very promise of it comes as a stunning interruption of expectation and the status quo.102 The eschatologically new always comes as a shock and surprise.103 Church can only live out an imagination of eschatological plenitude in expecting the shock of the new, not by forestalling perception of its arrival. Christian community engages in the untidy business of interpreting and participating in the complexities of reality, not by providing an “answer” to such difficulties in advance by recourse to metaphysical schema, totalizing narratives, or closed doctrinal systems. It tests new developments and claims for “fit” with the eschatological promises of God, accepting those that are consonant with it, rejecting those that are not, and remaining open to additional emergences that will require re-evaluating previous determinations. It recognizes that, as human communities, as broken by sin as any others, churches must remain humble, servants of the world that, under the sign of the cross, move in the world for the world on behalf of the coming basileia that will transform the world, often in ways it will be unable to predict but that open new insights into and experiences of that coming relational perfection in surprising and life-giving ways. The Openness of Ecclesial Humility The ecclesiological implications of this openness to the unforeseeable, uncontrollable eschatologically new can be elaborated under the heading of humility. All that has been said above about 98. The latter distinction is one that Loudovikos makes (Loudovikos, Eucharistic Ontology, p. 8). 99. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 212. 100. Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, p. 161. 101. Richard Bauckham, “Time and Eternity,” in Bauckham, p. 157. 102. Gregory Walter, Being Promised: Theology, Gift, and Practice (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), p. 38. 103. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 104.

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openness to the new requires that a church be realistic about the state of its knowledge, about its eschatological status, and about its internal communion or unity. Such realism means that it must be humble. Given the unknowability of the eschatological future that is the basis of ecclesial discernment, a church may often be able to make only provisional, tentative decisions on certain matters.104 Eschatological reserve must be immediately qualified in two ways. First, it cannot be taken to imply that we can say nothing doctrinally. Such humility is arrived at as the result of hard theological work, not in order to avoid it.105 Second, ecclesial humility must not result in a non-committal church. Deferring final decisions on difficult questions does not prevent confident action. Bold action is required by the eschatological urgency provoked by the sense of crisis ingredient to eschatological imagination and by the exigencies of historical context.106 But an eschatological church committed to its vocation of anticipating the coming future of God in love requires acting with a keen awareness of the limits of its own knowledge, the contingency of its determinations, and the neverceasing process of interpretation and revision in which it must always be engaged.107 As Pannenberg puts it, “Humility is the better part of valor in the face of a future which is not the prisoner of past and present.’108 Not only does the provisionality of ecclesial knowledge arise from churchly openness to the undetermined eschatological future, but it is a function of the nature of church as an institution of the interim, with no eschatological ultimacy of its own. Openness to the coming realization of the four-fold communion, in which church is fulfilled not by apotheosis but in ceasing to be, also keeps a church humble in its actions. The missio ecclesiae derives from the larger missio Dei, the ongoing story of God’s relationship with creation, from God’s creating it out of nothing to bringing it to its final fulfillment in the four-fold communion. The missio ecclesiae, therefore, is not ecclesial self-propagation, but loving and serving God through loving and serving the world. In this way, church anticipates basileia communion in its theology, form, and practices, an embodied testimony to the world’s future to those inside and outside of it.109 The arrival of the eschaton will bring that anticipatory mission to final fulfillment. There being nothing further to anticipate, the churches will cease to exist. This appears to be the meaning of Revelation 21, in which the new heaven and the new earth are described as having no temple. God’s being All-in-all (1 Cor. 15.28) “does not mean the churchification of the world.” Instead, church, as Christ’s body, represents creation prior to the eschaton.

104. Stephen Pickard, “Innovation and Undecidability: Some Implications for the Koinonia of the Anglican Church,” Journal of Anglican Studies 2 (2004), pp. 87–105 (93). 105. Lane, Keeping Hope Alive, p. ix. 106. Neuhaus, “Wolfhart Pannenberg,” p. 19. 107. Moltmann, Coming of God, p. 165. 108. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, p. 57. 109. Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 11.

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Upon its eschatological fulfillment, corresponding to Jesus’ bodily resurrection, God’s purpose in creation will be achieved, God’s shekinah will be fully present. Churches will no longer be required as an anticipation of that reality.110 “The church is a function of the kingdom rather than the kingdom being in some sense a function of the church.”111 Church remains a reality so long as the basileia does not, connected interdependently to other worldly structures but providing a unique witness to the coming plenitude. Of itself, church as church (not as the people of God) possesses no eschatological ultimacy.112 Scripture supports this claim. “It is one thing for believers to inherit/ possess/enter the basileia,” writes Ben Witherington, “it is another thing to be the basileia, and this latter language is not used anywhere in the New Testament.”113 This is because church, at least in the Lukan and Matthean views, is an “interim” reality,114 as it is in Paul, according to J. Christiaan Beker: “Because the church has an eschatological horizon and is the proleptic manifestation of the kingdom of God in history, it is the beachhead of the new creation and the sign of the new age in the old world that is ‘passing away’ (1 Cor. 7.31). Therefore we cannot identify the church with the kingdom of God or consider it as a supratemporal reality.”115 Such a construal of the eschatological status of church contradicts a good deal of ecclesiology, particularly ecclesiology in conversation with a more realized eschatological imagination, in which church is often implicitly or explicitly identified with the basileia. One of the reasons the churches have often downplayed eschatological imagination is precisely because it reveals church to have no eschatological destiny of its own.116 Yet, because it is obvious that church does not equal basileia, any assertion that it does “makes the Christian hope incredible.”117 Even so, contemporary ecclesiologies of communion tend to make this identification. Zizioulas, for his part, at least recognizes that “the Church in history is clearly not identical with the kingdom of God.”118 Nevertheless, church outside

110. Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, p. 69. 111. Mostert, “Kingdom Anticipated,” p. 26. 112. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, p. 83. See also Christoph Schwöbel, “Church as a Cultural Space,” in Polkinghorne and Welker, p. 114. 113. Ben Witherington, III, Jesus, Paul, and the End of the World: A Comparative Study in New Testament Eschatology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1992), p.  78; emphasis in original. 114. Schwarz, Eschatology, pp. 85, 87. 115. J. Christiaan Beker, The Triumph of God: The Essence of Paul’s Thought (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1990), p. 99. 116. Schwarz, Eschatology, p. 380. 117. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, p. 32. 118. John D. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics (Douglas H. Knight (ed.); London: T&T Clark, 2008), p. 136.

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of history—where Zizioulas maintains church is located during eucharist—is the basileia of God. McPartlan reminds us that, for Zizioulas, “the Church on earth is rhythmically the Kingdom of God” in celebrating eucharist, which, as an eschatological event, is non-historical. McPartlan thinks because church becomes the basileia “rhythmically” this exonerates Zizioulas’ ecclesiology from the triumphalism of medieval views that identified church and basileia too closely.119 However, Zizioulas’ understanding of the eschatological destiny of church is consistent with a triumphalistic imagination. Zizioulas explicitly denies that church is an interim institution because the eschatological destiny of creation is that it will become church, precisely the eschatological “churchification” of the world that a less realized eschatology avoids.120 If church is destined for eschatological permanence, if it, rather than the world as a whole, is the object of the promise, how can the churches within history hold their knowledge, form, structures, and practices with the light-yet-confident hand of the provisional, which openness to the adventus of the eschatologically new requires? To take a second example, we have already seen that Milbank explicitly identifies church and basileia.121 Implicated in this, Milbank’s political vision—in contrast to the “Augustinian liberalism [that] moves eschatology to the center of political theology”—“moves ecclesiology to the center of eschatology.”122 This is quite consistent with realized eschatology, which often inflates the role of the ecclesia in God’s design.123 Todd Breyfogle perceives this in Milbank’s ecclesiology, in which he discerns an “un-Augustinian contention that the Church on earth is ‘the

119. McPartlan, Eucharist Makes the Church, p. 288. 120. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 117. Papanikolaou refers to what I am calling here the impulse toward “churchification” as the drive toward the “sacramentalization” of the world, emphasizing that an Orthodox concept of this notion is not about renovating the world by transforming it into the institutional church but by bringing it into accord with a sacramentalization in which the world is in full communion with God (Papanikolaou, Mystical as Political, p. 125). I think this is what Moltmann means, as well, as do Milbank and many ecclesiologists of communion in their (problematic) talk of church as the model for proper sociopolitical arrangements. What is missing here is that such a sacramentalization is precisely what is accomplished by God’s becoming All-in-all. It can be anticipated to greater and lesser extents, but its realization is a thoroughly eschatological occurrence. Moreover, such language easily leads to intemperate claims that it is the institutional church that the world “becomes.” This is why theologians who employ such language need to be clear about what is and is not meant, as it can result in a (hopefully) unintended ecclesial triumphalism. 121. John Milbank, The Word Made Strange: Theology, Language, Culture (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997), p. 148. 122. Eric Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 143. 123. Craig C. Hill, In God’s Time: The Bible and the Future (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), pp. 174–76.

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realized heavenly city . . . [or] the telos of the salvific process.’ ”124 As Pannenberg observes, such a notion—that the earthly church is the basileia of God—is manifestly false, as even a cursory examination of any church’s historical and current character and action attests. Further, the actuality is the exact reverse of Milbank’s formulation. No present church sanctifies political life within history. Rather, the arrival of the basileia will allow the communion that ought to characterize ecclesial existence to become the universal mode of being in a new creation. “Only in Christ’s consummating kingdom does the Christian spirit abandon the form its life has taken in the church, and become the ‘soul’ of the worldwide political commonwealth, which will then for its part become ‘the body of Christ.’ ”125 Notice the careful terminology: the world is finally able to become the body of Christ, not the church, which are not, except under certain christological– ecclesiological construals, eschatologically identical. Church is the body of Christ by anticipation; the world becomes so by the full indwelling of God, which effects perfect communion. An eschatological imagination asserting the universal church, rather than the world, is the object of eschatological promise too easily slides into a conception of church as being the repository of truth, perfection, and goodness. An eschatological imagination that keeps the focus on the world as the object of future perfection, however, understands church to be part of the broken world that will be reconciled and healed. There is little chance that a church that thinks of itself primarily as the vessel of God’s truth or in other such exalted terms rather than primarily as a human community needing to be healed along with the rest of creation will display the humility an eschatological ecclesiology demands. When a church considers itself to be, even if only to a certain extent, the basileia, or considers itself and not the world as destined for eschatological perfection, it blinds itself to the fact that it has strayed from its appointed vocation, and that it can no longer anticipate the basileia. Instead, the world does.126 There are times, especially when the necessary eschatological humility of church is forgotten and the triumphalism of a theologia gloriae rather than the solidarityin-suffering-and-hope of a theologia crucis is too much in evidence, that the world must call church back to itself in a manner that Zizioulas, Milbank, and a host of ecclesiologists of communion adamantly deny is legitimate or even possible.127 Yet, it can and does occur. And Christian community must be open and humble enough to listen. Ecclesiological humility, finally, also requires that the church universal be realistic about the condition of its unity. Ecclesiologies of communion strongly

124. Todd Breyfogle, “Is There Room for Political Philosophy in Postmodern Critical Augustinianism?” in Wayne J. Hankey and Douglas Hedley (eds), Deconstructing Radical Orthodoxy: Postmodern Theology, Rhetoric and Truth (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 42. 125. Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, p. 14. 126. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, p. 78. 127. Schillebeeckx, Church, p. 157.

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accent ecclesial unity, within and across expressions of Christianity, which is why they are so attractive for ecumenical endeavors. Such construals of communion, however, often understand unity as achievable this side of the eschaton, made realizable by Jesus’ prayer in the Gospel of John that “they all might be one” as Jesus and the Father are one (17.21). To the limited extent that unity in community is possible, however, it is effected insofar as the community pursues the basileia, “the highest good.”128 Fragmentation is the real character of existence under present conditions. Unity is an eschatological reality. This is not to say that unity is never achieved, that it never arises by the grace-full inbreaking of the future. It can and does. When unity is imposed, however, it is not only “artificial” but deeply problematic theologically. “Such an imposition [is] an idolatrous attempt to freeze the provisional present and a denial of the true unity to be expected from the future.”129 The suggestion here is not that “anything goes.” It is that the quest for ecclesial unity in the form of shared agreement on the nature and practice of Christian faith is (at best) quixotic. It is likely ecclesiologically unhealthful to attempt to specify the so-called “limits of diversity” in advance of discerning such limits in specific contexts. Unity is crucial, as ecclesiologies of communion help us see. Efforts to achieve it, however, accord better with the church’s anticipatory vocation when they focus on discerning the unity of the churches in their common basileia-shaped ministries in and to the world rather than on demanding various uniformities.130 The important role of creedal faithfulness notwithstanding, even doctrinal agreement should not be taken as necessary for establishing the limited and provisional unity that is available to us in the form of the common pursuit of the anticipatory missio ecclesiae. The eschatological openness that relativizes what churches can “know” and the partialness of their determinations rule out achieving doctrinal consensus in the first place.131 Zizioulas thinks quite the opposite, lodging the maintenance of orthodoxy in the office of the bishop, who thereby preserves ecclesial unity. It is for this reason that Zizioulas finds “Anglican comprehensiveness” to be especially troubling, “particularly if there are no recognizable limits to the diversity involved.”132 Likewise, Milbank claims the Augustinian eschatological concordatia that marks the ontology of peace is available through church, at least in part, on account of its required “propositional consensus.”133 Whether such uniformity of thought is even desirable, the fact remains that it is not possible. Disagreement is unavoidable. The ecclesiological imperative is to grasp conflict as the positive ground for new insight, new understanding, and—hopefully—new

128. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, p. 118. 129. Neuhaus, “Wolfhart Pannenberg,” pp. 20–21. 130. I say more about the ecumenical implications of this in the conclusion to this volume (pp. 261–63). 131. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, pp. 100–101. 132. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 334. 133. Breyfogle, “Is There Room for Political Philosophy,” p. 37.

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and deeper relationality.134 Communion, Conflict and Hope, the only report to emerge out of the ecclesiological controversies within the Anglican Communion that puts the communion ideal into conversation with the inevitability of conflict and the eschatology of hope, makes precisely this difficult and messy point—and has been ignored on account of it. 6.2.3 Risk Being open to the emergence of the new often places us in tremendously uncomfortable positions. It means constantly re-assessing what we think we know about God, ourselves, and others. It does not mean throwing those perspectives overboard, but it might mean revising them in light of new emergences that appear to further God’s purposes, no matter how painful that might be for us individually or collectively. This is part of the risk that is the third mark of eschatological ecclesiological imagination. The individual and corporate openness of Christians to the future means that there is no such thing as certainty in the life of faith.135 There is promise, but it is an open promise. The resurrection, Brian Robinette argues, is “the eschatological and ontologically definitive promise God makes to an open creation,” a promise that “in no way compel[s] a particular script for our as yet unwritten future.”136 We are assured that the promise will be fulfilled, but not how or when. The promise provides no rules to govern our lives in the meantime. It does not infallibly reveal that which does and does not accord with God’s vision for creation. Our knowledge and understanding are partial, provisional, and fragmentary. Yet, we must commit to acting in church and world knowing full well that we will shoot wide of the target, or, in theological terms, sin. Each time we act, we do so knowing that we might at some point realize that what we thought was the best way to proceed was not and come to regret what we did. To varying degrees, every act is imbued with that risk. This can be profoundly unsettling. The Risk of Suffering That unsettlement is part of ecclesial life according to a theologia crucis, suffering the pain of acting despite doubt—doubt not in the promise of God, but in the consonance of churchly action with that promise.137 The cross, and the painful course of worldly and ecclesial action that is taken up under and on account of it, marks the risk of a life of faith that dares to admit its own sin, the inevitability of ignorance and error, its complicity—witting and unwitting—in injustice, and its suffering on account of all of this. To leave the matter there, however, would result in a paralysis of indecision and fear. The promise of the

134. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, p. 125. 135. Sarah MacMillan, “A Sociologist Appeals to Theological Hope in Postmodern Apocalypses,” CrossCurrents 61 (2011), pp. 232–44 (236). 136. Robinette, “Heraclitean Nature,” p. 35. 137. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 172.

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resurrection offsets this uncertainty by concretely demonstrating that “amidst all the risks, sufferings and ambiguities that such openness entails, creation is heir to a definitive and just future that shall never pass away.”138 This reduces the fear that would otherwise cause us to be unwilling to take the risk of faith.139 Acting in faith is always a risk. Because only the future will reveal whether the action taken today was “right” or “wrong” (1 Cor. 3.12–15), we can do nothing that is fully certain, eschatologically speaking. While “all actions are risks,”140 they are risks accepted, Neuhaus notes, on account of “reasonable probabilities,” the best understanding available at the time. A church informed by an eschatology of relational perfection acts in accordance with its ongoing discernment of that which is consonant with the four-fold communion of the promise. Even though it knows it may be wrong—and that it sometimes will be—on account of the mark of openness (the cross), “it is ours to seek the sign of promise, to commit ourselves to its fulfillment, and then trust to him who is the power of the future to vindicate our effort where we have chosen rightly and to forgive us where we have chosen wrongly.”141 Life—real, basileia life—is about the willingness to risk. “Human life must be risked if it would be won,” writes Moltmann,142 possibly echoing Jesus’ logion about one’s need to be willing to lose one’s life in order to find it, an utterance that, being unusual in its appearance in all four gospels (Mt. 10.39; Mk 8.35; Lk. 17.33; Jn 12.25), almost certainly goes back to Jesus himself. The joint human life of community in the church is no less characterized by this requirement. That is why Zizioulan statements such as “The liturgical ethos of Orthodoxy will probably never make it possible for her to be fully involved in history”143 and that within a “eucharistic vision” of the world “there is no place for the ‘opium’ of a ‘social gospel’ ”144 are unacceptable to an ecclesiology of anticipated eschatological 138. Robinette, “Heraclitean Nature,” p. 35. 139. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 22. 140. Rudolf Bultmann, History and Eschatology (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1957), p. 140. 141. Neuhaus, “Wolfhart Pannenberg,” pp. 20, 31. 142. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 337. 143. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 140. 144. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 130. He also writes: “The optimism of a ‘social gospel’ which might transform history into the Kingdom of God simply cannot be sustained theologically. Society will never become the Church, and history will have to wait for the eschaton to redeem it from its antinomies” (Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (London: T&T Clark, 2006), p.  87). Of course, Zizioulas is correct on all three counts: history will not become the basileia, society will not be churchified, and full social reconciliation is eschatological. It is troubling to observe, however, a theologian who strenuously maintains that the eschaton is fully realized during eucharist finding himself unable to acknowledge that there may be ways to anticipate these eschatological realities in the way that I am able to acknowledge that the arrival of the eschaton is, in fact, anticipated in eucharist, even if not in its fullness.

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fulfillment. Such involvement in the affairs of the world, far from being barred by the liturgical ethos, is a requirement of it. After all, as Metz’s work has been instrumental in making clear, an allied aspect of both the willingness to accept risk and the eschatological implications of proceeding under a theologia crucis is the ecclesiological responsibility to understand church as a community that suffers in solidarity with the world as it suffers and that, in standing with the marginalized against the powerful, is also willing to suffer on behalf of the suffering. This is inevitable for a church living properly into its vocation, recollecting the “dangerous memory” of Jesus, whose teaching and entire manner of life demands conversion to the basileia, the future that, by enabling anticipatory transformation, invites suffering at the hands of a world unprepared for, resistant to, and resentful of the burden of communion. There are certain aspects of the world—inside and outside of churches—that are hostile toward the basileia of God and will at times reject it with greater and lesser degrees of violence, direct, indirect, or sublimated. This, too, is a risk the church accepts on behalf of the basileia for the sake of the world, including and perhaps even especially for those who hate it most. The Risk of Communion In the act of creating ex nihilo, in creating something not of the divine self but autonomous and free from it, God risked bringing into being creatures who do not accept their finitude, who have no gratitude for their being, who consider God irrelevant or non-existent.145 In becoming incarnate, the Godhead assumed the risk of vulnerability in love, and was rejected, tortured, and executed. For us, losing one’s life in order to find it requires a similarly kenotic risk. We risk “losing” (the illusion of) autonomy from God, other, and world by accepting finitude, embodiedness, situatedness, and rootedness in place, time, and history. We risk the “security” of certainty in becoming open to the undetermined future. This is conversion. It feels extremely risky in prospect, not only because it requires admitting dependence on God and others, something at which our radical drive for independence bristles, but because accepting the relational structure of embodied reality means recognizing that we all impinge upon one another’s becoming, for good and for ill,146 a tremendous responsibility to shoulder. But this self-emptying risk is how we “find” ourselves. Scaled up to the corporate level, this also makes communion itself a risk. In communion, there is a loss of autonomy, a giving-over to the other. Ecclesially, this requires continual corporate re-imagining of the common life of faith. It demands loyalty and love despite conflict. It necessitates honoring difference, not in a way that leads to a chaotic relativism, but so as to engage realities that we ourselves might have only partially or not-at-all apprehended but others may see much more clearly. It entails keeping matters open rather than coming to premature closure, since, as Williams points out, “there is always more to be said” and allowing

145. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, p. 643. 146. J. Matthew Ashley, introduction to Metz, Faith in History, p. 6.

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it to be said “can be the promise of unimagined futures which could bring renewal,” if “the level of risk and trust involved in the exchange . . . allows real growth to occur.”147 It involves knowing that we will be wrong and will be wronged, and so must forgive and accept forgiveness. An ecclesiology of communion that places church beyond or over against the world does not risk itself on behalf of the world. But as an anticipation of the basileia, church is charged with taking the risk of striking out into uncharted territory, new ways of engaging the world outside of the conceptual and practical confines of what may have traditionally constituted “church.”148 Ecclesiologies of communion too often prevent taking this risk. As we have seen is the case in ecclesiologies such as Zizioulas’ and Milbank’s, a conception of church in retreat or cloistered is predicated upon a set of interrelated closures: a doctrinal closure in the form of a prescribed “orthodoxy,” an ontological closure in the form of metaphysical dualisms, a closure of authority that puts “truth” in the hands of the upper levels of a hierarchy, a closure of eschatological openness in an overly realized construal of the eschaton, a closure of ecclesial practice to certain sacraments (especially eucharist), and a closure of the forms that the church may take. In their manifold closures—indicative of an anxiety over the loss certainty, purity, definition, and limit—they present a church unwilling to take the risks of openness. Under such conditions, the possibility of real communion in and of the church, both ad intra and ad extra, is greatly diminished, to the detriment of the eschatological vocation of church and to the world it serves. Churches cannot anticipate the coming four-fold communion perfectly. Attempts to do so will yield much fruit. But churches will also alienate, disappoint, and hurt people. Prior to the reconciliation of all things, the complex, broken reality of intersubjectivity—the intersection of untold numbers of wounded lives and histories—will produce both joy and tragedy. This is no excuse for avoiding risk. We accept the risk and the inevitability of failure because the good we seek requires it and because we know the God in whom we place our trust can bring new life even out of the (spiritual and physical) death caused by our unavoidable sin.149 6.2.4 Trust While trust, the fourth mark, is ultimately trust in the relational promise of God, this trust assumes multiple forms in the ecclesial context. Some of these have already been elaborated under the marks of tensiveness, openness, and risk. Others will be treated in the final section on hope. This is only proper, given that these deeply interpenetrating marks can be separated only artificially. Here, I explore

147. Rowan Williams, Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction (Making of the Christian Imagination, Stephen Prickett (ed.); Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008), p. 115. 148. Hoekendijk, Church Inside Out, p. 66. 149. Moltmann, Coming of God, p. 234.

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trust by examining how church might be formally specified within an eschatological ecclesiology founded upon trust in the promised perfection of communion. Trust and Ecclesial Authority Faith is not certitude but trust in the basileia, a future that offers itself as an “invitation to trust.”150 Indeed, if Gregory Walter’s phenomenological account of promise is correct, God’s promise of fulfillment to creation attains its character as promise precisely to the extent that we trust in it. The promise remains “weak” in that it can be rejected (meaning it does not coercively determine the world’s present) or accepted (thereby opening tremendous new possibility).151 Reassured by the resurrection that God’s promise is, in fact, trustworthy, Christian community is enabled to accept the risks incurred in pursuing its mission in a manner informed by an eschatological theologia crucis. Even so, trust will sometimes flag, overcome by fears of various kinds that cause churches to bar the doors against the risks entailed in anticipating the basileia, leading to the “sin” of a “distrust” that “results in building defenses against the future.”152 Refusing to take the risk of faith prevents perceiving irruptions of the future basileia into present reality, leaving in place the illusion of a “knowledge” that ends by perverting Christian community away from its purpose.153 Lacking trust and relying on what we think we know, we impose structures and forms on church on the basis of extant doctrine and tradition, rather than allowing them to emerge in constructive dialogue with our always-revisable doctrines and traditions. In such instances, the structures of the churches can easily become clericalist, dogmatist, and schismatic. These qualities, which Pannenberg calls “signs of authoritarianism,” inhibit the ability of church to announce the promise, invite the world into it, and model basileia life in its own way of being.154 In such instances, eschatological vision is overruled by supposed certainties. In the case of ecclesiologies of communion, “the eschatological dimensions (positive aspects concerning the future of church and world alike in God’s plan of salvation)

150. Neuhaus, “Wolfhart Pannenberg,” p.  46; Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, p. 59. 151. Walter, Being Promised, pp.  21, 48–53. Walter further provides four sequential “elements” of promise: “the initial gift, the trust or distrust of the one promised, the field created by that trust and the extension [in time] of the gift between the pledge and its fulfillment, and the fulfillment itself ” (Walter, Being Promised, p.  35). In terms of eschatological ecclesiology, this would mean church arises and acts in the world within a “field” of possibility opened by its continuing trust that the promise, continually offered by God to the world, will be fulfilled. Lacking this trust would, obviously, severely constrict or even completely eliminate that field. 152. Neuhaus, “Wolfhart Pannenberg,” p. 26. 153. John Panteleimon Manoussakis, “The Promise of the New and the Tyranny of the Same,” in De Roo and Manoussakis, p. 83. 154. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, p. 93.

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of Communio models can be [and often are] rendered powerless by the institutional strictures and rhetoric surrounding them.”155 To take Zizioulas’ ecclesiology as one example, Volf claims that, for Zizioulas, “the reign is present in history in and through ecclesial structures.” But locating “the kingdom” in church structures impairs the possibility of churchly anticipation of communion because “the structures of the church . . . do not derive from history [i.e., from tradition], but rather are grounded in the eschatological reign itself.”156 The forms churches take are, therefore, in actuality free from historical determination, even if they are not free from historical inflection. In order to anticipate the four-fold communion, they have to be open to judicious and considered change as contexts shift. In Zizioulas’ ecclesiology, however, the closures of certainty, underwritten by a particular view of history and tradition, constrain ecclesial form, to the detriment of fostering communion—the very thing Zizioulas purports to care about most.157 This is perhaps unavoidable if it is true that, in general, “the consequence of the failure of communion ecclesiologies to deal with the shape of ecclesial authority is that these theologians are employing the category of koinonia to defend a conservative understanding of Church polity and authority,”158 one that puts the supposed certainty provided by dogma, history, and tradition in place of the open future of the basileia. In such cases, anxiety trumps trust by prohibiting new modes of ecclesial life to emerge. Ecclesiologies of communion commonly place a high premium on achieving ecclesial unity through the exercise of clerical authority. A pronounced hierarchicalism, however, generally reveals a church’s lack of trust in the promise of God’s future by declining to take up the hard work of forging authentic communion with and among the bulk of the faithful who compose a church. A pyramidal church hierarchy presumes the Holy Spirit moves only among the clergy.159 When a church trusts the promises of God, the power of the Spirit, and the integrity of the laity, it models its structures not on common sociopolitical distributions of power, nor on anything resembling “master–servant relationships,”160 but on the risky, communal, solidaristic ethos of Jesus. This means church must be synodal—and not only in name, as in Zizioulas’ perspective on the synod, in which the clergy and laity observe and perhaps even debate, but in which only bishops vote. “If, in thinking of Christ’s self-surrender, we talk about ‘the priesthood of all believers,’ then in thinking of Christ’s lordship we must equally

155. Gerard Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity: Questions for the Church in Our Time (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2007), p. 68. 156. Volf, After Our Likeness, p. 108. 157. Nicholas Loudovikos, “Christian Life and Institutional Church,” in Douglas H. Knight (ed.), The Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), p. 125. 158. Paul Collins, “Authority and Ecumenism,” in Knight, p. 153. 159. Schillebeeckx, Church, pp. 198–99. 160. Schillebeeckx, Church, p. 216.

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speak of ‘the sovereignty of all believers.’ ”161 The entire community of the faithful must be able to participate fully in church governance if church is to anticipate the basileia. Trust and Hierarchy For his part, Zizioulas is not unaware of the ecclesiological difficulties that hierarchicalism causes, both theologically and practically. We have seen that he claims that his ecclesiology removes “pyramidal notions” of the church, asserting that hierarchy is itself grounded in the basileia. “The Church is a community with a particular structure,” he writes. “If, however, we do not give ‘structure’ the legal character of an authority imposed from without but connect it with the otherness of personal relationships, then it becomes a different matter. In the Kingdom of God otherness of relationships will exist, and this creates the variety and hierarchy of ministries.”162 Invoking the basileia to justify hierarchy can strike those who accent the tensive character of eschatological communion as problematic. Demetrios Bathrellos, for instance, comments,“In his work [Zizioulas] uses eschatology, which is a criterion of truth, . . . to validate the bishop and hierarchy of the Church, which he regards as an image of the eschaton. It is difficult not to see some one-sidedness in this approach.”163 Zizioulas’ penchant for “overemphasis on structure”164 slots lay people into a hierarchy that does not, says Radu Bordeianu, “address sufficiently the role of the people in the quest for unity,”165 a hierarchy “in which they not only remain subordinated as a whole, but are also virtually insignificant as individuals,” writes Volf.166 This will not do in an ecclesiology predicated on basileia values. Of course, the differentiation of ecclesial roles that ecclesiologies of communion emphasize makes good sense for practical reasons. Moreover, the scriptural and traditional bases for the threefold ordained ministry are solid. And certainly, when this issue is taken up in an eschatological key, “otherness of relationships will exist” in the basileia. But the leadership of the clergy derives from a charism for servant leadership and affords no access to a “truth” screened off from laity. Further, the “eschatological otherness” employed to justify not legitimate hierarchy but hierarchicalism is better imagined as an otherness predicated upon the uniqueness of each discrete lived life that, reconciled to God, self, other, and world, has its own ontic integrity in the relational nexus of the basileia, not as an otherness based upon position within an eternal, quasi-Platonic system of levels corresponding to status, roles, and power.

161. Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 106. 162. Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion, p. 69; emphases in original. 163. Demetrios Bathrellos, “Church, Eucharist, Bishop: The Early Church in the Ecclesiology of John Zizioulas,” in Knight, p. 140. 164. Bathrellos, “Church, Eucharist, Bishop,” p. 140. 165. Radu Bordeianu, Dumitru Staniloae: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology (Ecclesiological Investigations, 13; London: T&T Clark, 2011), p. 209. 166. Volf, After Our Likeness, p. 215.

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In a church featuring an overly rigid, highly stratified model of authority, “the task of ‘the laity’ can only be to say ‘Amen’ to the liturgical, dogmatic and moral instructions of the hierarchy. This is in pure form a church for looking after people; it is not a self-confident church of God’s people.”167 A truly communion-shaped church, however, understands the laity to be the true apostles, the witnesses sent into the world to proclaim the basileia that Jesus preached, having been equipped by the clergy for doing so rather than being prevented by the clergy from doing so on account of overly rigid hierarchical constructions of church.168 Yet this latter state of affairs certainly sounds like what obtains in the churches of Zizioulas, Milbank, and much communion ecclesiology. Church, however, must be precisely that church of the people. All the faithful are called and are to be trusted in their faithfulness and for their various contributions and gifts, including governance and discernment. Ultimately, all are called to the basileia. Historically, each is called to a certain role. Nevertheless, these discrete roles are fluid, reciprocal, and changing.169 The individual callings that mark our “roles” or “functions” in church structure are not eschatologically enduring, obviously, since the church itself is not eschatologically everlasting. This means our various ecclesial vocations and the structures of authority that properly attach to them in history are relative and provisional. The bond that unifies churches, therefore, is not the hierarchy or authority, but communion-shaped love.170 Communion with God effects communion among human beings and vice versa, imperfectly and only intermittently, but truly. It is a striking irony among ecclesiologies of communion that hierarchy and authority are taken to be the ground of ecclesial structure and unity, rather than proleptic participation in the communion of the basileia exhibited by the harmonious interrelationship of all members of the church, in which exercises of “power-over” are minimized and those of “power-with” are maximized. The church trusts in the ultimate goodness and promise of God, not in structures that seek to domesticate the unruly power of the basileia. A community called to anticipate the fulfillment of communion will not seek to subjugate “the people” to their “appointed leaders.” Leadership, obviously, is necessary for the church, theologically and practically. Making certain forms of leadership into an indispensable facet of the church, however, and projecting this onto the basileia is not. To the extent that this has taken place, the “church is paying the price,” in the form of attrition of members and marginalization of public influence, for being “too little a ‘church of the people’ ” and much too much “a ‘church for the people.’ ”171 Trust in Light of Tradition and Apostolicity Just as the perfected communion of the basileia cannot justify hierarchicalism, neither can it support a rigid traditionalism. 167. Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, p. 21; emphasis in original. 168. Hoekendijk, Church Inside Out, pp. 85–86. 169. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 333. 170. Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, p. 25. 171. Metz, Faith in History, p. 129; emphases in original.

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Tradition, too, is relativized and refracted by the basileia. Tradition is not transmitted in “lines” of succession, but in the growth and expansion of the missio Dei. Tradition, then, does not justify “apostolic succession.”172 The apostles received “the word of the risen Lord,” that is, a commission for service to the world.173 This mission, not a certain form of authority and not a specific propositional teaching, is what comes down to us, not as an apostolic succession but as an apostolic procession. Church is apostolic when this mission is preserved and engaged.174 Ecclesiologists of communion could hardly disagree more. Zizioulas may recognize that “the Church is not a petrified entity transmitted from one generation to another as an archaeological treasure.”175 Even so, consonant with his view that “the kingdom” is present in church by virtue of its structures, he asserts that the basileia is “well ordered” and church structure manifests this, imbuing canonical church order not with just ecclesiological but “ontological” significance.176 Similarly, Milbank asserts the circular claim that canon law concretizes a theology of church, a theology that itself reflects the practices of the institution that canon law establishes.177 This analysis is consistent with the Neoplatonic essentialism of his view that “if there is truth, then it is ontological—the fact that there are essences (however complex); the fact that there is a true way for things to be and a way things eternally are.”178 It is also consistent with the “perichoretic” manner in which truth is lived ecclesially, as Zizioulas contends: church enjoys indefectibility due to a closed cycle of authority moving through the ecclesial body, one that is selfperpetuating, conservative, certain.179 To deviate from the given institutional form, to alter “the image of the Church,” means that “rather than an image of the completion of history by the kingdom of God, [church] becomes a picture of hell.”180 Not only does this supply additional evidence of how ontologizing and Neoplatonic metaphysics are often used in communion ecclesiologies to constrain Christian community, but Zizioulas and Milbank attribute ecclesiological shifts and transformations to a functional diabolism rather than to normal and, some would say, salutary expressions of church responding (not capitulating) to a world in need. There are no “privileged areas” in theology that are exempt from change. Church tradition and doctrinal formulations—“ancient institutions, such as

172. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, pp. 301–2. This is not to question whether bishops are of the esse or the bene esse of church, a question too profound and too controverted to enter into here. 173. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 202; emphasis in original. 174. Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 312. 175. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 325. 176. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 138. 177. John Milbank, Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 109. 178. Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. 106. 179. Zizioulas, One and the Many, p. 86. 180. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 138.

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episcopal succession, hierarchy, and dogma”—as products of human beings, are all fallible and subject to distortion. Historical forms of church have arisen for what were sound theological reasons, but that does not make them binding on churches today. Instead, they must be evaluated for fit with evolving apprehensions of the basileia. Where they remain consonant with them, well and good. Where they do not, they require careful, thoughtful transformation.181 The process of constantly re-evaluating church structure and form has to involve the entire Christian community, not only certain segments of it. Knowledge of the promise of God is partial and fragmentary enough as it is. No church is served well by amplifying that limitation, which it does when cutting itself off from the insights and gifts of all the people. All of the people of God are divinely charged to carry out the missio ecclesiae, anticipating the coming basileia in and for the world. Certainly, different people have different talents, interests, and experiences that suit them better for certain ecclesial tasks. Leadership, teaching, and sacramental presidency, for example, are necessary ecclesial roles. But their input into the structural form and political governance of church can be no weightier than any other member’s. There is no question that minimizing power differentials can lead to conflict. That is no reason to avoid it, especially since the basileia’s breaking into history always turns the world upside down, always discomfits, always unsettles, Zizioulas’ puzzling view that it is “well-ordered” notwithstanding.182 An eschatological church trusts, however, that all its members are guided by the Holy Spirit, that they all possess perspectives and gifts valuable to the whole community, and that the risks presented by an openness in the structures and forms of church—including the lack of clarity and fuzzy boundaries this sometimes creates—ultimately provide fertile ground for the growth of new ways of being together and serving God in and for the world, reflecting and anticipating thereby the coming basileia of communion in ways that could not be imagined—let alone planned or imposed— in advance. 6.2.5 Hope In the tension of the already–not yet, the fullness of the coming future is, obviously, the “not yet.” Our imagination of it, however, and our hope in it is what makes it present, by anticipation. To that extent, hope, the fifth mark of eschatological ecclesiology, can be thought of as the “now” of the basileia—its provisional and proleptic appearing, in the mode of trust and expectation. “Hope is the particular way in which the ultimate becomes present. Hope is in this sense realized eschatology, eschatology that has entered the present.”183 If Dermot Lane

181. Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom, pp. 93–95; quote at p. 95. 182. See in this regard John Caputo, “The Poetics of the Impossible and the Kingdom of God,” in Ward, pp. 469–81. 183. Weder, “Hope and Creation,” p. 185.

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is correct that among the three theological virtues hope is today weaker in the theological imagination than faith or charity, and if these latter have grown etiolated as a result, this is a very serious conceptual and practical problem for churches.184 Hope is a “distinctively human” capacity.185 Each experience of hope can be understood as a grace-filled gift of the Holy Spirit and the joy that arises from fulfilled hope as being anticipatory of the ultimate joy of the eternal basileia of God.186 That is because the object of hope is not the unrealized potential of immanent material processes, but the potential of the transcendent, open future.187 It is a capacity of the imagination.188 Eschatological hope is by virtue of its focus on the basileia not hope only for oneself, but even more for others, living and dead,189 for their reconciliation and fulfillment in the realization of the four-fold communion, and for the perfection of all creation, the site of that reconciliation. While we are each implicated in that, our hope is trans-personal, all-encompassing, universal. The limitless horizon of this hope is a life-giving resource for faith. Without it, we fall into a hellish despair, despair being nothing less than “the anticipation of the non-fulfillment of hope.”190 “Hell is hopelessness, and it is not for nothing that at the entrance to Dante’s hell there stands the words: ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’ ”191 In hope, we are connected to the object of our hoping. A profound link is established between “now” and “then.” Hope connects the proximate and the ultimate.192 As the character of the eschatological imagination described in the previous chapter made clear, this “ultimate” in which we hope, as Christians, is God’s becoming All-in-all, the condition called “the basileia,” in which creation is fulfilled and the communion of humanity with God, among human beings, within human persons, and between humanity and the rest of the cosmos is perfected. Such a hope for the excessive becomes excessive, exuberant, and confident. The vision of superabundance it awakens breaks open the closed vessels of our individual selves, our concepts and theologies, our plots and plans, and our structures and certainties, throwing them all into disarray. Out of the chaos this creates emerges the glimmerings of a more plenteous mode of being than we could see before, a mode of being we then desire to embody. This is what hope in the future, in the promise figured in the Christ event, but especially in the resurrection, does.

184. Lane, Keeping Hope Alive, p. 1. 185. Bauckham and Hart, “Shape of Time,” p. 59. 186. Manoussakis, “Promise of the New,” p. 88. 187. Bauckham and Hart, “Shape of Time,” p. 69. 188. Manoussakis, “Promise of the New,” p. 88. 189. Metz, Faith in History, p. 84. 190. Lane, Keeping Hope Alive, p. 60. 191. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 32. 192. Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, p. 3.

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By nature, hope aims at a reality that is yet to be. Theologically, this means that “we can only hope without knowing for sure that [God’s] never ending grace will ultimately prevail.”193 This has welcome epistemological implications. Consistent with the humility that should characterize the church’s knowing, Moltmann builds upon the Anselmian formula fides quaerens intellectum, modifying it for the eschatological context as spes quaerens intellectum.194 The accent is taken off the propositional and re-centered on the dispositional, on an attitude of hopefulness through which better understanding of God and God’s purpose is possible. In this sense, hope has a “pre-reflective” aspect,195 as do each of the components of eschatological imagination. Of course, as Fraser Watts argues, it would be dangerous to fully separate the propositional and the dispositional, as this can disintegrate hope “into either a mere propositional expectation that the future will be good (which is optimism rather than hope) or a mere wishfulness or fantasy about the future, which equally fails to inspire hope.”196 Nevertheless, eschatological hope, a catalytic source of epistemological “restlessness and torment,” drives us toward understanding better the object of hope, resulting in “anticipatory, fragmentary knowledge” that undergirds and reinforces commitment to both hope and the basileia at which it is aimed.197 Some of the “restlessness and torment” involved in eschatological hope stems from perceiving the vast distance between the present and the future, not temporally but qualitatively. Hope does not emerge from present conditions but from a heartfelt desire for the reversal of those conditions.198 This is what Metz calls a “solidaristic hope,” shaped apocalyptically by the urgency of imminent expectation.199 Church provides this hope with a public form, manifesting the dangerous memory of Christ, who liberates, who promises an open and reconciled future, who is the subversive power poised to transform the world.200 This hope motivates commitment to resist “the threats and seductions of the present,” to turn away from that which seeks to domesticate the ferocity of the coming basileia and to bring church “into line” with society.201 In making such claims about the character and theological role of eschatological hope, the intent is not “to mindlessly impose the Kingdom of God as a political and economic goal.” Churches, however, abdicate their vocation as the anticipatory witness to the basileia when they allow various blatant and more insidious forms

193. Schwarz, Eschatology, p. 397; emphases in original. 194. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 33. 195. Lane, Keeping Hope Alive, p. 59. 196. Fraser Watts, “Subjective and Objective Hope: Propositional and Attitudinal Aspects of Eschatology,” in Polkinghorne and Welker, p. 47; emphases in original. 197. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 33. 198. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 18. 199. Metz, Faith in History, p. 81. 200. Metz, Faith in History, pp. 89, 88. 201. Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, p. 294.

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of oppression to go unchecked or, worse, when by failing to confront them, they aid and abet them.202 It is precisely eschatological hope that inspires and energizes this aspect of ecclesial work. In response to those who claim that eschatology is too focused on the next world to do much good in this one, therefore, it is crucial to note that “in its openness to the future of God, hope is far from being a deadening opiate, rendering us passive and immobile in the face of our present challenges. On the contrary, hope is angry for a better world, and it is that which both commands and enables us to move forward.”203 In fact, “lethargy is the real enemy of every hope.”204 Paradoxically, such lethargy can itself arise out of the despair of a hopelessness stemming from a sense that nothing new is coming or will be given, that all has been realized.205 Hope is about being prepared. It entails taking action that emerges from an existential orientation to hopefulness, even when the object of that hope is not immediately present to one’s mind. This is why hope is both propositional and dispositional rather than emotional or conditional.206 As the root of an ecclesial eschatological imagination and of a political praxis founded upon it, this hope changes the life of the world.207 Before concluding, I want to note that it is not accidental that communion ecclesiology is not directly addressed in my exploration of the mark of hope. There is no sustained theological treatment of hope in either Zizioulas’ or Milbank’s ecclesiologies. This cannot be surprising. Given how realized their eschatologies are, how little the genuine future plays a role in their theologies, and how certain they are about their theological and ecclesiological knowledge, they have nothing in which to hope. It has all been accomplished. It simply needs to be appropriated. Neither is the ecclesial action that hope inspires of concern. Zizioulas, of course, is a political quietist of sorts and so the solidaristic stance of churches with the oppressed and marginalized is not one he entertains. Milbank’s politics are more engaged—in fact, they are so engaged that his theology sanctions democracy as the most Christian form of government and socialism as the most Christian economic system, completely ignoring the eschatological proviso that relativizes all political and economic schemes as contingencies of history. Moreover, Milbank’s approach is not to advocate a church that extends itself to the world in loving service, but one that extends its imperium into the “secular” sphere, demanding that the “world” become “church” so as to realize the ontology of peace universally. Part of eschatological hope is dispositional, and Milbank’s is not a disposition that is in the least bit amenable to it. If Zizioulas’ and Milbank’s ecclesiologies—and by extension, ecclesiologies of communion in general—are absent from this discussion of the ecclesiological value of hope, let that simply stand as an indication

202. Metz, Faith in History, p. 79. 203. Janet Martin Soskice, “The Ends of Man and the Future of God,” in Ward, p. 78. 204. Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, p. 3. 205. Lane, Keeping Hope Alive, p. 60. 206. Soskice, “Ends of Man,” p. 78. 207. Lane, Keeping Hope Alive, p. x.

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of an area in which this view of church and its worldly mission differs most from that advanced by ecclesiologies of communion and where these most need supplementation by the eschatological “more.” Ecclesial hope is not the result of a series of philosophical deductions about “reality.” Such hope springs from a lived experience of the power of God at work in Christian community through the presence of the Holy Spirit in corporate worship and worldly service. These are the ways in which “the Christian life is communion with the risen Lord.” This hope animates the communion of eucharist and the gathered life of church. It enables the provisional communion that looks forward to realized communion.208 And, having experienced that hope within the ecclesial community, church then proceeds into the world in hope, for service to creation as a sign of the basileia and an invitation to turn toward the abundant new life it offers.209 In this going out, hope is constituted as a practice. When spes quaerens intellectum is operationalized, then the hope-inflamed practices of Christian community not only emerge from a conceptual ecclesiology, but constitute a lived ecclesiology that, in turn (re-)shapes our imaginative understanding of church. The concept and practice of communion are one. Having seen how church is in and for the world in conceptualizing the eschatological imagination as an ecclesiology, in the next chapter, we discover the ways in which church is in and for the world in practicing that same eschatological imagination.

208. Neuhaus, “Wolfhart Pannenberg,” p. 47. 209. Bauckham and Hart, “Shape of Time,” p. 71.

Chapter 7 C H U R C H F O R T H E WO R L D  P A RT I I  : P R AC T IC I N G E S C HAT O L O G IC A L E C C L E SIO L O G Y

Theology is not solely a set of beliefs or concepts. It is also a practice. It is a practice both in the sense that theology as an intellectual enterprise is itself a practice and in the sense that the theological imagination simultaneously informs and is informed by religious practices more broadly. How one imagines the world theologically is shaped not only by faith-based beliefs about it, but also by faith-based engagements with it. Such engagements will themselves be informed by theological concepts, but the extent to which those beliefs are derived from prior religious notions or from prior religious practices is a complex question. What is clear, however, is that just as theological imagination is both concept-shaping and concept-shaped, theological imagination is also practice-shaping and practice-shaped. The ideas and actions comprising theological imagination are profoundly interrelated. Theological concepts require proper attention to practice to avoid becoming abstractions that are only tenuously related to a given reality. Theological practices require conceptual resources for discernment. These concepts keep practices connected to one’s theological commitments while simultaneously deepening those commitments.1 Ecclesiology is similarly structured. A robust theological imagination of church includes both ideas that inform and are informed by how we practice being church and practices that inform and are informed by what we conceive church to be. Ecclesiologies of communion are not unaware that ecclesial concepts and practices are deeply interrelated. The emphasis they place on eucharist as the central churchly act—the heart of both its doxological purpose and formational mission—testifies to the important place of practice in their theologies. They treat at length not only how the practice of eucharist is a logical entailment of deep theological commitments, but also, as already noted in the cases of John Zizioulas’ and John Milbank’s theologies, that eucharistic practice played and still plays a profound role in shaping theological notions (of church, of salvation, of the Trinity, and so on). They grasp that religious practice both emanates from and contributes to conceptual theological perspectives. However, because the eschatological 1. Kathryn Tanner, “Theological Reflection and Christian Practices,” in Miroslav Volf and Dorothy C. Bass (eds), Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), pp. 232–34.

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imagination of such ecclesiologies tend toward the overly realized, eucharist, as the realized presence of the promise, is often the only practice treated with any depth, bracketing out an entire range of additional Christian practices that might both shape and be shaped by theological ideas of church. To question this is not to impugn the status of eucharist as a core practice of the church, which it most certainly is. But it is to suggest that Christian community would profit from a more thorough theological investigation of and intentional engagement with other practices, as well. Those producing theological monographs, church reports, and the statements of bi- and multi-lateral ecclesial dialogues, all of which are often highly influenced by the reigning communion ecclesiological model, may need to broaden their view of what counts as proper Christian practice to include more than eucharist (and, to a lesser extent, baptism). Doing so would not only reveal more fully what churches do when they engage in eucharist, but resituating additional practices at the center rather than the periphery of the ecclesiological imagination would deepen churches’ ability to anticipate the basileia in and for the world by both infusing those additional practices with basileia-shaped import and intent, and by gaining new theological insight from engaging in them. Practicing an eschatological ecclesiology, therefore, is as crucial to re-imagining church as conceptualizing an eschatological ecclesiology. In fact, the two are separated only artificially in the first place. To support these claims, this chapter makes an argument in four parts. The first briefly explores how theological imagination is, in fact, practice-shaped and practice-shaping. This establishes the groundwork for the second part, an examination of how Dorothy Bass and Craig Dykstra’s work on Christian practices can help us grasp the ways in which a broader construal of Christian practices beyond eucharist can be understood to both flow from and feed into a deeper eschatological imagination. The specifically ecclesiological aspects of this are taken up in the third section, before concluding in the final part with thoughts about how such an approach to practice, combined with the conceptual framework provided in earlier chapters, coheres and interacts with an ecclesiology that, featuring a more tensive, basileia-informed eschatological imagination, provides more than what current ecclesiologies of communion supply: a vision of church as existing neither beyond nor over against but in and for a world that is the object of God’s promise and love.

7.1 Theological Imagination: Practice-shaped and Practice-shaping Bruce Morrill notes that “there is a certain awkwardness to writing in the abstract genre of a scholarly text about theologies critically committed to the particularities and contexts of the practice of faith.”2 I am fully aware of this. I will attempt to

2. Bruce T. Morrill, Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory: Political and Liturgical Theology in Dialogue (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2000), p. xv.

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mitigate it. And I will fail in doing so. A certain degree of abstraction in an academic discussion is unavoidable. I hope, however, that writing about context-sensitive practices with an acknowledgment of this awkwardness might at least lessen it. There is an awkwardness, too, in theologizing systematically about the chaotic messiness of religious faith as practiced by creatures and in a creation which are both shot through with contradictions and contingencies, particularly when the eschatological lens through which one has chosen to view theology, practice, and world affirms that neat, integrated systems are impossible, but can only be provisional, partial, endlessly revisable, and so, from the perspective of “Truth,” inherently unreliable. Nevertheless, the heuristic value of systematic thinking lies (at least) in providing a diagnostic mechanism for checking (theo)logical consistency that the discipline seems better off for continuing to embrace. While it is certainly true that consonance among theological propositions may not always indicate a straightforward coherence—at times, it can instead reveal a “spiritual logjam” or “a coerced or unreflective uniformity”3—systematic thinking provides an opportunity to mark contradictions among beliefs or disjunctions between concepts and practice. Most often, this indicates an issue that requires additional theological work. This is not to say, however, that such work will always result in achieving total systemic harmony. It may result in declaring the presence of an aporia, a paradox, or a mystery. Given the ineffability of theology’s object, the irreducible complexity of the world, the limitations of the human intellect, and the inconsistencies within human psyches, this is to be expected—particularly by an eschatologist.4 An airtight system results only in suffocation.5 But a systematic approach with room to breathe provides an environment for understanding and living the faith in new and surprising ways.

3. Amy Plantinga Pauw, “Attending to the Gaps between Beliefs and Practices,” in Volf and Bass, p. 42. 4. As Kathleen Cahalan points out, “If we are going to speak meaningfully of integration we must be cognizant of the dangers lurking around the concept and the impossibility of ever gaining an integrated self, society, or church [or, I would add, theological system] in any complete, final, and whole way. It should be obvious that such a claim is based on Christian hope that lies in a future eschatological promise that is not of our own making” (Cahalan, “Integration in Theological Education,” in Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore (ed.), The WileyBlackwell Companion to Practical Theology (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), p. 386). 5. While this is true even at the abstract level of theorizing or conceptualizing, when practice is added into such a system, the suffocation that can arise from it may also be the result of what Mark Chaves has called the “religious congruence fallacy,” a common belief— even among sociologists of religion and others who study religion concretely (and who therefore might be expected to know better)—that beliefs and practices form a neat, consistent, harmonious pair (Chaves, “Rain Dances in the Dry Season: Overcoming the Religious Congruence Fallacy,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 49 (2010), pp. 1–14). Whether we as theologians wish to make something of the empirical reality of this disjunction from a normative standpoint is one question. Whether we have the nerve to

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There is also no interest here in perpetuating the additional theological awkwardness that often arises when “systematic” and “practical” modes of theology are juxtaposed, even with the admirable aim of expressing their “complementarity.” No benefit derives from distinguishing the two overly strongly.6 Doing so results in a replay of the “theory–practice” debate that a more holistic approach to theology has helped the discipline to surpass.7 While the systematic approach to theologizing attempts to bring conceptual coherence to the endeavor, the practical approach, when it avoids falling prey to the theory–practice dichotomy, roots theology in a concrete world of paradox and contradiction, where the abstract tidiness of a fully self-consistent system is perceived properly as chimerical.8 This, again, is not to argue for the complementarity of the two, but points instead to the inability to profitably separate them in well-rounded theological work to begin with. As Bonnie Miller-McLemore, a pioneer in the field of practical theology, notes, systematicians are increasingly attending to “practical” theological methods and concerns at the same time that practical theologians are increasingly coming to focus more directly on “systematic” (that is, doctrinal) considerations. The validity of a distinction between the two, she rightly maintains, is primarily a question of emphasis, not of a substantial difference between the sub-disciplines.9 It is crucial for a post-metaphysical, non-foundational ecclesiology to pay sustained and explicit attention to practices,10 for although practices do not prove the truth of theological propositions, they do render them more or less credible and they are most intelligible not at the level of the practitioner, but at the level of the practicing community.11 As the things that Christian groups do together over time out of their perceived consonance with truth, it is precisely their practices that distinguish churches from other kinds of communal configurations. Practices are marked by the visionary purposes of the group from which they emerge,

face it squarely as a common phenomenon is another. Some of the practical theologians I examine here may not have been assiduous enough in stopping their ears to the siren call of this attractive danger. Determining if that is the case, however, would take me too far afield of my argument. I myself am aware of it and wish to advocate strongly for resisting it, not only on the grounds that theologians should have a realistic view of general human tendencies but also on the theological grounds of an eschatologically informed imagination, which understands that complete congruence and thoroughgoing systematic coherence this side of the basileia is impossible. 6. Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Christian Theology in Practice: Discovering a Discipline (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2012), pp. 2–5. 7. Miller-McLemore, Christian Theology in Practice, p. 104. 8. Jaco Hamman, “Playing,” in Miller-McLemore, p. 44. 9. Miller-McLemore, Christian Theology in Practice, p. 104. 10. Gregory Walter, Being Promised: Theology, Gift, and Practice (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), p. 2. 11. Pauw, “Attending to the Gaps,” pp. 34, 36, 40.

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purposes they exist to develop and perpetuate.12 The underlying purpose of Christian practices is the missio Dei. In terms of eschatological ecclesiology, this means they anticipate and provisionally manifest the basileia in and for the world. In an ecclesiology of eschatological anticipation, Christian practices both flow from and expand the eschatological imagination of communion. In James K. A. Smith’s pithy formulation, articulating one side of this dynamic, “the way to the imagination is through the body.”13 It is no less true, as he well knows, that the imagination also influences what we do in the body as our (individual and corporate) bodies. These practices inflame and direct desire. The particular desire Smith has in mind is a desire for the basileia, one that does not arise “naturally” but results from Christian practices,14 practices that themselves come into being as attempts to “intentionally embody the story of the gospel and enact a vision of the coming kingdom of God in such a way that they’ll seep into our bones and become the background for our perceptions, the baseline for our dispositions, and the basis for our (often unthought) action in the world.”15 This requires some additional nuance. Practices shape or misshape Christian community, depending upon the spiritual health and vitality of that group’s ideas and actions.16 Just as a community’s mere assertion of a “proper” theological belief is insufficient by itself for creating or authenticating church, a community’s practice does not provide incontrovertible evidence of the quality of its ecclesial status or character, nor guarantee that its practitioners will automatically have their desires formed in a particular shape or direction. As Nicholas Healy cautions, individuals and groups can engage in practices for reasons quite at odds with their original intention, such as crossing oneself with holy water for superstitious reasons simply because one learned to do so from one’s parents.17 A group’s practice alone—even liturgical participation—does not inevitably lead to a desire for the basileia. If theological concepts require embodiment in appropriate theological practices, theological practices likewise require tempering with appropriate theological concepts if they are to achieve the purpose for which such practices have emerged: anticipation of the basileia in and for the world. The potential for deformation resulting from divorcing concept and practice and the fact that neither belief nor practice, on their own, will each lead to the other, mean that Christian theological practice—conceptually and concretely—

12. James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formations (Cultural Liturgies, 1; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), p. 62. 13. James K. A. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works (Cultural Liturgies, 2; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), p. 125. 14. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, p. 62. 15. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom, p. 40. 16. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom, p. 4. 17. Nicholas M. Healy, “Practices and the New Ecclesiology: Misplaced Concreteness?,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 5 (2003), pp. 287–308 (294–96).

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has crucial affective implications. Edward Collins Vacek argues for precisely these reasons that orthodoxy (“right belief ”) and orthopraxis (“right action”) may be secondary in theology to what he calls “orthopathy,” or “right emotion.”18 Specifically, he contends that rightly ordered love and desire provide the link between beliefs and actions in the Christian context. This does not mean individualistic emotionalism. “Orthopathy” indicates a deeply ecstatic love and desire for God and God’s purposes that unites theological conceptualizing and acting. Rather than practices issuing inevitably in desire for the basileia, then, desire for the basileia, once ignited, lights up both theological concepts and practices, allowing each to shape and re-shape the other in ways that align with the aims of an eschatological ecclesiology. This has tremendous epistemological import. “As cognitions, emotions reveal the values involved in objects named in orthodox propositions. As connectors, emotions allow us to participate in these values and to be modified by that participation.”19 How our emotion—our love—is configured determines “whether, how, and what we can know”20 and what, accordingly, we are likely to do or not do. The shape of the theological imagination that gives rise to and that is informed by Christian ecclesial practice, therefore, shows itself once more to be connected intimately to the conceptual, and is revealed to lie quite close to the heart of what it means to be church. Theological imagination, both practice-shaped and practiceshaping, once again proves to be central in ecclesiology.

7.2 Practicing Eschatology: The Bass–Dykstra “School” of Practical Theology 7.2.1 Context and History of the Christian Practices Approach to Practical Theology Practical theology, which Miller-McLemore defines as “that discipline most concerned with mediating and integrating knowledge within theological education and between seminary, congregation, and wider society,”21 describes, using the sources and methods of theology and, often, the social sciences, “new connections between thinking, being, and doing.”22 It is allied to what Terrence Tilley calls the “practical turn” in philosophy, in which “the Enlightenment individual subject has been replaced by the community-shaped agent, and experience has been replaced

18. Edward Collins Vacek, “Orthodoxy Requires Orthopathy: Emotions in Theology,” Horizons 40 (2013), pp. 218–41. 19. Vacek, “Orthodoxy Requires Orthopathy,” p. 240. 20. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, p. 70. 21. Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, “The Contributions of Practical Theology,” in MillerMcLemore, p. 6. 22. Miller-McLemore, “The Contributions of Practical Theology,” p. 2.

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by practice.”23 In philosophy and social theory, this “turn” is exemplified by the work of figures such as Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.24 Systematic theologians who carry this project forward in their own work, according to Tilley, tend to be liberationists and postliberals, which is consistent with the importance of religious praxis in these approaches.25 Although the concerns of systematic theology are thus hardly absent from practical theology, practical theology is suspicious of systematizing and often subjects received ideas and practices to judicious critique, a tendency it shares with constructive theologies.26 As Miller-McLemore points out, practical theology “is an open-ended, contingent, unfinished grasp or analysis of faith in action. It focuses on the tangible, the local, the concrete, and the embodied.”27 These are precisely the qualities that make the contribution of practical theology so crucial for the development and maintenance of theological imagination and that make it so salutary for eschatological thinking. Ted Smith notes that, as practical theology has risen to greater prominence in recent decades, “practice has become a word to conjure with, a potent tangle of meanings that has been deployed for a wide variety of purposes.”28 In general, “practice” indicates an action designed to attain a particular objective, and “practical theology” an area of inquiry into the practices whose objectives are explicitly and intentionally connected to understanding and manifesting one’s faith.29 For Hans Schilderman, “the distinction between actus hominis (the actions of humans) and actus humanus (the human act) is significant. The latter takes into account the existential, moral, and religious meaning of practice as consisting of intentional, freely chosen, and responsible acts.”30 Practical theology, then, does not concern itself with just any old human behavior (the actus hominis), but with behaviors invested with specific meaning and designed to achieve specific moral ends (the actus humanus). In so doing, practical theology becomes, in Smith’s words, “the discipline that reflects on [hermeneutical and embodied] knowledge and brings it into critical conversation with other modes of knowing.”31

23. Terrence W. Tilley, The Disciples’ Jesus: Christology as Reconciling Practice (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2008), p. 30. 24. Dorothy C. Bass and Craig Dykstra (eds), For Life Abundant: Practical Theology, Theological Education, and Christian Ministry (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), p. 4, n. 7; Ted A. Smith, “Theories of Practice,” in Miller-McLemore, pp. 246–50. 25. Tilley mentions especially Roberto Goizueta, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Stanley Hauerwas, and James William McClendon, Jr. (Tilley, Disciples’ Jesus, pp. 29–30). 26. Pamela Cooper-White, “Suffering,” in Miller-McLemore, p. 24. 27. Miller-McLemore, “The Contributions of Practical Theology,” p. 14. 28. Smith, “Theories of Practice,” p. 244; emphasis in original. 29. Hans Schilderman, “Quantitative Method,” in Miller-McLemore, p. 124. 30. Schilderman, “Quantitative Method,” p. 124. 31. Smith, “Theories of Practice,” p. 251.

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This is close to the understanding with which Bass and Dykstra approach practical theology. The institutional base of what might be referred to as their “Christian practices school” of practical theology32 has been the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith at Valparaiso University, directed by Bass and funded in part by Dykstra, a practical theologian and former vice president at the Lilly Endowment who is now a professor of practical theology at Duke Divinity School.33 Bass, Dykstra, and the theologians associated with them have spent nearly two decades attempting to identify and strengthen Christian practices. They have produced influential writings34 and, with their attention to the shape and meaning of Christian practices—practices such as welcoming, healing, discerning, forgiving, suffering, and the like35—they have successfully fulfilled practical theology’s aim of challenging the common “misconception that people of faith outside the academy do not practice or produce theology and that theological claims and activities have little to do with public life.”36 While Bass and Dykstra’s approach emphasizes the “everyday” character of many expressions of lived faith, it also reveals how these practices are characterized by a Christian source, referent, and inflection that differentiates them from actions that might appear to be the same as those undertaken by people of a different or no faith, and why this difference is theologically significant.37 32. The Christian practices approach to practical theology is not the only mode in which practical theology can proceed. It is, however, very congenial to the position being advanced here because, unlike practical theological work focused on pastoral formation, congregational development, or theological pedagogy, which often proceed according to the research methods and concerns of the social sciences, the Christian practices “school,” generally more narrative and (where it verges closest toward the social sciences) ethnographic in character, provides a conceptual framework for analyzing and drawing out the theological implications of embodied, material modes of Christian life in which the qualities represented by the basileia are already present, sometimes even without the actor’s knowledge, and that, when thematized explicitly in theological reflection, can be amplified as practices that are intentionally meant to produce basileia-shaped life, individually and corporately. The Christian practices approach, in short, seems a particularly apt one for exploring the embodied aspect of theological imagination. 33. For a particularly good history of this branch of practical theology, see Benjamin T. Conner, Practicing Witness: A Missional Vision of Christian Practice (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2012), pp. 43–67. 34. Of special importance in this regard are Dorothy C. Bass (ed.), Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2nd edn., 2010), along with the aforementioned Practicing Theology and For Life Abundant. 35. I follow Bonnie Miller-McLemore in preferring to name practices with a gerund, as it underscores the “dual capacity” of such words, highlighting their ability to serve as “noun and verb, subject and action” (Miller-McLemore, “The Contributions of Practical Theology,” p. 8; emphases in original). 36. Miller-McLemore, “The Contributions of Practical Theology,” p. 4. 37. Dorothy C. Bass, “Ways of Life Abundant,” in Bass and Dykstra, p. 31.

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Take, for example, the practice of hospitality to strangers. As we understand this practice, the action that occurs when the staff members of a homeless shelter provide a homeless man with a bed is only one movement within it; it is not in itself a practice. The [specifically Christian] practice of hospitality, as we understand it, also encompasses, among other things, the biblical stories that have shaped the way in which the hosts perceive their guests; the specific habits, virtues, knowledge, and other capacities of mind and spirit that the hosts bring to the situation, many of which could have been developed only within the context of practice itself; the liturgical words and gestures that make manifest in crystallized form the hospitality of God to humankind and our obligations to one another; and the domestic hosting that prepares family members to break bread with strangers in less familiar settings as well.38

For Bass and Dykstra, Christian practices are complex patterns of action, the embodied wisdom of Christians “across many generations and cultures” pertaining to the nature and condition of humanity and the world and to the relationships between God, humanity, and world. They are layered, communal actions with epistemological and formational import for Christian life.39 Such practices “must pursue . . . good[s] beyond [themselves], responding to and embodying the selfgiving dynamics of God’s own creating, redeeming, and sustaining grace.” In other words, they cannot be “self-referential and self-perpetuating.”40 On the contrary, Christian practices are “the traditioned yet always-emerging patterns through which communities live as Jesus’ disciples, responding to God’s grace and to the needs of human beings and all creation. [. . . Christian] practices [are] forms within and through which a Christian way of life takes shape,”41 a way of life that fulfills an inchoate longing for meaningful existence in multiple dimensions and that “embodies a grateful human response to God’s presence and promises.”42 Moreover, when Christians do “certain things together in the light of and in response to God’s active presence, they have in a sense shared in the practices of God,”43 which affords practitioners a degree of knowledge about God and God’s world, “including ourselves.”44 Engaging in Christian practice, therefore, does not simply reflect one’s faith, although it does do that. It also catalyzes new theological insight.45 The cognitive content derived from engaging in a particular Christian 38. Craig Dykstra and Dorothy C. Bass, “A Theological Understanding of Christian Practices,” in Volf and Bass, p. 19. 39. Bass, “Ways of Life Abundant,” p. 29. 40. Bass, “Ways of Life Abundant,” p. 30. 41. Bass, “Ways of Life Abundant,” p. 32. 42. Dykstra and Bass, “Theological Understanding,” p. 16. 43. Dykstra and Bass, “Theological Understanding,” p. 23. Dykstra and Bass imply that God’s practices are those that God is depicted as performing in scripture: “honor[ing] the human body, embrac[ing] death, and rest[ing], call[ing] creation good,” and so forth. 44. Dykstra and Bass, “Theological Understanding,” p. 24. 45. Bass, Practicing Our Faith, p. xix.

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practice produces both fresh theological imaginings46 and deeper understanding of the theological significance of other practices, given their profound interrelationship.47 Normatively speaking, they point the way toward and manifest a way of life that, consonant with divine purpose, leads to the flourishing of creation,48 a significance of these practices that becomes clearest during worship. In a way that resembles the connection that ecclesiologists of communion wish to establish between eucharist and extra-ecclesial life, Bass and Dykstra maintain that “worship distills the Christian meaning of the practices and holds them up for the whole community to see.”49 It is in worship that we come to understand what we are doing when we engage in Christian practices and we discover that such practices are themselves worshipful. Notice, however, that the idea is not that practice flows from eucharist out into the world, but that Christian practice is most authentic when its meaning is simultaneously refracted through, an outgrowth of, and a contribution to both worship and an entire way of life, a more complex scenario than the church–world dualism that most ecclesiologies of communion seem to present, one more in keeping with the reciprocity between concept and action in a well-rounded theological imagination, and one quite salutary to the eschatological point of view. 7.2.2 Eschatological Horizons in Christian Practice Pamela Cooper-White, in her analysis of suffering as a Christian practice, exemplifies the interplay of the conceptual and the practical within theological imagination, writing: “Guided . . . by my Anglican identity and formation, I take scripture, tradition, and reason and experience as valid sources for theological reflection—but as a practical theologian I begin with experience, then scripture and tradition interpreted by reason, for both ongoing theological reflection and the creative shaping of personal and communal responses to suffering.”50 Within this framework, the inevitability of suffering provides fertile ground for the emergence of “new life” by practicing close attention to the sufferings of self and others and situating them within the larger story of creation, its divine transformation, and our proleptic participation in it.51 The cross and resurrection stand as narrative reminders of this practical and theological call to witness the suffering of the world. As creatures made in the image and likeness of God, we too are called to be witnesses, martyrs in the sense of not shrinking from one another’s cries of pain, but entering into the costly

46. Bass, Practicing Our Faith, p. xx. 47. Dykstra and Bass, “Theological Understanding,” p. 29. 48. Bass, Practicing Our Faith, p. xxiv. 49. Craig Dykstra and Dorothy C. Bass, “Times of Yearning, Practices of Faith,” in Bass, p. 9. 50. Cooper-White, “Suffering,” p. 24; emphasis in original. 51. Cooper-White, “Suffering,” p. 29.

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but godly vocation of being-with. By standing as witnesses who offer deep recognition of one another’s pain, we participate in a holy process of transforming mute pain into expressive suffering. Through the shared comprehension of such suffering, transformation becomes possible—healing and renewal for a broken world!52

Quite intentionally (though without using the same words) and quite specifically, Cooper-White grounds this Christian practice in an eschatological vision of the fulfillment of the four-fold communion between human beings and God, among human beings, within human persons, and between humanity and the rest of creation. This eschatological horizon in Christian practice appears repeatedly in the Christian-practices literature and especially in the work of the Bass–Dykstra theologians. While this may be exciting, it should not be surprising. As Jaco Hamman observes, “the vast majority of practical theological inquiry is directed at a definite telos, or end, such as the kingdom of God, or a specific (ortho)praxis of the church, such as mission, formation, or justice.”53 Hamman echoes here a point I observed already—that practices have an aim built into them—while adding that this aim is commonly eschatological. Miller-McLemore goes further still, stating that “ultimately, practical theology is normatively and eschatologically oriented. That is, it not only describes how people live as a people of faith in communities and society. It also considers how they might do so more fully in and beyond this life and world.”54 An eschatological imagination is not simply mental. Building and maintaining eschatological hope requires more than vision or notional assent. It demands practice. In fact, such hope often arises from the practice of it, “in the praxis of thisworldly relationships, in doing deeds of service, charity, and justice.”55 Ben Witherington points out that scripture teaches the same, observing that “what Paul and the other New Testament writers call us to is to live in the light of the future, live in the light of the Kingdom that has come, is coming, and shall come, letting our eschatological worldview shape how we view and should live out all the normal activities of a Christian life.”56 From the perspective of practical theology, this is the upshot of our practices and the intent of our theologizing.

52. Cooper-White, “Suffering,” p. 30; emphasis in original. 53. Hamman, “Playing,” p.  43. An attentive reader might rightly surmise that I would prefer to see Hamman’s repeated use of “or” in this sentence dropped in favor of using “and.” 54. Miller-McLemore, Christian Theology in Practice, p.  103. What life beyond “this world” might mean to Miller-McLemore is not stated, as far as I can tell, but her larger point is well taken. 55. Sarah MacMillan, “A Sociologist Appeals to Theological Hope in Postmodern Apocalypses,” CrossCurrents 61 (2011), pp. 232–44 (236, 237). 56. Ben Witherington, III, The Rest of Life: Rest, Play, Eating, Studying, Sex from a Kingdom Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2012), p. ix.

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The central aim of practical theology ought to be the transformation of society in the direction of the [basileia]. Even though human effort alone will not bring about the full realization of God’s Reign on earth, Christian churches do have an important proleptic or anticipatory role to play here and now with regard to the divinely determined future for the world. Funded by eschatological hope and grounded in liturgical practices like baptism and Eucharist which “remember the future,” Christian communities bear witness in word and deed to the transforming power of God in the world toward a coming future marked by the knowledge and praise of God and the experience of justice, peace, and reconciliation among peoples.57

For theologians who share this perspective, it is “foremost and foundational” that Christian practices be understood as direct participation in “God’s work of reconciliation,” the divine work of establishing communion that is an ongoing project in the world.58 Practice for these writers is therefore always relational practice.59 If engaged through an eschatological imagination that understands the basileia as the future realization of a mode of being in which relational communion is perfected, such a focus on Christian practices as relational practices will inevitably include an exploration of the eschatological dimensions of those same practices. This is precisely what is found among the Bass–Dykstra theologians, as Bass and Dykstra themselves make plain.60 Attending to both the now and the not yet, Christian practices foment an anticipatory way of life that is “responsive to the gracious presence [now] and startling promises [not yet] of God”61 as Christians work together, under the power of the Holy Spirit, to shape an emerging, new, unforeseen-but-anticipated reality that, it is hoped, resembles the basileia better than the reality that preceded it. They do this without ever expecting anything short of God’s own action to fully instantiate the basileia, while remaining vigilant against falling into the trap of progressivistic optimism, and while fully cognizant of the inevitability of missing the mark. As Bass and Dykstra put it, expressing it in markedly eschatological terms, “At their most basic level, Christian practices are not our own but God’s. [. . . I]n doing these things together we hope to become more receptive to what God is already doing to sustain and redeem the world. Through such practices, we open our lives to God and one another, trusting that God is indeed making all things new

57. Gordon S. Mikoski, “Educating and Forming Disciples for the Reign of God,” in Bass and Dykstra, p. 349. 58. Conner, Practicing Witness, p. 50. 59. Dykstra and Bass, “Times of Yearning,” p. 2.; Christine Pohl, Living into Community: Cultivating Practices That Sustain Us (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2012), p. 5. 60. Dykstra and Bass, “Theological Understanding,” p. 21. 61. Dykstra and Bass, “Times of Yearning,” p. 12.

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(Rev. 21.5).”62 Language recalling the eschatological themes surveyed in the previous chapters also appears in Bass and Dykstra’s characterization of the content of Christian practices. The content of each practice challenges, lures, and sometimes drags its practitioners into new ways of being and knowing that are commensurate with that practice—and thus, if it is rightly attuned, commensurate with the well-being of creation. Living within such a practice gives men and women certain capacities that enable them to read the world differently—even, we would argue, more truly.63

Christian practices cause us to ask ourselves whether we are living in right relationship—to God, others, ourselves, and the world.64 Their practical function lies in “providing concrete help for human flourishing that is informed by basic Christian beliefs about who human beings really are and what God is doing in the world.”65 Their theological and normative function is to provide a means for humanity to enter in to the reconciling practices of God in order to “cooperate with God in addressing the needs of one another and creation.”66 In each of these aspects of Christian practice, there is direct consonance with the preoccupations and themes of the robust eschatological imagination that is crucial to living out and into the ecclesial vocation. Bass, Dykstra, and the theologians associated with them are animated by an implied eschatological imagination of communion that very much resembles the one in operation here. When analyzing the theological importance of and rationale for the Christian practices treated in the group’s primary programmatic volume, Practicing Our Faith, for example, one finds that virtually every essay probes the eschatological origins or aims of the practice in question. This rarely surfaces explicitly. (“Eschatology” does not even appear in the book’s index.) Yet, both the overall view of Christian practice and the treatment of individual practices offered by the contributors seem to assume a full-bodied eschatological imagination to be a theological prerequisite for practicing Christianity well. Because the eschatological implications of these essays are implicit rather than stated, and because those implications are so crucial to my position, they will be drawn out at length in the following pages. The result might seem overly comprehensive. However, it will not only make the implicit eschatological imagination embedded in their essays explicit, but will form an archive of eschatologically shaped practices—although only a suggestive collection of such practices and not at all a definitive catalogue of them—both of which will help to advance the argument in the following section.

62. Dorothy C. Bass and Craig Dykstra, “Practicing a Way of Life,” in Bass, p. 195. 63. Dykstra and Bass, “Theological Understanding,” p. 25; emphases added. 64. Dykstra and Bass, “Times of Yearning,” p. 2. 65. Dykstra and Bass, “Theological Understanding,” p. 23. 66. Dykstra and Bass, “Theological Understanding,” p. 22.

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In her chapter on “Honoring the Body,” Stephanie Paulsell echoes the emphasis on the resurrection grammar of the eschatological imagination, observing that how we wash, dress, touch, and express sexuality and worship with our bodies is simultaneously informed by scripture, the needs of those around us, and our overarching vision of why bodies matter in the first place: “It is Jesus’ resurrected body that teaches us, perhaps more than any other image in Christianity, that bodies matter.”67 Paulsell invokes the eschatological image of creation groaning in its labor to give birth to the new creation (Rom. 8.22–23) when discussing the connection of theological imagination to the real-life travails of a woman experiencing a dangerous delivery, an experience that opened up the meaning of that text—and both the existential condition expressed and the divine promise conveyed by it—for her in fresh ways (Paulsell, 2010, p. 14). She describes how the practice of honoring the bodies of others makes us vulnerable to our own needs, and more aware of the integrity and unacceptable abuse of other people’s bodies, particularly those oppressed by war, famine, and disease, in terms quite similar to those employed by Jürgen Moltmann and Johannes Baptist Metz (Paulsell, 2010, pp. 15–16). Paulsell concludes that the Christian practice of honoring the body requires that we view the world through the lens of Jesus’ wounded but resurrected body. His broken body brings into focus the bodies of the sick and the wounded and the exploited. His resurrection shows us the beauty God intends for all bodies. As we love and suffer, as we seek God and each other, with our bodies, we remember that every body is blessed by God, deserving of protection and care (Paulsell, 2010, p. 27).

The implicit operation of an eschatological imagination in Paulsell’s essay that is similar to the one advocated in the previous two chapters is not idiosyncratic among the authors of Practicing Our Faith. Ana María Pineda, in her chapter on “Hospitality,” links that practice to the eschatological image of the Exodus, through which captives are liberated to new life in a land of divine promise, and asserts that the practice of hospitality provides practitioners with insight into living in a new openness with others,68 which one might say teaches us the form of and concretely manifests basileia living. Similarly, in her essay on “Household Economics,” Sharon Daloz Parks demonstrates that how we provision our homes affects the health of the global oikos,69 a relationship of communion on a planetary scale that she maintains must be carried out in a manner that effects a new way of being together in the world and new ways of treating the world in accordance with basileia values (Parks, 2010, pp. 54–56). In Parks’ view, a community’s choices are the embodied

67. Stephanie Paulsell, “Honoring the Body,” in Bass, p.  26. In treating each author’s contribution to Practicing Our Faith, citations subsequent to the initial one are made parenthetically in the text. 68. Ana María Pineda, “Hospitality,” in Bass, pp. 33–34. 69. Sharon Parks, “Household Economics,” in Bass, pp. 44–45.

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outgrowth of true communion, a practical result of which will be better global stewardship (Parks, 2010, pp. 56–57). Shawn Copeland’s essay, “Saying Yes and Saying No,” is devoted to ascetical practices of discernment, which she deploys to identify and say “yes” to the things that promote the flourishing of that which, in my terms, is consistent with the basileia and to identify and say “no” to the things that are not. “Our spirituality,” Copeland writes in a manner that parallels to some extent my conception of the relational reality and conceptual formulation of the four-fold communion, “is our capacity to relate to God, to other human beings, and to the natural world. Through these relationships, we give meaning to our experience and attune our hearts and minds to the deepest dimensions of reality.”70 According to Copeland, the ascetical practice of right choosing is rooted in a private and corporate prayer life (which means it has ecclesiological implications) that seeks to imagine a new way of life and that petitions God for the grace to pursue and realize it (Copeland, 2010, pp. 68–72).“In this practice, we are invited and challenged to make a fully conscious choice about who it is we are and who it is we shall become” (Copeland, 2010, p. 73; emphasis added), and we discover new, unexpected, and life-giving ways to live out of and into the imagination of that future. Closely connected to this, and considered from an even more pronounced and explicitly eschatological standpoint, Frank Rogers affirms in his essay on the practice of “Discernment” that God is directing creation to a specific end, one shaped by reconciliation and communion: God is seeking to bring healing and wholeness and reconciliation, transforming this broken world into that New Creation where there will be no more sadness or injustice or pain. Our decisions and our search for guidance take place in the active presence of a God who ultimately cares about our life situations and who invites us to participate in the divine activities of healing and transformation.71

For Rogers, discernment is a relational, communal practice that seeks out opportunities for and facilitates participation in the “goal” of God’s work: “the new creation” (Rogers, 2010, p.  109). This interpersonal enterprise can only be undertaken in the context of deep, trusting relationality of a sort considered in the previous chapter (Rogers, 2010, p. 110). In a manner that also echoes the previous discussion of newness and risk, communal discernment of and participation in the work of God in proleptically anticipating the new creation is difficult and taxing. “The methods are easy. The practice, however, is challenging, painful, and complex. Unjust power is exposed; personal agendas are demoted; fears are confronted; interests are threatened; lines of authority shift” (Rogers, 2010, p. 115). All of this is in keeping with the eschatological imagination, which understands

70. M. Shawn Copeland, “Saying Yes and Saying No,” in Bass, p. 61. 71. Frank Rogers, Jr., “Discernment,” in Bass, p. 104.

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the present-yet-coming basileia to provide a contrast to current conditions and, to the extent that the present falls short of the perfection of communion that lies at the heart of eschatological promise, a judgment upon them that destabilizes and denaturalizes them. As unsettling as this is, however, “the practice [of discernment] bears a promise. In exposing the obstacles that fear and selfishness put in the way of freedom, it opens avenues through which a healing Spirit may move. And in providing an opportunity to imagine solutions we did not anticipate at the beginning, it helps us to find better paths toward the future” (Rogers, 2010, pp.  115–16). The eschatological undergirding of all this language and of his approach is evident. In her own contribution to the volume, Bass notes that “Keeping Sabbath” derives from ancient Mosaic law, where it was connected to the protological rest of God after the “completion” of creation. In Christian terms, sabbath-keeping is more directly associated with the eschatological reality of the resurrection and so is observed on Sunday, the eschatological “eighth day,” described by Bass as “the day on which the future burst into the present.”72 It is the eschatological phenomenon of the resurrection that, for Christians, decisively changed what it means to practice keeping sabbath: “The appropriate response was to celebrate each Sunday with a feast of communion—one that looked back to Jesus’ passion and resurrection and forward to the great banquet that would occur at the end of time” (Bass, 2010, p. 83). While changing social and cultural contexts have brought heavy pressures to give it up to bear on those who would observe sabbath as a regular intentional practice, Bass thinks it is possible to recover it. “But,” she writes, “this can only happen as we help one another develop new forms rooted in the enduring truths of creation, liberation, and resurrection” (Bass, 2010, pp. 84–85)— interlocking eschatological themes that, as I have pointed out previously, are decisive in an ecclesiology of eschatological anticipation. Eschatologically shaped communion is also effected whenever we engage in the Christian practice of “Testimony,” as Thomas Hoyt observes. Offering testimony is a communal endeavor and is done to reinforce communal ties as well as to better the wider world by providing grounds of hope for its flourishing and motivation for working to bring it about.73 Testimony tells the story of one’s own salvation, but not only as it connects to some kind of “afterlife,” but to the earthly “heaven” that is possible whenever the liberative, reconciling, salvific work of God breaks into the present (Hoyt, 2010, pp. 97–99). Testifying to the truth of God’s promise and its transformative realization (partially now, thoroughgoing hereafter) foments hope and puts one in solidarity with the communion of saints, the “great cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12.1) who have testified before us (Hoyt, 2010, pp. 100–101). In this way, worship itself becomes embodied testimony. Washing new Christians in the water of baptism, for example, constitutes “testimony to one another and to God that we are bound to one another and to Christians of every time and place”

72. Dorothy C. Bass, “Keeping Sabbath,” in Bass, pp. 82–83. 73. Thomas Hoyt, Jr., “Testimony,” in Bass, p. 92.

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and offering the peace is testimony “to the reconciliation God intends for all people” (Hoyt, 2010, p.  99)—both of these being principal eschatological themes. The practices of gratitude, promise-keeping, healing, and dying well are equally tied to an eschatological imagination. The practice of gratitude allows for thankfulness even in the midst of suffering and uncertainty because we know that our present vision is partial, because our communion with others comforts us in the hardest of times, and because negative conditions are not perceived as definitive for our identities.74 Promise-keeping, obviously, is a crucial practice for expressing faith in and coming to better understand the object of our faith: a God who is above all the God of promise.75 To offer healing is to contribute to the wholeness and flourishing of a world moving toward its final perfection, a plenitude promised in the resurrection of Jesus.76 The manifold ways in which Christians try to bring a measure of healing to the world reflect their “efforts to participate in the divine [eschatological] activity of bringing wholeness to all creation.”77 The somewhat lost practice of dying well is one that is strongly connected to resurrection-shaped faith78 and to the eschatological hope that stems from it: “When Christian practices are healthy, dying well embraces both lament and hope, and both a sense of divine judgment and an awareness of divine mercy.”79 L. Gregory Jones maintains that the “central goal” of the Christian practice of “Forgiveness” “is to reconcile, to restore communion—with God, with one another, and with the whole creation,”80 employing a formula that, yet again, has a high degree of consonance with my emphasis on the four-fold eschatological communion. Jones thinks that forgiveness, practiced in the context of community and sometimes requiring us to “hope against hope” (Jones, 2010, p. 137), allows us to “offer a future not bound by the past,” the possibility of living “in a new way with one another,” in accordance with the ongoing work of the God who “is making all things new” (Jones, 2010, p.  133), affirmations that further strengthen the resemblance between Jones’ perspective and my own. Like all Christian practices, the practice of forgiveness has baptismal and eucharistic implications, both of which are eschatologically inflected. Baptism “initiates us into God’s forgiveness and sets us on the lifelong journey of living into God’s promises,” while eucharist “anticipates the fullness of the messianic banquet at which God’s reconciling work will be complete” (Jones, 2010, p. 144).

74. Pohl, Living into Community, p. 26. Pohl’s work is associated with the Bass–Dykstra “school,” which is why it is mentioned here, even though she does not have a contribution in Practicing Our Faith. 75. Pohl, Living into Community, p. 62. 76. John Koenig, “Healing,” in Bass, p. 148. 77. Koenig, “Healing,” p. 151. 78. Amy Plantinga Pauw, “Dying Well,” in Bass, p. 162. 79. Pauw, “Dying Well,” p. 165. 80. L. Gregory Jones, “Forgiveness,” in Bass, p. 132.

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Finally, Larry Rasmussen writes about how “Shaping Communities”—practicing leadership and exercising authority—needs to be undertaken in accordance with the characteristics of the basileia. This claim is especially important for my purposes, since Rasmussen rightly asserts that “shaping communities is not just a single practice of its own. It is the practice that provides the choreography for all the other practices of a community or society.”81 In other words, the character of the community, how it imagines itself, and how it is constituted determines, to a marked degree, the manner in which the faith of that community is practiced. This being the case, a theologian seeking to advance a practice of the faith grounded in an eschatological imagination of communion is gratified to find such an imagination inscribed deeply in Rasmussen’s perspective on the practice of shaping community, as this confirms that, for at least one other theologian, such an imagination is held to animate and support everything church is and does, even though his position is not articulated so directly. Our communities, Rasmussen avers, should not be neat, tidy, and hierarchical, like those of the world around us, which value efficiency, results, and effective management. As in the basileia, Christian communities must put the last first, must be devoted to service rather than consolidating power, must respond nimbly to context rather than assuming a rigidity that renders them brittle. Following Ronald Heifetz, Rasmussen maintains that exercising leadership is a practice that requires “creative deviance on the front line,” an openness to newness and risk, rooted in the trust of God and one’s fellow Christians, that allows the exigencies of a specific context to drive action rather than some foreordained formula for how communities “must” be structured.82 In part, Rasmussen claims this is appropriate because such a practice “lives in the tension between our own time—what the apostle Paul called ‘this present age’—and another yet to come” (Rasmussen, 2010, pp.  122–23). Authority in Christian communities, shaped by the age to come, requires being open to new possibilities, to what “may emerge” as needs and conditions arise, shift, and are addressed. Again, for Rasmussen, this fluidity is evidence of our living in an uncertain, chaotic interim between already and not yet and of our need to maintain sensitivity to that tension in our approach to Christian community (Rasmussen, 2010, pp.  119–20). In doing so, we can make our communities “a foretaste of things to come for all creation” (Rasmussen, 2010, p. 124) and church “an anticipatory community that could give present form to a hoped-for future through a range of adaptable practices” (Rasmussen, 2010, pp. 127–28).

81. Larry Rasmussen, “Shaping Communities,” in Bass, p. 118. 82. See Ronald Heifetz, Leadership without Easy Answers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp.  183–206. Not insignificantly, although Rasmussen does not mention this himself, this phrase—“creative deviance on the front line”—and its meaning and theological function share a good deal of overlap with Johannes Baptist Metz’s advocacy of a “creative and militant eschatology.”

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The theologians associated with the Bass–Dykstra “Christian practices” approach to Christian theology provide a framework for thinking more intentionally about how practices interact with concepts in the formation (and, by extension, deformation) of theological imagination. They also help clarify how the eschatological horizons built in to this view of Christian practice allow those practices to shape and be shaped by both the theological concepts that are part of the eschatological imagination and by the overarching, holistic, concept– practice amalgam that is the theological imagination of eschatological anticipation itself. The eschatological practices in which Christians engage flow from an imagination of full communion represented by the basileia, while at the same time providing an experiential education in imagining and living out what such a fulfilled communion might be like. Christian eschatological practice is, therefore, somewhat akin to an embodied parable: it contains cognitive content and simultaneously provides a visceral, affective, relational experience of the divine that provides a richer theological texture than is possible to attain on the intellectual level alone. Even more, in a very real sense, Christian practices, understood and performed in this way, constitute participation in the anticipatory inbreaking of the basileia itself.

7.3 Practicing Eschatological Ecclesiology: Church as the Gathered Disciples of the God of Promise In general, ecclesiologists of communion do not have a good deal to say about the kinds of eschatological practices that the Bass–Dykstra theologians call Christian practices. This might be because, often, they are not practices that are unique to Christians or because they do not take place exclusively (or, in some cases, at all) within the confines of a church building, and so they are not seen (to such ecclesiologists) to merit theological treatment. It might be because, as their critics often maintain, ecclesiologies of communion tend toward the propositional, the “ontological,” and the abstract—leading them to concentrate on internal church practices associated with sacerdotal, doctrinal, and disciplinary practices—in a manner not prone to taking much cognizance of extra-ecclesial modes of the embodied life of faith, most of which partake too much of the complications and contradictions of “real life” to fit within these conceptually tight parameters.83 More likely, it might be because these practices are not principally liturgical. Associated with this and even more likely, it might be because these practices extend far beyond eucharistic celebration. As seen plainly in the surveys

83. Even theologies of communion that purport to concern themselves with “materiality,” such as Radical Orthodoxy, are regularly charged with a lack of follow-through on that commitment. L. Roger Owens, for example, asserts that Milbank’s construal of “participation” is too abstract and disembodied to provide a theology of ecclesial practice (The Shape of Participation: A Theology of Church Practices (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010), pp. 133–34).

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of ecclesial documents and the theologies of figures such as Zizioulas and Milbank, for ecclesiologists of communion it is eucharist that truly makes a church. Church simply is the assembly of people who celebrate eucharist. Of course, a practical theologian would not normally seek to deny the centrality of eucharistic practice as definitive for ecclesial identity. Bass, for example, writes (in pronounced eschatological terms) that in eucharist our ecclesial “foretaste of the feast to come” can sharpen our discernment of what truly nourishes and what does not. It can continually stir our hunger for God’s realm. It can teach us to say “thanks” to God, not only during services of eucharist (from the Greek word for “thanksgiving”) but at other times as well. It can knit us into a new kind of community. It can reshape how congregations approach their food ministries, moving us beyond mere provision to addressing the wider political and economic injustices behind food inequity. It can be a gathering where we practice a way of being in the world that is responsive to God and the true needs of others.84

As it is for the ecclesiologists of communion, eucharist is, then, central for Bass, too, as it is a principal source for understanding better and shaping all that we do as Christian people as we go about life in the world. This is not at all out of keeping with the view of most theologians of Christian practice. Such a perspective on the import of eucharist, however, generally does not appear in the works of ecclesiologists of communion. As has been observed in the ecclesiologies of Zizioulas and Milbank, such theologies of eucharist are more often limited to the ways in which eucharistic practice glorifies God, affirms the triunity of the Godhead, continues the reconciling work of Christ, effects the presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements and as the gathered body, participates in the eternal worship of the Father by the communion of the saints in heaven, represents the sacred cosmic hierarchy, connects the church of the present to the church of the apostles through the formal consistency of its canon and in the unbroken transmission of episcopal authority, reflects an earthly structure that mirrors the divine structure revealed by God in Christ, and so forth. Rarely do ecclesiologists of communion seek to open up or supplement these concerns by thinking concretely about the ways in which the eucharistic act and ethos flow out of the church into the world with the degree of specificity Bass offers. In such cases, “practical” eucharistic theology often amounts to little more than a discussion of proper liturgical form and the appropriate delimitation of clerical power in the eucharistic synaxis, the laity often having no meaningful part to play in such theologies. Even if an ecclesiologist of communion might make an occasional overture toward thinking from eucharist outward into other Christian practices, however, it is rare indeed to find one willing to affirm the validity of theologizing from “worldly” practice back into the church in the way that practical theologians 84. Dorothy C. Bass, “Eating,” in Miller-McLemore, p. 58.

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tend to do. For ecclesiologists of communion, that relationship is almost always unidirectional. In general, such theologies construe Christian practice as eucharistic practice. It is eucharistic worship that forms Christians for life in the world, a formation often conceived of as a process of arming them to withstand worldly assaults and temptations rather than of strengthening and equipping them for serving, let alone loving, creation. That practices such as “honoring the body,” “saying yes and saying no,” “household economics,” and the like, practices that take place outside of worship, might actually help us better understand the theological import of our eucharistic liturgy or the triune God who is its object is generally not considered in ecclesiologies of communion. This perspective seems to be of a piece with the overly realized eschatologies of ecclesiologies of communion. Consistent with the character of the theological imagination that colors many theologies of this kind, what takes place outside of eucharist—the event in which such theologies maintain that the eschaton is more or less realized—is not as full, rich, and true as what takes place during worship. As such, it can illumine neither what is taking place in that act nor the God to whom it is offered, at least not to any significant extent. Theological attempts to do this constitute a threat to the integrity and sufficiency of eucharist and, accordingly, church. They bring the world into church in an improper sense, no longer as an offering of the world back to God in the eucharistic gifts, thereby sanctifying creation and participating in the reconciling work of Christ, but by dangerously reversing the arrow of theological reasoning and practice—from world through church to God. In Zizioulas’ language, this would be like trying to understand the ecclesial hypostasis through the biological hypostasis. In Milbank’s, it would be like constructing a theology of the civitas Dei by beginning with the civitas terrena, or like explicating the ontology of peace from the standpoint of the ontology of violence. The overly realized eschatologies of most ecclesiologies of communion, which construe the church as either the eschatological basileia itself or as the only authentic worldly manifestation of it, set church beyond or over against the world. The insights of a theology of Christian practices, however, demonstrate that Christian practice in the world partakes of the sanctifying mission of the Holy Spirit, is aimed at the eschatological basileia, and has much to teach us theologically. This destabilizes the neat church–world dichotomy of most ecclesiologies of communion precisely by releasing the basileia from ecclesial monopoly and liberating Christian practice from worship alone (and so from the direct supervision and control of the clergy, which might be another source of discomfort for many theologians of communion, most of whom are ordained). An eschatological imagination that maintains that the basileia is simultaneously present (as inaugurated) and coming (as anticipated), and that comprehends the whole world as the site and recipient of eschatological transformation, cannot accept limiting Christian practice to worship or barring such practice from playing a decisive role in the shaping of our theological concepts and beliefs. Communion is not abstract. It is lived. It is practiced. This is what too much communion ecclesiology appears to miss. People of faith manifest their diverse

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religious imaginations as ways of life through their practices, in their modes of being in the world. In the Christian context, practices are understood from the outset as communal and as eschatological, as the theologians of the Bass–Dykstra school make clear. As outworkings of what it means to be a follower of the God of promise, they have to be communal and eschatological: if the basileia that lies at the heart of Christian desire and longing (“Thy kingdom come”) is the perfection of the four-fold communion, a relational reality that represents the core truth of the purpose of creation and God’s intention for it, then the practices of the disciples of that God and the shape of its community must point to and proleptically manifest—anticipate—that final condition. Accordingly, Christian practices, indelibly marked by eschatological hope for full communion, create deeply relational and life-giving, though imperfect, communion between humanity and God, among human beings, within human persons, and between humanity and the rest of creation, connections that will be brought to final perfection only with the full realization of the basileia. This means that Christian practice is, quite simply, co-extensive with discipleship. To speak of Christian practices is to speak of discipleship. Clearly, worship, including regular eucharistic worship, is a component of Christian discipleship, as ecclesiologies of communion rightly insist. But discipleship includes a great deal more than that, and an adequate ecclesiology must also concern itself explicitly with that “more.” There is nothing about the eschatological practices described by the Bass– Dykstra theologians that would, on their face, bar ecclesiologists of communion from commending them. The fact that communion ecclesiologies do not do so is because these practices fall outside the scope of vision that their ecclesial and eschatological imaginations make available. Were ecclesiologists of communion to engage with such practices, they would inevitably find their theologies of church opened up by the new insights and richer ecclesial and eschatological imaginations that attention to such practices would afford them. What does it mean to engage in Christian discipleship from the standpoint of a theology of Christian practices that takes the eschatological horizon of such practices to be central? How could this understanding of practices–discipleship inform an eschatological ecclesiology? How, in turn, might such a practice-minded ecclesiological imagination result in a church that looks different from church as it currently tends to be conceptualized and to exist in actuality? These are the questions to which I will turn next. 7.3.1 Breaking Down the Wall: Imagining “Worldly” Practice as Basileia Discipleship Discipleship “is a matter of Christian formation, and specifically the formation of the imagination.”85 This must certainly be true if it is also true that imagination has

85. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom, p. 140.

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deeply practical implications and that Christian practice is best understood in terms of discipleship. Practical theologians Kathleen Cahalan and James Nieman assert that promotion of a “faithful discipleship” is “the basic task that orients practical theology.”86 As the theologians of Christian practice make clear, the concrete practices of discipleship are predicated upon the deep “theological substance” embedded in the activity of “everyday life.”87 Although Christian discipleship means engaging in the common activities of daily life, however, it requires that they do so in ways that are qualitatively different for the practitioner for having been transformed by a basileia-shaped eschatological imagination, in which the purposes of God for the full flourishing of creation are a primary consideration.88 One might say, hopefully without too much rhetorical overstatement, that—worship practices notwithstanding—on the whole, Christian disciples do not do different things from other people, but that they do those same things with a difference. For the disciples of Jesus Christ, these common practices become simultaneously the mark of their discipleship, a concrete means of anticipating the basileia in and for the world, and an opening for deeper theological understanding. Like the Christian practices examined by the Bass–Dykstra school, Jesus’ own practices of healing, reconciliation, service, and love are often materially indistinguishable from similar acts that have been undertaken for countless reasons by people across space and time. Christians, however, discern in them the salvific, communion-forming power of God at work in the world.89 Discipleship means imitating these practices, carrying out a “mutually critical conversation” between the original context for those redemptive acts and our world’s needs and realities.90 This practice-based “reinterpretation” of the “script” provided by Jesus’ own original “performance” of them, as reflected in the New Testament and carried forward to the present day through the ongoing practice of his disciples,91 is the

86. Kathleen A. Cahalan and James R. Nieman, “Mapping the Field of Practical Theology,” in Bass and Dykstra, p.  67. Conner (Practicing Witness, p.  51) observes that discipleship, while implicit in the work of Bass and Dykstra from the start, has played an increasingly explicit and central role in their thinking. 87. Cahalan and Nieman, “Mapping the Field,” pp. 67–68. 88. This is not to deny that one might be able to read actions that display basileia values but that are undertaken for non-Christian or even non-religious motivations as the unacknowledged operation of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those who are unaware of it. To conceive of this in a way that avoids falling into the violence of a pneumatological imperialism that reduces such people into unwitting agents of God’s universal kingdom against their wills and, perhaps, their conscious opposition to theism more generally demands a good deal of theological work that would take us too far afield from my purpose. The focus here is limited only to the practices of self-acknowledged Christian disciples. 89. Tilley, Disciples’ Jesus, p. 229. 90. Cahalan and Nieman, “Mapping the Field,” p. 81. 91. Tilley, Disciples’ Jesus, pp. 73–74, 130.

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means by which we are best able to know God’s character and to participate in God’s purposes.92 As Tilley puts it, “We can only discover God’s will, although perhaps not easily, in practice. As Christians, we discover God’s will in the reconciling practices that constitute living in and living out the basileia tou theou.”93 Here, we find not only more support for a circular understanding of the relationship between concept and practice within the theological imagination, but also additional insight into the eschatological shape of Christian practice. Discipleship, as Tilley observes, pertains to the basileia. This is not only because the practices of Jesus, the template for contemporary Christian practices, are basileia practices, but also because eschatological thinking motivates a discipleship informed by future hopes and expectations,94 because “eschatology always influences and shapes the conduct of life and vice versa.”95 It is also because the character of discipleship is itself marked by the same qualities that inform the eschatological imagination. Christian discipleship is possible to the extent that the future transformation anticipated in the resurrection is already active and manifest in a person’s life,96 which imbues discipleship with the already–not yet dynamism of eschatological promise. “Christian life,” writes Jürgen Moltmann, “is certainly discipleship of Christ, but in that discipleship it is also an anticipation of the coming kingdom and the new creation of all things.”97 This anticipatory, basileia-shaped hope gives rise to life-giving practices that resist the unjust practices and structures of both the wider society and idolatrous

92. Johannes Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology (New York: Crossroad, 2007), p. 62. None of this should be taken to imply that either these theologians or I myself think that the specific content of what constitutes “Jesus’ practices” can simply be read off the text of the New Testament without further ado. A tremendous deal of theological, philological, historical, and other work needs doing in order to assess what those practices were and are. Moreover, even if we did rely on the bare text of the gospels alone, we would see that not only did Jesus’ basileia practices not spring fully formed into the world, but that the shape and content of his ministry had at times what Stephen Pattison has provocatively called a “shadow side,” components we might think of as being deeply problematic—a tendency toward affirming dualisms, a literal demonology, an apocalypticism that could create fear in his hearers, a perfectionism and idealism in his teaching, and so on (Pattison, “The Shadow Side of Jesus,” in The Challenge of Practical Theology: Selected Essays (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2007), pp. 229–43). Whatever one might make of Pattison’s specific view, the caution to avoid uncritical invocation of “Jesus’ practices” is certainly a good and helpful one. 93. Tilley, Disciples’ Jesus, p. 228. 94. Metz, Faith in History, p. 163. 95. Hans Schwarz, Eschatology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000), p. 26. 96. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993), p. 99. 97. Jürgen Moltmann, Ethics of Hope (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2012), p. 23.

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religious imaginations.98 Such practices are marked by eschatological openness, an alertness to the emergence of the new, and deep trust in one’s co-religionists, the integrity of creation, and the relational purposes of the God of promise.99 Disciples are aware of the provisionality and partialness of their practices, aware that, this side of the eschaton, no practice is definitive or entirely free of sin, that the form of practices may shift as needs and realities change, and that no person is able to foresee all the consequences of her actions. As Cahalan and Nieman put it, “Disciples cannot completely comprehend the challenges and demands they face and cannot fully anticipate the outcomes of even their most faithful actions. In its very methodology, practical theology must remain open to God’s future.”100 From the start, discipleship—the life of Christian practice—shapes and is shaped by the eschatological imagination. Because Christian discipleship is basileia discipleship, and because the full establishment of the basileia is conceived of as a universal reality, a complete cosmic transformation, the concrete anticipation of this thoroughgoing transformation in the form of Christian practices has a strong public aspect. Discipleship is public witness.101 Even more, it is a public eschatological witness that, in its performance, brings about a reality that is closer to that which it proclaims.102 Not only is this the case at the level of the concrete, material outcomes of Christian practices, but the consonance between Christian proclamation and Christian practices is itself public testimony that it is the Jesus who announced the basileia of God who is being followed.103 To the extent that Christians stray from

98. Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1996), p. 152. 99. Janice Allison Thompson, for example, draws on Metz’s work in arguing that, in our practices of mourning, assertions about the ultimate triumph of God over death must be tempered with acknowledgment of the particularity of embodied grief, the visceral experience of loss and interruption. Salvation is not here, is not now. The negativities of pain and absence remain real (pace Milbank). Hope is not merely consolation in the face of this. It is a struggle, undertaken in a specific place and in a particular time, that occurs through narrative construction. In the context of maternal mourning, which is Thompson’s focus, this is a narrative of preparing or “making room” for the coming child in pregnancy and, in the face of the child’s death, of the continuation of the parent–child relationship by providing the deceased child with an open story that death has only interrupted. This brings protology and eschatology together and establishes a relational practice of active eschatological hoping. See Thompson,“Making Room for the Other: Maternal Mourning and Eschatological Hope,” Modern Theology 27 (2011), pp. 395–413. 100. Cahalan and Nieman, “Mapping the Field,” p. 84. 101. Cahalan and Nieman, “Mapping the Field,” p. 69. 102. Daniel Izuzquiza, Rooted in Jesus Christ: Toward a Radical Ecclesiology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 37–38. 103. Metz, Faith in History, pp. 154–55. Richard Burridge, in fact, argues that the disciple’s charge to imitate Jesus, an effort complicated by, among other things, the various ways in

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basileia discipleship in their practices, even if it is to “embrace” the world in some fashion, they have abandoned their eschatological mission to be in and for the world. In such an instance, they are no longer anticipating eschatological perfection—the realization of the four-fold communion—by a distinctive quality of being, by their practices.104 There is a tremendous difference between loving the world and ecclesial conformation to it. Of course, determining what constitutes “accommodation” and what constitutes a contextualized “re-interpretation” of the original “script” of Christian practices is a notably thorny and messy affair that calls for a great deal of discernment. Engaging in such discernment, however, is one of the difficult eschatological practices of Christian discipleship required by and nurturing of one’s orientation to the basileia. Like all Christian practices, such discernment is an endeavor of corporate discipleship. It is crucial to recall that Bass, Dykstra, and the theologians affiliated with their approach to practical theology maintain that Christian practices are always communal practices. Discipleship is a life of ongoing moral formation that takes place within the community in and through the practices of discipleship itself, as the interrelated concepts and actions that are ingredient to theological imagination interact to build a distinctive way of corporate life that testifies to and imperfectly manifests the basileia in and for the world.105 Eschatological discipleship in the context of community is what Christians do. The communities in which the practices of that discipleship are grounded are the gatherings of these disciples that we call churches. If the basic vocation of the ecclesia is to anticipate the basileia in and for the world, it has to be a community with a way of life, with a basileia-shaped discipleship, in other words, with practices that simultaneously reflect and feed that mission.106 Discipleship and ecclesiology are inseparable. Colleen Mallon articulates a church-based view of Christian discipleship founded on three communal qualities: “ecclesial fellowship” (koinonia), “ecclesial witness” (marturia), and “ecclesial service” (diakonia).107 These interlocking modes of discipleship are connected to one another and to the ongoing work of the Holy

which Jesus is depicted in the New Testament, has to proceed by reading those texts through a basileia-shaped hermeneutic in order to discern, not what we are to do, but the qualities our discipleship must evince (Burridge, Imitating Jesus: An Inclusive Appeal to New Testament Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2007), especially pp. 73–78). 104. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology (London: SCM, 1967), p. 305. 105. World Council of Churches, Costly Obedience, in Thomas F. Best and Martin Robra (eds), Ecclesiology and Ethics: Ethical Engagement, Moral Formation and the Nature of the Church (Geneva, Switzerland: WCC Publications, 1997), p. 74. 106. “ ‘Mission’ . . . is just shorthand to describe what it is for Christians to pursue their vocations to the glory of God in ways that are oriented to the shalom of the kingdom” (Smith, Imagining the Kingdom, p. 157). 107. See Colleen Mary Mallon, “Ecclesial Discipleship: Applying the Requirements of the Gospel to the Church as Social Institution,” Louvain Studies 28 (2003), pp. 344–62.

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Spirit in both church and world. Through the community of disciples that is a church, they combine to effect—uniquely, according to the circumstances of specific times and places—conditions that bear a resemblance to the basileia. Mallon maintains that this construal of discipleship is richer and broader than the one ecclesiologies of communion deliver. It includes koinonia as a key component, but it goes further. Discipleship, she argues, involves three equally important ecclesial praxes: the “praxis of communion,” which, as an anticipation of God’s eschatological indwelling in the world, celebrates diversity and locality108; the “praxis of reconciliation,” which, as an anticipation of God’s fulfillment of the relational purpose of creation, tirelessly seeks to effect repentance, peace, and justice; and the “praxis of solidarity,” which, as an anticipation of God’s eschatological defeat of oppression and death, focuses the work of the church on ameliorating the effects of marginalization and exploitation and on maximizing expressions of agapic love. Together, these three praxes constitute a lived ecclesiology, a practice of Christian discipleship, that upholds the values of ecclesiologies of communion while at the same time going far beyond them, propelling church out into the world in a critical yet loving manner that is consistent with an eschatological imagination that simultaneously affirms the world as the object of God’s love and promise and seeks to transform it where it falls short of God’s plan for the perfected four-fold communion. If the coming reconciliation sealed in Christ’s flesh tears down the wall between Jew and Gentile, as the Pauline literature asserts in Eph. 2.14, there is also every reason to contend, in light of the eschatological fulfillment of perfect communion, this reconciliation also tears down the wall between church and world, even if they remain distinguishable from one another. Basileia discipleship, according to such an understanding, must include service to God and God’s purpose precisely by serving the world, of which church itself remains a part. It does this by engaging in the common, “worldly” activities of everyday life, but with the eschatologically shaped difference that transforms “everyday action” into Christian discipleship. Of course, serving “the world” through transformed “everyday” practices does not require the wholesale embrace of everything a particular society values. The eschatological imagination, as we have seen, disallows this and actually weakens to the degree that ecclesial witness to the relational promise of the basileia is attenuated. Tom Sine argues that Christians have, to some extent, “succumbed . . . to the seductions of the dominant culture” and that this is due in no small part to the fading of the eschatological imagination, which has decreased a sense of urgency about transforming the conditions of the world and has increased the need to create “new countercultural communities” as a means of reanimating that impulse.109 Perhaps, however, the remedy for the malady that Sine diagnoses is not 108. Diversity and locality, it should be said, are the opposite of unity and universality, in the sense that those words are typically used in and privileged by ecclesiologies of koinonia. 109. Tom Sine, “Creating Communities of Celebration, Sustainability and Subversion,” in Graham Cray, Ian Mobsby, and Aaron Kennedy (eds), Ancient Faith, Future Mission: New Monasticism as Fresh Expressions of Church (London: Canterbury, 2010), pp. 72–74.

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so much the creation of “new countercultural communities,” but a rediscovery of the ancient role of Christian ecclesial discipleship in contesting the way things are in order to reveal and partially enact the way things are promised to be. The church has the conceptual and practical resources—scriptural and traditional—to accomplish this. What remains is for it to become a central concern in the way its ecclesiology is articulated and instantiated. 7.3.2 Embodying Anticipation: Incarnating the Eschatological Ecclesial Imagination It may seem counterintuitive at first but it is nonetheless true that the practices that compose a life of Christian discipleship cannot be limited to churchly practices alone if we wish to foster a rich ecclesiological imagination. As Dykstra puts it, “Ecclesial imagination is the way of seeing and being that emerges when a community of faith, together as a community, comes increasingly to share the knowledge of God and to live a way of abundant life—not only in church but also in the many contexts where they live their daily lives.”110 This being so, it is likewise crucial for the eschatological imagination to be equally robust. Eschatology is, as John Manoussakis points out, a “ ‘liberation’ theology” that sets us free “from the moralistic and sociological constellations of this world,” allowing us to see more clearly what is of ultimate significance and to live into and out of that awareness, individually and communally, through our practices.111 These practices of discipleship to the basileia, in both church and world, stem from and continually shape and re-shape what it means to be church. Yet, ecclesiology as a theological discipline and as a church practice itself (when carried out by denominational committees or in inter-church dialogues, for example) does not often take sufficient account of either eschatology or practice. Benjamin Conner suggests a way of construing the relationship between ecclesial practice, eschatology, and ecclesiology that might be helpful in this regard. He attempts to push the work of Bass and, especially, Dykstra further, exploring how their notion of Christian practices can be enhanced by a view of Christian missional witness that rounds out the interplay between theological concept and theological action, which he thinks their own work does not do sufficiently, and that provides additional texture and import to conceiving of church in explicitly eschatological terms.112 Conner maintains that Bass and Dykstra are overly reliant on Alasdair MacIntyre’s perspective on virtue ethics and the Aristotelian notion of telos that underlies it. Conner agrees that practices are pointed toward an “end,” but argues that “Aristotle’s notion of telos is not an adequate substitute for the biblical

110. Craig Dykstra, “Pastoral and Ecclesial Imagination,” in Bass and Dykstra, p. 57. 111. John P. Manoussakis, “The Anarchic Principle of Christian Eschatology,” Harvard Theological Review 100 (2007), pp. 29–46 (30). 112. Conner, Practicing Witness, pp. 87–107.

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notion of eschatology,” precisely because it cannot accommodate an already–not yet dynamic.113 The basileia is both present and coming, which means it both is and is not possible to instantiate it now and that the mission of church is to be itself that manifestation in and for the world while also seeking to realize it in non-ecclesial ways through Christian “worldly” practices to the greatest possible extent. Christian practices do have a telos. In a way not true of the Aristotelian concept of “end,” however, that toward which they are directed is not merely potential. “The practices are signs of the kingdom—they are not themselves the kingdom and do not usher it in, but they do point beyond themselves to the living Lord Jesus who is the one sign of the kingdom,” who, along with the basileia he proclaims, is both present and coming.114 Conner maintains that “there is no sense, yet, that in Dykstra’s writings or in the Practicing Our Faith discussion that ‘participation in the ongoing redemptive work of God’ is suggesting, as missional theology would insist, that the congregation become the active, sent agents who are the sign, instrument, and foretaste of the kingdom of God.”115 While my discussion of the perspectives advanced in Practicing Our Faith makes it plain that this eschatological horizon and vocation is, in fact, implied throughout the essays that it comprises, it is true that, as I noted, this is not an explicit focus in that work and that a more direct connection between practices and basileia life and mission would have crucial ecclesiological benefits. In Conner’s estimation, drawing out the implications of this can be accomplished through employing a missional theology of witness to the basileia as a means of specifying what makes a Christian practice “good” or “faithful” by connecting the practices of Christian discipleship to the “nature and purpose of the community that practices them.”116 Conner appears to construe the Bass–Dykstra notion of Christian practices as resulting in an ad intra ecclesiology and his own as leading to one that is ad extra. Conner’s combination of the two (see Table 7.1) exemplifies an imagination of church close to the one advocated here: as the gathered disciples of the God of promise, anticipating the basileia in itself and for the world, in service and in love. If an eschatological ecclesiology is one that imagines church as a congregation of disciples anticipating the eschatological perfection of the four-fold communion,117 and if the marks of such an ecclesiology are tensiveness, openness, risk, trust, and hope, then the practices that flow from and feed into such a community of disciples should bear those characteristics. The life of discipleship that forms and is formed by such a church should be “nothing other than practical

113. Conner, Practicing Witness, p. 54. 114. Conner, Practicing Witness, p. 93. 115. Conner, Practicing Witness, p. 85. 116. Conner, Practicing Witness, p. 54. 117. Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God (New York: Crossroad, 1996), p. 31.

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Table 7.1 Conner’s complementation of the Bass–Dykstra approach with his own Practicing Our Faith

Practicing Witness

A way of life in the world.

A way of witness to the kingdom of God in the world.

The practices put us in a position to perceive the mysteries of God.

Through practices we proclaim and perform (witness) God’s redemptive presence for the world.

Participation in Christ—practices are the arena where knowledge of God is tested and palpably felt.

Partnership with Christ—practices are a sign, instrument, and foretaste of the kingdom of God and are the way in which an active working fellowship with Christ is lived.

Practices create space where God works in us.

AND

Practices create space where God works through us.

God changes his people as they participate in practices.

God changes the world through the witness of the practices.

Through the practices we are “no longer strangers to God’s redemptive presence in the world.”

The practices enable us to bear witness to those mysteries in the world.

Witness is the result of the Christian life together that is nurtured by practices.

Witness is the purpose of the Christian life together that is cultivated through practices.

Emphasizes worship as the master practice.*

Emphasizes witness as the master practice.

Source: Benjamin T. Conner, Practicing Witness: A Missional Vision of Christian Practice (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2012), p. 99. * Somewhat unfairly, Conner asserts that, in the Bass–Dykstra school, “the hub of worship, around which the practices cohere, is a worship that is lacking an ecclesiology that is clear about the nature of the church” (p. 66).

eschatology and lived hope.”118 As Dermot Lane observes, “I do what I hope, and I hope what I do.”119 This is precisely what we find in the work of theologians who take this view of Christian community seriously. Morrill, as a renowned liturgiologist, notes the practical importance of maintaining the eschatological–ecclesiological tensiveness at the heart of eucharist itself by engaging critically with the same notion from Alexander Schmemann’s sacramental theology to which we saw Rowan Williams advert in the previous

118. Jürgen Moltmann, “The Liberation of the Future and Its Anticipation in History,” in Richard Bauckham (ed.), God Will Be All in All: The Eschatology of Jürgen Moltmann (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001), p. 267. 119. Lane, Keeping Hope Alive, p. 66.

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chapter (p. 181). Morrill maintains that the startlingly realized quality of Schmemann’s eucharistic eschatology is necessary in order to experience the basileia now, which is the means by which the basileia becomes operative in a believer’s life.120 At the same time, Morrill observes, its fragmentary presence in the world, outside of worship, can be discerned by Christian disciples. But this is only the case if overly realized eschatology is avoided: “If one overidentifies the signs of the kingdom in the liturgy with the signs of the glorious victory of the Second Coming, then it becomes difficult to expect the participants in the liturgy to be able to perceive the Spirit of the kenotic Christ acting in the world.”121 If a church imagines itself via a triumphal theologia gloriae as the basileia and its practices as the realization of the eschaton rather than as its anticipation, then its life—ad intra and ad extra—will reflect this, not only in the quality of its worship, but in its internal structures, its self-presentation, and the character of its members, as the case studies presented previously have made clear. The same is true for the importance of the other marks of eschatological ecclesiology. The prayer life of a church keeps the community open to God’s future and prepared to participate in its anticipation.122 Prayer, however, is not limited to worship alone. A life of prayer includes the bodily, corporate practices of Christian discipleship, in which glimmers of the basileia appear and through which disciples are able to enter it, partially, by anticipation. This communal openness to God’s future is, like koinonia, often concrete. It is made manifest as a mode of being. As a matter of faithful discernment for a church, however, discerning what constitutes openness and what constitutes apostasy is always risky. A church can be wrong. This means it can locate the basileia where it is not and miss its presence where it is. This risk, however, is another mark of the eschatological church. “Risking everything” is required, “the not knowing, the knowing that what we trust is unknowable. If God is to be God, the divine comes to us beyond what we can comprehend.”123 The church that accepts the risks of faithful living is empowered to do so by its corporate trust in God and in the other members of the body of Christ, a reality also accounted for in an eschatological ecclesiology. Hierarchy, particularly hierarchy of an authoritarian sort, has no place under such conditions. Corporate

120. Morrill, Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory, p. 104. I would say it differently, arguing that imaginative, proleptic, Spirit-led efforts to anticipate the basileia do this, while claims to actually experience it often lead to partitioning off the “real” world so that one may stay safely ensconced in the “kingdom.” Given Morrill’s overarching position, this is likely a semantic difference between our positions, though not one without significance. 121. Morrill, Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory, p. 134. 122. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology (vol. 3; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 209–10. 123. Jonathan Clark, “Postmodernism and Sacramentalism,” in Steven Croft and Ian Mobsby (eds), Ancient Faith, Future Mission: Fresh Expressions in the Sacramental Tradition (London: Canterbury, 2009), p. 107.

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participation in the redemptive practices of Jesus is itself sufficient guarantee of apostolicity.124 Moreover, it is communal engagement in these practices that allows them to take place at all. As Pauw points out, when our own practices flag, as they inevitably do, we trust that the ongoing eschatological practice of others will preserve and carry them forward until we ourselves are capable of taking them up once again.125 Eschatological ecclesiology imagines the church as a communal, lived anticipation of the basileia. This means that the present shape of its internal and external life is “determined by the expected future of God’s kingdom and his righteousness and justice.”126 Such a community does not only believe certain things about itself and the world, but, in light of its hope for the fulfillment of God’s purposes in perfecting communion in all its aspects, it organizes its internal life, proclaims its mission, articulates its theology, and orients its practices of loving service in and to the entire world in accordance with that hope. Hope is active. “Christians,” writes Hans Schwarz, “do not just sit around and hope.”127 Hope, like ecclesiology, requires discrete practices for its proper expression while being a practice itself. The hope of Christian people, individually and collectively, is instantiated in the practical life of discipleship, the acts of reconciliation and communion through which Jesus’ own basileia practice is announced and continued. Prior to this, however, the very existence of church is an expression of hope, as the ongoing congregation of those who stood and still stand as witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It may not be too much to say that, imagined properly, the practice of being church—of gathering as disciples—is itself the richest expression of eschatological hope there is. The eschatological church anticipates the basileia not only in worship, and not even only within the confines of ecclesial community, but practices its way of life for the world in the world. As an agent of the universal basileia, church must engage constructively in every facet of the common life of a given society—in politics, culture, economics, and the like. Moltmann writes that “kingdom-of-God theology is public theology, which participates in the res publica of society, and ‘interferes’ critically and prophetically, because it sees public affairs in the perspective of God’s coming kingdom.”128 Being the eschatological church, as a practice itself, means engaging society directly, in its multi-faceted reality and complexity, in order to shine the light of the basileia into the dark recesses of both church and world, where the marginalized have been forced to retreat, to proclaim

124. Conner, Practicing Witness, p. 96. 125. Pauw, “Attending to the Gaps,” p.  43. An example that Pauw herself provides is trusting the community to forgive a person that she herself is not able to forgive and trusting that God’s grace will at some point provide the means for reconciliation. 126. Moltmann, “Liberation of the Future,” p. 286. 127. Schwarz, Eschatology, p. 370. 128. Jürgen Moltmann, God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1999), p. 252; emphasis in original.

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the presence of the basileia where it can be seen and, by pointing out where it cannot, to reveal where redemption and reconciliation need and are promised to occur, and to take up that work to the greatest extent possible.129 The public practice of the eschatological church lies not in judging, let alone condemning, the world. It is to witness to the basileia and to assess the world, just as it assesses itself, in light of it. This calls for discernment, certainly. But this can and should be carried out humbly, with full knowledge of the possibility of being wrong, yet with a boldness to act on account of its trust in the God of promise and its love for God’s creation. The public witness of the eschatological church is consistent with the vision of the basileia from which it emerges. Its intent is not to make the world over in the (always broken and sinful) image of church, but to announce the coming perfection of all things, including its members, and to call the whole human family to the joy of participating in the quality of life this vision imparts.130 Unless the witness of an eschatological church is confirmed by ecclesial practices that cohere with the words of its preachers and theologians, “the truth of the gospel and . . . the life-giving power of the resurrection of Jesus”131—all that lies at the heart of the eschatological imagination of what “full human flourishing” might mean in the theological sense—is falsified. As Metz puts it, “Everything depends on whether or not Christians succeed in making this religious way of being a subject into a living, social reality, in incarnating it visibly at the heart of the struggle for human beings and for their history.”132 This is the core of Christian ecclesial practice because it is precisely the eschatological, basileia-oriented discipleship that Jesus practiced and the way of life that Jesus exhorted the community of his followers to pursue.

7.4 Communion without Closure: Imagining a Church of the Open Promise The Christian practices school of practical theology helps us see that, in many ways, church is what church does. As such, an eschatological church is one that, informed by basileia-shaped imagination, engages in basileia-oriented practices such as those described in Practicing Our Faith. In their emanation from, pointing toward, and partial instantiation of the quality of relationality of eschatological promise, such practices are characteristic of the discipleship that defines the Church of Christ. Like eucharist, although differently, they are illustrative of a mode of being, a practice-minded theological imagination, that hopes in and seeks to anticipate and provisionally embody the fulfillment of perfect communion.

129. Moltmann, God for a Secular Society, p. 253. 130. Moltmann, God for a Secular Society, p. 254. 131. Pohl, Living into Community, pp. 2, 8. 132. Metz, Faith in History, pp. 76–77.

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These, however, are not the only such practices through which Christians are able to manifest that vision. A definitive list of eschatological ecclesial practices cannot be created. It is no more possible or desirable to generate a definitive catalogue of ecclesial practices than it is to generate a definitive catalogue of ecclesial forms. A gesture toward that kind of comprehensiveness, despite the noble attempt to be clear and specific, would result in a more, not less, abstract ecclesiology. This is because, in its conceptual comprehensiveness, it would cut itself off from the contradictions, inconsistencies, and aporias of the real world. Theologies of Christian community that present a “complete” understanding of church—its origin, purpose, formal structure, sacramental worship, evangelical mission, practices—what Healy calls “blueprint ecclesiologies,”133 are in fact more abstract than what has been offered here precisely because their attempts to be thorough bracket out complex and important realities that do not fit their models. Basing an ecclesiology and the practices implied in it on the unknowable, unspecifiable, eschatological promises of God bars one from making overly confident pronouncements about what church and its practices are and allows one only to say what the church and its practices are like. Illustrative examples may (and hopefully will) abound. The openness of the eschatological horizon and the emergence of the new that is ingredient to it, however, disallow a “premature closure” of what constitutes acceptable church practice or form.134 Which new phenomena and realities will and will not be consonant with the eschatological imagination of communion cannot be predicted in advance of their arising. Perpetual discernment, not the “certainty” of closure, characterizes the eschatological church. An ecclesiology predicated on the mystery of the basileia cannot provide a blueprint for church but only a sketch for one, which stands to reason, given the sketchiness of eschatology. The church needs an ecclesiology that grounds its sense of vocation in God’s promise of relational perfection. This vocation is not “communion” in the limited sense that most ecclesiologies of communion employ the term. It is not a blueprint-style idea of communion. It is communion in the universal, cosmic, world-affirming, eschatological sense, the ultimate perfection of the four-fold communion between humanity and God, among human beings, within human persons, and between humanity and creation. What this perfect communion—the relational transformation of the cosmos across space and time—will look like is impossible to foresee. As such, no theology, ecclesiology, or ethics based upon it is able to do more than point, by its form and content, to the qualities of that coming state, as a kind of living parable of the basileia—yet as also more than a parable, since, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Christian community and its practices are enabled to participate in that future reality by anticipating it

133. See Nicholas M. Healy, Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical–Prophetic Ecclesiology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 25–51. 134. Lane, Keeping Hope Alive, p. 2.

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now to whatever extent those qualities are realized.135 How this takes place is contextual, shifting, emerging, and uncontrollable, as should be expected of the intermittent and imperfect manifestations of the basileia under the conditions of time and space. For this reason, a refusal to reach closure on the form and content of an eschatological ecclesiology and practice does not produce an abstraction. Remaining reverently agnostic and apophatic about the mystery of the eschaton, which is God’s alone to realize and not ours to delineate precisely or to predict confidently, we know the kind of reality the basileia signifies but cannot grasp its ultimate form. We can make determinations, within the context of our realities and through dialogical processes of communal discernment, about which practices and forms of church best manifest that quality of relationship in their service to the world and to God in our present context. I have attempted to do so here. But I cannot foresee and prescribe the practices and forms appropriate to a coming day. Given the complexities of concrete reality and human nature, the opportunities for effecting basileia qualities in church and world are virtually as numerous and unique as the discrete moments of time. Blueprints cannot account for this. That is what makes them conceptual abstractions. The attentiveness of eschatological ecclesiology to given realities makes it less so. Paul seems to have recognized this. If Paul’s epistles are context-specific theological responses to specific circumstances and in no way constitute a systematic theology, and if Paul was more concerned with living out authentic Christian discipleship than in the “correctness” of theological concepts, and if his method was primarily one of bringing a central gospel of God’s eschatological triumph to bear upon the concrete circumstances of the community he addressed in a given letter,136 then what one seems to find in the Pauline corpus, with all its ambiguities, messiness, and seeming contradictions, is the earliest record we have of a Christian eschatological ecclesial imagination at work. Paul’s ecclesiology is not a blueprint. It is not a schematic for church form or practice, not because Paul was a bad theologian but precisely because he was an excellent one. As a result, it seems at least theoretically possible that almost any practice, engaged in by the community over time as an act of discipleship–service that is

135. In explaining why the basileia eludes anything like a “definition,” Jan Lochman points out that “it is surely significant that Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God mainly in parable, i.e. in a form of discourse which is conscious from the very outset of its provisional character, indeed, which deliberately veils the mystery of the kingdom of God (in the sense of Mk. 4.11), at the same time as it discloses that mystery. This surely means that we never have this mystery within our grasp” (Lochman, “Church and World in the Light of the Kingdom of God,” in Gennadios Limouris (ed.), Church Kingdom World: The Church as Mystery and Prophetic Sign (Faith and Order paper 130; Geneva, Switzerland: World Council of Churches, 1986), p. 61). 136. This is how J. Christiaan Beker argues that the Pauline letters should be understood. See his The Triumph of God: The Essence of Paul’s Thought (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1990).

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both an outgrowth of and refers itself back to the eschatological ecclesial imagination, could become a legitimate Christian practice, as the explorations of the Bass–Dykstra theologians and other practical theologians have shown. Being overly precise about “what counts” as Christian practice in prospect is likely to have the undesirable effect of stymying nascent practices. It seems much more prudent to engage in communal discernment and conversation about ecclesial activities that emerge from specific contexts as they arise as a means of determining whether they show potential for being taken up more widely as intentional Christian practices. Likely, all we can know about such practices before they appear is that they will bear the marks of basileia life and that they will be undertaken by communities for the sake of community. After all, as Stephen Pickard observes in connection with his view of the ways in which Christians might ecclesially live out discipleship, “the truth of God has a social form, and practices that intensify this have priority.”137 Protologically and eschatologically, church and world are imagined in their essential unity. They are distinguishable from one another, but do not form a dyad or a dualism.138 The church–world relationship is central to the eschatological vocation of church on account of the communion-forming character of the practices of Christian discipleship. This is the reason why it is imperative for ecclesiology to grasp that relationship conceptually and live it practically in an appropriate manner. Ecclesiologies of communion, which, because they generally feature too-realized eschatologies, tend to understand church as existing beyond or over against the world, often obscure the fact that church, as an agent of the basileia that is dawning as God’s promised transformation of the world, is meant to anticipate that reality in and for the world through loving witness and service, in practices such as those described by the Christian-practices theologians, but not limited to them. Eschatological hope drives desire. Christian hope for the basileia stems from an imagination of what constitutes the fulfillment of eschatological promise.139 When the basileia is understood as a place or condition separate from the world, the object of our longing is transferred to a zone where creation can either be forgotten safely or expected to return to a prior state that will negate history, which amounts to the same thing: a denial that creation and its processes have meaning for God or that they ought to have meaning for churches. But this is not acceptable for Christians, enlivened by an eschatological imagination with a resurrection grammar of embodied materiality, one that fills their lives of practical discipleship. “Christians practically experience [the] abundance of grace in the resurrection as they accept their place in the ongoing narrative [of salvation] and engage in mission that transforms the present moment in light of both the past and the

137. Stephen Pickard, “Gifts of Communion: Recovering an Anglican Approach to the ‘Instruments of Unity,’ ” Journal of Anglican Studies 11 (2013), pp. 233–55 (236). 138. Lochman, “Church and World,” p. 68. 139. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, p. 27; Smith, Imagining the Kingdom, p. 125.

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future.”140 When resurrection grammar governs our imagination of the “end,” when it is remembered that “salvation is not salvation from the body and from the world, but of the body and of the world,”141 then creation—the world—is accorded its proper status as the site and object of God’s ultimate purpose and, so, of our discipleship. Christians may not be “of the world” (Jn 17.14), but this is not because they enjoy a different ontological status from those who merely exist as “biological hypostases,” as Zizioulas would put it, or because Christians “participate” in an ontology of peace while the remainder of humanity finds itself colluding in an ontology of violence, as Milbank thinks. It is because Christians, working in the world to anticipate the relational perfection of the eschaton, “seek first the kingdom” (Mt. 6.33; Lk. 12.31). This endeavor illuminates how far the world currently is from that ultimate condition. At the same time, it inflames Christian hope for the basileia, which is precisely hope for the deliverance of this world out of the sorrow and pain that consumes it (Romans 8), not our deliverance out of creation. This compels us to go deeper into the world to continue the mission of the reconciliation of all things that Jesus inaugurated. As such, church, in its self-understanding and its practical existence, must adopt a different imagination of its eschatological relationship to the world from what is found in most ecclesiologies of communion. James K. A. Smith expresses beautifully what is at stake in doing so: If we are going to recalibrate our attunement to the world, and hence feel pulled by a different call, it is not enough to have a Christian “perspective” on the world; we need nothing less than a Christian imagination. Because our evaluation of a situation is bound up with our perception of it, and because our perception is shaped by the bodily background within which we constitute our experience, Christian action requires the sanctification of perception on the bodily register of incarnate significance. In sum, if we are going to be agents of the coming kingdom, acting in ways that embody God’s desires for creation, then our imaginations need to be conscripted by God. It is not enough to convince our intellects; our imaginations need to be caught by—and caught up into—the Story of God’s restorative, reconciling grace for all of creation.142

It is through our pluriform practices of love and service to the world that our imagination of the basileia is formed and our desire for its coming is kindled and maintained. This is not something that ecclesiologies of communion generally recognize, let alone aim to foster.

140. Julie Clawson, “Imagination, Hope, and Reconciliation in Ricoeur and Moltmann,” Anglican Theological Review 95 (2013), pp. 293–309 (306). 141. Brian D. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection: A Christian Theology of Presence and Absence (New York: Herder & Herder, 2009), p. 134; emphases in original. 142. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom, p. 157; emphases in original.

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Given the public character of eschatological ecclesiology and the universality of its vision of reconciliation, this will unavoidably have political implications for church practices. If God brings about the new by interrupting the old so as to effect justice—reflecting the apocalyptic intuition within eschatological imagination— this will necessarily require interruption of the status quo of the political sphere.143 It is appropriate for churches to engage in the political realm, as this is an ascetical training ground for Christian practice in non-demonization of the Other, a practice that itself already has eschatological undertones due to its nurturing of communion,144 but also because it effects solidarity with the oppressed and exploited, an equally eschatological political practice through which church enables the vanquished to assume subjecthood before God145 and by which basileia values are made manifest in the world. It is a practice of the eschatological church to stand in solidarity with the politically marginal not despite its eschatological imagination but because of it. The suffering-with mandated by the theologia crucis demands it. It is not an optional add-on. “If there is to be no poverty in the new heavens and earth, the Church should be seen as a community that cares for the poor. If there is to be no injustice, it is to be seen as a community that challenges injustice.”146 Ecclesiologies of communion too often take the Zizioulan line on politics—that is, they say almost nothing about it. Where political concerns are explicitly in focus, such as in Milbank’s neo-Constantinian project to “re-Christianize” the “secular world” with a modified democratic socialism, there tends to be a disturbing triumphalism at work, one that, consistent with a realized eschatology that sees church as in some way possessing “the Kingdom,” would extend ecclesial borders to encompass large swaths or even the entirety of society. An ecclesiology rooted in an imagination of church as an agent of a coming cosmic transformation involving reconciliation, justice, and the perfection of authentic communion cannot practice its politics—within church or outside of one—in either of these ways. Instead, its hope and desire for the rich intersubjectivity promised in the four-fold communion guides the way in which its political activities are theologically justified, ecclesiologically conceptualized, and practically lived, in loving service in and for the world, particularly for and—ideally—with the most vulnerable. Such considerations may sometimes appear as second-tier desiderata in statements of the World Council of Churches, but rarely are they connected to the core vocation of church in bi- or multi-lateral dialogues or the writings of ecclesiologists of communion.

143. Metz, Faith in History, p. 84. 144. Aristotle Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), pp. 83, 153. 145. Metz, Faith in History, p. 81. 146. Graham Cray, “Communities of the Kingdom,” in Graham Cray, Ian Mobsby, and Aaron Kennedy (eds), Fresh Expressions and the Kingdom of God (London: Canterbury, 2012), p. 18.

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Eucharist alone will not suffice as a practical guide for Christian ecclesiology. Receiving “only a small piece of bread and a tiny sip of wine” does not adequately feed or fill us but rather whets our appetite for what it represents: the eschatological feast of the full, four-fold communion with God and others. “Even the Eucharist points beyond itself to an as-yet-unrealized communion.”147 Ecclesiologists of communion certainly recognize this. Yet, by functionally limiting theological treatment of the nature and vocation of church essentially to this one practice, the richness of communion is reduced, limited to a single institution in possession of “Truth,” and often to a certain class of minister within it. Eschatological vision is narrowed and the (nearly) full presence of “the Kingdom” within the ecclesia and its sacraments is proclaimed. Concern is focused on ecclesial communion itself— on church unity, often held to depend upon uniformity of belief and practice—and the “vertical” communion of church with God, often held to depend upon a correctness of metaphysical perspective and the preservation of specific forms of worship and institutional structure. The unintended by-product of communion thus understood is often to seek to absorb “the world” into the Christian church in order to “sanctify” it or to shut the church doors on it all together. It is too insular, too self-absorbed a view of communion and church. As crucial as the concerns of ecclesiologies of communion—unity, doctrinal consensus, an institutional claim to truth, the vertical aspect of communion, metaphysical commitments, the importance of church structure—may be, an ecclesiology of communion that does justice to the four-fold communion that is signified by the promised basileia of God provides more than what communion ecclesiologies presently offer. It is based on a vision of communion that includes more than inter-church communion and the communion of church with God. It envisions the communion of human beings—inside and outside of churches— with one another, the communion of human beings within themselves as fully flourishing subjects, and the communion of human beings with the rest of God’s beloved creation, and ecclesial practices seek to “intensify” this relational communion.148 The eschatological promises of God are more than what communion ecclesiologies generally maintain, and this has everything to do with how Christian disciples organize themselves and how they conduct themselves individually and corporately. Communion is more than what most ecclesiologies of communion offer and what church is and does is more than what those ecclesiologies would have it be. This is a serious matter if communion ecclesiology is to remain the regnant model for theologizing about church, as it has been for decades. Continuing to focus our conceptual and practical efforts on the subset of concerns taken up by ecclesiologies of communion without supplementing its perspectives with a view that maintains that communion is that and also more, and that church is that and also more, will

147. Jay Emerson Johnson, Dancing with God: Anglican Christianity and the Practice of Hope (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 2005), p. 149. 148. Pickard, “Gifts of Communion,” p. 236.

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have the pragmatic effect of contributing to the further marginalization of Christian community as a legitimate actor in the public sphere. More troubling still, it will have the spiritual effect of cutting church off from its reason for being and the impetus for its action: a vision of true, deep, communion in the roundest, richest sense, communion as the promised basileia of God, the perfection of relationality between humanity and God, among and within human persons, and between humanity and all of creation—this creation—guaranteed by the bodily resurrection of Christ, attested to in scripture, and glimpsed, proclaimed, and imperfectly made present in part now wherever that future reality is made manifest by Christian disciples laboring under the power of the Holy Spirit. This is not a simple or straightforward matter for ecclesiologies to take up. It does not easily lend itself to the bullet points of ecclesial statements or the rigors of scholarly discourse. It is excruciatingly difficult to live into. If churches are to fulfill the vocation of being the anticipation of the basileia in and for the world, however, ecclesiology must include more than what communion ecclesiologies generally have up to now. Ecclesiology must first seek the basileia, the communion that is both here and coming. The eschatological imagination of such an ecclesiology, deeply infused into the conceptual understanding and practical life of churches, will reveal it to be much more than what communion ecclesiologies limit it to being. It will show it to be, at its best, the loving hands of God, working, always imperfectly, to anticipate the unimaginable flourishing and plenitude of communion, the All-in-all that is the basileia of God.

Chapter 8 C O N C LU SIO N : M O R E T HA N C OM M U N IO N  E C C L E SIO L O G Y  : B E I N G A C H U R C H O F T H E B A SI L E IA I N A N D F O R T H E WO R L D

It is relatively common to hear calls from the more progressive-leaning quarters of the Christian family for a church that is more “open” and “inclusive,” a church that is more “affirming,” a church that is more concerned with “justice.” The desire that generally lies behind the use of these words, which can often set more conservative folks’ teeth on edge, is for a church that, overall, most Christians—progressive and conservative—are likely to embrace, even if not always in the same form or to the same degree. They are calling for a church that faces the conditions that mark our present-day realities squarely and takes them seriously. They are seeking a church less concerned about “who is out” than extending a welcome to ever-widening circles of people. They yearn for a church that values the vibrancy of diversity and pluralism over the deadening sameness of homogeneity and uniformity, that appreciates both the spiritual and the simply human gifts of women, members of non-majority racial and ethnic populations, sexual minorities, the differently abled, the young, the old, the impoverished, the “foreign,” and others who often stand outside of the closed circle of people who set the dominant discourse in both society and churches. And they desire church to be these things because they are “right” and “fair” and “good” and “decent.” More conservative Christians sometimes balk at advocating unreservedly for this, being all too aware of the real difficulties of such an approach, the inevitability of conflict under such circumstances, and the risks posed by questioning the (already tenacious) certainty that structures and boundaries provide. As a result, they tend to emphasize the importance of deepening the relationship between human beings and God or Jesus as the most critical component of faithful living outside and inside churches, understand love of neighbor to be a function of the prior love of God, and seek to discover new ways of enhancing and deepening that foundational God–human relationship. These are important cautions to keep in mind and aspects of Christian spirituality to maintain. But even those who do so nevertheless often subscribe to some or all of the items on that list of ecclesial aspirations as ideals. Differently, therefore, in their own ways, according to their various perspectives, histories, traditions, temperaments, and spiritualities, conservatives and progressives of goodwill all desire a church of communion—true, authentic, and deep communion, in its 255

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many forms. Communion, true to form, will not traffic in binaries. It transcends them. I have argued that to effect the deeper ecclesial communion we all seek, we need to nurture a more intentional and more profound eschatological imagination, one that interacts with a more intentional and more profound ecclesiological imagination. We need immersion in the “more” that often drops out of communion ecclesiologies in order to live better the communion such ecclesiologies seek. This will bring about churches of generous, deep communion characterized properly by its creedal marks. It will produce a church that is one in serving God and the world in love, holy in creating an opening for the sanctifying grace of God’s promised future to flow into the present through worship and worldly Christian practice, catholic in understanding the entire cosmos to be God’s beloved creation and the object of our co-ministry with the Holy Spirit in the work of reconciliation, and apostolic in witnessing to the promise of the realization of the four-fold communion through our works, worship, and ways of individual and corporate living. There is much to agree with in a view of church that values a multi-dimensional conception of communion as its defining characteristic. Churches are right to emphasize the communion of Christian communities with the God who is in Godself communion, to reflect that relationship formally in the communion of churches among and within themselves, and to instantiate it in worship, which performs and manifests the communion that makes church what it is. However, the ecclesiological imagination of communion cannot stop there. This is not all that characterizes communion or the ecclesiality that grows from or leads to it. As laudable as they are, there is “more” to communion and to communion ecclesiology than these things alone. An ecclesiological imagination that stresses these important themes in conversation with an eschatological imagination that understands the promises of God to be more or less realizable now, and primarily so in and through church, tends to result in a church focused too much on itself—its unity, its boundaries, the purity of its doctrine, the correctness of its structures, the maintenance of its inherited traditions, the distinction between itself and the world. Ecclesial unity is crucial for creating authentic and enduring relationships among Christian individuals and groups. Boundaries are important in helping mark ecclesial identity. Doctrine is critical for shaping faithful Christian life. Structure is necessary for the maintenance of community. Tradition is valuable for carrying forward the embodied wisdom of the past and preserving purpose and identity. It is essential to distinguish between the mode of life that should be on offer in church and some of those that typically characterize the larger world if the gospel is to be the Good News of a more fruitful way of being. By making these important features more or less definitive of a “true church,” however, church becomes cramped and selfinterested. A different ecclesiological imagination results from supplementing these vital themes with an eschatological imagination that, rooted in the tradition of the synoptic gospels and the authentic letters of Paul, understands the promises of God in a more tensive sense. It sees the promise of communion as anticipatable

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but not totally realizable, as partially available now but only fully so eschatologically. Moreover, to the extent that communion is imperfectly realizable now through basileia discipleship in and for God’s beloved creation and people, it tends to result in churches focused as much on the world as on themselves. Such churches see themselves as agents of the basileia in the time between the times, sites of Christ’s mysterious, paradoxical, and transforming presence in the period of his absence, before his parousia, above all but not exclusively in eucharistic worship. Such churches are open to the undetermined future, engaged in discerning in new emergences that which seems to be consonant with the promise of communion, all the while knowing that it is God’s basileia—a universal state not limited to a small sliver of creation—and not church itself that is the object of that future, that it is itself a limited provisionality, finite and fallible like every other created thing. It takes the risk of suffering with those who suffer, at the hands of a world that is sometimes too anxious and fearful to accept the power-in-weakness that is God’s eschatological offer, and it takes the risk that is communion itself, the hard, messy, chaotic work of forging relationship across significant difference. It is a church that trusts that God will honor the promise made in the resurrection of Christ to redeem, reconcile, and retain God’s cherished creation in the perfection of communion—between humanity and God, among human beings, within human persons, and between humanity and the rest of the world. It is a church that, empowered by this trust to accept the risk of communion, embraces the nonclarity of more permeable boundaries, relaxes its need for “purity,” flattens hierarchy, and exercises authority more equitably. Above all, it is a church characterized by hope in and for the world because of God’s promise to realize the perfection of relationality, to bring about the basileia, to become All-in-all. This hope in the plentitude that God promises the world provides the vision and the message it is the vocation of Christian community to anticipate in its mode of being, through its practices, ad intra and ad extra, in and for itself and the world. These characteristics do not supersede the emphases of current ecclesiologies of communion. They are tempered by them. Tensiveness includes an insistence that some degree of divine presence is available now, or else church is no longer imagined as the anticipation of the future—a proleptic manifestation of what it proclaims—but only as a finger pointing weakly toward it. Its openness to the new cannot effect the dissolution of all boundaries, or else the identity of churches as groups of disciples distinct from other kinds of groups will be lost. The risks taken in suffering with the world and undertaking a life of radical communion cannot become recklessness. Nor should willingness to risk making mistakes lessen the commitment and requirement to engage in careful and thoughtful corporate discernment of actions that accord best with the promise of communion. Similarly, trust in those promises and in the disciples of it should not come at the cost of structures of authority or differentiation of roles in the church, without which no earthly community can survive. And hope must remain realistic, grounded in the gospel promise, to avoid falling into a utopic idealism that would lessen Christian community’s identity as church and turn it into another well-intentioned socialjustice movement.

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Instead of emphasizing the institutional aspect of church, this more expansive imagination of communion and of an ecclesiology of communion foregrounds not church but the relational purpose of God in bringing creation into existence and the role of churches as provisional, not ultimate, agents in witnessing to and manifesting that coming reality in and for the world in love and service. Church is then no longer imagined as the dispenser of salvation. That role is rightly returned to God. Rather, church becomes understood as a community of disciples who separately and corporately act to invite the world to accept the salvation that God offers, in worship and through the exercise of Christian practices in the world, and who in so doing participate in the proleptic inbreaking of that very future under the power of the Holy Spirit. Church becomes the place where the eschatologically new and everlasting life of freedom promised in Christ’s resurrection is announced as a gift and promise to the world, a new mode of life, a new creation, one focused on the full flourishing of the communion for which creation was made and into which it will be transformed. Such an imagination of communion and church better fulfills the desire of Christian disciples—progressive and conservative alike—for a church that emphasizes the deep relationship, the communion, that God is, offers, promises to perfect, and empowers churches to anticipate, in and for the world. What has been offered here is a preliminary step in developing such an eschatological ecclesial imagination. A great deal of additional theological work— on eschatology and on ecclesiology in an eschatological mode—needs to be undertaken to fill out a richer picture of the character and implications of the communion ecclesiology that I am advocating. Eschatologically, although work has been done in nearly all the following areas, the theological imagination of what it could mean to posit the perfection of relationality as the eschatological culmination of God’s work in creation would be significantly enhanced by engaging theologically with the most recent thinking in cosmology and theoretical physics. A realistic theological hope for the material creation needs to be developed in conversation with, but manifestly not determined by, conditions revealed by the sciences. Although the knowledge that science delivers in this regard is constantly being revised, which requires us to engage it theologically as a set of hypotheses to take seriously but not prescriptively, insight into the nature and destiny of creation adds detail and texture to eschatological imagination—questions about the theoretical continuities and discontinuities between the present creation and what might be envisioned as the next, the conditions that would need to obtain in order for such a transformation, and the like. Of course, it is important not to fall into either a kind of natural theology– eschatology, here, on the one hand, nor into a material reductionism on the other. But cosmology, biology, and the theoretical physics of string and chaos theories and quantum mechanics all present insight into the importance of newness, emergence, complexity, diversity, relationality, multidimensionality, time and eternity, and so on, all of which eschatology must confront and could only profit from by doing so. In addition, there is work being done at the intersection of neuroscience and psychology that is asking new questions about how the “mind” and “body” interact

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to create unique human identities. This work could be put into theological conversation with cultural anthropology and narrative theory to investigate the extent to which human beings are their stories, a pattern of relationship that takes shape over time, which could have profound eschatological implications for imagining the form that persistence of identity could take in the eschatological transformation. Such work is providing empirical evidence that the mind–body dualism is a demonstrable falsehood, which contributes to imagining eschatology in its physical and embodied aspects and challenges the popular reduction of eschatology to the movement of a “soul” to an “afterlife,” resituating the spiritual in a material nexus of cosmic relationality. This also raises questions about what we imagine to “carry over,” to endure as valuable to God. In conjunction with disability studies, one can ask, for example, whether the blind are sighted “in heaven” and whether the deaf hear. If not, if blindness and deafness are understood as part of an individual’s core identity, something that is not a “deficiency” to be “overcome” but rather another component of a unique, discrete, unrepeatable occurrence of human being that is of inestimable value to God, this would necessitate revising the way we presently see and relate to people with “disabilities,” as well. The same is the case for matters of sexuality and gender. What do we imagine the eschatological destiny of sex, gender, and sexual relationships to be? How are such assessments made? On what theological, philosophical, sociological, anthropological, and scientific bases? And what do they suggest to us about both eschatological relationality and, by extension, how that gets anticipated in a Christian way of living now? Philosophically, additional phenomenological work needs to be done on the manner in which future expectation can be and is anticipated in the present. This would aid churches significantly by informing an understanding of how best to live out of and into the vocation of anticipating the four-fold communion. This can be focused, further, into phenomenological investigations into the communal context for the appearing and instantiation of the marks of eschatological ecclesiology: tensiveness, openness, risk, trust, and hope. How are these perceived or obscured? How are they practiced, inside and outside of church and worship? What is the role of relationality in their corporate discernment and manifestation? Do the deliverances of philosophical views rooted in the phenomenological tradition question or support an ontological or metaphysical basis for these manifestations? Does phenomenology help us grasp better the role that ontological schema and metaphysical systems can or should play in the theological imagination or ecclesiology of communion? Theologically, it is necessary to articulate a theology and ecclesiology of communion that preserves trinitarian commitments without imagining the trinitarian persons in terms of a functional tritheism that assigns communion-producing and ecclesial “tasks” to each of them. It is not clear to me that Zizioulas, Milbank, Moltmann, or any of the major figures treated here have completely avoided this problem, which is why their trinitarian theologies have not been investigated here in depth. This is a matter that urgently needs to be solved—or at least better struggled with—in order to arrive at a satisfactory trinitarian ecclesiology of communion.

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In addition, there are patristic and traditional resources that can and should be employed to better investigate the history of the eschatological and eschatological– ecclesiological imagination of church over time. We now have an extensive bibliography of works on the scriptural interpretation and eschatological perspectives of the early church, particularly as these relate to Jewish apocalyptic. Even so, we could profit from a deeper view of early churches’ eschatological imaginations in the sense that I mean “imagination”—an embodied conceptual and practical understanding. How have churches lived out of and into their eschatologies and their eschatological expectations? How did these imaginations develop? What caused them to take shape, fade, reignite, and fade again, changing form over time? In what ways does this history provide resources for our own theological imaginations? To what extent does it supply models to emulate and cautionary examples to avoid? Another piece of necessary theological work is continuing to explore the eschatological–ecclesial implications of the “Christian practices” trajectory within practical theology. Whereas Dorothy Bass, Craig Dykstra, and the other theologians associated with this “school” have looked at Christian practices through the lens of an implied eschatological imagination, that endeavor must now be carried forward using an explicitly eschatological frame of analysis. How do the practices under investigation, as embodied theologies in their own right, add to the eschatological imaginations of individuals and Christian communities? In what ways can those insights be fed back into churches, not only those where the practitioners under analysis themselves are members, but more broadly? On the other side of this question, in communities where shifts toward a more vigorous and intentional eschatological imagination have taken place, we need to examine the extent to which there have been concomitant transformations in Christian practices, what they were, for whom, under which circumstances, and with what kinds of results. The crucial importance of exploring these topics—and others that have not been mentioned or have not yet emerged—is that such thinking will enhance our imagination of both communion and the ecclesiology of communion. We should go about this using the same strategy that brought communion ecclesiology itself to the fore: employing the conceptual and practical components of theological imagination to re-articulate the character and vocation of church. Communion ecclesiology became the regnant paradigm for ecclesiology because those convinced of its value simultaneously produced scholarly theological work to support it, infused it into ecumenical dialogue and inter-church conversations at various levels, made it the basis of liturgical reforms and changes in ecclesiastical polity, and re-envisioned evangelism and mission in light of it. Which components of this are “conceptual” and which are “practical”? They are each both. These are holistic, mutually reinforcing, co-constituent elements of a thoroughgoing theological imagination that changed how church is thought about, practiced, and lived. By supplementing the reigning communion-ecclesiological imagination with the “more” of communion and of an eschatological ecclesiology in touch with it, imagination of Christian community can be opened in new directions.

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This is critical, as it is unlikely that communion ecclesiology will be replaced any time soon. The recent publication of the World Council of Churches’ “convergence text,” The Church: Towards a Common Vision, provides ample evidence of that. In this document, there is not the slightest movement away from the koinonia ecclesiology that defined Faith and Order’s work under Zizioulas’ leadership. More crucially, there is little evidence that the ecclesial imagination that animates the document has been enlarged, either. This is a key point. Given that communion ecclesiology will remain the dominant mode of conceptualizing church, it is important to supplement it with a richer eschatological outlook rather than seeking to replace the communion-ecclesiological approach altogether. For the foreseeable future, the question will remain which communion ecclesiology will shape our imagination of church. Which version we choose will have everything to do with the kind of churches we will have as a result. Remaining in the realm of ecumenism for a moment provides an example of the difference this might make in concrete terms. In the final chapter of his threevolume study of ecclesiology, Christian Community in History, Roger Haight offers a relatively spare but highly provocative proposal for a new approach to ecumenism. In contrast to the “full communion” of the churches, the standard goal of ecumenical work, Haight suggests it is more practical—and more in keeping with the actualities of ecclesial life—to grasp the value of and develop what he calls “partial communion.”1 Haight asserts that our various ways of doing church each reflect a “spirituality,” a logic that links the lived lives of believers with God and imbues each new generation of Christians with that spirituality, thereby incorporating them into a specific mode of ecclesial existence. Ecclesial existence and ecclesial spirituality are, therefore, inseparable.2 The life of the churches is the outworking of their respective spiritualties. Building upon this, Haight contends that the manner in which this combination of ecclesial existence and spirituality is experienced in the churches contributes to the possibility for communion among them. Members of all these communities experience themselves as gathering to worship and pray to God through the mediation of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, and they are prepared now more than ever before to recognize that other Christians do the same.3 This sets the stage for identifying in others the deep, often hidden levels of apostolic continuity embedded in each of the highly divergent ways that Christians have of being church.4 This, Haight suggests, is sufficient grounds for communion among the churches, a partial communion that does not dissolve the distinctions between different expressions of Christianity by requiring doctrinal and practical agreement or formal structural merging. Instead, it relativizes the differences as socio-

1. Roger Haight, Ecclesial Existence (Christian Community in History, 3; New York: Continuum, 2008), pp. 270–92. 2. Haight, Ecclesial Existence, p. 274. 3. Haight, Ecclesial Existence, p. 282. 4. Haight, Ecclesial Existence, pp. 274–75.

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historical developments and perceives beneath them a profound and more essential unity in their being faithful responses to God and the gospel.5 By nurturing transdenominational relationships on the basis of this shared, though variously expressed, apostolic heritage that is common to all Christian communities, the resulting partial communion would have a positive impact on the wider life and witness of Christianity as a whole. It would change how each community relates to and serves every other and how they turn outward together, in service to the world. Haight is not wedded to calling this “partial communion.” He understands that “partial” can connote failure.6 We could, however, put Haight’s insight into conversation with an eschatological ecclesial imagination and call it “anticipated communion.” This would reframe Haight’s proposal, centering it less on the negativity of present lack and more on the positivity of future fullness, while affirming all that “partial” is meant to convey: that there is more in the offing, that the communion experienced now is but a foretaste of an even more intimate communion to come, and that the kind of communion we as sinful human beings are able to generate, even under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is only a proleptic pointer toward the eschatological consummation of relationality that Christians anticipate in their eschatological expectations and practices. Perhaps the ecumenical dream of visible ecclesial unity has not been achieved because, at least in part, ecumenical endeavor has been overly focused on achieving the type of unity that most ecclesiologies of communion prize rather than unity in the vocation of anticipating the four-fold communion, which is carried out in a tremendous number of ways, all of which participate in the missio Dei, the true source of ecclesial unity. Animated by an ecumenism of anticipated communion, the various churches would find themselves united in their context-specific attempts to proleptically and partially (and here that word is apt) instantiate the basileia in and for the world, humbled by the tensive provisionality of what it means to be living between the times (that no one expression of communal Christian discipleship will “get it right”), open to the inbreaking of the unpredictable future (emergences of basileia-shaped life in other ecclesial settings), willing to accept the risk of discipleship while maintaining trust in the other Christian communities that have done the same, even if differently, and all of this in the shared hope of all Christians in God’s promise to perfect the communion toward which the churches are committed to strive even while knowing and lamenting that, this side of the eschaton, they will always fall short of it. This would be a more realistic mode of ecumenism between the times. Moreover, redirecting ecumenical energies away from achieving “full communion” toward nurturing “anticipated communion” would, paradoxically, result in richer and warmer inter-church relationships and free up the personal, communal, and spiritual resources devoted to ecclesial union for investment in deeper ecclesial participation in the missio Dei

5. Haight, Ecclesial Existence, pp. 286–87. 6. Haight, Ecclesial Existence, p. 280.

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in and for God’s creation. An ecumenism of “full communion” is simply too ecclesiocentric. After all, it is creation that is ultimately the object of God’s love and promise and it is the world that will endure eschatologically, not the churches. Would such a change at the ecumenical level have an impact “on the ground”? Returning to the example of the Anglican Communion, surveyed in Chapter 2, we noted a communion-ecclesiological response to recent conflict in that milieu that was deeply influenced by a more realized ecclesial eschatological imagination and some of the problems this caused. What might have been different had those who formulated this response been steeped instead in the kind of eschatological imagination that has been advocated here? As it turns out, that difference was, in fact, demonstrated concretely, albeit implicitly rather than explicitly. As explained previously, in 2004, a global group of Anglican theologians and church leaders convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the Lambeth Commission on Communion produced the Windsor Report in response to the Archbishop’s charge, in light of a series of conflicts within the Communion, to report to him on “the canonical understandings of communion, impaired and broken communion, and the ways in which provinces of the Anglican Communion may relate to one another in situations where the ecclesiastical authorities of one province feel unable to maintain the fullness of communion with another part of the Anglican Communion.”7 This report stands in a long line of Anglican statements that are deeply reflective of communion-ecclesiological perspectives. It is a common view that Windsor’s proposed solution for the Communion’s problems took the form of asserting the need for universal Anglican doctrinal uniformity, enhanced centralized structures, consolidating authority in a small and high-level group, enhancing the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury, reducing traditional provincial autonomy, and adopting a pan-Anglican “covenant” to govern the relationships of the Communion’s member churches, all of this underwritten by a hermeneutic of “communion” funded by a particular reading of the New Testament, a selective view of Anglican history and tradition, and a eucharistic ecclesiology markedly similar to Zizioulas’ and Milbank’s. The rigidity and legalism of this structural, hierarchical response to a very serious ecclesial conflict created exasperation and demoralization on all sides. Rancorous debates over the proposed covenant, itself a legalistic, structural, instrumental response to a relational problem, only exacerbated the conflict. Yet, partisans of the communionecclesiological position of both Windsor and the covenant passionately maintained (and still do) that this imagination of church is the one that accords best with God’s will for the Anglican churches and is what will save the Communion. Meanwhile, when the Archbishop of Canterbury convened the 2008 decennial Lambeth Conference of all the bishops in the Anglican Communion, he did something novel. Although many of the bishops had come to see Lambeth Conferences as possessing a kind of synodal authority (a power that its originators

7. Lambeth Commission on Communion, The Windsor Report (London: Anglican Communion Office, 2004), “Mandate,” para. 1.

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expressly denied themselves for important theological reasons, opting instead to conceive of these meetings as occasions for mutual enrichment, sharing, and fellowship—in short, for communion), the Archbishop decided no conference resolutions would be entertained or discussed. Instead, the bishops would be broken into small groups, each one containing bishops from diverse regions and contexts, for Bible study and theological conversation according to the practice of Indaba. “Indaba” is a Zulu word naming an African method of intentional conversation and discussion designed to facilitate deep listening and to effect transformation and reconciliation. Bishops came away from this meeting reeling with new-found insight into the circumstances of their counterparts from across the globe. Some of them were able to hear each other as fellows in the faith for the very first time. Participants from the Global North began to understand that those from the Global South could not be essentialized as backward-looking fundamentalists, while those from the South were surprised to learn that their colleagues from the North actually took scripture seriously and engaged with it deeply. Trust began to form. New relationships emerged. Healing began. Seeing the promise of this, the Anglican Communion instituted the Continuing Indaba project, which is replicating the process at all levels of the Communion throughout the world. The Rev. Dr. Jo Bailey Wells, chaplain to the new Archbishop of Canterbury and formerly the director of the Anglican Episcopal House of Studies at Duke Divinity School, served as a consultant to the Continuing Indaba initiative. Wells makes it quite clear what Indaba represents: it is taking the “risk and sacrifice” necessary to trust in one’s fellow Christians as part of a “commitment to shalom, to flourishing, for our opponents as for ourselves, knowing our future is bound up with theirs” a “practice of hope” through which “we may find ourselves living into a different kind of Church: one that does not exist, yet.”8 Here we hear the tensiveness, openness, risk, trust, and hope of an eschatological ecclesiology of communion invoked as the way forward for the Anglican Communion. Wells is clear that such an imagination will change the Christians and churches marked by it and the world they serve in new and better ways, and that it has, in fact, already started to do so. If the Anglican Communion is willing to move away from the version of communion ecclesiology exemplified by the Virginia and Windsor reports, a version greatly influenced by the bi- and multilateral statements that undergird them, toward a more explicitly eschatological communion ecclesiology of a kind advanced implicitly in Communion, Conflict and Hope and the Indaba process, it will undoubtedly find itself living more rather than less as a communion, both in itself and in its relations with the world. This is only one example of the crucial difference that an enhanced eschatological ecclesiology would make for one specific ecclesial family. The wider implications of this for other Christian communities are equally profound.

8. Jo Bailey Wells, “Living with the Conflict, In Hope and Sacrifice,” Continuing Indaba, 26 March 2013, http://continuingindaba.com/2013/03/26/living-with-the-conflict-in-hopeand-sacrifice-by-jo-bailey-wells/ [accessed 23 July 2014].

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Broadly speaking, communion ecclesiologies can be divided into two types, although no church in actuality conforms purely to one or the other. A first type is characterized by an overly realized eschatological imagination. It leads to contests over ecclesial definitions, structures, and authority that pit factions of a church against one another. A second, characterized by a more tensive eschatological imagination, results in creating and nurturing relationships of eschatological communion (shalom) so that conflicts can be healthfully negotiated and a common life of Christian discipleship can grow. Which of these manifests the communion to which both of these approaches claim to be committed? Which of these is more likely to effect Christian communities desiring and equipped to love and serve the world? Which of these best anticipates the basileia? This is what is at stake in how we imagine ecclesial communion. We can stop our imagination of communion and the church’s role in bringing it about at the church doors, focusing it on internal church unity, structure, and worship. Or we can build on that imagination and extend it outward, into the world God created and loves, so that Christian community can imagine itself as, and become, an anticipation of the realization of the four-fold communion promised by God, in loving service to God and to the world, in the messy, chaotic, and joyous struggle of a life lived with and for both ourselves and others in Christian hope.

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INDEX Ables, Travis E. 37, 66 n.11 Afanasiev, Nikolai 20, 21, 22, 64, 79, 82 Anglican–Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Commission 14 Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) 14, 23–4 Aquinas, Thomas 103, 110, 111 n.47, 138, 172, 185 Aristotle 108–9, 145, 242 Augustine 8, 45, 48, 52 n.233, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106 n.21, 108–9, 110, 111 n.47, 113, 114, 115, 120, 121, 122, 126, 127 n.149, 131, 133, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 163, 198, 200 Avis, Paul 53 Baillargeon, Gaëtan 190 baptism and baptismal ecclesiology 56–8, 188–9, 216, 226, 230, 231 Barbu, Ştefäniţä 73 Barth, Karl 134 n.212 Bartholomew I 25 basileia (see also as basileia under church and kingdom of God under Milbank, John and Zizioulas, John) 11–12, 35, 41–3, 54, 55, 134 n.212, 145, 146, 151, 153, 157, 158, 159, 169, 171–2, 173, 177, 178, 180, 182, 184, 185, 189, 190, 192, 194, 195, 197, 203, 205, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 219, 222 n.32, 225–6, 232, 238, 251, 254 Bass, Dorothy C. 222, 223, 226–7, 230, 234, 237 n.86, 242 Bathrellos, Demetrios 207 Bauckham, Richard 160, 167, 188, 192, 211 Bauerschmidt, Frederick Christian 119 n.85 Baumert, Norbert 34–5, 53, 63 Behr, John 45 Beker, J. Christiaan 197 Berger, Calinic (Kevin M.) 64 n.8, 74 n.69

Best, Thomas F. 29 Bevans, Stephen B. 11, 180 Blondel, Maurice 103 Boersma, Hans 113 Boff, Leonardo 41–2, 192 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 157 Bordeianu, Radu 21, 22, 207 Bourdieu, Pierre 115 n.64, 221 Bretherton, Luke 106 n.21 Breyfogle, Todd 103 n.7, 127 n.149, 138 n.242, 155, 198–9 Bultmann, Rudolf 149–50, 164, 202 Burridge, Richard A. 239 n.103 Cahalan, Kathleen 217 n.4, 237, 239 Caputo, John 146 Chaplin, Jonathan 103 n.7 Chase, Kenneth R. 114 Chaves, Mark 217 n.5 Chester, Andrew 151, 169, 170 Christ (see also Jesus and also resurrection grammar of under eschatological imagination) 8–9, 29, 34, 42, 54, 64, 69–70, 72–98, 118–19, 131, 135, 140, 178, 181, 183, 189–91, 212, 234 church agreement in 24, 26, 29, 200 authority in 185 autonomy of 53, 203 as basileia 41–3, 179, 181, 187, 197–9, 235, 245 defined 43, 258 diversity in/of 5, 9, 16, 19, 20, 28, 30, 31, 52, 55, 56, 60, 241, 255 local 8, 13, 16–22, 27, 28, 31, 32, 51, 52, 54, 55, 57, 241 practices of 219 provisionality of 41–3, 196–9 sacramental character 56 trinitarian being of 5, 8, 9, 13, 16–17, 19–20, 23–5, 27–9, 31–2, 44, 47, 50–2, 54, 63–4

283

284

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unity of 4, 5, 7, 13–18, 19–23, 24–7, 29–30, 35, 39, 40, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51–2, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60–1, 186, 199–200, 206, 241, 253, 256 universal 13, 16–20, 22–4, 30, 32, 51, 55, 57, 241 vocation and mission of 50–1, 57–8, 176, 177, 178–86, 196, 199–200, 204, 210, 213, 220, 226, 227, 239–40, 243, 252, 254 and world 43, 58, 177, 203, 209, 224, 235 Ciraulo, Jonathan Martin 69 n.33 Clark, Jonathan 245 Clawson, Julie 250–1 Coakley, Sarah 192 Communio (movement) 52 communion 5, 8–9, 10, 13, 17, 19, 22, 23, 24, 27–9, 47, 50–2, 53–4, 58–9, 63, 178, 241, 255–6, 258 anticipated 60, 159–60, 177, 178–81, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189, 196, 203, 211, 214, 219, 226, 232, 233, 236, 237, 248–9, 251, 262–3 degrees of 31 as disposition 35, 208 eschatological 60, 68, 157–9, 161, 165, 168, 174, 175, 182, 188, 191–2, 202, 211, 214, 226, 231, 233, 239, 248, 254 four-fold 10, 158, 159, 165, 168, 174, 175, 176, 177, 180, 181, 185–6, 194, 196, 206, 211, 225, 229, 231, 236, 241, 248, 253, 256, 265 New Testament treatment of 33–5 as risk 203–4 trinitarian 13, 19–20, 21, 24, 25–6, 27, 29, 31–2, 46, 50–2, 53–4, 55, 63–4, 141 Communion, Conflict and Hope 26–7, 48, 54 n.245, 59, 201, 265 communion ecclesiology 3–7, 13–61, 252, 253–4, 256–8, 260–1, 266 abstract church resulting from 38–9, 60, 233 agendas of 59 Anglican 3, 13–14, 22–8, 53, 54, 59, 60–1, 263–4 anxiety in 59–60 assets of 5, 32, 50, 256 authority in 54–5, 59–60, 206

bishop(s) in 3, 8–9, 15, 18, 22, 23, 25, 26–7, 28, 31, 42, 50, 53, 54, 55 as contextual 58 cross-fertilization and transmission of 13–14, 25, 28–9, 31, 45 ecclesiocentrism of 39, 41–3, 45, 190, 197–200 ecumenical 3–4, 14, 27–31, 45, 61 hierarchicalism of 39–40, 52, 53, 54, 56, 60, 186, 206, 208 hope (role of in) 213–14, 250 as idolatry 37, 61 Johannine eschatology of 46–8, 187, 200, 251 in Milbank (see ecclesiology under Milbank, John) ontology and Neoplatonism of 36–40, 178, 193–4, 209, 233 Orthodox 3, 13, 19–22, 42, 44, 45, 52, 61 practice in 55–8, 60, 215–16, 233–6, 250 provisionality of 35–6 realized eschatology of (see also eschatology, realized) 43–5, 55, 162, 176, 177, 184, 187, 216, 235, 256 relationality in 50–5 restorationist eschatology of 48–50, 166 Roman Catholic 3, 13, 15–18, 20–1, 24, 28 n.95, 45, 52, 54, 59, 61 trinitarianism of (see communion, trinitarian) in Zizioulas (see ecclesiology under Zizioulas, John) Congar, Yves 35, 52, 53 Conner, Benjamin T. 237 n.86, 242–4 Continuing Indaba project 265 Cooper-White, Pamela 224–5 Copeland, M. Shawn 229 Cray, Graham 252 Cullmann, Oscar 170 d’Ailly, Pierre 108 de Certeau, Michel 121, 221 de Lubac, Henri 52, 103, 131 Descartes, René 108 Didache 96 discipleship 54, 58, 179, 223, 236–42, 247, 249–50, 251

Index Doak, Mary 119 Dodd, C[harles] H[arold] 173 Doyle, Dennis 4 Dulles, Avery 38, 42, 44, 45, 49, 52 n.237, 187 Dunn, James D. G. 169–70 Dyer, Mark 25 Dykstra, Craig 222, 223, 226–7, 237 n.86, 242, 243 ecclesial/ecclesiological imagination (see also eschatological imagination and theological imagination) 2–3, 45, 54, 215, 240–1, 242, 243, 251, 256–8 Erickson, John H. 20, 56, 63, 81 eschatological ecclesiology 49–50, 53–4, 243, 246, 256–8, 265 apocalyptic in 149–51, 158, 252 apostolicity in 208–10, 245–6 authority in 205–7, 232, 245 ecumenism in 200, 261–3 hierarchy in 207–8, 232, 245 history in 153–6, 181, 247 hope in 181, 183, 189, 191, 200, 210–14, 246, 251, 257 humility in 195–201, 212, 247 the individual in 151–3 judgment in 247 marks of 186, 204, 243 openness in 191–201, 202, 210, 239, 245, 248, 257 political implications of 252 practice in 213, 214, 216, 218–20, 221, 233–54 promise in 156–9, 179–80, 204, 208, 210, 253 provisionality in 159, 187, 195, 196, 201, 208, 239, 249 risk in 61, 201–4, 205, 245, 257 sacraments in 188–91 synodality in 206–7, 210 tensiveness in 185, 186–91, 207, 210, 232, 235, 238, 244–5, 257 tradition in 207, 208–10 trust in 204–10, 232, 239, 245, 257 unity of the church in 199–200 world in 181–6, 189, 196, 198–9, 201, 202–3, 204, 205, 209, 212, 214, 219, 234, 241, 246, 250, 251

285

eschatological imagination (see also ecclesial/ecclesiological imagination and theological imagination) 3, 5–7, 35, 40, 45, 60, 141–2, 156, 168, 169–70, 176, 183, 185, 192, 196, 211, 212, 213, 216, 219, 221, 225, 226–7, 229–33, 236, 237, 241, 242, 247–54, 256–8 poetics of 146, 193, 194 provisionality of 142–4, 146, 161, 176 resurrection grammar of 146–9, 150, 152, 154, 165, 176, 182, 201–2, 205, 211, 228, 231, 246, 250–1 theological role of 144–6, 176 eschatology (see also communion, eschatological; eucharist, eschatological dimensions of; practice, eschatological horizons in; and also under Milbank, John and Zizioulas, John) communal implications of 48, 165, 230 continuity and discontinuity 148, 150, 154, 155, 167, 168, 182, 192–3 cosmic scope of 151–3, 156–7, 239, 248 emergence in 162, 194, 201, 211, 232, 248 feminist critique of 164, 165, 166, 185 futural 49–50, 54, 142, 148, 150–1, 156, 159, 160–8, 177, 191–6, 201, 210–14, 230 history and 147, 148, 149, 150, 153–6, 158, 159, 160, 161, 165, 169, 173, 179, 192 hope in 146, 156, 160, 165, 166, 168, 175, 178, 192, 193, 194, 230, 231 interruptiveness of 162, 180, 192, 195, 210, 211, 229, 246, 252 Johannine (see also communion ecclesiology, Johannine eschatology of) 46–8, 142, 170–3, 190, 227 materiality in 143, 148, 152–3, 156–8, 165, 167–8, 182, 183, 192, 251 in Milbank (see under Milbank, John) the new in 160, 166, 169, 192–5, 199, 213, 226, 231, 232, 239, 248 Pauline 49, 142, 147, 152, 153, 157, 158, 169–70, 172, 192, 202, 228, 249, 251 political implications of 106 n.21, 213

286

Index

promise 156–9, 164–5, 166, 168, 170, 175, 182, 198, 201, 205, 231 realized (see also communion ecclesiology, realized eschatology of and under Zizioulas, John) 5–6, 26, 41–2, 43, 48, 49, 149–50, 155, 156, 164, 166, 168, 172–6, 180–1, 190, 198, 245 resistance as an effect of 166, 192, 238 resurrection as basis for 143, 146–9, 170 as “saturated phenomenon” 148, 162 of synoptic gospels 142, 170, 171, 172 n.195 tensiveness of (“already–not yet” and “both–and structure”) 48, 147, 148, 150, 154, 157, 158, 159, 165, 168–76, 179, 226, 243 temporality in 154, 160–2, 167, 173 transformation in 152, 158, 164, 170, 180, 183, 192, 230, 239 and utopia 153, 257 and world (see also world under Milbank, John and Zizioulas, John) 142, 145, 152–3, 157, 159, 169 in Zizioulas (see under Zizioulas, John) eucharist (see also under Milbank, John and Zizioulas, John) 7, 8, 9, 13, 16, 21, 26, 27, 31, 32, 41–2, 50, 53, 55–8, 141, 186, 187, 188, 214, 215, 224, 231, 233–6, 244–5, 247, 253 eschatological dimensions of 55, 181, 189–91, 226 eucharistic ecclesiology 20, 22, 39–40, 55–7, 63, 73, 131, 132 Evans, G[illian] R[osemary] 56 Farrow, Douglas 94, 190 Fermer, Richard M. 69 n.33 Flanagan, Brian P. 27–8, 32 n.123, 51 n.228, 58 n.268, 60 Foucault, Michel 105 Fox, Patricia A. 73, 193 Frey, Christofer 143 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 221 Gerson, Jean 108 Green, Garrett 144, 147

Gregory, Eric 102 n.3, 103 n.7, 106 n.21, 134 n.212, 198 Gunton, Colin 69 n.33 Guroian, Vigen 85 n.120 Gutiérrez, Gustavo 42 Hahnenberg, Edward P. 15, 35, 38 Haight, Roger 4, 261–3 Hamann, Johann Georg 103 Hamman, Jaco 225 Handford, Clive 61 Hankey, Wayne J. 110 n.41, 111 n.47 Hanvey, James 127 Harris, Harriett A. 164, 185 Hart, Trevor 144, 145, 188, 211 Hauerwas, Stanley 29, 114, 117 Healy, Nicholas M. 60, 219, 248 Hedges, Paul 109 n.39 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 103 Heidegger, Martin 103, 110, 111 n.47 Heifetz, Ronald 232 Herder, Johann Gottfried 103 Hill, Craig C. 172 Hobbes, Thomas 108 Hoekendijk, J[ohannes] C[hristiaan] 178, 181 Holy Spirit 5, 19, 20, 27, 29, 34, 39, 43, 45 n.198, 59, 54, 64, 68, 74, 87 n.127, 90, 94, 122–4, 133–4, 162, 164, 179, 189, 192, 206, 210, 211, 214, 226, 237 n.88, 240–1, 248, 254, 256, 258, 261–2 Horton, Michael 111 n.47 Hoyt, Thomas, Jr. 230 Hyman, Gavin 115 n.68 imagination (see ecclesial/ecclesiological imagination, eschatological imagination, and theological imagination) Indaba 264 Insole, Christopher J. 109 n.39 Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission (IATDC) 26 International Commission for Anglican– Orthodox Theological Dialogue 25 Jacobs, Alan 114 Jenson, Robert W. 44, 47, 50, 51 n.228, 57

Index Jesus (see also Christ) 12, 17, 26, 29, 32, 42, 43, 44, 54, 56, 70, 119, 120, 123, 135, 157, 165, 169–71, 179, 180, 184, 186, 202–3, 206, 223, 237–9, 246, 247, 249 n.135 Johnson, Elizabeth A. 162 Johnson, Jay Emerson 253 Jones, L. Gregory 231 Kant, Immanuel 103 Kasper, Walter 17–18, 25 Keller, Catherine 163 Khomiakov, Alexei 20 Kierkegaard, Søren 103 Kilby, Karen 51 n.228 kingdom of God (see basileia) Knight, Douglas H. 73 Koenig, John 231 Lacoste, Jean-Yves 191 LaCugna, Catherine Mowry 67 Lane, Dermot A. 147, 210–11, 244, 248 Lincoln, Andrew T. 34–5, 49, 50, 53, 63, 178 Lindbeck, George 119, 129–30 Lings, George 42 Link, Christian 169 Lochman, Jan Milic 43, 249 n.135 Loudovikos, Nicholas [Nikolaos] 47 n.212, 79 n.92, 193 Machiavelli, Niccolò 108 MacIntyre, Alasdair 221, 242 MacMillan, Sarah 225 Mallon, Colleen Mary 53–4, 240–1 Mannion, Gerard 45, 50, 52 n.233, 59, 205–6 Manoussakis, John Panteleimon 94–5, 153, 166–7, 193, 242 Marion, Jean-Luc 148 Marx, Karl 151 Maximus the Confessor 64, 76, 121 McLoughlin, David 4 n.13, 38, 52 n.233, 53 McPartlan, Paul 20–1, 39, 48, 52, 71, 92, 93, 97, 99, 190, 198 Metz, Johannes Baptist 10, 126 n.147, 142, 146, 150, 156, 164, 185, 187, 193, 203, 212–13, 228, 232 n.82, 239 n.99, 247 Mikoski, Gordon S. 226 Milbank, John 7, 8–9, 101–40, 141, 171–2

287 analogy and analogical participation 103, 105, 110, 112, 113, 124 beatific vision 127–8, 141, 152, 172, 173, 175 bishops 125, 132 capitalism 137 difference 109, 112 n.49, 117–18, 128, 131 ecclesiology of 101, 102, 105, 108, 117–21, 122, 123–5, 127, 128, 129–30, 134, 135–8, 139–40, 172, 174, 181, 198, 200, 204, 209, 213 eschatology of 111, 121, 122–8, 134, 136, 138–9, 140, 142, 150, 152–3, 155, 163, 166, 170–2, 173–5, 181, 213 eucharist 101, 131–3, 135, 140 futurity 125–7, 162–4, 174 harmonization 112 n.49, 117–18, 121, 128, 131, 133, 137, 200 hierarchy 110–11, 113, 114, 118, 119, 132 n.191, 136, 138, 139, 140, 163, 173, 208 history 115, 119–20, 124, 125, 126, 129–30, 139, 155 hope 213 Johannine literature 121, 170–1 kingdom of God 122, 123, 124, 135, 138, 139, 198 liberation theology 138 metaphysics (Neoplatonism) and ontology 101, 102–5, 107, 108–13, 115, 116–17, 118, 120, 124–8, 129–31, 133, 134, 136, 137, 139–40, 141, 150, 155, 163, 172, 174, 175, 193, 209, 213, 235, 251 (out)narration and metanarrative 114–17, 118–20, 129–31, 132, 135, 139–40 Pauline literature 117, 120, 125, 131, 138 n.242 personhood 121 pluralism 112, 116, 139 po(i)esis 130–1, 132, 134, 136 political order 136–9, 175, 198–9, 213, 252 “politics of time” 136, 173 (post)modernity 103, 107, 108, 112, 115–16, 141, 163 practice 129–40, 233 n.82, 235

288

Index

realism (theological) 110, 115, 116 reconciliation 125, 131, 132, 133, 135–6 secularity 102–7, 116–17, 137–8, 139, 141 socialism 122, 137–8, 213, 252 transcendence 102, 103, 106, 110, 111, 113, 114, 155 Trinity 128, 135 violence 108–9, 112, 113–14, 115 n.64, 116, 118, 134, 135, 150, 162 world 101, 118, 121, 122, 134, 139–40, 141, 153, 174, 184, 199, 204, 213 Miller, Patrick D. 146 Miller-McLemore, Bonnie J. 218, 220, 221, 222, 225 Moltmann, Jürgen 10, 43, 142, 145, 147, 150, 151, 153, 154, 156, 157, 160, 165, 166, 167, 168, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183, 185, 188, 189, 192, 195, 198 n.120, 199, 202, 206–7, 208, 209, 211, 212, 213, 228, 238, 243–4, 246 Morrill, Bruce T. 216, 244–5 Morse, Christopher 160, 161 Mostert, Christiaan 178, 197 mystical-body ecclesiology 52 n. 237 negative experience of contrast 187–8 Nègre, Paul 74, 189 Neuhaus, Richard John 178, 202, 205 Nieman, James 127, 239 Nietzsche, Friedrich 103, 105, 107, 109, 110 ontotheology 111, 112 n.49 Origen 120 Ormerod, Neil 38, 49, 50, 129 n.169 Owens, L. Roger 233 n.83 Pannenberg, Wolfhart 10, 14, 41, 42, 142, 146, 164, 178, 179, 180, 196, 197, 199, 200, 205, 209–10 Papanikolaou, Aristotle 19, 44, 57, 64 n.8, 73 n.55, 76, 79 n.92, 85 n.120, 91, 99, 187 n.56, 198 n.120 Parks, Sharon Daloz 228–9 Pattison, Stephen 238 n.92 Paulsell, Stephanie 228 Pauw, Amy Plantinga 217, 246 Pickard, Steven 53, 250, 253

Pilario, D[aniel] F[ranklin] 115 n. 64, 130 n.179, 166, 174 Pineda, Ada-María 228 Plato 108–9 Plotinus 112 n.49 Pohl, Christine 231 n.74, 247 Polkinghorne, John 158 n.102 practical theology 218, 220–4 practice 215–20 eschatological horizons in 224–33 Prusak, Bernard P. 47–8 Pseudo-Dionysius 110, 112 n.49 public theology 246–7, 252, 254 Rahner, Karl 164 Raschke, Carl 37, 174 n.203 Rasmussen, Larry 232 Ratzinger, Joseph (Benedict XVI) 17–18, 52 Rausch, Thomas P. 151, 159 Reid, Duncan 25 n.74 Rivera, Mayra 111, 155 Robertson, Neil G. 107–8 Robinette, Brian D. 143–4, 147–9, 153, 156, 162, 172 n.195, 175, 187, 201, 202, 251 Robinson, V. Gene 60 Robra, Martin 29 Rogers, Frank, Jr. 229 Rowell, Geoffrey 47, 60–1 Russell, Edward 69 n.33, 73 Schilderman, Hans 221 Schillebeeckx, Edward 184, 187, 206 Schloss Jeffrey P. 162 Schmemann, Alexander 181, 244–5 Schnackenburg, Rudolph 11 Schroeder, Roger P. 11, 180 Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth 12 Schwarz, Hans 143, 160, 161, 170, 172 n.195, 192, 212, 238, 246 Schwöbel, Christoph 41, 157 Scotus, Duns 103, 108 Sine, Tom 241 Skublics, Ernest 19, 20, 72 Small, Joseph D. 50 Smith, Graeme 163 Smith, James K. A. 1–2, 107, 109, 117, 219, 236, 240 n.106, 251 Smith, Ted A. 221 Soskice, Janet Martin 213

Index Spinoza, Baruch 108 Staniloae, Dumitru 21–2, 41, 44, 47, 49, 188 Suárez, Francisco 108

289

Wittgenstein, Ludwig 221 World Council of Churches (WCC) 4, 14, 28–31, 45, 47, 57, 63, 180, 252, 261 Yoder, John Howard 43

Tanner, Kathryn 51 n.229 Tanner, Mary 14 Taylor, Charles 1, 105, 109, 126, 221 theologia crucis 159–60, 170, 187, 195, 199, 201–3, 205, 252 theologia gloriae 159–60, 170, 173, 187, 199, 245 theological imagination (see also ecclesial/ ecclesiological imagination and eschatological imagination) 1–3, 68, 86, 97, 219–20, 223–4, 233, 236, 238 theophanic name 161 Thiel, John E. 143 Thompson, Janice Allison 239 n.99 Tillard, Jean-Marie Roger 14, 16–17, 23, 27, 28 n.95, 28–9, 31, 41, 44, 46–7, 50, 51 n.228, 58 Tilley, Terrence W. 12, 220–1, 237–8 Turner, Robert D. 88, 96, 98 Vacek, Edward Collins 220 Valliere, Paul 44 van der Ven, Johannes 11 Vico, Giambattista 103 Virginia Report 24, 25, 47, 59, 264 Volf, Miroslav 3, 69 n.33, 73, 80 n.96, 153, 154, 156, 158, 160 n.119, 174, 179 n.6, 206, 207 von Rad, Gerhard 149 Walter, Gregory 205 Ware, Timothy (Kallistos) 19, 63, 79 n.92 Watkins, Clare 33, 48, 54, 58–9, 60 Watts, Fraser 168, 212 Weder, Hans 210 Wells, Jo Bailey 264 Westphal, Merold 111 n.47 William of Ockham 103, 108 Williams, Raymond 166 Williams, Rowan 25, 55, 60, 63, 175, 181, 203–4, 244 Windsor Report 24, 25, 44, 59, 263–4 Witherington, Ben, III 11–12, 152, 169, 174, 197, 225

Zizioulas, John D. 7–8, 9, 14, 21–2, 25, 27, 28–9, 31, 47, 51 n.228, 63–100, 101, 141, 171–2, 193–4, 252 baptism 68, 69, 83–4, 85 n.120, 88, 93 biological hypostasis 66, 68, 71, 83, 84, 93, 100, 150, 152, 155, 172, 175, 189, 251 bishop(s) 77–9, 80 n.96, 81–2, 93, 200, 207 conciliarity and synodality 81–2, 93, 99, 206 ecclesial hypostasis 66, 68, 69, 71, 83, 88, 89, 100, 150, 152, 155, 172, 175, 189 ecclesiology of 67, 68, 69, 71, 72–92, 97–100, 172, 180–1, 198, 202, 204, 206, 208, 213 environmental concern (see also nature, status of) 100, 152 eschatology of (see also realized eschatology) 67, 68, 71, 74, 77, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86–97, 98, 152–3, 154, 166, 172, 198, 207, 210 ethics 98, 202 eucharist 72, 74, 75–9, 82, 83–4, 85 n.120, 90, 91–100, 166, 189–91, 198, 235 eucharistic hypostasis 68 freedom 65, 69, 76, 83, 86, 94, 195 difference (diversity) 75–9, 82, 200 division 75–9 hierarchy 79, 80–2, 93, 207, 208 history 68, 75, 83, 86, 89, 90, 91, 94, 97, 154, 155, 190, 198, 202, 206, 209 hope 213 Johannine literature 71, 82–3, 84–5, 87–8, 89, 90–1, 95, 96, 170 kingdom of God (church as icon of or as the) 90–2, 97, 99, 197–8, 206, 209 nature, status of 66 n.11, 69 n.33, 84–5, 89–90, 98, 100 ontology of personhood 65–71, 72–3, 74, 75, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 96, 98, 99, 152 orthodoxy (doctrinal) 75–6, 99 n.202, 200

290 Pauline literature 87 practice 86, 92–100, 213, 235 realized eschatology (see also eschatology of) 88–9, 90 n.139, 91, 92, 95–7, 99, 100, 142, 150, 162, 170, 173–5, 180–1, 213 synoptic gospels 87 n.127

Index Trinity 66–7, 68, 69–71, 72–5, 76, 79 n.92, 80, 86, 88, 92, 94, 98, 175, 195 triumphalism in 198 unity 75–9, 82, 200 world 69, 71, 82–6, 89, 90, 94, 97–100, 141, 153, 173, 199, 202, 204 Zuidervaart, Lambert 103 n.7

291

292

293

294