While historical approaches to pastoral theology have helped me gain a greater understanding of where the church has come from, some contemporary ecclesiologies have helped to shape my understanding of where the church might be heading. "Ecclesiology" is simply theology that tries to understand what the church is. Three significant theologians writing about ecclesiology are Miraslov Volf, Leonardo Boff, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Letty Russell. Below is a brief overview of each of their ecclesiologies. The next entry will attempt to compare and contrast the four.
The ecclesiologies of Volf, Boff, Ruether and Russell find their groundings in significantly different contexts. Volf writes from the tradition of the Free Church drawing on the work of John Smyth and the Baptist tradition. He seeks to create an ecclesiology that counters the individualism of most Free Church ecclesiologies while attending to both the person and the individual. He also seeks to create an ecclesiology that is respectable in the world, establishing the Free Church movement as a recognized witness to the gospel. Boff, Ruether, and Russell are not concerned with creating an acceptable theology. Rather, their theologies have been developed as critical responses to the greater church body. Boff writes as a liberation theologian in Latin America critiquing the Roman Catholic Church that has served as the cultural center of his community. His critique emerges out of the irruption of the poor in his country and focuses on the elite capitalist establishment and its relationship to the church. Ruether writes as a Catholic in the United States and emerges out of the women’s movement in this country. Her critique focuses on the patriarchal nature of the church. Both seek to create communities that are set apart in order to renew the larger institution of the church.
Russell writes as a Protestant in the United States. She draws on feminist and liberation theologies to critique patriarchy and create a church that is understood through the eyes of the oppressed and marginalized. To use Volf’s definition, each are striving to create a culturally sensitive, culturally critical social embodiment of the gospel.
Each theologian draws on an eschatological vision to shape their ecclesiology. Volf focuses on the new creation. In the new creation there is a mutual indwelling of the Trinitarian community and the glorified church. The church anticipates this new creation and participates in it through the faith of individual believers within the community. Through faith in Jesus Christ, by the work of the Holy Spirit, individual believers are even now in relationship with the trinity. Since all believers are in relationship to the same trinity, they are also in relationship with one another. This unity in the Spirit is central to his understanding of the church. The church is where Christ is present through faith and through the work of the Spirit in constituting the ecclesial community. Volf’s eschatological emphasis is in part a response to the charge that Free Church ecclesiology is separatist and does not recognize the catholicity of the faith. Volf responds by pushing catholicity into the eschatological realm rather than as a present reality. There are some present aspects. At a minimum, all churches must recognize the legitimacy of all other churches that believe in the gospel. This is part justification and part judgment on the Roman Catholic Church. At a maximum, the church should strive to reflect the eschatological reality where all nations and tongues together confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. For Volf, though, complete unity will not take place until the new creation.
Volf’s eschatology highlights the deficiencies in the historic church that will not be redeemed until the end times. He highlights the spiritual reality over the material reality of the church. As such, his sense of mission in the church often remains at a spiritual level. He critiques those who only emphasize the actions of the gospel arguing that there must be a verbal assent and a cognitive understanding of Christ. Boff, Ruether and Russell also have eschatological frameworks that shape their ecclesiologies, but their eschatological frameworks drives them towards a more materially focused mission seeking to create more just societies in this world.
Ruether draws on the New Testament church in Women-Church to shape her structure of the church. For Ruether, the New Testament church was an eschatological community. It was a charismatic community whose ministry was empowered by the gifting of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps most central for Ruether, the gender relations within the New Testament church were modeled after the eschatological reality rather than on the order of creation. As such, men and women served equally in the early church. It was not until the church began to develop a structure and institutionalize that patriarchy set in and women were pushed out of leadership. Ruether’s ecclesiology focuses on returning to the eschatological structure of the church by creating an egalitarian community that resists patriarchy. While Volf’s new creation is grounded in relationship to the trinity, Ruether’s new creation is a feminist vision of the church in which women are equally valued in the culture. As with Volf, her ecclesiology focuses on the creation of such a community more than on an outward vision. While for Volf, such a community is the church itself, for Ruether such a community is only one aspect of the church. Ruether sees her Women-Church functioning as a renewal movement within the greater church. A separate community is needed for critical distance, but should remain in conversation with the wider institution. The Church, for Ruether, is not made up of individual congregations, but following Catholic ecclesiology, is a single entity. The church consists of the institutional Church as well as spirit-filled communities such as Women-Church whose role is to call the institutional Church back to its New Testament roots.
Boff has a similar understanding of the church in his work Ecclesiogenesis. Perhaps this is due to a similar grounding in Catholic theology. He sees the base communities in Latin America as spirit-filled communities who are to serve as renewal movements within the larger institutional Church. His eschatological vision, though, is slightly different than that of Ruether or Volf. Ruether focuses on liberation through the dismantling of patriarchy. Boff focuses on the dismantling of alienating structures, especially the global capitalism that has oppressed the people of Latin America. The differences between Volf and Boff can be illustrated by their understanding of friendship. For Volf, the church is characterized by “sibling friend” relationships. These sibling friend relationships among the believers are modeled after the relationships among the persons of the trinity. They are characterized by mutuality, equality, and love. For Volf, the focus of the new creation is community and relationship. Here he draws on Moltmann’s understanding of the relational trinity. He differs from his mentor, though, and with Boff, on how those relationships work themselves out in the world. Rather than focusing on relationships with one another, though they are also essential, Boff and Moltmann focus on Christ’s relationship to the world. The image of friendship in liberation theology is that of Christ as the friend of the oppressed, coming alongside the poor and the least of these, bringing new life and liberation from injustice. While Volf focuses on the spiritual unity of the community, Boff and Moltmann focus on demonstrating friendship to the world by working against injustice.
