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The Limits of Ecclesial Metaphors in Systematic Ecclesiology1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2013

Brian P. Flanagan
Brian P. Flanagan
Affiliation:
College of the Holy Cross
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Abstract

This article looks at two major metaphors used in contemporary ecclesiology, the church as “the People of God” and as “the Bride of Christ,” which have functioned in some of the polarizing debates within the Catholic Church in North America. It then suggests some methodological reasons why reliance upon metaphors in ecclesiology, either through the balancing of different metaphors or the promotion of a dominant metaphor, is inadequate to the task of understanding the church systematically. It then suggests some avenues for future ecclesiological method that may help to understand the church better and so to respond better to contemporary ecclesiological debates.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , Spring 2008 , pp. 32 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 2008

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References

2 Steinfels, Peter, A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003).Google Scholar

3 A similar point was made recently by Massa, Mark in “Beyond ‘Liberal’ and ‘Conservative’: The Internal Sectarian Threat to U.S. Catholicism,” in Inculturation and the Church in North America, ed. Kennedy, T. Frank (New York: Crossroad, 2006), 127–44.Google Scholar

4 As a Roman Catholic theologian writing about ecclesiology in a way that I believe potentially fruitful for continuing dynamics within the Roman Catholic community, I must also be clear about my use of the word “church.” When speaking of “the church” from my confessional perspective, I do so recognizing the irreplaceable ecumenical context of contemporary Christian theology and with the hope, rather than the surety, that in raising questions about “the church” these reflections may help in the multidenominational attempt to understand the one church of Christ in and through our particularities.

5 Avis, Paul outlines these basic definitions of metaphor and image, as well as symbol and myth, in the course of his argument about the irreducibly metaphorical nature of theological language in God and the Creative Imagination (New York: Routledge, 1999), 94–98.Google Scholar But while Avis is suspicious of any theology that forgets its basic symbolic and metaphorical—in short, imaginative—roots, and provides an important warning for theologians who forget the limitations of their speech and method, I will continue to argue below for the possibility of more and less systematic, more and less clear and consistent theological methods, that avoid Avis's “wild-goose chase” for “greater and greater degrees of literalness” (102) without abandoning the attempt for systematic theological clarity.

6 Is “communion” a metaphor? Unlike the other liturgical and biblical metaphors presented here, communio seems to be more of an abstract theological concept than a metaphor drawn from human experience. At the same time, the model of the church as “communion” has arisen just as quickly as many ecclesial metaphors, and could potentially be superseded just as quickly as the other “blueprint ecclesiologies” of the twentieth century (the term is Nicholas M. Healy's; see Healy, , Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology, Studies in Christian Doctrine [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000], 25–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Mannion, Gerard, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity [Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2007], 36–38Google Scholar). I have elsewhere argued that while “communion” is just as susceptible to such a non-systematic usage as these ecclesial metaphors, it may also be used in a less hegemonic and more explanatory way to speak about some aspects of the nature of the church (Flanagan, , “Communion, Diversity, and Salvation,” 185–91Google Scholar).

7 Cf. Massa, “Beyond ‘Liberal’ and ‘Conservative.’”

8 The metaphor of the church as the “Body of Christ” would be the most likely contender as a major metaphor of the church that determines Christian ecclesiology in a significant way (although not all theologians or exegetes would identify this Pauline phrase as a metaphor; e.g., see Jenson, Robert W., Systematic Theology, 2 vols. [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997], 2:211–15Google Scholar). But while there are definite systematic difficulties involved in clinging too closely to the metaphor of church as the Body of Christ (e.g., the difficulty in understanding the relationship of non-Catholic Christians to the Roman Catholic Church, if the latter is identified as “the Body of Christ”; the image of the church as a physical “body” lends itself to a binary division: one is either part of a body, or not), the metaphor does not play a comparable role in intraecclesial Roman Catholic divisions, and so an analysis of the metaphor is less pressing at this time.

9 For a brief overview and extensive references on the use of the metaphor in ecclesiology, see O'Donnell, Christopher, “People of God,” in Ecclesia: A Theological Encyclopedia of the Church (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996), 357–59.Google Scholar Some of the crucial sources for understanding the notion and its historical genesis are Congar, Yves, “The Church: The People of God,” Concilium 1:1 (January 1965): 7–19Google Scholar; Koster, Mannes Dominikus, Ekklesiologie im Werden (Paderborn: Verlag der Bonifacius-Druckerei, 1940)Google Scholar; Rahner, Karl, “People of God” in Sacramentum Mundi, ed. Rahner, Karl et al. , 6 vols. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968–1970), 4:400–2Google Scholar; Ratzinger, Joseph, Das Neue Volk Gottes (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1969)Google Scholar; idem, Volk und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von der Kirche (St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 1992 [original diss. 1951]); and the documents of Vatican II themselves, particularly chapter 2 of Lumen Gentium.

10 This analysis is based upon Harrington, Daniel, “The Church and the People of God,” in The Church According to the New Testament: What the Wisdom and Witness of Early Christianity Teach Us Today (Franklin, WI: Sheed & Ward, 2001), 69–81.Google Scholar For more on the people of God in the Scriptures, see Brown, Raymond, The Churches the Apostles Left Behind (New York: Paulist, 1984), 75–83Google Scholar; Grelot, Pierre, “People,” in The Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed. Léon-Dufour, Xavier (London: Chapman, 1973), 416–22Google Scholar; Meyer, R. and Strathmannn, H., “Laos,” in The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Kittel, Gerhard et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–1976), 4:29–56.Google Scholar

11 The bibliography on the church as the “Body of Christ” is as extensive as that on the People of God. Again, a good starting point is the article “Body of Christ” in O'Donnell, , Ecclesia, 62–64.Google Scholar The three major sources which brought Body of Christ language from the Roman School into the center of twentieth-century ecclesiology are Mersch, Émile, La théologie du corps mystique, 3rd ed. (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1949)Google Scholar, along with Mersch's earlier biblical and historical studies; Tromp, Sebastian, Corpus Christi quod est ecclesia (Rome: Gregorian University, 1946)Google Scholar, available in English as The Body of Christ, Which is the Church, trans. Condit, Ann (New York: Vantage Press, 1960)Google Scholar; and Pius XII's 1943 encyclical Mystici corporis, AAS 35 (1943): 193–248, of which Tromp was a primary author.

12 Vatican Council II, The Conciliar and Postconciliar Documents, New Revised Edition, ed. Flannery, Austin, O.P., 2 vols. (Northport, NY: Costello Publishing Company, 1975), 1:350–426Google Scholar, esp. chapter 2, “The People of God”, 1:359–69.

13 See Alberigo, Giuseppe and Komonchak, Joseph, eds., History of Vatican II, trans. O'Connell, Matthew J., 5 vols. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995–2006), 2:411–12; 3:43–44.Google Scholar

14 See Komonchak, Joseph, “The Significance of Vatican Council II for Ecclesiology,” in The Gift of the Church, ed. Phan, Peter (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 83–86.Google Scholar

15 See Provost, James H., “Introduction to Canons 204–329,” in The Code of Canon Law: A Text and Commentary, ed. Coriden, James A., Green, Thomas J., and Heintschel, Donald E. (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1985), 117–19.Google Scholar

16 See, for example, Hinze's, Bradford E. treatment of the Call to Action movement in Practices of Dialogue in the Roman Catholic Church (New York: Continuum, 2006), 64–89.Google Scholar

17 See Ratzinger, Joseph with Messori, Vittorio, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church, trans. Attanasio, Salvator and Harrison, Graham (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 46–48Google Scholar; Ratzinger, , Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion, ed. Otto, Stephen and Ofniir, Vingang, trans. Taylor, Henry (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 126–29Google Scholar; and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation’ (Libertatis Nuntius),” Origins 14 (September 14, 1984): nos. 11–13.Google Scholar Note that in this letter the CDF refers not to the “People of God,” but to the term “Church of the People”; however, given Ratzinger's comments as a “private theologian” regarding the use of the term “people” when discussing liberation theology, I think it legitimate to identify the same concern in these different formulations.

18 This argument is forcefully made by Comblin, José, People of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004), esp. 52–62.Google Scholar

19 See Campbell, J.Y., “The Origin and Meaning of the Word Ekklesia,” Journal of Theological Studies 49 (1948): 130–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Congar, , “The Church: The People of God,” 17–18.Google Scholar

21 See “Spouse” in O'Donnell, Ecclesia, 427–28. On biblical use in the Old and New Testaments, see Jeremias, Joachim, “Numphê, numphios,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 4:1099–1106Google Scholar; Stauffer, Ethelbert, “Gameô, gamos,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 1:648–57Google Scholar; Baril, Gilberte, The Feminine Face of the People of God: Biblical Symbols of the Church as Bride and Mother (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992)Google Scholar; and Batey, R.A., New Testament Nuptial Imagery (Leiden: Brill, 1971).Google Scholar For an early feminist critique of spousal imagery in biblical texts, see Trible, Phyllis, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978).Google Scholar

22 O'Donnell, , “Spouse,” 427.Google Scholar

23 There are numerous introductions to the theology of von Balthasar available. See McGregor, Bede and Norris, Thomas, eds., The Beauty of Christ: An Introduction to the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994)Google Scholar; Oakes, Edward T. S.J., Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York: Continuum, 1997)Google Scholar; Oakes, Edward T. S.J., and Moss, David, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scola, Angelo, Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Theological Style (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995).Google Scholar It is important to note that while for the purposes of this essay I have focused upon important aspects of von Balthasar's thought on gender and ecclesiology, it would be a significant error to reduce his theology to these topics and positions.

24 For articles that summarize this aspect of von Balthasar's thought, some critically, see Crammer, Corinne, “One Sex or Two? Balthasar's Theology of the Sexes,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar, 93–112Google Scholar; Gonzalez, Michelle A., “Hans Urs von Balthasar and Contemporary Feminist Theology,” Theological Studies 64 (2004): 566–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moss, David and Gardner, Lucy, “Difference—The Immaculate Concept? The Laws of Sexual Difference in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Modern Theology 14 (1998): 377–401CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ross, Susan A., “Women, Beauty, and Justice: Moving Beyond von Balthasar,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 25 (2005): 79–98.Google Scholar

25 Two of the most immediately accessible collections are his 1974 work Der antirömische Affekt, available in English as The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church, trans. Emery, Andrée (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986)Google Scholar, and his 1961 collection of essays with the significant title Sponsa Verbi, volume two of his Explorations in Theology, available in English as Spouse of the Word, trans. Littledale, A.V. and Dru, Alexander (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1991).Google Scholar Another programmatic article in the journal Communio, which von Balthasar, helped found, is “Mary—Church—Office,” Communio 23 (1996): 193–98.Google Scholar

26 Michelle Gonzalez's article is particularly helpful in showing how von Balthasar and feminist theology have much in common in their mutual appreciation for gender, embodiment, and relationship as important aspects of a theological anthropology, while she also critiques von Balthasar's attempt to simultaneously assert an equality of the two sexes and a certain priority to the “active” male over the “receptive” female; see Gonzalez, , “Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 570–72.Google Scholar

27 For example, see von Balthasar, , Spouse of the Word, 22.Google Scholar Cf. Ross, Susan, Extravagant Affections: A Feminist Sacramental Theology (New York: Continuum, 2001), 113.Google Scholar

28 This section relies heavily upon the readings of Paul, John II by Ross, Susan in Extravagant Affections, 102–15Google Scholar, and her essay “The Bridegroom and the Bride: The Theological Anthropology of John Paul II and Its Relation to the Bible and Homosexuality,” in Sexual Diversity and Catholicism, ed. Jung, Patricia Beattie, with Coray, Joseph Andrew (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001), 39–59.Google Scholar

29 Ross, , Extravagant Affections, 106–8.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 107. For a recent work of theology that explicitly combines the thoughts of von Balthasar and John Paul II on gender and gender complementarity in theological anthropology and ecclesiology, see Scola, Angelo, The Nuptial Mystery, trans. Borras, Michelle K. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005).Google Scholar

31 Ross, , “The Bridegroom and the Bride”, 51.Google Scholar

32 See Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “On the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood” (Inter Insigniores), Origins 6 (February 3, 1977), no. 5Google Scholar; and Paul, John II, “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women” (Mulieris Dignitatem), Origins 18 (August 15, 1988), nos. 25–26.Google Scholar

33 This can be argued in a less simplistic way than “Christ ordained the Apostles, shortly after the First Mass in the Upper Room”; see Sullivan, Francis A. S.J., From Apostles to Bishops (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2001).Google Scholar

34 For a recent article on this concept, see Bavel, Tarsicius Van, “The Christus totus Idea: A Forgotten Aspect of Augustine's Spirituality,” in Studies in Patristic Christology, ed. Finan, Thomas and Twomey, Vincent (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998), 84–94.Google Scholar

35 Ross, , Extravagant Affections, 111.Google Scholar

36 For the biblical sources of the eschatological reading, see Batey, Richard, “Paul's Bride Image: A Symbol of Realistic Ecclesiology,” Interpretation 17 (2001): 176–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Merz, Annette, “Why Did the Pure Bride of Christ (2 Cor. 11.2) Become a Wedded Wife (Eph. 5.22–23)? Theses about the Intertextual Transformation of an Ecclesiological Metaphor,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 79 (2001): 131–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 The major issues around the sinfulness of the church have been masterfully addressed recently by Sullivan, Francis A., “Do the Sins of Its Members Affect the Holiness of the Churches?” in In God's Hands: Essays on the Church and Ecumenism in Honour of Michael A. Fahey, S.J., ed. Skira, Jaroslav Z. and Attridge, Michael S. (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2006), 247–68.Google Scholar

38 For an introduction to some of these issues, see Lindbeck, George, “The Church as Israel: Ecclesiology and Ecumenism,” in Jews and Christians: People of God, ed. Braaten, Carl E. and Jenson, Robert W. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 78–94.Google Scholar

39 Lonergan, Bernard J. F., Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 132.Google Scholar

40 Lonergan, Bernard, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), 176–77.Google Scholar

41 For historical summaries of how this movement to reclaim the church as mystery, beginning in the Tübingen school, developed in Roman Catholic ecclesiology, see Congar, Yves, L'Église de saint Augustin à l'époque moderne (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1970), 417–37Google Scholar; and Himes, Michael J., “The Development of Ecclesiology: Modernity to the Twentieth Century,” in The Gift of the Church, 45–67.Google Scholar

42 Dulles, Avery, Models of the Church, rev. ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1987), 17–18.Google Scholar

43 Particularly in his early lecture “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,” Theological Investigations, vol 4: More Recent Writings (New York: Crossroad, 1966), 36–73. Originally published as “Über der Begriff des Geheimnisses in der Katholische Theologie” in Schriften zur Theologie, vol. 4 (Einsiedeln: Benzinger, 1960), 51–99.

44 Rahner, , “Mystery,” in Sacramentum Mundi: 4:133.Google Scholar

45 Rahner, , “God is No Scientific Formula,” in The Content of Faith: The Best of Karl Rahner's Theological Writings, ed. Lehmann, Karl and Raffelt, Albert, trans. and ed. Egan, Harvey D. (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 228.Google Scholar It may be interesting to note that Rahner is much more interested in his time in making the “mystery” of God mysterious again, that is, of working to prevent the mysteries of the Christian experience of God from being moved about by theologians like so many pieces on a chessboard. From the standpoint of theology today in postmodernity, we are likely to be too anxious about the inadequacies of our language to even begin “stammering.”

46 Komonchak, , “Ecclesiology and Social Theory,” in “Foundations in Ecclesiology,” ed. Lawrence, Fred, suppl. issue, Lonergan Workshop 11 (1995): 65.Google Scholar

47 Ibid. The further possibilities and limits of a systematic ecclesiology that considers the concept of the church's participation in theological mystery, while drawing on critical reason and social scientific discourses, have been explored by Ormerod, Neil in “The Structure of a Systematic Ecclesiology,” Theological Studies 63 (2002): 3–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “A Dialectic Engagement with the Social Sciences in an Ecclesiological Context,” Theological Studies 66 (2005): 815–40.

48 Komonchak, , “Ecclesiology and Social Theory,” 66.Google Scholar

49 Ford, John, “Koinonia and Roman Catholic Ecclesiology,” Ecumenical Trends 26 (1997): 42.Google Scholar

50 Healy, , Church, World and the Christian Life, 26.Google Scholar

51 Ormerod, , “The Structure of a Systematic Ecclesiology,” 5.Google Scholar

52 Healy, , Church, World and the Christian Life, 46.Google Scholar

53 Hefling, Charles C. Jr., Why Doctrines? (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1984), 74.Google Scholar Hefling's statement builds upon the distinction of realms of meaning elaborated by Bernard Lonergan; cf. Lonergan, , Method in Theology, 81–85.Google Scholar

54 In fact, there may be numerous situations in which metaphors would be essential to ecclesiological reflection. This would seem to be especially the case in preaching or in what Lonergan calls “Communications” (Method in Theology, 355–68). But these are two tasks: the task of preaching the church in a way that stirs hearts and minds, and the task of understanding the church in a deliberate and critical way, sometimes boring to all but the most dedicated specialist. While these two tasks are obviously related, distinguishing what one is doing when one is preaching from what one is doing when one is pursuing a systematic ecclesiology is a necessary clarification.

55 Komonchak, , “Lonergan and the Tasks of Ecclesiology,” Lonergan Workshop 11 (1995): 52–53.Google Scholar It is also for this reason that Komonchak, Ormerod, and others insist upon sustained and critical ecclesiological attention to the social sciences.

56 See Lonergan, , Method in Theology, 125–45.Google Scholar

57 Some of the best work in exploring the relation between different kinds of speech about God has been done in recent years by liturgical theologians in their reflections upon the difference between liturgical praxis and theological discourse, and their mutual influence; their discussions of how to draw systematic propositions out of liturgical practice without stripmining the liturgy for data or seeing liturgy only as a source for “real theology” are some of the more sophisticated attempts to distinguish and relate different kinds of theological speech. See Chauvet, Louis-Marie, The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001)Google Scholar and Morrill, Bruce T., Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory: Political and Liturgical Theology in Dialogue (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000)Google Scholar for two examples.

58 Mannion, , Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, 125.Google Scholar See also a later section of that chapter, “Humility in Method,” 132–34.

59 In addition to Ford, “Koinonia and Roman Catholic Ecclesiology,” see Healy, Nicholas M., “Communion Ecclesiology: A Cautionary Note,” Pro Ecclesia 4 (1995): 442–453Google Scholar; Looney, Thomas P., “Koinonia Ecclesiology: How Solid a Foundation?” One in Christ 36 (2000): 145–66Google Scholar; and McLoughlin, David, “Communio Models of Church—Rhetoric or Reality?” in Authority in the Roman Catholic Church: Theory and Practice, ed. Hoose, Bernard (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2002), 181–90.Google Scholar

60 The need to investigate the concrete life of the Christian church remains necessary, whether one holds, with Komonchak and Mannion, that the modern social sciences can in some instances be of assistance in this endeavor, or, with Healy, Ormerod, and other theologians influenced by the critiques of Milbank, John (Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason [Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993])Google Scholar, that non- or anti-Christian assumptions in the social sciences require that ecclesiology call their conclusions into question and require an analysis of the lived church from an explicitly theological perspective (Healy's “practical-prophetic” ecclesiological method and Ormerod's “dialectic engagement”).

61 Healy's recent discussion of the lack of consensus regarding authority in the church provides another helpful example of the kind of systematic ecclesiology I am recommending: it addresses a particular question, with reference to the scriptural, theological, and social data, and comes to conclusions regarding the nature of authority in the church which give a better understanding of authority in the church without attempting to capture these conclusions in a single metaphor or notion which would occlude the reality's complexity. See Healy, Nicholas M., “‘By the Working of the Holy Spirit’: The Crisis of Authority in the Christian Churches,” Anglican Theological Review 88 (2006): 5–24.Google Scholar

62 Some examples might be Hinze's, Bradford E. recent book, Practices of Dialogue in the Roman Catholic Church: Aims and Obstacles, Lessons and Laments (New York: Continuum, 2006)Google Scholar, and the continuing work of Francis A. Sullivan, Richard Gaillardetz, and Paul Lakeland on church authority. See Sullivan, , Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church (New York: Paulist, 1983)Google Scholar; Gaillardetz, , By What Authority? A Primer on Scripture, the Magisterium, and the Sense of the Faithful (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003)Google Scholar; and Lakeland, , The Liberation of the Laity (New York: Continuum, 2004).Google Scholar