Writer of Fancy: The Playful Piety of Jane Austen

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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Theology - Ecclesiology: Moral and Social

According to Oliver O’Donovan, Book 19 of City of God “is, at the very least, an essay to demonstrate that moral philosophy must be social philosophy.”  The highest good for Augustine is the peace of the city of the blessed, and this is an inherently social reality.  Since virtuous action is guided by ends, and this is the supreme end of the city, the moral life is oriented to a vision of uninterrupted social peace, the eternal tranquillitas ordinis.

Theology - Ecclesiology: High Church Donatists

The Donatists are usually seen as the sectarians of the early church but Robert Dodaro points out that for Augustine their sectarianism derived from their clericalism: “Augustine explains that cultic acts which remit sins, such as baptism, are in reality performed by Christ, who acts through Christian priests. Augustine’s frequent insistence on this point is due, in part, to his conclusion that the Donatists, by erroneously attributing to their bishops the power of obtaining forgiveness of sins through intercessory prayer, establish the latter as mediators on a par with Christ. . . . he complains that ‘Donatists put Donatus in the place of Christ.’ Behind the Donatist conception of the cultic role of bishops stands their conviction that the holiness of the church is, in effect, guaranteed by the bishop, inasmuch as he obtains divine forgiveness for the sins of the church’s lay members through intercessory prayer. . . . Moreover, he opposes the sharp, Donatist distinction between the intercessory roles of bishops and laity in the church by insisting that Christ, as high priest, incorporates into his body the whole church and not just priests.”

It’s totus Christus against Donatist clericalism.  Surely this counts as counter-evidence to Warfield’s characterization of the Reformation as the triumph of Augustine’s soteriology over his ecclesiology.

Theology - Ecclesiology: Universal choir

Augustine on Psalm 149: “Chorus Christi jam totus mundus est.”  Christ’s choir is now the whole world.

Theology - Ecclesiology: FV In Nuce

Mundus reconciliatus Ecclesia (Augustine, Sermon 96).  “The world reconciled is the church.”

Theology - Ecclesiology: Continuing Incarnation?

In his 1987 book on Thomas’s ecclesiology, George Sabra argues that Thomas does not teach that the church is a continuing incarnation.  He definitely rejects any notion that the church is deified.  If the notion of “continuing incarnation” simply means that the church continues the work of the incarnation, it comes closer to Thomas.  But even here, Sabra says, Thomas is too conscious of the once-for-all character of Jesus’ work to use language of continuation or prolongation.  Instead, he uses the language of “communication”: Christ communicates the effects of His work to the church, the Head infusing His own life into the body.

Theology - Ecclesiology: Congar on Thomas

Thomas wrote no treatise on the church, but Yves Congar, among others, insisted that the whole second part of the Summa is about ecclesiology. Thomas is telling a story of exodus and return, and the second part of his treatise is about the return effected by Christ and worked out in the church.

Man, Thomas says, is created for beatitude; beatitude is the final end, the purpose for which God created man. Man exists for fellowship with God, and this ought also to be the aim of every particular human action. This purpose is interrupted and destroyed and despoiled by sin, and so it was necessary for Christ to return mankind back to God. He ensures that man reaches his telos. Thomas understands both the incarnation and Christ’s sacrifice as dimensions of humanity’s return to God.

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Theology - Ecclesiology: Orchestra of the world

Calvin says “The whole world is a theater for the display of the divine goodness, wisdom, justice, and power, but the Church is the orchestra, as it were - the most conspicuous part of it.”

Theology - Ecclesiology: Calvin and Ordination

In his recent book on image and word in Calvin, Randall Zachman describes Calvin’s shifting views on ordination. Early on, he sarcastically rejects the notion that the laying of hands in the Roman Church constitutes a sacrament. By 1543, however, he has changed both his tone and his position. He still thinks that Roman ordination is corrupt, but he says that the laying of hands “is a ceremony, first taken from Scripture” and that it is “one that Paul testifies not to be empty nor superfluous, but a faithful token of spiritual grace.” Yet he does not “put is as number three among the sacraments because it is not ordinary or common with all believers, but is a special rite for a particular office.”

A bit later in the 1543 edition of the Institutes, he adds: “There remains the laying on of hands. I concede that it is a sacrament in true and lawful ordinations, so I deny that it has a place in this farce [of Roman ordinations], where they neither obey Christ’s command nor consider the end to which the promise should lead.” It has no power or efficacy in itself, of course, but does have power and efficacy that “depend solely on the Spirit of God.”

Theology - Ecclesiology: Hospitable society

Feasting and care for the poor have been polarized in contemporary culture.  If you’re a “conservative,” you’re in favor of free trade, consumption without guilt, festivity without concern for those who can’t join you, who probably deserve their poverty anyway.  If you’re a “liberal,” you renounce festivity because other people are hungry and how dare you eat when someone else isn’t.

The Biblical prophets combine a promise of festivity with severe denunciation of greed, luxury, and oppression.  But they combine the two seamlessly by emphasizing hospitality.  The promise is a feast like the feasts of the Pentateuch, where the widow, stranger, and Levite are not forgotten but included as welcome guests.

Against both “conservative” indifference and liberal asceticism, the Bible presents the ideal of the hospitable society.

Theology - Ecclesiology: Church as public assembly

In his sociological history of Christian worship, Martin Stringer examines the process of “Christianization” in the early church as a process of Christian colonization of space. Among other things, he notes that “Christian architecture differed in a number of significant ways from the religious architecture of pagan religions. Most pagan temples contained a small inner sacred space that was restricted to the priests, and were surrounded by more public arcades, walkways, and squares. For the Christians the inner space had to contain the whole Christian congregation and the basic shape of the building came to follow that of the basilica, or public hall, rather than that of the temple.”

This is fascinating on a number of levels, but one point for now: Christian places of worship resembled civic buildings more than pagan temples. That’s because the church was arriving on the scene as a new city, not merely a new cult.

Theology - Ecclesiology: Irenaeus and Apostolic Succession

Irenaeus is cited as one of the early proponents of apostolic succession through episcopal ordination. Only bishops who could reconstruct a line back to the apostles could claim apostolic authority: “With the succession of the episcopate they received the assured gift of truth.” Yet, according to K. J. Woollcombe, “in the earliest days, it is likely that bishops were elected and consecrated by their fellow-presbyters. Irenaeus can only have been consecrated to succeed the martyred Pothinus of Lyons by his fellow-presbyters. The Bishops of Rome were probably consecrated in the same way at least until the middle of the second century.”

Theology - Ecclesiology: Bible and Episcopacy

H. W. Montefiore, one-time vice-principal of Westcott House, Cambridge, and a priest in the church of England, argues that the episcopacy is of the plene esse of the church. Of those who claim it is if the esse, he writes, “if episcopacy were to be essential to the life of the church, God would have made it quite clear to us. He who had condescended to become man for the salvation of the world would not allow the benefits of His passion to be jeopardized by the doubtful hypotheses of biblical scholarship. There can therefore be no support from the Bible that the apostolic succession through the laying on of hands guarantees the church. It may be read into the text, but it cannot be read out of it.”

Theology - Ecclesiology: Hugeness

Jason Zengerle has an interesting piece in the TNR on evangelical conversions to Orthodoxy. At the end of the article, he quotes Jordan DeRenzo, who converted to Orthodoxy when her Baptist pastor, Wilbur Ellsworth, converted. She says: “Coming to the Orthodox Church means that I am in communion with that church no matter where I am in the world, that I can go into that church wherever I am and have the same liturgy and celebrate the same way. I’ll be in communion with other people. And that is so huge. That hugeness is so exciting.”

She has a point, of course. One cannot even walk into Baptism or Presbyterian churches in the same town and find the same liturgy.

On the other hand: What was she learning in the Baptist church that made her think she wasn’t part of a huge communion?

And, on still another hand: Isn’t converting to Orthodoxy a tad restricting? Is she going to find the same church everywhere? Isn’t she going to have a hard time finding that huge church in Chile, Guatemala, or Austria?

Theology - Ecclesiology: Enjoyment in God

Wilken summarizes Augustine’s social vision of perfection this way: “This peace for which the city of God yearns is a ‘perfectly ordered and harmonious fellowship in the enjoyment of God,’ a peace of ‘enjoying one another in God.’ Notice that Augustine’s language is social, not individualistic. He does not say, ‘fellowship with God,’ but enjoying one another in God, or as one translator has it, a ‘mutual fellowship in God.’ Augustine’s controlling metaphor for the new life that God creates is not, for example, being born again, but becoming part of a city and entering into its communal life.”

Theology - Ecclesiology: Ecclesiology of perfection

When Plato thought about politics, he thought about an ideal city (at least in the Republic).

Not Augustine. Augustine recognized that Plato had portrayed “what kind of city ought there to be.” But Augustine was after something different. He presented an actual human society, a city of God in history, with all the complexities and messiness that entails.

Theology - Ecclesiology: Exhortation, Fourth Sunday of Trinity

Over the next couple of years, Trinity will go through a significant transition, as I phase out of some responsibilities at Trinity to take on new responsibilities with the NSA graduate program. I will not be leaving Trinity, but over the next two years you’ll see a different face in front of you more and more frequently.

It will be tempting for some, no doubt, to consider moving from Trinity. If you have been here for me, and I’m not going to be preaching as regularly, it might seem you’ve lost your reason to be here.

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Theology - Ecclesiology: Church as New Creation

In Ephesians 4, Paul describes the sevenfold unity of the church. The numerical connection with Genesis 1-2 already indicates that the church is the new creation, formed by the word of God and the “seven Spirits” into a united cosmos. But the seven unities might also link in detail to the days of creation. Maybe; here’s a stab:

1. One body: Church as light in darkness.
2. One Spirit: Spirit as the boundary/firmament?
3. One hope: Earth emerging from waters? Plants springing from earth?
4. One Lord: The Sun of Righteousness, ruler of the Day.
5. One faith: Birds and fish?
6. One baptism: Which makes new men, in the Last Adam; the nuptial bath of the bride, the new Eve.
7. One God and Father: Who brings all to completion, rest; who presides over the Sabbath; who will be all in all.

Theology - Ecclesiology: Spouse and Kingdom, revisited

In response to my earlier post on “Spouse and Kingdom,” Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio writes,

“it strikes me that the WCF’s dualism in describing the Church reflects the typical Western dualism that was congealing during the 17th century. Invisible and spiritual matters can be described in poetic, imaginative, metaphoric, fuzzy ways, but things we can perceive with the senses, “that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands,” must be described with a more precise vocabulary. The political/juridical vocabulary is more precise, almost scientific, and so more suitable (for 17th century thinkers) for actual living and breathing congregations.

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Theology - Ecclesiology: Spouse and Kingdom

The rhetorical and metaphorical shift between Westminster Confession 25.1 and 25.2 is dramatic.

The invisible church is described in terms of their intimacy with Christ and with one another: They are gathered “into one” under “Christ the Head; the invisible church is the beloved “spouse” of Jesus, and His “body”; it is the “fulness of Him that filleth all in all.”

Section 2, on the visible church, turns political.

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Theology - Ecclesiology: Plebs in the church

Thanks to Tim Enloe for getting me a copy of David Rankin’s 2004 article, “Class Distinction as a Way of Doing Church: The Early Fathers and the Christian Plebs” (Vigiliae Christianae 58). He examines the way the terminology and orders of Roman society were imported into the church.

As early as Clement of Rome, for instance, the word laos is being used to refer to the “laity,” rather than to the people as a whole:

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