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Endnotes
for The Church as Ark of Salvation
1. I have been massaging this definition of the church
since my first years of teaching at Perkins School of Theology. It is
explicitly developed in my A Grammar of Christian Faith: Systematic
Explorations in Christian Life and Doctrine, 2 vols. (Lanham: Rowman
and Littlefield, 2002), 25-35, 609-654. Further references to this work
will be in brackets within the text in the form of [GCF].
2. For almost a quarter of a century I was a member of the Commission
on Theology of the Council on Christian Unity of the Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ). The Commission made regular reports to the church
over this period concerning basic issues of ecclesiology, culminating
in a final report to the church on ecclesiology in 1997. This report,
and other previous reports dating back to 1979, are helpfully contained
in The Church for Disciples of Christ: Seeking to be Truly Church
Today, eds. Paul A. Crow, Jr, and James O. Duke (St. Louis: Christian
Board of Publication, 1998). While I regard these reports as theologically
sound for the most part and thoughtfully construed to encourage further
study by the church, I am not aware of any sustained attempt by the officers
of the General Church to see to the distribution of this book to the local
and regional churches for serious study. Many of my remarks about the
Disciples of Christ are diagnostic summaries of how I have heard and observed
laity and clergy talk and act and make decisions at all levels of the
church over a lifetime of being a member of the Disciples.
3. See J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed., (San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1978), 206-207, 403, and Jaroslav Pelikan,
The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine,
vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1971), 157-159.
4. The Library of Christian Classics, vol, 5, Early Latin
Theology, ed. and trans. S. L. Greenslade (Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1956), 151 [Letter 73.2].
5. Ibid., 169 [Letter 73.21].
6. Avery Dulles, Models of the Church, expanded edition (New
York: Doubleday, 1987), 34-46. See Dulles’ further discussions of
other models of the church. In the long run, however, Dulles never repudiates
the conviction of extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
7. Quoted in Dulles, 41.
8. See The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church [Lumen Gentium],
articles 14-16 in The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M,
Abbott (New York: Guild Press, 1966), 32-35. See also the succinct discussion
of “Outside the Church No Salvation” in Encyclopedia of
Theology: The Concise Sacramentum Mundi, ed. Karl Rahner (New York:
Seabury Press, n.d.), 220-221.
9. See Kelly, 412-16.
10. For this use of ‘grammar,’ see GCF, 4-19.
To plot the grammar of basic concepts is to see how they relate to other
concepts and are embedded in distinctively human practices.
11. See CGF, 604-05 for a brief discussion of the classical marks. One
of the ongoing disputes among churches pivots around the meaning of apostolicity.
In ecumenical Protestantism the preferred definition is ‘the faith
of apostles,’ wherein that faith is contained in the NT. But Roman
Catholic tradition, along with some Protestant traditions, worry about
how that apostolic faith is to be preserved and guarded from distortion
and corruption, i.e. from heresy. It answers that it is the ordained office
of the priesthood culminating in the office of the bishop that has the
authority to teach and determine what the true faith is. The bishops and
the priests bear the office of successors to the apostles. In this development
we can see how the ‘institutional’ character of the church,
in the office of the bishop, is decisive for determining also where the
church exists.
12. It is well to note that the words ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’
are always relative to some particular discussion of contrasts. There
is no one abstract meaning of ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’
that fits all uses of these words. So let us beware: these words often
get up and walk around on us. But I can stipulate how I am using this
word ‘liberal’ and expect thereby that the reader will allow
me to so stipulate without objecting that my use is not the ‘real’
meaning of the word.
13. See George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology
in a Postliberal Age, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984), esp.
31-32.
14. This locution is so awful conceptually that one hardly knows where
to get a hold on it. No sentence of the Bible is literal? Or, even if
some sentences are literal, their religious meaning is only symbolic?
Notice that when you buy into this sort of thinking, then all the particularities
of Christian rootedness in history become relatively unimportant in relation
to what is of universal symbolic significance.
15. Throughout his book Lindbeck critiques the essentialist-expressive
model of religion and contrasts it with what he calls a “cultural-linguistic”
approach. With some significant qualifications, I am sympathetic to Lindbeck’s
position.
16. Hauerwas is a prolific author and his critique of liberalism arises
in most of his writings. A good place to start is his A Community
of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic, (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). Resident Aliens: Life
in the Christian Colony, written with William H. Willimon, (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1989) is a lively and sustained critique of the liberal
presuppositions of the mainline churches. The Hauerwas Reader,
eds. John Berkman and Michael Cartwright (Durham: Duke University Press,
2002) is an excellent collections of his writings over a long period of
time, with a useful index.
17. It is one of the great ironies of democratic theory and practice that
justice is repeatedly appealed to and is the primary paradigm of secular
politics and morality, but it remains so vague and malleable in the hands
of various persons, parties, and ideologies. It is a further irony that
this last century, which experienced the worst and most extensive slaughter
of humans in history, found most of this slaughter being justified by
appeal to some idea of justice. For an acute discussion of the vagaries
of views of justice, see Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which
Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).
18. See Lindbeck.
19. A good place to start on Hans W. Frei’s work is his posthumously
published essays, Theology and Narrative, eds. George Hunsinger
and William C. Placher (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) and Types
of Christian Theology, eds. George Hunsinger and William C. Placher
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). In a spirited way with his own
creative voice, William Placher’s Unapologetic Theology: A Christian
Voice in a Pluralistic Conversation (Louisville: Westminster/John
Knox, 1989) discerningly displays some of the main themes of a postliberal
theology.
20. See Lindbeck, 32-41, for a brief explication of what he means by a
“cultural-linguistic” approach.
21. I urge my readers and listeners not to despair when they run into
some technical words in these theses. I trust the gist of my characterization
of language and human understanding and experience will come through nevertheless.
But I am indeed teaching some new concepts, however, and it will, in line
with my theses, take some practice to learn how to use them.
22. See CGF, 47-52, for a discussion of what I call the ‘dialectic
between the church and the world.
23. See the stunning transformation of meanings taking place within Jewish
language in Philippians 2.5-11.
24. See the full statement of trinitarian rationale in GCF, 167-215. My
claim is that the Gospel itself cannot be fully conveyed as to who God
is without trinitarian language, however difficult and perplexing it might
from time to time be.
25. See CGF, 503-509 for a brief schema of salvation grammar.
26. I believe it is urgently the case that the Protestant traditions need
to rediscover the meaning of sanctification as that disciplined way of
living and growing into relationship with God. It is in relation to sanctification
that the current popular talk of ‘spirituality’ should be
developed. See my extended discussion of sanctification and spirituality
in CGF, 537-545. See also how it relates to Discipleship, 545-553.
27. See John 1.1-14; Col 1.19-20; Heb 1.2-3
.
28. It is interesting to note that in our earlier discussion of the traditional
model of the church as ark we saw that the church had to admit that it
was itself comprised of both saints and tares. Hence, it is not a sufficient
condition of being saved that one is a member of the church through baptism.
Something more is required in order to be ultimately saved. When Augustine
gets his mind around this dilemma, he finally affirms that anyone ultimately
saved is saved only by the grace of God and not in any sense by their
own righteous living and its deserts. When the crunch really comes, salvation
is finally by the grace of God only.
29. For a fuller discussion of the church as the body of Christ in and
through its distinctive discourses and practices, see CGF, 617-644.
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