Christ as the Way of Synodality

Abstract

Christ as the Way of Synodality Angela Franks IF CONFIRMATION IS, as the wag has it, a sacrament in search of a theology, even more so is synodality a movement in search of a theology. Not all movements deserve a theology; and movements that do are not always supported by theologies that make the grade. Given that synodality has been supported by many theologically dubious claims, is it a movement that does not deserve a theology? Or is it a sound movement that has not found a theology that makes the grade? I do not claim to have read comprehensively in the theology of synodality, so perhaps the ecclesiologically superficial accounts that I have encountered are not representative of its theology as a whole.1 Rather than pursue further that question, I will here propose my own response: Synodality can be a movement that deserves a theology. I will argue that synodality points to the Way who is Christ (syn-hodos as a meeting of the way) and can be conceived in terms of the dynamics of ecclesial communio, itself a theological transposition of the one-many question. Understood this way, synodality expresses a symphony of pneumatic charisms and missions discerned within the Church. [End Page 255] I. The One-Many Question within Ecclesiology The two major Pauline images of the Church’s relation to Christ, as body and as bride, both speak to the dynamic between unity and multiplicity in ecclesiology. The image of body emphasizes the unity-in-diversity of Christ with his Church, mystically united as a quasi-person.2 As Christ’s body, the Church can only be understood out of the unity of its “I,” who is Christ. All the aspects of the Church “are in reality modes of existence of Christ, who is at work in the world through his living Holy Spirit.”3 Yet the Church is also his bride, the one who stands face-to-face with Christ. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “The unity of Christ and the Church, head and members of one Body, also implies the distinction of the two within a personal relationship” (CCC 796). Benoît Dominique de la Soujeole gives the example of agency: Just as the one-flesh union of husband and wife does not mean that a husband’s acts are attributable to his wife or vice versa, so “every act performed by the Church is not identically an act of Christ.”4 Yet, despite this distinction, the unity of Christ and the Church is more than the moral union between two spouses, while less than a simple physical or hypostatic identity. It is, rather, a “mystical” identity rooted in the Eucharistic sharing of divine sonship through grace.5 Ecclesiology here perfects the foundational metaphysical question of the one and the many. The early alternatives between Parmenides and Heraclitus can be read this way: Is being essentially monolithic or essentially diverse? If the former, then [End Page 256] being’s simultaneity with unity means that all is one, and appearance and difference are only illusions. If the latter, then all unity is an illusion amidst an essential multiplicity. Ironically, both approaches end in the same place, by calling into question the ordinary world of sense perception and political life, in which both unity and multiplicity are evident. Plato and Aristotle took issue with the influential Parmenidean way of thinking about being, in which being and nothing are strictly opposed and univocal.6 Both philosophers noted that being (and nonbeing) can be said “in many ways,” bequeathing a nuanced approach to the one-many question to their successors.7 The analogical balance between unity and multiplicity is difficult to maintain, and the history of philosophy can be understood as the history of competing extremes on the one-many question. Likewise, the tension within ecclesiology can slacken. The Church as one quasi-person with Christ can be misunderstood in an almost Parmenidean way, in which what “is” the Church does not admit of varying levels of ecclesial existence.8 One would be simply “in” or “out” of the Church (being or nonbeing), in this understanding. Lumen...