Practices and the new ecclesiology: Misplaced concreteness?

International Journal of Systematic Theology

Volumn 5, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 287-308

  Healy, Nicholas M ^a  

^a ST JOHN'S UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61149560115     PISSN: 14631652     EISSN: 14682400     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1463-1652.00110     Document Type: Article

References (43)

1. Avery Dulles, Models of the Church, expanded edn (New York: Doubleday, 1974/1987).
2. For a critique of such 'modern' ecclesiologies, see my Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
3. See esp. George Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984).
4. Reinhard Hütter, in James J. Buckley and David S. Yeago, eds., Knowing the Triune God: The Work of the Spirit in the Practices of the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), p. 35.
5. Serene Jones, in Miroslav Volf and Dorothy C. Bass, eds., Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), p. 60.
6. Greg Jones, in Buckley and Yeago, Knowing the Triune God, p. 173.
7. The debates at the Council of Trent were clearly in part about the practices of the church. Trent's claim that the Roman magisterium has authority over morals as well as faith is not to be understood as simply a claim about morality, according to John Mahoney. The Latin word mores referred only part of the time to moral concerns. The Reformers and the Roman hierarchy were united in their concern about morality. What divided them were the mores, those traditional practices and customs handed on, or not handed on, from the Apostles, such as devotions to saints, private masses, celibacy and the like, things that would now be called practices. See John Mahoney, S.J., The Making of Moral Theology: A study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 120-32.
8. MacIntyre defines a practice as: 'any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and good involved, are systematically extended'. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, second edn (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 187.
9. Bourdieu's concept of practice differs in important respects from Maclntyre's. See Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977);
10. also The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), esp. pp. 80-97.
11. David H. Kelsey, To Understand God Truly (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), p. 118.
12. Volf and Bass, Practicing Theology, p. 3.
13. These are taken from Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People, ed. Dorothy C. Bass (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997),
14. cited hy Bass and Dykstra in Volf and Bass, Practicing Theology, p. 19.
15. Volf and Bass, Practicing Theology, p. 248.
16. R. Hütter, Suffering Divine Things: Theology As Church Practice, trans. Doug Stott (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 37 and 211.
17. Buckley and Yeago, Knowing the Triune God, p. 11. Their proposal is made in the interest of practical ecumenism. They may not mean it as an absolute statement.
18. See Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997).
19. George A. Lindbeck, 'Ecumenical Imperatives for the Twenty-First Century', Currents in Theology and Mission 20 (1993), pp. 360-6, p. 364,
20. cited by Hütter, Suffering, p. 195.
21. See especially his Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989). The countercultural view of the church is advocated generally throughout his writings, though Hauerwas clearly acknowledges that the church learns from society.
22. John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), p. 388.
23. Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology, The Gifford Lectures, 2001 (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2001; London: SCM Press, 2002), pp. 230f., note 58.
24. Bruce D. Marshall, Trinity and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
25. Lindbeck's illustration can be found in his Nature of Doctrine, p. 64. Even in this case the practice does not fix the meaning of the utterance, though it certainly affects it, of course. Suppose the crusader had been reading his Bible the night before the battle and had become convinced that the crusade is wrong. He argues with the camp priest about it in the morning, and becomes confused and despondent by the priest's exhortations to do his duty by Christ, the Pope and King Louis. Going into battle, he recalls a sermon by a Dominican who once visited his parish, and has the spiritual insight that his knowledge of right and wrong is of less import, finally, than the work in him of him who is truth. So he fights against his opponent, and says Christus Dominus est, not as a shout of triumph, but as a shout of hope and trust in the faithfulness of God. His attitude towards God still 'authorizes' the action, for it is, in an odd but genuine way, a gesture of surrender (to God). Far fetched, yes, but not impossible. The point is that it is his Spirit-informed intention, his spiritual poverty, that saves the confused man, irrespective of his behavior, and it is his intention which informs the meaning of his utterance, not his action-context.
26. Marshall, Trinity and Truth, p. 194.
27. Here I draw upon the other version of the new ecclesiology mentioned above. For some background, see my Church, World and the Christian Life, pp. 170-9; a more detailed discussion can be found in Tanner, Theories of Culture.
28. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953/2001), section 1ff.
29. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Harper, 1929), p. 11.
30. Hütter, Suffering Divine Things, pp. 105ff.
31. Hütter's argument with Barth, then, is not with Barth's apparent lack of concern to find ways of talking theologically about the day-to-day activities of the church. This, I realize now, was my main concern in my essay, 'The Logic of Karl Barth's Ecclesiology', Modern Theology 10 (1994), pp. 253-70.
32. Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe, p. 193.
33. The phrase is Joseph Mangina's and taken from his 'Bearing the Marks of Jesus: The Church in the Economy of Salvation in Barth and Hauerwas', Scottish Journal of Theology 52 (1999), p. 278
34. Mangina, 'Bearing the Marks', pp. 294-5, cited in Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe, p. 145.
35. See Hauerwas's 'Hooks: Random Thoughts by way of a Response to Griffiths and Ochs', a reply to a review of the Lectures by Paul Griffiths entitled 'Witness and Conviction in With the Grain of the Universe', both in Modern Theology 19:1 (200.3). pp. 89-101, 67-75 respectively. The clarification is made on pp. 91f.
36. In 'Hooks: Random Thoughts', p. 93, Hauerwas says that he believes 'that theological claims are practical from beginning to end'. While that is true, I think he would agree that our claims are often not directly practical, but need to be construed, and thus ordered and located, in such a way that their practical import may be properly appreciated by the church and its members.
37. This approach means, of course, that I omit mention of much of Thomas's theology, including much that pertains to ecclesiology, where it does not bear upon the issues I have raised. I have presented my understanding of Thomas's theology, more broadly though with ecclesiological concerns in mind, in Thomas Aquinas: Theologian of the Christian Life (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).
38. See Gilles Emery, OP, Trinité et Création dans les Commentaires aux Sentences de Thomas d'Aquin et de ses Précurseurs Albert le Grand et Bonaventure (Paris: Vrin, 1995).
39. References in parentheses are to Summa Theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Westminster: Benziger/Christian Classics, 1981).
40. Super Evangelium S. Ioannis Lectura, 8:28, n. 1192. All references to Thomas's commentaries on scripture are to the Marietti Edition, ed. R. Cai (Turin, 1951-3), translations from which are my own.
41. Super Evangelium S. Matthaei Lectura, 28:20, n. 2467: 'In Christ is implicitly contained the Trinity.'
42. Those who may be concerned about Thomas's talk of 'meriting' our salvation might usefully consult Joseph P. Wawrykow, God's Grace and Human Action: 'Merit' in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998).
43. Many thanks to readers and listeners for their comments on earlier versions of this article: Rusty Reno, Kathryn Tanner, John Webster and the members of the Oxford University, Faculty of Theology, Modern Doctrine Seminar, and Karen Kilby and the members of the University of Nottingham, Department of Theology Seminar.