From Impasse to Passage - the evolution of Christianity practices and beliefs

Ecumenical Review, The, Jan, 2001 by Isabelle Graessle

The argument I follow consists in putting ecclesiological thinking into the context in which we live today. Does this mean that it is condemned from the start, in that a call to return to the concerns of human beings cannot rival the divine call (klesis) to be the church (ecclesia)? On the other hand, what status is to be given to context, always relative and always shifting, in trying nevertheless to say in a new way what constitutes the church?

The solution I would recommend would be to set a moratorium, for a specified period, on the ecclesiological "dogmas" which we have received from the tradition, ancient or recent. I am thinking particularly of the ecclesiae notae, even when these are taken together with the external marks of the church declared by the Reformation. This suspension is necessary to allow us to envision a new landscape; it does not constitute a negation of Christian thought, merely a breathing space in which to have a lively vision of the passage before us. My suggestion for a reformulation of the marks of the church is "plurality, solidarity, contextuality and witness".

"Plurality" means, to me, a church relieved of the paralyzing illusion of unity which groups it together under the myth of one and the same divinity. This is not to deny either the fellowship of the church or the unique object of faith. But plurality as one of the marks deriving from the church's identity allows us to recognize a human reality which is not uniform, and which is expressed in a multiplicity of languages and enlivened by colourful manifestations of the holy. The message of the New Testament does not say otherwise -- it clearly notes the identity of the first church groups and the differences among them.

By "solidarity", I mean a church whose existence is only justified when it cares totally for marginalized, powerless, oppressed persons -- knowing, as the parable of the Samaritan reminds us, that any of us at some point in our lives could find ourselves in a situation in which we were marginalized, powerless or oppressed. This is not to deny the church's holiness, only to put it back into the context of a concrete alliance among human beings, caring deeply for one another -- what the New Testament calls agape.

"Contextuality" for me is a church which fits intelligently into the context where it belongs, whether at the level of movements of thought or of local customs, respecting cultures and mentalities, and seeking to formulate the central elements of the Bible's message in ways suited to that context. This is not to deny the church its universality, though this may be the most problematic term in our ancient, or even scriptural, ecclesiological heritage. It is rather to relativize the claim of the Christian message to address all cultures.

"Witness", finally, means to me a church in which the many voices from the past live on, the saints, apostles, prophetesses and other messengers, a church also attentively trying to discern, through the tumults of the world, the voices of figures who stand as witness for our own time. This is not to deny the church's apostolicity, merely to set it in the wider circle than the official history of the church, and bring it up to date within the space of our own time. I accept that, in being so determined to find witnesses, we might be in danger of blurring and losing that distance we need to enable us to distinguish between inspired voices, useful words or discordant, misleading ones. In this regard, good sense often works better than impassioned arguments.