7 - Practical-prophetic ecclesiology

Summary

In the foregoing chapters I have argued that ecclesiology can better perform its function if it is set within a theodramatic rather than an epicmodernist horizon. A theodramatic and traditioned understanding of religion and truth prompts the church to engage with other traditions of inquiry and their embodiments without domesticating their otherness. A theodramatic horizon provides the church with a framework within which it can develop self-critical responses to the various challenges and opportunities of the present ecclesiological context. It enables the church to argue forcefully that it is reasonable to witness to Jesus Christ as the ultimate truth, and that it is possible to embody that witness in truthful discipleship. Practical-prophetic ecclesiology assists the church in reforming its concrete identity to accord with Paul's rule, namely to glory (only) in Jesus Christ.

This final chapter makes a few suggestions about how ecclesiology might be expanded so as to draw upon the work of other disciplines, and how it might develop from those disciplines new theological approaches of its own. My suggestions are necessarily tentative and open-ended. Within a theodramatic horizon (at least), one cannot construct in purely theoretical terms a method guaranteed to produce successful concrete results; one can only present some approaches that will prove useful or not in the doing. There is no single right approach; other approaches may be more appropriate than the ones proposed within other contexts and particular denominations. My suggestions are related to my ecclesiological agenda which includes, we recall, a concern to develop ecclesiology into a social practice that reflects directly and theodramatically upon what modern ecclesiology often renders secondary, namely the church's concrete, in via identity.