The Church and the Historical Jesus

Abstract

The Christological approach to the doctrine of the Church. which is now seen as the most hopeful way forward fot the work of Faith and Order, could mislead us if it were to direct our attention away from the dependence of the Church on the historical Jesus, and to lead us to think instead only in the dogmatic terms of a Chalcedonian analogy. While there is much to be learned about the right way to formulate our doctrines from such theological machine-tools, our first business in thinking about the nature of the Church is to learn to bear witness to the acts of Christ Himself in founding the Church as the new People of God, and in keeping it throughout its history as the instrument of His present work. If the purpose of this paper is to think especially of the dependence of the Church, as a continuous society in history, on its origins in the historical actions of Jesus, in the Incarnation and Passion of Christ as concrete facts in space and time, there is no intention thereby to deny the equal importance of the corresponding dependence of the Church on the present action of its living and ascended Lord.