Evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodox together: Is the church the extension of the incarnation?

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 2000 by Saucy, Mark

The nature of Christ's relationship to the Church and the Church's role in salvation have been points of dispute among the Christian traditions since the days of the Protestant Reformation.1 Recent gatherings of evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodox for dialogue indicate that questions of ecclesiology will continue to command attention for dialogue to proceed fruitfully. Of particular interest in the current context are indications of an openness from some evangelicals to the usual Catholic and Orthodox charge of being weak in ecclesiology. One evangelical, for example, reflecting on his own encounter with Orthodoxy states, ". . . it is understandable that evangelicals feel that the Orthodox doctrine of the church is too `high: But perhaps our theology of the church is too `low,' much lower than our Protestant forebears would have it.."2

At the heart of the issue for "high" and "low" ecclesiologies is the interpretation of the apostle Paul's words to the Corinthian believers in 1 Cor 12:27, ". . . you are Christ's body." Typically Protestants take the body image to be a metaphor not unlike the other images the NT uses to discuss the nature and function of the Church. As Paul's favorite metaphor for the Church, the body image particularly illuminates the grand Pauline theme of Christ's union or communion with his Church.3 Catholics and Orthodox, by contrast, see 1 Cor 12:27 as more than mere metaphor and particularly as a simple statement of reality proving that the relationship of the Church and Christ should be seen more in terms of identity.4 This interpretation is illustrated by appeal in these traditions to Chalcedonian christology whereby the Church, like the God-man, is the mysterious union of the divine and human natures in the eternal person of Christ.5

Taken to this extent, the incarnation as an analogy of the church is acceptable to Protestants; there is a divine and human component in the Church's gatherings. But Catholics and Orthodox raise the stakes in their use of incarnation theology to make the claim that the union of divine and human in the Church actually makes a new single acting subject: one person with two natures.6 The immanence of Christ with his people through the Holy Spirit is the mechanism for this claim as Christ's spirit is literally fashioned as the soul of the body, the Church. Through the Spirit, Christ is organically united to his body, the Church, so that he is with her totus Christus, caput et membra, ("the whole Christ, head and members").7

As Catholics and Orthodox alike recognize certain limitations of incarnational analogies,8 the question before us must not be only the propriety of the incarnational rhetoric that punctuates their ecclesiology. More to the point is how incarnational categories and the idea of the totus Christus function in these traditions to see the Church as fundamentally supernatural and so to ground the sacramental ecclesiology and soteriology that ultimately provoked the Reformation.9 Because "Christ, the head, cannot be separated from his body, the Church," Richard Neuhaus identifies the "Catholic difference" with Protestants in the statement: "For the Catholic, faith in Christ and faith in the Church are one act of faith."10 As the "single subject with Christ" in the totus Christus, the Church derives her equal authority with Christ to share with him in actually dispensing faith and so extend his saving mission on earth as the "continued incarnation of the heavenly Lord."11

Does the NT, however, corroborate such claims for the Church? Can ecclesiology indeed be evaluated so "high" where the Church at points functions as a single subject with Christ to continue his soteriological mission? Is an incarnational paradigm useful for ecclesiology, or is it inherently dangerous? The traditional munus triplex Christi, the incarnated Christ's fulfillment of the offices of prophet, priest, and king, will be our primary tool for testing the Church's incarnational claims because of its focus on the functional rather than ontological aspects of the incarnation. 12 As it is at this level that incarnational claims are made by Orthodox and Catholics, the munus triplex offers a unique vantage point from which to compare the degree to which the Church may justifiably contend for itself as Christus prolongatus. From the munus triplex I will argue that the NT is fundamentally resistant to the manner in which incarnational categories press ecclesiology toward the identity of Christ and Church, and further, that the NT itself suggests a different category to understand Christ's relationship to his Church.

I. CHRIST AND CHURCH AS PROPHET

In the simplest of terms the biblical prophet was the Spirit-inspired spokesman of God, who made known God's truth. In the NT there can be no doubt that Jesus was understood by his contemporaries and understood himself as one of these who "speaks the words of God" (John 3:34).13 Similarly, there can be no doubt that the subject of his proclamation was the good news of the inbreaking of God's promised basilea: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15).14 The NT also reveals that after his exaltation Jesus continues to speak his message to the world through his spirit in his church (Luke 10:16; John 16:12-14). This very thing the Church of Acts continues to do in its proclamation of Jesus as the Christ.15