Anglican Ecclesiology

This chapter begins by exploring the question of the distinctiveness of Anglican ecclesiology within the spectrum of the major Christian traditions. It continues by asking to what extent Anglican ecclesiology can be identified as (a) Protestant; (b) Catholic; (c) catholic and reformed; (d) a ‘middle way’. The chapter then examines the origin and meaning of the terms ‘Anglican’ and ‘Anglicanism’ and goes on to explain what is meant by the Anglican Communion as ‘a communion of churches’ in the sense of the New Testament terms koinōnia/communio and whether this ideal is sustainable in the present global context of radical differences in theology and ethics. The chapter concludes with an account of the origins of episcopacy and of the valuations that Anglicans place on it in the context of their total ecclesiology.

Roman Catholic Ecclesiology from the Council of Trent to Vatican II and Beyond

For 400 years after the Council of Trent, a juridical model of the church dominated Roman Catholicism. Shifts towards a broader ecclesiology began to emerge in the nineteenth century. Despite the attempts to repress any deviations from the official theology after the crisis of Roman Catholic Modernism in the early twentieth century, various renewal movements, known as ressourcement, in the decades between the world wars brought forth a period of rich ecclesiological research, with emphasis given to notions such as the Mystical Body, the People of God, the church as mystery, as sacrament, and as communio. The Second Vatican Council incorporated many of these developments into its vision for renewal and reform of the Roman Catholic Church. Over half a century after Vatican II, a new phase in its reception is emerging with the pontificate of Pope Francis.

Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams’s ecclesiology is shaped by his account of the spiritual life. He examines the transformation of human beings’ relationships to one another, driven by their encounter with God’s utterly gracious love in Jesus Christ. The church is the community of forgiven people generated by Christ’s resurrection. It is animated by its constant exposure to God’s love in Christ in word and sacrament. It is held to that exposure by its doctrinal discipline. It is a community in which members go on learning from one another how to go more deeply into that exposure. For Williams, the church’s commitment to unity and its commitment to truth go together: truth cannot be discovered without holding together in unity to learn from one another; and proper ecclesial unity is unity in this search for truth.

John Zizioulas

The chapter explores three deeply interlinked aspects of John Zizioulas’s highly influential ecclesiology: the relationship between the church and the Trinity; the relationship between the church and the Eucharist; and finally the consequences of those relationships for the structure of the church. The church is a communion through its participation in the life of the Trinity. In Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit, it receives and re-receives the gift of communion in every Eucharist, and communion has a shape that reflects the life of God. The Trinity is centred on the Father, and so in the church at various levels the communion of the many is centred on one who is the head. This is the purely theological reason why the synodality of the church requires primacy at the local, regional, and universal levels. The chapter concludes that, while prompting many questions and needing further development, Zizioulas’s proposal has great ecumenical value.

Wolfhart Pannenberg

This chapter describes the development of Wolfhart Pannenberg’s ecclesiology in his early work and explores his fully developed ecclesiology in the Systematic Theology of 1993. It analyses the fundamental role of the church to be a sign and foretaste of the kingdom of God. This involves a constitutive self-distinction of the church from any political order or civil state on the one hand and from the future kingdom of God on the other. Moreover, the chapter emphasizes the simultaneity of individual salvation and incorporation into the church as the body of Christ in Pannenberg, and demonstrates the ecclesiological task to overcome the divisions between churches in order to witness to the unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity of the church.

Introduction to Ecclesiology

The purpose of this introductory chapter is to provide the reader with an overview of the theological discipline of ecclesiology and a basic orientation to its questions and methods. Noting the boost that ecclesiology received from Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics, Vatican II, and the Ecumenical Movement, the chapter proceeds to explain the etymology of ‘ecclesiology’ and then to define it as the discipline that is concerned with comparative, critical, and constructive reflection on the dominant paradigms of the identity of the church. It then mentions the primary sources of ecclesiology and charts its late arrival on the theological scene. It explores why ecclesiology is inherently problematic—because the church is a divine mystery. Recent developments within ecclesiology are introduced: missiological, ecumenical, feminist, practical, and ethnographical. Four questions to wrestle with are briefly discussed and the chapter ends by raising the possibility of ecclesiology as a vocation.

Feminist Critiques, Visions, and Models of the Church

Women have been vastly under-represented within the church’s ministries. Feminist ecclesiologies invariably begin from this situation of invisibility and discrimination, whilst arguing for the historic and contemporary legitimacy of women’s full participation alongside men. Feminist critiques and reconstructions have drawn on biblical and historical evidence in order to refute patterns of hierarchy and exclusion in favour of more egalitarian traditions of the church as a community of equals. The various strands of the ‘Women-Church’ movement have also been central to a practical feminist ecclesiology, in which women have sought new ways to name their everyday experience as sacred and to exercise new patterns of ministry and leadership. Institutionally-led initiatives, such as the World Council of Churches’ programme on The Community of Women and Men in the Church, have met with mixed success, although worship has been one of the most creative well-springs of feminist activity and renewal.

Methodism and the Church

This chapter examines the nature of the church in Methodist experience and practice from the origins of Methodism as a network of religious societies in the eighteenth century to its present day self-understanding as a global communion of churches. The article discusses: (1) the Wesleyan foundations of Methodist ecclesiology; (2) methods, sources, and norms in Methodist theological reflection on the church; (3) how Methodists interpret the credal marks of the church; (4) the ordained ministry; and (5) the means of grace and authority. A concluding section considers the future agenda for ecclesiology as a branch of practical theology in Methodism. Confident in its providential mission to spread scriptural holiness and ecumenical in outlook, Methodism remains in essence a holiness movement in search of its true ecclesial location in the Holy Catholic Church.

The Church in the General Epistles

Four letters (James, 1 Peter, Jude, and 2 Peter) and a homily (Hebrews), in distinctive ways, express and promote the four ‘marks’ of the church (as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic). They are concerned with the healthy and united life of Christian communities that now face suffering and apostasy. Two of them (James and 1 Peter) address scattered communities in a desire to maintain a worldwide, catholic communion. All five texts promote an ecclesiology based on the inherited Scriptures, and in the case of 2 Peter scriptural authority attaches to the letters of the apostle Paul. Both 1 and 2 Peter open by appealing to the apostolic authority of Peter. James suggests the role of teachers and elders. The whole church should be priestly (1 Peter) and worshipping (Hebrews).

The Shape of the Pauline Churches

This chapter considers what the Pauline epistles reveal about the nature of the Pauline churches and to this end looks at a range of issues: their genus; their formation; their composition; how Paul configures their identity; their leadership structure; their rituals; their meetings; the kinds of places in which they met. The discussion reflects the state of contemporary scholarship on the Pauline communities, but it also seeks to make a fresh contribution to the subject. A critique of the now dominant ‘house-church’ reconstruction of the Pauline congregations is offered, and a more diversified picture is proposed.