KNOWING THE TRIUNE GOD

The Work of the Spirit in the Practices of the Church

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Copyright © 2001 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8028-4804-8

Contents

Contributors...................................................................................................ix1. Introduction: A Catholic and Evangelical Theology? James J. Buckley and David S. Yeago.....................12. The Church Reinhard Htter.................................................................................233. The Bible David S. Yeago...................................................................................494. The Liturgy Susan K. Wood..................................................................................955. Contemplation A. N. Williams...............................................................................1216. Baptism L. Gregory Jones...................................................................................1477. Interpretation David S. Cunningham.........................................................................1798. The Wounded Body James J. Buckley..........................................................................2059. Israel Bruce D. Marshall...................................................................................23110. The Stranger Eugene F. Rogers, Jr.........................................................................265

Chapter One

Introduction

A Catholic and Evangelical Theology? JAMES J. BUCKLEY AND DAVID S. YEAGO

The central claim of this book is that knowing the triune God is inseparable from participating in a particular community and its practices — a participation which is the work of God's Holy Spirit. Why say this, now?

A first step in answering this question is the specific circumstances of the book's origin. Several years ago Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson founded the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, headquartered in Northfield, Minnesota. The Center sponsors regular conferences on theological matters, and publishes Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology. In addition, the Center has also sponsored meetings among theologians interested in "Catholic and Evangelical theology." The authors here were members of one such group, originally called "The Dogmatics Project." This group was "Catholic and Evangelical" — Anglican (Cunningham and Williams), Lutheran (Htter, Marshall, and Yeago), Methodist (Jones), Roman Catholic (Buckley and Wood), and one raised Presbyterian, with a Lutheran conscience, who reads Catholics and Orthodox, and attends Episcopal services (Rogers); at times the group included Greek Orthodox and Baptist participants as well.

Thanks to the generosity of Carl and LaVonne Braaten and Robert and Blanche Jenson, this group met in Northfield, Minnesota, once or twice a year for several years, beginning in 1991. At our meetings, we discussed papers on a wide range of topics central to the future of a Catholic and Evangelical theology — from the doctrine of the Trinity to emerging theologies of the Jewish people. Eventually it was time to ask whether our conversations were leading in any distinctive direction. Did we have something to say as a group about the best direction for what the Center calls a "Catholic and Evangelical theology"?

This volume is our answer to that question to date. But we did not proceed deductively by arguing for an abstraction called "Catholic and Evangelical theology" to add to the pantheon of modern and postmodern theologies. The label has a past and present that is suggestive but hardly forms a monolithic school of thought. For example, in the nineteenth century, William Augustus Muhlenberg, the Anglican grandson of a famous Lutheran leader, proposed the formation of "an Evangelic and Catholic Union" of "the two distinctive elements" of the "Protestant Episcopal Church" — the primitive Catholicism of the early church and the restored Catholicism of the Reformation. But an aspiration to "evangelical catholicity" is also deeply embedded in the Lutheran tradition; "evangelical catholic" has recently served as a party label in intra-Lutheran controversy.

The label also has a connection with what moderns call "The Radical Reformation." That is, George Hunston Williams identified "Evangelical Catholics" as one subspecies of the "Evangelical Rationalists" of the Reformation era, exemplified by Erasmus, Lefevres, and Juan de Valdes. Still further, in the Reformed tradition, Karl Barth once expressed "a horror of mystical, High-Church, Evangelical-Catholic dilettantism"; but he could say, decades later, that he preferred "evangelical-catholic" to "evangelical" — and Thomas Torrance's essays on evangelical and catholic unity in east and west carry on this tradition. A more liberal theological tradition speaks of "the public Church" as a coalition of "mainline, evangelical, and catholic."

Among Roman Catholics, "evangelical" has usually meant "non-Roman Catholic." But Catholics also have a tradition of evangelical Catholicity, and Avery Dulles has recently spoken of "the birth of a new Catholicism which, without loss of its institutional, sacramental, and social dimensions, is authentically evangelical." Charles Colson and Richard John Neuhaus have brought together American Evangelicals (quite different, on many scores, from the largely Continental Evangelical theologians mentioned so far) and Catholics to speak to their "common mission" as well as "the gift of salvation."

We could go on. Our point is that, if all these groups and individuals share something theologically, it certainly does not add up to a party line. We certainly wish to embrace a Catholic and Evangelical cause. In calling the spirit in which we do theology "Catholic and Evangelical" we mean that we intend to engage the whole of the Christian tradition, in its diversity and richness. At one level, this means that we believe modern and constructive theology is authentically Christian and ecclesial when it is contiguous with the prior theological tradition — this much is implied when we affirm our belief in the communion of saints. At another level, it implies an ecumenical conviction: that theology which is to be heeded is not simply the theology of the church to which a particular writer belongs, but the theology of all Christians. The Roman Catholic is to listen to Luther and Barth; the Presbyterian is to listen to Aquinas, and everyone is to listen to the theology of the church in the patristic age. But we have no interest in announcing a new theological school, or restoring an old one. We simply aim to do theology in a way that reflects and generates "Catholic and Evangelical" dialogue and debate.

It should not be surprising, given this history, that the unity of the volume is not provided by a single philosophical perspective or global ethical agenda. We found ourselves disagreeing about issues raised by traditional and modern and postmodern philosophies as well as about the joys and griefs of contemporary economic and political life. Those who think that theological coherence depends on first elaborating a common philosophical framework, methodological program, or social-ethical commitment may find it difficult to see any unity in this volume at all. Each essay has its own distinctive shape. There will thus be no substitute for reading each of the chapters on its own terms. However, we believe that the diversity of the essays only underlines our central thesis: that what unifies theology as a coherent enterprise of inquiry and dialogue is the work of the Spirit in the practices of the Church. That is, it is the concrete context of ecclesial practice that constitutes the framework of reflection within which agreements and disagreements over various methodological strategies and philosophical gambits and ethical projects are contained.

Thus, one reason for this volume at this time is the specific circumstances that brought us together. But what holds the essays together without dissolving their distinctiveness? Our first step in holding together the unity-in-diversity of the volume was to divide the nine essays into three parts. Part One centers on the way in which a particular communal practice gives rise to our knowledge of the triune God. For Reinhard Htter, knowledge of God arises as we undergo the work of the Spirit sacramentally operative in, with, and under the core practices that mark out the unique public space of the Christian Church. David Yeago argues that the context of ecclesial practice both forms and demands a distinctive enterprise of "understanding" the scriptures as the formative discourse of the Spirit. And Susan Wood proposes that Christian worship contains within itself a distinctive mode of "participatory" knowledge of the triune God.

Part Two focuses more on particular ways in which the interrelation of knowledge and practice in Christianity gives distinctive shape to both. A. N. Williams presents the inseparability of love and knowledge, especially in Augustine; theology is thus inseparable from prayer, but prayer is likewise inseparable from the engagement of the mind with God. Gregory Jones re-reads the catechumenate as a set of practices that shape Christian practical wisdom on the way into God's dazzling light. David Cunningham argues that the tradition of finding "vestiges of the Trinity" throughout our personal and political lives, far from a reduction of the Spirit's work to ours, is in the service of articulating God's triune mystery.

The essays in Part Three respond implicitly to the concern that binding knowledge of God to church practice will insulate Christian practitioners from repentance and challenge, making of the Church a self-enclosed and self-satisfied enclave. These three essays therefore focus on the significance of "others" — "strangers," "Israel," and "separated brothers and sisters" — for the knowledge of God, calling the Church to be drawn by the Spirit's work to unexpected places. Buckley argues that the Spirit is in ecumenical movement as the Church recognizes and repents of its divisions, resisting the temptation either to forget them or to grant them the final word over the Spirit's work on the Church as a wounded body. Marshall takes up the even deeper division between Church and synagogue, asking about the relationship of the Christian worship of the triune God to the knowledge of God in Israel. Gene Rogers offers a re-reading of the natural knowledge of God in the broader Gentile world, arguing that a trinitarian construal of "natural knowledge of God" mandates hospitality to the stranger.

Readers will quickly see that there is no sharp division of topics or loci among these essays. Thus there is no neat division between Parts One and Two, nor are any of the essays in Parts One and Two untouched by the disputed questions that arise regarding the Church's identity in its mission to the world. Htter's account of the relation between pathos, poiesis, and praxis, Yeago's incorporation of hermeneutics into a missionary ecclesiology, Wood's appeal to philosophies of participatory knowledge, Williams's Augustinian anthropology, Jones's neo-Aristotelian notion of practices, Cunningham's trust in the work of the Trinity throughout the world — all these suggest (in partly conflicting ways) how the Spirit's working of knowledge of God in the practices of the Church is inseparable from the mission of the Church to a world created, fallen, and redeemed.

What is it, then, that unifies the three parts? It is, we think, the book's central theme: knowing the triune God is inseparable from participating in a particular community and its practices — a participation which Christians link with the work of God's Holy Spirit. Consider each of the major elements of the book's title.

1. What Does It Mean to Know the Triune God?

Scriptures, especially Paul and John, speak of faith and knowledge as inseparable (e.g., Romans 6:8; John 10:38). From this point of view, our title raises no more (or no fewer) problems than does Scripture for the theologians, pastors, and educated Christians to whom we address this book. Or we could put the point this way. We confess faith's knowledge of the triune God when we profess the ancient creeds. But we also confess the triune God in the very gathering to hear the scriptures and eat the body and blood of Christ, with or without the ancient creed. This practice includes as an essential ingredient our hope of knowing the God who, as Father and Son and Spirit, creates the world and elects Israel as a blessing unto the nations and pours himself out even unto death, sending the Spirit to gather and abide with the communion of saints. On one level, "knowing the triune God" creates no problem: it is the knowledge embedded in our faith as lived and confessed.

Nonetheless, perhaps especially in our time, saying that we hope to know the triune God by the gift of the Spirit in the practices of the Church is a dangerous claim. It is dangerous mostly because it confesses a difficult hope — our trust in a God who bears the sins of the world to bring us to share God's own triune life and love. But it is also dangerous because modernity as well as postmodernity include a luxurious garden, or desert wilderness, of theories and practices of "knowing" that all too often eclipse the singular habits of mind and heart required to know this God. In such a context, knowing and believing become competitors. Ordinary Christ-believing Christians, educated as well as uneducated, are then tempted to sequester their believing from their knowing, ignoring the various ways each is ingredient of the other in Scripture and tradition and our lives together today.

But, in the face of the temptation to isolate believing and knowing, there is another temptation to seek some comprehensive, systematic, or programmatic account of the relationship between knowledge and practice, in order to defend ourselves in advance from those who would play the two off each other, or isolate them from each other, or complain that we have ignored the insights of one or other "epistemology" or personal or political practice. Theologians have succumbed to this temptation every time they have discovered or created a new methodology to pull the theological train. But we are not only thinking here of theologians like ourselves. We are thinking of the ways that comprehensive claims to know from one systematic theology or one psychology or social theory can infect local congregations as well as the universal Christian communion of saints and then eclipse the triune communion that is the center of our faith.

The authors here have tried to resist the temptations to isolate faith and knowing, or to provide a comprehensive account of their relationship as a preliminary to "knowing the triune God." We have resisted partly because of limitations of the nine of us and partly to resist the familiar Christian temptation to think that Christian communal identity depends upon all manner of minute agreements in theory and practice before we can worship and witness and work together.

Our actual procedure in this volume, which makes no attempt to provide such an all-encompassing account, may suggest a more complex approach. Christians, we might say, have two prima facie options. On the one hand, we may construct quite comprehensive accounts of knowledge and practice, carefully showing how all kinds of knowledge and practice relate to all other kinds; the "all other kinds" would include Christian knowing and practice (always recognizing the singularity of Christian knowledge and practice as response to the triune God). For this strategy we might think of the Cappadocians and Augustine, at least in one dimension of their thought, or of Rahner and Pannenberg in our own day. Or else we may remain skeptical of all such accounts precisely because of the risk that they will envelop and eclipse the singularity of Christian knowledge of the triune God in the practices of the Church. For this second strategy we may think of Kierkegaard's rightful insistence on the singularity of Christian practice and knowledge over against modern systems out to sublate us — or less idiosyncratically, Barth's insistence that for theology, relating to such comprehensive teachings is itself a matter of skilled practice, to be accomplished only ad hoc and without finality. In the older Christian tradition, we may think of Irenaeus's celebration of the concrete depositum fidei, what the Church has received from the apostles, over against the speculative systematics of gnosis, or the insistence of the medieval Cistercians that true knowledge of God and creatures depends on — and may finally be identical with — a certain kind of ascetic-liturgical schooling of the affections.

We have not ruled out either of these broad options in advance of their application to specific theological issues, in the context of the work of the Spirit in and on the Church. The burden on those who take the first tack is to do justice to what is essential for Christian communal identity, and avoid the reduction of Christian knowledge to a mere "case in point" of some more general kind of knowing. The burden on those who take the second tack is to relate the singular Christian knowledge of God to other human knowing, and avoid the isolation of the knowledge of God in a special "religious" sphere.

What unites this book therefore is not a particular epistemological strategy (e.g., a strategy that relies on an account of what it means to know anything and everything), but an agreement about the context from which such strategies must move and the form of life to which they must be made congenial. That context and life-form is the communion of the Church, understood in terms of the specific practices that make it distinctive among human communities. We might not agree about which of the broad epistemological strategies mentioned above does best justice to the distinctive communal life and practice of the Church, and the knowledge contained therein, but it is clear that either strategy could be pursued in ways that would be inappropriate to that setting. A "universalist" epistemology that reduced the Christian knowledge of God to a mere symbolic mediation of abstract universal truths would fail the test, but so would a "particularist" epistemology that reduced "knowledge" to a finally non-cognitive "authenticity" produced by a lonely convulsion of the individual will.

(Continues...)

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