A theology exam I took back in August made me realize that there are two big things I really don't know much about: ecclesiology and the sacraments. This is not surprising, as these two are essentially absent in everyday Baptist theology. Growing up, I heard lots in Sunday School and sermons about the inspiration of Scripture, the Trinity, Soteriology, Jesus' divinity, the nature of sin, and so on, but very little on "the Church" and very little on how God might be present to us in things like Baptism or the Lord's Supper.
As I fumbled through explaining Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's notion of the Church in my oral exam, a theology professor of mine, Vincent Miller, asked me what my own personal ecclesiology was. What did I, as a Baptist, think the Church looked like? The question stunned me for two reasons. First, I've been trained in academic theology, and in the setting of things like theology exams, to only do theology through layering quotes and ideas from other theologians. Second, because I had an answer, and it was one completely different from the sources I had read for my exam.
I told Vince Miller that my own experience of ecclesiology in working in a local church, like Lamberth Memorial Baptist in Roxboro, NC, was one where God took the institutional and cultural reality of brick and mortar southern Baptist culture and through the Holy Spirit did endlessly surprising and unexpected things in the lives of people. While I had been taught, theologically, what would "work" to make "excellent" Christians at Duke, I was continually surprised when God exceeded the practical theology I was taught and spoke through people and events to testify to the power of the Cross and to Jesus' overturning of the powers in the world in ways I didn't expect. To put it in more systematic terms, I see "the Church" as an overlapping context of (1) institutional bodies, church buildings, salaried ministers, committees, Sunday School classes, Wednesday night meals and so on and (2) the mysterious and constant work of the Holy Spirit in and beyond this setting in doing work to testify to Jesus continually and surprisingly.
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It's striking to me that you start out by saying that you have not focused on ecclesiology or sacramental theology, because by the end of the post, in describing your own ecclesiology, you describe a certain kind of *sacramental* ecclesiology--a visible community through which the mystery of God is made known as proclamation and action in the world. That is, your sacramental theology and your ecclesiology may have a lot of overlap.
ReplyDeleteI didn't think about that...interesting. Amos Yong says something similar about Pentecostal "sacramentality" and the way a Pentecostal congregation mediates the experience of God to people.
ReplyDeleteI like this because Baptists make ecclesiology too much about theology. The Church is either where the right Gospel is preached/authority of the Bible upheld, or a gathering where people have freedom of conscience to act on their own personal faith. Both of these show a kind of intellectual bias that comes from seminary training, I think. One thing I'm learning from studying with Catholics is that you don't necessarily need theology to have a church, if that makes any sense. I think Yong is going in that direction as well: starting from the experience of a congregation, rather than starting from academic formulations and then trying to map these onto the experience of local churches. Yong is much more "Baptist" in this way.