Sven-Erik Brodd

Ecclesiological Research and Natural and Human Sciences: Some Observations of an Unconventional Phenomenon

This article is motivated by the absence of published material dealing with the rapprochement between ecclesiology and the sciences. It presupposes that there is a need to broaden the scope of ecclesiological research in order to integrate into it theories and methods from the social and natural sciences. Ecclesiological research in this wider sense has as its object, church, as a broad concept. The article suggests a threefold aspect for ecclesiology, conceiving it as the ecclesiology of the researcher, and the ecclesiology of both the object and of the result of the research. Furthermore, its purpose is to identify transparent ecclesiological theories which are able to engage with and integrate scientific theories and methods. An inventory of examples of modes of collaboration used between ecclesiology and different sciences is then offered as an illustration of the context in which ecclesiology may integrate or relate to science in different ways. Finally, the article concludes that there is a need for further clarificatory research into the possibilities which exist for ecclesiology to be made more fully the science of being Christian in community or church.

Ecclesiology and Church Music: Towards a Possible Relationship

Abstract The relationship between church music and ecclesiology seems to be only rarely discussed. This is the more remarkable since the interdependence between liturgy and ecclesiology is increasingly being noted and church music referred to in discussion on communication ecclesiology. This article contains some snapshots – no more – hinting at possibilities for the fruitful study of church music from the ecclesiological angle. Several levels may be detected in such study, for, implicitly or explicitly, church music has been referred to in constructive ecclesiologies, though not in a developed way. Moreover it is possible to detect in church music, its organization and performance, both operative ecclesiologies and meta-ecclesiological features. The examples presented here deal with edification and with communion/koinonia as musical and ecclesiological categories. Connections between catholicity and church music also raise questions about church musics effect on the unity and disunity of the Church. Lastly a rather fragmented ecclesiology in the German Reformation and Baroque periods is related to structures in church music at those times. The purpose of this article is to highlight the possibility of acquiring new knowledge by bringing ecclesiology and musicology together.

The diaconate as ecumenical opportunity: historical ecclesiological layers in understanding the diaconate

This article gives an account of the background to the Hanover Report, The Diaconate as Ecumenical Opportunity (1996), and in particular to the West Wickham consultation (1995). Recognising that the diaconate offers new ecumenical perspectives on ordained ministry, the author presents and critiques the Hanover Report for its harmonisation of contradictory positions, especially among Lutherans. The idea of diaconal ministries in the report makes the distinctive diaconate indistinct and gives rise to a mainly functional understanding of ministry. Ecclesiologically historical layers contradicting each other are mixed in such a way that the ecumenically productive eucharistic ecclesiology derived from the Early Church and central to the reports understanding of the diaconate remains at the end rather indistinguishable among the variety of other perspectives conveyed.

The Church as Sacrament in the Writings of Yngve Brilioth: Texts and Contexts

The Church as sacrament has been a recurring theme for some time in modern ecumenical conversations and in debates among theologians. When this idea re-emerged in the Western churches during the twentieth century it did not initially arise primarily from the results of patristic scholarship or under the influence of the Eastern churches. It seemed rather to emerge from two different problems: Roman Catholic institutionalism and the Protestant individualism born during the nineteenth century. It was also a reaction against what was perceived – in the context of an emerging ecclesial and socio-cultural diversification – to be too narrow a conceptualisation of sacrament. This article briefly introduces the idea of the Church as sacrament in the writings of Yngve Brilioth (1889–1959); it examines the background which allowed a Swedish theologian to describe the Church as sacrament. It notes that, during the 1940s, the sacramentality of the Church became a relatively common view among other leading Swedish theologians and suggests how this historical occurrence might provide some perspectives on current ecclesial deliberations.

Martin Luther, Renegade and Prophet by Lyndal Roper, and Martin Luther, Confessor of the Faith, by Robert Kolb

Martin Luther, Renegade and Prophet by Lyndal Roper, and Martin Luther, Confessor of the Faith, by Robert Kolb

Being Human, Being Church: the Significance of Theological Anthropology for Ecclesiology

Among Protestant theologians, there is a tendency to separate, not only to distinguish between, ‘creation theology’ − and thereby anthropology – and ecclesiology. The historical background for that is obvious. From time to time there are reasons for thinking that this separation between creation theology and ecclesiology is of a more programmatic character, thus avoiding fundamental ecclesiological questions for creation theology. Making a separation between the first and the third articles of the Nicene Creed, focusing on the first, makes it possible to avoid some fundamental critical questions. The usage of the Swedish theologian Gustav Wingren is an example of this. Among Lutheran theologians in Scandinavia and in the USA, Wingren is referred to as a ‘creation theologian’, which, of course, is possible. At the same time, most of what he has written is ecclesiology. Hence, there is a problem when anthropology is emancipated from ecclesiology.1 Conversely, there are not so many studies in ecclesiology that explicitly, at least, integrate anthropology into ecclesiology. A search of the international literature, on the role of anthropology in ecclesiology, reveals a rather common custom of bringing both in, rather as elements, co-lateral with ‘anthropological, Christological and ecclesiological angles’, in the study of something or someone. A concluding part of the work is then used to integrate them in a comparative perspective. There is, however, internationally, a discussion on the role of anthropology in ecclesiology, and vice versa. A tentative survey of themes, where one can find a relationship between anthropology and ecclesiology worked out, might be in the fields where, for example, communion ecclesiology, the Church as family, the meaning of personhood in ecclesiology, and Church and politics are the subject of study. If one looks at this discussion from the denominational angle, it is clear that, although it is present among Orthodox and Reformed theologians, Roman Catholic scholars dominate the field. From a wide spectrum of academic works, I have given a few examples of titles in a footnote and a hint of what this is about. This might also indicate the context of Patrick S. Franklin’s book on the significance of theological anthropology for ecclesiology.2

Impressions of the Church of Sweden: liberal and catholic with nuances of Lutheranism

Abstract The Church of Sweden is difficult to describe or to characterise, whether as a Folk Church, a national church, as catholic or liberal, or as, in some sense, Lutheran. This article refers to aspects of its complex relations with the Roman Catholic Church and with Lutheranism at large. The author detects, from ecumenical agreement and practice, an incipient new communion of churches, based on a common claim to be catholic and also to be open to developments in society. This group includes the Church of Sweden, the Church of England, the Episcopal Church in the USA, the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht and the Philippine Independent Church, all of which are in communion with each other. The authors presentation is set out in relation to the Church of Swedens liturgical and sacramental life, its church–state relations, and in an account of the rather asymmetrical shape of ecumenism in Sweden, in all of which the question of gender plays a role.

George Bell, Bishop of Chichester: Church, State, and Resistance in the Age of Dictatorship

George Bell, Bishop of Chichester : Church, State, and Resistance in the Age of Dictatorship

Chinese ecclesiology – post-denominationalism and the search for an ecclesiological language

Abstract The quest for ecclesiology is apparent in Chinese theology and church life, both in China and abroad. It has been responded to with reference to different sorts of deductively elaborated ecclesiologies. This article suggests that analyses of present teaching and practices in Chinese churches should be undertaken in order to understand more precisely what sort of implicit or explicit ecclesiologies are already operative. On the basis of an ecclesiological hermeneutics, it would be possible to achieve an ecclesiological reconstruction in Chinese theology, recognising the given divine revelation.

Themes in operative Ecclesiology

The term ‘ecclesiology’ as is well known refers both to systematic and historical theological teaching on the Church itself (Greek: ekklesia), but also to a theological discipline studying what is ‘church’. Ecclesiology in the sense of the study of the Church has an important role to play in exploring what understanding of being church might be hidden or openly operative in ecclesial life. It is important to remember that in ecclesiology as a theological discipline, ‘church’ must not exclusively or primarily be identified either with institutions or alternatively with true teaching on the Church. Ecclesiology should rather be understood as researching all types of structured communal Christian existence. It is no longer confined to dogmatics, even if it is systematic theological in character. Ecclesiology thus includes various ways in which the teaching has been understood and put into practice in the history of the Church and at present. Because ecclesiology may also be studied inductively, it can draw support from various other disciplines, such as political science, history and sociology. The French Dominican scholar Yves Congar (1904–1995) introduced a concept that can be labelled operative ecclesiology. The idea is that the piety and liturgy found in various traditions actually say something about the self-understanding of these traditions. The maxim lex orandi lex credendi is turned into an inductive way of understanding, with the consequence that there is a constant need to broaden the concept of ecclesiology to communal life systems in which the component ‘church’ in any meaning is decisive for understanding that life system, that is, the life system depends on the constituent ‘church’. The operative ecclesiological imaginations, implicit or explicit, not only affect the idea of what is ‘church’ but also other apprehensions of, for example, ethics and social politics. The concept of ecclesiology, as it is used in this case, is wide and includes not only a locus in dogmatics but also the practices of the Church that are performative for those who take part in them. Dogmatics and the empirical are knit together, teaching and practices cannot be separated, though distinctions, of course, must be made, and it would be a theological disaster to separate the spiritual and the material, the visible and the invisible in any ecclesiological conception. International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church Vol. 6, No. 2, July 2006, 124 – 125