Objectives
By the end of this module you will be able to:
Objectives
By the end of this module you will be able to:
Introduction to Reading 3.1
Marie-Joseph le Guillou, "Church" in ed. Karl Rahner and others, Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology. Vol. 1. London: Burns and Oates, 1968.
In its original context this reading forms the first part of a lengthy article on the church. We will read this discussion of the history of ecclesiology because it provides us with a concise history of our unit topic. When we focus on a modern theology of the church in modules 4 and 5 we will do so knowing some important historical background.
It seems to me that Le Guillou’s argument in its essentials is as follows. Vatican II developed a theology of church that recovered the best insights of the early church fathers and the great medieval theologians. Le Guillou suggests that ecclesiology (theology of the church) developed as a special topic in theology only in the Middle Ages. This development was in response to current challenges to papal authority and church teaching. These first treatises presented to their readers an impoverished understanding of church emphasising the aspects under threat. The biblical and theological vision of the fathers was lost. The revival of ecclesiology began in Germany in the nineteenth century and came to fruition in Vatican II.
Please read carefully section A: FROM THE FATHERS TO THE MIDDLE AGES. The author devotes two paragraphs to the ecclesiology of the fathers, beginning with the apologists, and a third paragraph to the Middle Ages. He attempts to capture the thought of very different writers spread over several centuries addressing vastly different audiences. I can understand that you might feel that the language is abstract and that ideas are elusive. However it is important for us to be able to describe briefly some of the main aspects. I suggest you take note of the following:
(i) The early church fathers and the theologians of the Middle Ages had important theologies of church, but, unlike theologians today, the early writers never wrote a separate theological treatise on the church. How then is the church understood in this period? Le Guillou first makes the point that the church was the "existential foundation" of the theology that emerged. I would suggest that the early theologians were church people writing from within the church about topics of vital concern for the life and survival of their local churches.
(ii) You will see the Trinitarian context in which church was understood and the vast horizons of the plan of God for the world in which the church is situated. In module 4 we will see that Vatican II attempts to recover this perspective.
(iii) Le Guillou writes that when the Fathers referred to Christ and the church they used the whole of scripture. Let me add on this point that some Fathers wrote commentaries on the Old Testament in the course of which they referred to the church. Some referred to the Old Testament when they tried to define the church as distinct from the pagans and Jews. Some of the Fathers explained the new life of Baptism through reference to the whole design of God beginning with the creation of the world. The worldview of Scripture was always the assumed to be the worldview within Christian life and the church could be explained.
(iv) In response to threats posed by heretics and dissidents within the church the fathers developed key ecclesiological topics like those listed in the last paragraph of the section on the Fathers.
(v) While the medieval theologians did not ignore the visible institutional aspects of the church their emphasis was on the interior aspect of the life of grace. Le Guillou writes that "this whole patristic and theological conception signified for ecclesiology the primacy of the Spirit and of the ontology [essential meaning of] of grace."
Exercise 3.1
3.1.1 Describe succinctly the ecclesiology of the church fathers and of a medieval theologian like St Thomas Aquinas.
Please read section B: THE FORMATION OF THE TREATISE ON THE CHURCH
Le Guillou discusses the emergence of the first treatises on the church in the context of (a) the conflicts of the medieval popes with political rulers and (b) the struggle of the church with a number of medieval reform movements provoked by abuses within the church.
As regards the conflict with the princes, our author refers first to the Gregorian Reform, named from Pope Gregory VII (1073-85). It is generally said that the Gregorian Reform emancipated the church from secular domination and asserted the pre-eminence of the Pope. Further on in the article Le Guillou mentions the conflict of the pope with King Philip IV (the Fair) of France at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Here le Guillou uses the term Gallicanism (the assertion of the independence of the local or national French church). As regards the second factor, the rise of heretical movements in opposition to the power and wealth of the papal church, we read of the Waldenses, the Albigenses and the Poor Men of Lyons.
It is indeed a challenge to survey in a brief article twenty centuries of theological and church history. I suggest that we focus more on the sort of ecclesiology found in the first treatises on the church rather than on the details of the ecclesiastical history.
Exercise 3.1
3.1.2 Explain the idea of the church as a perfect society (societas perfecta). What influence did the canon lawyers have on the first treatises of the church.
Le Guillou concludes section B of his article with a discussion of the influence of the Protestant Reformation on ecclesiology.
Exercise 3.1
3.1.3 Explain le Guillou’s claim that in reaction to Reformation church theology Roman Catholic theologians concentrated on the church’s juridical and visible reality and gave less attention to the reality of grace.
Having mentioned the Reform le Guillou continues to suggest historical factors right up to the twentieth century that led theologians before Vatican II to emphasise the institutional aspect of the church. He alludes to Jansenism. [Note: Jansenism originated with Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638) bishop of Ypres. T. Howland Sanks writes that "the main theological concerns of Jansenism were not with ecclesiology, but with a belief in the radical corruption of human nature and the consequent inability of humans to observe moral rectitude on a natural level." T. Howland Sanks, Salt, Leaven and Light, p.96.] Febronianism, next mentioned, is an 18th century doctrine of the church that arose in Germany. Like Gallicanism in France Febronianism argued for the independence of the local or national church against the authority of the pope. In the nineteenth century the institutional aspects of the church were emphasised once again in a reaction to liberal Protestantism. This phrase refers to a movement associated with the names of Friederick Schleiermacher (d.1834) and Adolph von Harnack (d.1930). Liberal Protestantism responded to the need to relate Christian faith to the human situation and to bridge the gap between Christian faith and modern knowledge. Finally in this section le Guillou refers to Modernism. Modernism is associated with a number of early twentieth century theologians. "Drawing from the Liberal Protestant writings of the late nineteenth century, they identified revelation with a universal human experience... Accordingly they downplayed both the dogmatic content of revelation and its supernatural origin and process of communication." [Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism, HarperSanFrancisco, 1994, p.245.].
Please read section C: THEOLOGICAL PROGRESS
You will perhaps agree that by this time our author has constructed a formidable case for the need to rethink the treatise on the church. In this final section of the article he tables developments anticipating the Vatican II theology of the church.
In the 19th century thinking on the church began to revitalise when theologians returned to patristic and medieval sources (the Tu bingen school). The theology of the mystical body was developed though it was not considered correct at the first Vatican council (1869-70). The theology of the mystical body came to full flower in the theological renewal of the post World War II Years. After the papal encyclical Mystici Corporis (Pius XII, 1943) theological studies developed in complementary directions. The major approaches to ecclesiology that used by the second Vatican council emerged in these years.
Exercise 3.1
3.1.4 In what sense can the term "theological renewal" be applied to the work of the TÜ bingen school of catholic theologians and to the thinking in the encyclical Mystici Corporis?
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