DE KERK ALS SAKRAMENT EN HET HEIL VAN DE WERELD

Abstract

Summary The conception of the Church as a sacrament, endorsed by Vat.II in Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes, may not have become as popular as that of the Church as the People of God, it has undoubtedly been an important theme in theology with increasing ecumenical relevance. In this article part of its history is written; it focuses on the use of the word “sacrament” for the Church in its relation to the world. At the level of authoritative teaching the sign-character of the Church is for the first time expressed at Vat.I. On the eve of Vat.II the sacramental view of the Church was again brought to the fore by Semmelroth, Rahner and, to a certain extent, by Schillebeeckx. It invariably appears in the context of two theological loci: the theology of the sacraments and the necessity of the Church for salvation; in one way or another the theme will remain linked with these loci in post-conciliar theology. The relevant texts of Vat.II are dealt with at some length, and special attention is paid to “unity” as a keyword in LG, to the way the unity of mankind is linked with the union with God, and to the fact that the idea of the Church as the sacrament of unity is taken up in GS. In the discussion that accompanied the making of GS, and after the Council, the conception of the Church as a sacrament served to determine the place (“function”) of the Church in the modern, secularised world. It also enabled theologians to abandon an ecclesiocentric view of salvation-history (Rahner, Schillebeeckx, Boff, Gutierrez). A positive appreciation of secularization was predominant: the autonomous world was seen as the scene where the Kingdom of God is emerging. In the european (and north-american) context such ambiguous expressions as “the Church is the sacrament of the world” (Schillebeeckx) or “the sacrament of history” (GonzalezRuiz) appeared. They are ambiguous because “world” and “history” are so. In the seventies they were taken over by some representatives of the theology of liberation (Boff, Gutierrez). In this latin-american context the formula “sacrament of history” sounds almost contradictory, as “world” is now discovered in its dividedness, and “history” as dominated by conflict and struggle. It is pointed out that at the background of this theology that is turned toward the world as history, is the empirical theology of “the signs of the times” as advocated by Chenu. At the same time, most of the theologians discussed here insist that the sacramentality of the Church is not limited to the celebration of the (seven) sacraments, but extends to the whole of her mission, and that the whole People of God is its subject. To the extent that the world for which the Church is a sacrament looses the formal and abstract character it had in pre-conciliar theology, “salvation” and “unity” become more tangible and more social. Such is particularly the case in the theology of liberation (Boff, Gutierrez, Codina). If the Church is the sacrament of the Kingdom of God as preached and practised by Jesus and as emerging in the history of mankind, she should show in her own life those goods that the society in which she lives is longing for. It appears from the criticism of De Lubac and Ratzinger that what is at stake in this view of the sacramentality of the Church is the very nature of Christian salvation: earthly and heavenly, individual and social (political). Finally, the more the Church is considered as the community whose liberated life is a (sacramental) sign for the world, the more closely ecclesiology and ethics will be linked. The world “sacrament” then gets a moral ring: the sign-function of the Church consists in setting an example for the world. But this can never be a reason for a new sort of triumphalism, for in the last resort the Church lives from grace.