Towards an Adequate Concept of Church

Abstract

TOWARDS AN ADEQUATE CONCEPT OF CHURCH IT is sometimes asserted that modern ecclesiology needs to elaborate a more spiritual concept of Church to replace one which has been too juridic and sterile. Such a perspective, however, seems superficial. It does not touch the fundamental reality of the Church. The need of the present moment is not for substitution but synthesis. It is possible now to recapture the Pauline synthesis which was lost when apologists and polemicists concerned themselves exclusively with the visibility of the Church. The need is to take up this synthesis once again and restate it in terms for our times. An adequate concept of Church must explain the Church's theandric character. Recognizing the Church as a reality which is at once visible and invisible, it must accept the Church as both a society and a life; a society which manifests in a public way Christ's triumph over Satan; a life which establishes a totally new relationship between redeemed humanity and God. The members of the Church possess a unique relationship to Christ and the Holy Spirit. The communion among those possessing these relations constitutes the precise reality which imparts to the Church its specific esse, viz. a mystico-visible sharing in the life of Christ. The present article will not attempt to present an adequate concept of Church. Rather its aim is to establish what seems to be an antecedent necessity: that only through a synthesis of the juridic and spiritual viewpoints can we arrive at a truly adequate concept of Church.1 It will do this by reviewing the synthesis which is present in St. Paul. It will then explain how this synthesis was lost and offer some suggestions relative to the restatement of this synthesis today. 1 Although this was recognized in the last century by Scheeben, it has not received the consideration it merits. Cf. B. Fraigneau-Julien, L'Eglise et le charactere sacramentel selon M.-J. Scheeben, (Paris, 1957). 11 12 JOHN J. KING So rich and complex is the concept of Church that St. Paul uses a multiplicity of biblical images to describe it: Body of Christ, People of God, Bride of Christ, Kingdom of God, Temple of God.2 Each image expresses some element or some consequence of the union of men with Christ. We do not have to seek the origin of St. Paul's thought in the Stoic metaphor which saw the whole cosmos as a body animated by a divine Pneuma; or in the gnostic myth of Urmensch.3 These certainly influenced the evolution of Paul's expression, but his thought concerning the Church was already fully contained in his awareness of our oneness "in Christ." The words which he heard on the road to Damascus had given him this awareness which he never lost. The heavenly voice's identification of the Christian community with Jesus was without doubt the source of Paul's thought and it was this he sought to express by a variety of images. Among these there are two which stand out: People of God and Body of Christ. From the time when God first made a special intervention in human affairs and called to Himself a special group of men, there was always a People of God on earth. The divine election effected on Mt. Sinai made the Jews God's own people. The desert community was thus set aside from the rest of humanity. They became, as a race with an existence and a unity of their own, the heirs of Abraham and of the promises made to his seed. They were also raised up as a sign to all nations that God had determined upon a definite plan for the world and its salvation. At the very beginning of this covenant between God and his people, there was foreshadowed Israel's sin and unfaithfulness.4 God's plan for Israel would never be fulfilled. In time the prophets would announce a 2 Space limitations make it impossible to treat this very important image of temple. It is well treated by J. C. Fenton, "The New Testament Designation of the True Church as God's Temple," in American Ecclesiastical Review...