Abstract
As a corrective for the idealizing, romanticizing, and universalizing tendencies of communio ecclesiology, Neil Ormerod recently proposed an alternative non-communio trinitarian approach based on the ‘four-point hypothesis’ originating in Bernard F. Lonergan’s trinitarian theology. Ormerod’s account focuses on the missio rather than communio dimension of the church and thus gives primacy to ecclesial ‘operator’ over ‘integrator.’ This article aims at furthering Ormerod’s account of a non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology. In the light of Thomas Aquinas’s teaching, recent developments in ecclesiology and biblical scholarship, this essay (1) critically engages Ormerod’s account and (2) suggests a complementary route grounded in the biblical foundations of trinitarian doctrine.
Keywords
Distinctly Christian ecclesiology, along with other theological loci, is anchored and shaped by the trinitarian vision. 1 In the last five decades, linking the mystery of the Trinity with ecclesial life allowed for conceiving the church as a participant in the trinitarian life, ‘an icon of the Trinity.’ 2 And yet, contemporary ecclesiologies engaged the trinitarian vision relatively one-dimensionally, predominantly through the symbol of communio (Greek koinonia). Communio ecclesiologies correlate intra-trinitarian perichoresis and the life of the church by placing special emphasis on unity in diversity and the eucharistic dimension of the church. 3 This perspective is especially appreciated in the Western contexts of postmodern fragmentation, ecumenical dialogue, 4 and renewed interest in trinitarian theology. 5 In the Roman Catholic Church, the rise of communio ecclesiology was also fostered by conciliar and postconciliar emphasis on the spiritual/theological (as opposed to ‘juridical’) dimension of the church. 6
However, in more recent theological discourse, the question is raised whether the communio type of trinitarian ecclesiology alone is adequate in the diverse contexts of the church whose center of gravity has shifted to the Global South. 7 Some methodological limitations of this approach are also widely addressed. As a corrective for the idealizing, romanticizing, and universalizing tendencies of communio ecclesiology, Lonergan scholar Neil Ormerod proposes an alternative trinitarian approach. His non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology turns away from the dominant emphasis on the perichoretic ‘union in diversity’ and instead focuses on the notion of missio: the mission of the church vis-à-vis the missions of the Son and the Spirit. 8 Specifically, by appropriating the ‘four-point hypothesis,’ which originated in the trinitarian theology of Lonergan and was developed by Robert Doran, Ormerod correlates the life of the church with the created participations of the divine nature that are imitative of the four trinitarian relations (paternity, filiation, active and passive spiration). In comparison to communio ecclesiologies, this approach allows Ormerod to break away from the functionalist 9 tendencies of the communio ecclesiologies and offers an opportunity for exploring the trinitarian dimensions of religious pluralism. 10 Nonetheless, as Ormerod himself points out, his account needs to be developed further, especially in relation to the ‘actual life of the Church.’ 11
Consequently, the main aim of this essay is the furthering of Ormerod’s account of a non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology. While appreciating Ormerod’s pioneering work, I propose that his account has to be complemented by a non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology which starts with the Trinity as it is known to us through revelation, i.e., a biblically grounded non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology. With speculative distinctions in hand, such an alternative non-communio trinitarian approach returns to the biblical foundations of trinitarian doctrine. It begins directly with the two divine missions, whereas Ormerod’s account starts with the transposition of the four intra-trinitarian relations to these missions. I will proceed in three steps. First, I will more closely review Ormerod’s account of a non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology based on Lonergan’s ‘four-point hypothesis.’ 12 Second, I will critically engage Ormerod’s project by examining its principal merits and lacunae. My critical engagement with Ormerod’s account will be guided by Thomas Aquinas’s trinitarian treatise and relevant insights from contemporary ecclesiology. This ‘deconstructive’ section will be followed by a third step where I will outline some suggestions for constructing a non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology based on the appropriation of the biblical foundations of trinitarian doctrine.
Ormerod’s ‘Four-Point’ Non-Communio Trinitarian Ecclesiology
Ormerod’s ‘four-point’ account 13 is an extension of a ‘classical’ trinitarian approach to ecclesiology, which is based on two processions and missions of the Son and the Spirit. Though, to some extent, Ormerod attends to the ‘classical’ approach in the fourth chapter of his book Re-Visioning the Church and outlines it again in an essay dedicated to a non-communio Trinitarian ecclesiology, he never develops it as fully as he does his account based on the four relations. To appraise the latter, we first need to review two things: (1) Ormerod’s main reasons for providing an alternative to the communio trinitarian account, and (2) the underlying ‘classical’ trinitarian account by Thomas Aquinas.
The Need for a Non-Communio Trinitarian Ecclesiology: Ormerod’s Perspective
Ormerod’s general reason for his critical stance against communio ecclesiology, which is commonly seen as the favored ecclesiological approach of Vatican II, has to do with his interpretation of the reception of the conciliar documents. In a recent article, Ormerod argues that Vatican II does not present us with a single ecclesiology, and that ‘the emergence of communio ecclesiology in the 1980s as the favoured ecclesiastical approach was more an expression of anxiety over change than a proper reading of the documents.’ 14 Ormerod proposes that this anxiety emerged decades after Vatican II as a result of seeking a ‘corrective’ to the alleged aberrations introduced by the Council. According to him, the stress on unity/communion was used to quiet dissenting voices and to promote a form of Catholicism which, by emphasizing ecclesial identity over ecclesial mission, contributed to a centripetal concept of the church. 15
Ormerod’s underlying assumption that the ‘reactionary’ version of the Catholic communio ecclesiology in the 1980s is representative of the entire phenomenon of the communio approach is debatable. However, his critique of the emphasis on the identity of the church over her mission would be difficult to refute. In particular, Ormerod undergirds the need for a non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology by reclaiming Lonergan’s concept of the dialectic tension between transcendence and limitation. The principles of limitation, which provide integration and harmony, Lonergan calls ‘integrators,’ whereas the principles that transform the present situation in the direction of transcendence, he refers to as ‘operators.’
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In relation to these two aspects of the same reality, Ormerod describes the interaction between communio and missio as follows: As Lonergan notes, the operator relentlessly transforms the integrator, so that development is not a homeostatic balance between two opposed forces but is dynamic and transformative of the underlying reality. In this context, communio is a symbol of ecclesiological integration, while missio is a symbol of ecclesiological operation. In Lonergan’s framework, the priority lies with the operator.
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Because of the primacy of the operator, the defining characteristic of the church, for Ormerod, is mission, ‘the strongest’ of the operator symbols. 18 He argues that ecclesiologies which employ the integrator symbol of communio tend to ignore the dimensions of the church that threaten the ideal of harmony and unity, such as the sinfulness of the church and the need for change. Likewise, Ormerod proposes that the idealized vision of the church inherent to communio ecclesiologies is not adequate for handling concrete historical data, which the contemporary ‘empirical turn’ in ecclesiology demands, and for challenging the status quo. 19 Therefore Ormerod insists on complementing communio ecclesiology with a mission-focused account.
Ormerod also voices his concerns about social trinitarianism, which typically underlies the communio approach. He doubts the validity of using interpersonal categories to describe the inner-trinitarian relations 20 and deplores the ‘thinness’ of the trinitarian accounts of communio ecclesiologies. Ormerod argues that exclusive focus on the mutual indwelling of the divine Persons ‘prescinds almost entirely from the specificity of classical trinitarian doctrine.’ 21 As a result, a genuine trinitarian connection between the mission of the church as a Spirit-empowered response to and participation in the ‘historical mission of Jesus’ inaugurating the kingdom of God is underplayed. 22 Consequently, Ormerod builds his approach to the church on Lonergan’s extension of the ‘classical’ trinitarian treatise of St Thomas Aquinas, which I will briefly review in the next section.
Review of Thomas Aquinas’s Trinitarian Treatise
Thomas Aquinas’s most developed trinitarian treatise is found in his Summa Theologiae (I, qq. 27–43). 23 It is divided into three parts: (1) the origin or the processions of the divine persons (q. 27); (2) the relations of origin (q. 28); and (3) the persons (qq. 29–43). Aquinas’s trinitarian treatise sometimes is playfully summarized as follows: ‘Five characteristics, four relations, three persons, two processions, one God and no proof.’ 24 The five characteristics refer to the ‘ingenerateness’ of the Father, who is the principle of origin of the Son and the Spirit, and to the four real and subsistent relations 25 of origin, which allow for ‘differentiating’ the three divine Persons (Greek hypostasis) who share the same divine essence (Greek ousia). The notion of relations builds upon the category of two processions: generation (procession of the Son from the Father) and spiration (procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son). The two processions are uncreated, intra-trinitarian, and a-temporal. Aquinas conceives them by way of an analogy of the intelligible emanations of an inner word from infinite understanding, and of love from the speaking of a word of infinite value: the Father speaks the Word and both spirate Love. Thus, God is present to God-self as the known in the knower in the spoken Word, and as the beloved in the lover in the proceeding Love. 26 In each procession Aquinas considers ‘two opposed relations: the relation of what proceeds from its principle or source, and the relation of the principle itself.’ 27 This gives four relations: paternity (the relation of the Father to the Son), filiation (the relation of the Son to the Father), active spiration (the relation of the Father and the Son to the Spirit), and passive spiration (the relation of the Spirit to the Father and the Son).
The missions of the Word and the Spirit are the ‘temporal term’ of the processions: ‘mission includes an eternal procession, but also adds something else, namely, an effect of time.’ 28 The missions imply that the Son and the Spirit are ‘sent’ by the Father to be present in ‘a new manner.’ 29 Each of the two missions is both visible (Incarnation and signs of the Spirit’s activity in the world) and invisible (the indwelling of the Son and the Spirit in believers).
Ormerod’s Extension: A ‘Four-Point’ Approach
Ormerod’s ‘four-point’ ecclesiological account builds upon the classical trinitarian treatise recalled above and developed by Lonergan. Since the ‘temporal effect,’ which distinguishes trinitarian missions from processions, is manifested in the created order, Lonergan maintains that the missions involve created participation in the divine nature.
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He proposes that the four divine relations (which are really identical to the divine substance) can be transposed to the two divine missions as ‘four very special modes that ground the external imitation of the divine substance.’
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Lonergan correlates them with the four supernatural realities of the Incarnation, sanctifying grace, the habit of charity, and the light of glory.
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Upon this correlation Lonergan builds his ‘four-point hypothesis’: It would not be inappropriate, therefore, to say that the secondary act of existence of the Incarnation is a created participation of paternity, and so has a special relation to the Son; that sanctifying grace is a [created] participation of active spiration, and so has a special relation to the Holy Spirit; that the habit of charity is a [created] participation of passive spiration, and so has a special relation to the Father and the Son; and that the light of glory is a [created] participation of sonship, and so in a most perfect way brings the children of adoption back to the Father.
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Ormerod proposes that, besides the reality of sanctifying grace and the habit of charity (i.e., the theological virtue of charity), there could be other ways of non-hypostatic created participation which can be related to other aspects of Christian life. Ormerod locates two other modes of created participation in the eternal relations of paternity and filiation: in the theological virtues of, respectively, faith and hope. He grounds the first transposition of paternity to faith as follows: ‘As the Son is the divine yes of the Father, so the indwelling of the Son joins our yes of faith to that of the Son, where faith is here conceived as “knowledge born of religious love.”’ 34 Given the connection of filiation with the light of glory, Ormerod suggests that ‘an anticipatory participation with the relation to filiation may be found in the theological virtue of hope.’ 35 The resulting theological structure (schematically represented below) implies that the church is an icon of the Trinity by participating in the divine reality through her life of faith, hope, and charity, grounded in sanctifying grace. 36
Elsewhere, as will be discussed in more detail later, Ormerod expands the latter scheme by proposing other modes of created participation in paternity: the indwelling of Christ in the believer, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the church as the body of Christ. 37
Critical Engagement with Ormerod’s Project: Assessment of the Principal Merits and Lacunae
Having outlined Ormerod’s project of the ‘four-point’ non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology in its broader context provided by Aquinas’s trinitarian treatise and Lonerganian scholarship, let me examine the principal merits and lacunae of Ormerod’s account.
Principal Merits
I suggest that the following three merits of Ormerod’s contribution need to be highlighted. First, his account allows us to conceive a dynamic image of the church as a grace-empowered participant in the divine economy. Ormerod argues that such participation makes the church an icon of the Trinity. 38 As he indicates, sharing in trinitarian life grounded in sanctifying grace and lived in faith, hope, and love, is a constitutive element of what Lonergan calls a divinely originated solution to the problem of evil. Charity provides a universal willingness for the good, faith informs the intellect of the nature of the solution, and hope helps to overcome the difficulties in implementing the solution. 39 Hence, Ormerod’s account of a non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology presents the life of the church as participation in the life of the Trinity, and does so by focusing on her mission. The latter Ormerod defines as ‘a prolongation of the mission of Jesus to incrementally realize the kingdom of God on earth.’ 40
Second, the category of the created participations employed by Ormerod provides a theological structure for conceiving the church as both a supernatural and human reality, fully present in its twofold relation to God and the world. 41 On the one hand, the divine origin of created participations brings to the forefront a theology of grace as both healing and elevating human nature. 42 On the other hand, the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity are actualized through free human response. Thus, Ormerod’s account allows for dialectics of contraries: 43 grace and nature, eschatological and historical, providential and contingent, ideal and empirical. In the postmodern pluralistic context, Ormerod’s account also allows for relating the church to other religious traditions. For him, the church still is the sign and instrument of God’s kingdom, but not in an absolute way: it plays a unique, but not exclusive role in the economy of salvation. 44 Since grace and the theological virtues are to be found outside the church, the ‘church does not constrain the kingdom [of God] or possess it; rather the kingdom possesses the church.’ 45 In relation to it, one may even say that it is not that the church has a mission, but that the mission(s) have a church.
Third, by extending the possibilities for other created participations imitative of the four trinitarian relations to other supernatural realities, such as the Eucharist and the church as the body of Christ, Ormerod offers a fresh perspective on the sacramentality of the church. 46 In this context, the church can be conceived as ‘a created expression of the divine formal, full, and constitutive act of meaning which is the Son.’ 47 Since meaning is constitutive of human existence, the entry of the divine meaning into the world through the church can be said to effect the ‘transsignification’ of the human reality. 48 I suggest that the notion of ‘transsignification’ could become a potential gateway for rethinking sacramental theology and for dialogue between more empirically oriented ecclesiologies and ecclesiological streams, such as radical orthodoxy, that react against this empirical turn. 49 For instance, in this context, one may ask: Can the church as an ‘alternative society,’ which is faithful to the Christian narrative, be a reality where the ‘alternative’ meaning is cognitive, efficient, constitutive, and still communicative? 50
To summarize, Ormerod’s non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology based on the four trinitarian relations provides a rich theological framework for reimagining the church as an icon of the Trinity. The image of the church conceived within such a framework is dynamic and outwardly oriented, and yet allows for a fresh perspective on the sacramental dimension of the church. It is bounded by its relation to trinitarian dynamics and, at the same time, open to new perspectives that emerge in the postmodern world. As such, this theological framework can bear with the inherent tensions proper to the empirical and spiritual reality which the church is.
Some Lacunae
Although Ormerod’s ‘four-point’ non-communio account opens up the possibility for a mission-oriented and dynamic trinitarian ecclesiology, it also elicits some critical questions: To what extent is an account based on four relations evocative and inspiring? Is it sufficiently normative? In other words, does Ormerod’s ‘four-point’ account provide sufficient guidance as to what the church ought to do in order to live out faith, hope, and charity authentically? Does it provide a theological framework for attending to the communal dimension and the visible structures and ministries of the church? With these questions in view, I will consider three potential lacunae of Ormerod’s project.
Evocative Power
First, while an account based on a transposition of the four trinitarian relations to two divine missions carries an explanatory power, it may be criticized for not being sufficiently evocative. As a highly sophisticated speculative framework it lacks power to kindle imagination and to inspire action: ‘imitating the divine trinitarian relations’ 51 does not sound as compelling as, for instance, ‘imitating Christ.’ Likewise, while Ormerod’s account is rich in systematic reflection, it lacks attention to ecclesial metaphors. As Richard Lennan points out, systematic reflection and theological understanding derived in dialogue with social sciences needs to be complemented with metaphoric language because the ‘poetry’ of metaphors has the capacity to expand our vision and fuel our imagination. 52
At the root of the evocative thinness of Ormerod’s ‘four-point’ account, I propose, lies the distancing from a ‘classical’ trinitarian approach based on two missions, which more closely follows scriptural and patristic foundations. Ironically, starting from the inner-trinitarian relations (which is followed by transposing them into the category of mission)
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places Ormerod’s ‘four-point’ account in a position similar to that of communio ecclesiology, which Ormerod himself has criticized: While this attempt [of communio ecclesiology] to link ecclesiology and trinitarian theology is admirable, one might question whether this is the appropriate place to identify a connection. The divine unity is where God is most different from God’s creatures, even the creation that we call Church. What is first in our knowledge of the triune nature are the divine missions of Word and Spirit, which in turn ground our knowledge of the processions and persons within the Trinity.
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Indeed, what is first in our knowledge is not the intra-trinitarian life. The divine relations, however, originally (and, for Aquinas, exclusively) belong to the realm of intra-trinitarian life. Ormerod himself considers created participations as only ‘imitative of the four trinitarian relations.’ 55 Since, in the order of knowing, relations follow processions and processions follow missions, I suggest that Ormerod’s account needs to be complemented with an approach that explicitly attends to the missions as they are known through revelation. Strikingly, Aquinas’s trinitarian treatise provides a precedent for such a complementary move: while the ordo disciplinae of the Summa Theologiae follows the order of being, the order of exposition in Aquinas’s biblical commentaries is reversed. There he starts off from the faith experience of salvation and then proceeds to discover how ‘the action of the persons in the economy leads to the discovery and disclosure of a truth concerning the Trinity itself.’ 56
Normativity
My second concern relates to the normativity of Ormerod’s account. Although the concept of participations in the divine nature that relate to sanctifying grace and the three theological virtues has great capacity as a theological framework, at the same time, it distances itself from the particularity of the Christian narrative and its normative power. It does not directly refer to the distinct persons of the Son (i.e., Jesus Christ) and the Spirit, and the Christian story through which the experience of the divine Persons is communicated. 57 Therefore, I suggest, Ormerod’s ‘four-point’ account lacks normative power. My concern about the limits of a relatively ‘depersonalized’ theological framework, which focuses on the reality of sanctifying grace and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, can be substantiated by once more referring to Thomas Aquinas’s trinitarian treatise.
Let me begin by pointing out that, in Ormerod’s account based on the four relations, the distinctness of the ‘transitive action’ (i.e., missions) of the Son and the Spirit is engaged only obliquely. This has some advantages and disadvantages. On the upside, Ormerod’s appropriation of Lonergan’s ‘four-point hypothesis’ affirms that the ‘immanent’ and the ‘economic’ Trinity are inseparable. Aquinas clearly holds that the two can be distinguished only by the manner of divine action: the ‘immanent’ action, which remains in the acting subject (processions), and the ‘transitive’ action, which is transmitted to a reality outside the acting subject (missions). 58 The ‘immanent’ action is the ground for the ‘transitive’: the generation of the Word and the procession of Love are the source of God’s action in the world. 59 On the downside, in Ormerod’s attempt to integrate the two dimensions (immanent and transitive) in order to correlate the Trinity and Christian life, the visible and hypostatic created participations get little attention. The focus shifts from the two divine Persons who are ‘sent and given in their personal distinction, that is, in their distinctive properties’ 60 to the reality imitative of the four relations. Consequently, Ormerod proposes various modes of created non-hypostatic participation. The disadvantage of this otherwise promising move is that the distinctions between the Son and the Spirit and their respective missions 61 are no longer in direct focus. Simultaneously, the normative power of the Christian narrative is also obscured.
Moreover, Ormerod’s multiplication of the ways in which created participation can be imagined seems to be somewhat arbitrary, and at odds with Aquinas’s positions. When discussing the invisible missions, Aquinas rejects the idea that the Son is perceived ‘not only through sanctifying grace, but also through the charisms, through faith, e.g., and knowledge.’ 62 He writes: ‘Though the Son may be known by us through various effects, he does not dwell in us nor do we possess him through just any effect.’ 63 Even if Ormerod is careful to uphold Aquinas’s thesis that the divine persons are sent exclusively in connection to sanctifying grace, 64 the fact that in Ormerod’s theological structure grace and theological virtues are located at the same level of four imitative relations brings in a certain ambiguity as to his position concerning the exclusive role of sanctifying grace posited by Aquinas.
The Visible Structures and Ministries of the Church
From what has been said earlier, it follows that, as Ormerod focuses on the hypothetical modes of created participations, the visible missions of the Word and the Spirit are given scant attention.
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For Thomas Aquinas, however, precisely visible missions make manifest the invisible missions and therefore are bound to the establishment of the church. In a passage of the Sentences, Aquinas outlines the following relationship between the invisible and visible missions of the Holy Spirit and the church. The invisible mission gives the recipient an ‘experiential knowledge of the divine person.’ This interior grace is given in such plenitude that it ‘overflows into a visible disclosure which reveals the indwelling of the divine persons beyond the one who receives it to others.’ Through such ‘overflowing’ from Christ to the apostles and to many other human beings ‘the Church was planted.’
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The lack of attention to the visible missions in Ormerod’s ‘four-point’ account thus means that his framework is not well equipped to attend to the visible structures and ministries of the church. Thus, the ‘four-point’ approach can hardly bear the full weight of the demands which Ormerod himself places on systematic ecclesiology: [A] systematic ecclesiology must not only be empirical and critical; it must also be normative, and hence evaluative. It must allow us to judge whether this change—this new structure, teaching or program—contributes to the purpose of the Church. It does so by asking whether this change, structure, teaching or program is properly oriented to the goal of the Church: the incremental realization of the kingdom.
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Accordingly, I propose that in order to discern what truly serves the kingdom, Ormerod’s ‘four-point’ ecclesiological account has to be complemented by an account which more closely correlates the life of the church and the visible missions of the Son and the Spirit, as reflected in the Scriptures. This need is further reinforced by the fact that the ‘upper blade’ of theory 68 that Ormerod’s account offers for examining the life of the church is a single systematic principle. As Nicholas Healy points out, when a single principle is applied, there is a real risk of succumbing to reductionist tendencies. We can avoid this danger by working with the ‘system’ that is Scripture rather than with a single systematic principle. 69
One way that such a risk is being played out in Ormerod’s non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology, is that Ormerod’s account does not adequately note and account for differences between individual and collective dimensions of grace. More precisely, one may ask: In what way is the life of faith, hope, and love, grounded in sanctifying grace, specifically a corporate life of the church? In other words, what difference does the collective nature of the church make upon Ormerod’s non-communio trinitarian approach?
To summarize: Ormerod’s non-communio account based on the transposition of the four divine relations provides a valuable speculative theological framework within which the church can be conceived as iconic of trinitarian life through her participation in the economy of salvation. Ormerod’s emphasis on the operator symbol of missio provides a needed corrective for the integrator symbol of communio. At the same time, several lacunae of Ormerod’s account, such as a relative lack of evocative and normative power, and the limited capacity to attend to the corporate dimension of the church, especially her visible structures and ministries, need to be filled in. I propose that it can be done by complementing Ormerod’s account with a non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology that returns to the Trinity as it is known to us through Scripture. This task is congruent with a more classical approach that correlates the life of the church with the missions of the Son and the Spirit. As the classical approach draws upon biblical and patristic roots, one way of furthering Ormerod’s project is to attend to biblical foundations of the trinitarian doctrine and its relation to ecclesiology. This will be the main focus of my next section.
A Non-Communio Trinitarian Ecclesiology vis-à-vis Trinitarian Biblical Foundations
To recapitulate, the furthering of Ormerod’s non-communio trinitarian account has to balance the integrator and operator functions and to allow for affirmation of the distinctness of the divine Persons in the context of the Christian story (which has normative and evocative significance), as well as to explore the possibilities for attending to the visible structures and ministries of the church. Keeping in view these demands, I will map out some ideas for ecclesiological appropriation of the biblical foundations of trinitarian doctrine. I will first examine the relevant aspects of ‘proto-trinitarian grammar’ 70 which has shaped the self-understanding of the Jesus movement and the early church. Next, I will draw some implications that this engagement of Scripture can offer for understanding the identity, the mission, and the structures of the church. Since the task of constructing a full-blown account of a non-communio ecclesiology based on the biblical foundations of trinitarian doctrine far exceeds the scope of this essay, I will focus on demonstrating the feasibility and advantages of such an account, and the presence of multiple attestations that support my cause in the Pauline corpus, which reflects the earliest layers of the self-understanding of the church.
Attending to ‘Proto-trinitarian Grammar’
In seeking to complement Ormerod’s account, my engagement with the New Testament material is guided by the question: How can we say that the church is an icon of the Trinity? When the question is posed this way, strikingly, one discovers that Scripture discloses the strong conviction that the mission of the church is inseparable from the realization of the image of God in human beings. In the New Testament, this idea is communicated in the language governed by ‘proto-trinitarian grammar.’ 71 Let me take a closer look at how this language functions and what it conveys about the church in relation to her triune God.
In Paul’s undisputed letters and the Col/Eph Deutero-Pauline tradition, human beings realize their potential to be an image (eikōn, homoiōsis) of God 72 insofar as, through the power of the Holy Spirit, they remain ‘in Christ’ (cf. Rom 8:1–2; 8:9) through whom God reconciled the world to God’s self (2 Cor 5:19). 73 According to the Pauline tradition, in Jesus, and through the Spirit, the Father reveals the perfect image of God and of true humanity. 74 ‘Being in Christ,’ an ecclesial metaphor developed by Paul, means dying and rising with him (Gal 2:19; Rom 6:8). This Paschal mystery of transformation is entered through baptism (Rom 6:3–4; Gal 3:27) and lived in the community of mutual love and in eucharistic sharing (cf. 1 Cor 11:20–34). However, the final transformation is an eschatological reality: even those who have the first fruits of the Spirit (the early church) are still ‘groaning’ (cf. Rom 8:23). Christians will be fully ‘conformed to the image of [God’s] Son’ (eikōn, Rom 8:29) and ‘transformed into the same image’ (2 Cor 3:18) in the eschatological reality.
This language of conformation/transformation suggests that human beings in general, and the church in particular, are adversely affected by sin, but they also are bearers of God’s promise fulfilled in Christ. Vis-à-vis the reality of sin, the early Pauline church perceives herself as grafted onto the Son—the true image of the Father—through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and therefore set on the way to be in tune with God’s creational design (cf. Rom 11:24). This Spirit, which indwells in believers and in the church as in the temple (cf. 1 Cor 3:16), in the New Testament writings, is both the Spirit of God (the Father) and the Spirit of Christ (cf. Rom 8:9). Though the proper response to God’s self-gift is ‘putting on the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Rom 13:14) and ‘imitating Christ’ (1 Cor 4:16; 11:1, 1 Thess 1:6, also cf. Eph 5:1–2), it is realized only through the power of the Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 12:3).
For Paul, the new identity of the children of God, received through Christ and lived in the Spirit, underlies the essential equality of believers. As contemporary New Testament scholar Udo Schnelle notes, while ‘in Roman society one’s family background and social class were determinative for one’s status, in the Christian community, the fundamental distinctions hallowed by antiquity, based on family, gender, and race, no longer counted.’ 75 This equality, however, does not abolish the diversity of charisms with which believers are endowed by the Spirit for the sake of the whole congregation (cf. 1 Cor 14:12). Animated by the Spirit, whose active presence is manifested through various charisms, the church as a whole participates in the one mission of Christ. The latter, in the New Testament, is bringing about the reign of God. 76 Jesus’s message can be summarized in his own words: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel’ (Mk 1:15). In Jesus, this basileia tou theou is decisively inaugurated. As the church is the locus of Christ’s lordship, she participates in his mission. As the church serves the reign of God, the realization of the image of God in believers and in all humanity is manifested more fully.
Thus, in the New Testament, the dynamism of ‘becoming an image of God,’ is intrinsically bound with life ‘in Christ through the Spirit.’ This life is realized in the community of disciples, the church, as she labors for the sake of the reign of God. Schnelle observes that the metaphor of being ‘in Christ,’ for Paul, is inseparable from two other foundational metaphors for the church: ‘people of God’ (1 Cor 10:7; Rom 9:25–26; 10:21; 11:1–2; 15:10) and ‘body of Christ’ (1 Cor 12:27). 77 According to Richard Longenekcer, Paul’s metaphor en Christō, denotes both personal union with Christ and a locution for corporate communion in the church. 78 Though Paul certainly at times used the term en Christō only as a synonym for the noun or the adjective ‘Christian,’ and grammatically the term carries the instrumental (‘by Christ’), causal (‘through the empowerment of Christ’), and/or source (‘Christ in us’) senses of the dative, the local designation is prominent. It communicates the meaning of the deepest union (but not identity) with Christ. 79 Another prominent biblical scholar, Pheme Perkins, proposes that each of the other two key metaphors in Paul has a particular function. The ‘people of God’ relates church and its story to the economy of salvation as God’s plan for humanity from the beginning, whereas ‘body of Christ’ first of all recalls the ‘supernatural’ aspect of the church, that which she and believers are eternally. 80 Hence, these key metaphors (in particular, the body of Christ), point toward the sacramental dimension of the life of the church, especially in connection with baptism (cf. Rom 7:4) and Eucharist (cf. 1 Cor 10:16; 11:27). This undergirds the indispensability of the category of sacrament, which is integral to Vatican II ecclesiology. The metaphor of the people of God, as incorporated in 1 Pet 2:9, is also echoed in Vatican II’s notion of the common priesthood of all believers (cf. Lumen Gentium no. 10) and has important implications for re-thinking the role of the laity in the mission of the church, as I will briefly discuss later.
Though, as Kendall Soulen argues, the early church creeds and the scribal tradition of nomina sacra, witness the shift from the ‘binitarian’ (theos and kyrios Iēsous Christos) to the trinitarian naming of God (theos, kyrios Iēsous Christos, and pneuma), 81 there is no doubt that from the very beginning the church conceived itself as both a ‘christomorphic’ 82 and ‘pneumatological’ community, called (klētos, cf. ekklēsia) into being by God the Creator. For instance, an implicit trinitarian logic is prominent in one of the climactic pericopes 83 of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, chapter 8. Rom 8:1–2 highlights the Spirit’s work, whereas vv. 2–4 the Father’s work in the Son. 84 Furthermore, Rom 8:5–15 establishes the sharp distinction between the two contrasting ways of life according to the Spirit of Christ/God and to the flesh. 85 Paul reminds Christ-believers: ‘However, you (hymeis) are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him’ (Rom 8:9). The ‘flesh’ (sarx) here is a metaphor for the self which is under the rule of sin, nomōs tēs hamartias, as opposed to the self which, in Christ, is freed from the dominion of sin and death and is under the rule of the Spirit, nomōs tou pneumatos (cf. Rom 8:2). 86 According to Matera, this Spirit is ‘the Spirit that God bestowed upon Christ during his earthly ministry and pre-eminently at the resurrection, when Christ became “a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor. 15: 45).’ 87 Thus, Rom 8 brings to the forefront the triadic experience of God and God’s effecting our salvation and implies a connection between the mission of Christ and of the church.
By and large, as Romans 8 illustrates, for Paul, the two dimensions of our life ‘in Christ’ and ‘in the Spirit’ are inseparable and grounded in the activity of God the Father. However, Paul’s ‘in Christ’ or ‘in the Spirit’ does not carry with it connotations of absorption into divinity. For Paul, the church experiences new life as the reality which is both ‘already’ and ‘not yet’ (cf. Rom 8:15 and 8:23). 88 Nevertheless, the opposition of life en sarki and en pneumati/en Christō leaves little doubt as to what the church is called and constantly empowered by the Spirit to be: the new creation in Christ (cf. 2 Cor 5:17), the ‘body of Christ’ (cf. 1 Cor 12:27), that is, the visible, credible, and effective sign and instrument of God’s salvific presence in the world. For Paul, belonging to Christ in the Spirit entails the re-creation of the image of God in humanity (cf. Rom 8:15 and 8:29). 89
Following a line of analysis represented in the New Testament scholarship, I propose that christomorphic and pneumatological dimensions play a crucial role in the self-understanding of the early community of Christ-believers. On the one hand, ‘christomorphism’ grounds the normative claims of the Christian church. As Gordon Fee argues, ‘Christ is the absolute criterion for what is truly Spirit activity’ (cf. 1 Cor 12:3). 90 In a similar vein, Schnelle notes: ‘participation in the Christ event takes shape in the life of the Church … Christology determines ecclesiology because “no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 3:11).’ 91 On the other hand, the Spirit ‘determines Christian existence’ 92 itself and is the source of the diverse charisms in the church. For Paul, pneumatikos and pneumatika (spiritual person/things) portray God’s powerful presence and gracious turn to the world which is concretized in charismata. 93 Consequently, as Schnelle argues, ‘the alternative frequently posed between charism and office does not exist for Paul because the work of the Spirit is indivisible.’ 94 Hence, the ‘pneumatological’ dimension may be said to determine the new being in Christ and to undergird the church’s adaptability to changing circumstances and needs of the community.
The Church as an Icon of the Trinity: Implications of a Return to the Bible
As has been argued, the New Testament, especially the Pauline epistles, connects the life of the church with the dynamic of Imago Dei. In this context, the church is an icon of the Trinity by fostering the full realization of the image of God in the human being, which is actualized by Spirit-empowered participation in the perfect image of God, Christ Jesus. The Spirit draws the church to become ever more fully the icon of the Trinity through partaking in the mission of the Son to the world, namely, in living under the lordship of Jesus Christ and serving the basileia tou theou. Let me suggest some implications which the New Testament’s ‘proto-trinitarian grammar’ explored above offers for understanding the identity, mission, and structure of the church as an icon of the Trinity. I will focus specifically on those aspects which may further Ormerod’s account.
Identity of the Church
In the light of the New Testament’s ‘proto-trinitarian grammar,’ the church is an icon of the Trinity through its ‘christomorphic’ and ‘pneumatological’ dimensions. In Christ, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, the church fosters the realization of the image of the triune God in her members and promotes such realization in the whole world by advancing the reign of God. Drawing on the metaphor of the icon, one may speak of ecclesial ‘christomorphicity’ as a picture’s contour (i.e., the design that ‘contains’ colors) and of the ‘pneumatological’ dimension as a picture’s colors. The icon’s perspective points to God the Father. I use the term ‘icon’ here in a Byzantine/Russian Orthodox sense, which has sacramental connotations: it is the image that draws the viewer into the life depicted in the icon (dynamic participatory aspect), and, through the inverted perspective, relates to the viewer as the one who is being acted upon in the encounter (causal aspect).
This metaphor of an icon suggests that the ‘christomorphic’ dimension relates to the boundedness of the church, whereas the ‘pneumatological’ dimension relates to her openness. 95 Above all, the boundedness of the church is shaped by Jesus’ eucharistic commandment: ‘Do this in memory of me.’ To the extent the church is faithful to her calling to participate in the Son’s ‘cruciform’ mission, she might be called a living memorial of Jesus, a phrase coined by Schillebeeckx. 96 Further, the pneumatological dimension undergirds the openness of the Church to the ‘signs of times’ and to the eschatological reality. If this dimension is given proper attention, the Christian narrative, which shapes ecclesial identity, cannot be thought of as a closed system (pace some proponents of radical orthodoxy).
Thus, on the one hand, the christomorphic identity of the church grounds her identity ‘in Christ’ and provides a normative framework for judging how the life of grace has to be lived in faith, hope, and charity. By being united with Christ’s dying and rising through the communal and sacramental life (which are closely intertwined), and through participation in Jesus’ mission, the church is truly the icon of God whose image par excellence is Christ. On the other hand, as the Pentecost stories suggest, the stirring of the Spirit is at work both in unity and turmoil, conversion and confusion. Consequently, the pneumatological dimension of the church allows for her adaptation, emergence of new structures and new perspectives in response to historical contingency. The epistles of Paul and the Acts narrate how such adaptation and re-orientation took place in the early church. For instance, in a striking passage, Acts affirms that the Spirit can both lead and block the disciples’ way (Acts 16:6–7). This suggests that the Spirit might be at work both in continuity and discontinuity.
Hence, the interaction of the christomorphic and pneumatological dimensions in the church permits locating discontinuity as an ‘eruption’ of the Spirit within the deeper current of continuity: the ‘change in, but not of identity’ of the church, to use Lennan’s phrase. 97 Without doubt, the biblical fonts of trinitarian doctrine are replete with the operator-integrator dynamic. However, pointing out this operator-integrator dynamic does not mean aligning the christomorphic dimension of the church exclusively with the integrator function and the pneumatological with the operator function. After all, these two dimensions are inseparable. The norm of Christ directly commands and inspires openness to the Spirit, and the Spirit who leads the church is the Spirit of Christ.
Mission and Structure of the Church
My engagement with Scripture allows for clarifying two aspects of the mission of the church in relation to her ministries and structures. First, by the power of the Spirit, all Christians are called to grow in surrender to the self-giving love manifested in the salvific Christ event and to proclaim the gospel, which is God’s power for salvation (cf. Rom 1:16). Through dying and rising in Christ (christomorphic dimension), every believer is empowered to share in Christ’s prophetic, priestly, and royal offices. However, Vatican II’s rediscovery of this biblical teaching still waits to be fully appreciated in creative ways, grounded in the creativity of the Spirit herself (pneumatological dimension). Most urgently, the church needs to re-examine her ways of living as a priestly nation. By bringing to light the richness and interrelatedness of the ministries present in the early church, a non-communio trinitarian account of the church grounded in Scripture may help to examine particular ways in which this could be implemented.
Second, the concrete shape which participation in Christ’s mission takes varies depending on the charisms, the existing structures of the church, and the needs of the community. In response to doubts expressed in some new ecclesiologies, 98 one may say that the New Testament does not see the presence of some form of leadership in the church as contrary to the essential equality of all believers. This equality is grounded not in ‘democratic’ principles, as we understand them in a liberal society, but in the new identity in Christ, received through baptism. However, the New Testament suggests a much richer and charism-dependent participation in the mission of the church than the one presently operating in the Roman Catholic Church (and in many other Christian denominations). In this context, the account of the church forged in correlation with the scriptural ‘proto-trinitarian grammar’ allows for raising some ecclesiological questions, which are relevant in present times. For instance, how would the offices of the church be different, if Paul’s idea that charism and office are indivisible was seriously upheld? What ecclesial structures might emerge building upon 1 Pet 4:7–11, the passage that refers to a charismatic order in which important functions are not only service and the ministry of the word (4:10,11), but also hospitality (4:9) and steadfast love (4:8)? 99 These and similar questions indicate that an account that starts from biblical foundations might challenge and inform our vision of contemporary ecclesial structures.
Though the implications of a biblically grounded approach outlined above do not exhaust all possibilities, they present sufficient evidence to conclude that the non-communio trinitarian account of the church proposed by Ormerod can be complemented and enriched by a more robust engagement with the ‘proto-trinitarian grammar’ of the New Testament. Such an engagement offers some possibilities to fill in the lacunae of a more speculative account, such as Ormerod’s non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology based on the four relations. A complementary non-communio trinitarian approach that returns to Scripture, as delineated in this section, carries great evocative and normative potential and is attentive to the visible structures and ministries of the church.
Conclusion
As contemporary ecclesiology experiences major shifts, related to modern and postmodern contexts, the need to reclaim trinitarian ecclesiology is modified, but not lost. Communio ecclesiologies, which arose in the modern context of predominantly Western societies and in relation to the particularities of the post-Vatican II era, have often been criticized for their idealizing tendencies. However, their unparalleled power to engage the spiritual and sacramental dimensions of the church still attracts and nurtures ecclesiological vision. Moreover, the emphasis placed on the empirical and social dimensions of the church in the ‘ecclesiologies from below,’ to use Roger Haight’s expression, calls for a corrective movement ‘from above.’ 100 Neil Ormerod’s non-communio trinitarian account offers such a corrective. Instead of focusing on the symbol of communio, Ormerod grounds the participation of the church in the life of the Trinity in the notion of missio. His innovative and creative approach based on the extension of Lonergan’s ‘four-point hypothesis’ allows for affirming the unique place that the church occupies in the divine economy without undermining the contribution that other religious traditions may bring to the building of God’s reign. For Ormerod, lives that are grounded in sanctifying grace and led in faith, hope, and charity, participate in the reality of the Trinity and the divinely originated solution to the problem of evil. The fresh perspective which Ormerod’s account offers invites us to explore other possible modes of a non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology.
The present essay responds to the invitation provided by Ormerod’s account and attempts to further his pioneering project. As my analysis of Ormerod’s highly speculative approach demonstrates, his non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology would benefit from being complemented with an approach that is more evocative, normative, and attentive to the visible structures of the church. The avenue advocated here is that of returning to the biblical sources of trinitarian doctrine. However, it is not the only possible or fully constructed avenue. For instance, creative engagement with the early church creeds and patristic developments, as well as with modern trinitarian accounts, would advance the project of furthering Ormerod’s account.
Nevertheless, the brief engagement with Scripture outlined in this essay provides some insights upon which further work can be built. In the context of the analysis presented in the third part of this essay, I suggest that a non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology based on the ‘proto-trinitarian grammar’ of the New Testament allows for conceiving the church as an icon of the Trinity through the biblical category of the image of God. By participating in Christ, the image of God par excellence, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the church labors for the sake of the fuller realization of God’s image in all of humanity. The latter, by virtue of being created in the image of the triune God, is also not excluded from the trinitarian dynamic. Ultimately, to paraphrase St Paul, not only humanity, but all creation is awaiting in hope for the fulfillment of God’s reign inaugurated by Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit (cf. Rom 8:19–21).
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
1
For instance, Neil Ormerod argues that ‘if indeed we are “partakers of the divine life” (2 Pt 1:4) and that life is a Trinitarian life, then undoubtedly there must be some way in which our life as church reflects the life of the Trinity. The church should indeed be an icon of the Trinity.’ See more in ‘A (Non-Communio) Trinitarian Ecclesiology: Grounded in Grace, Lived in Faith, Hope, and Charity,’ Theological Studies 76 (2015): 448-67, at 449.
2
See Ormerod, ‘Non-Communio Ecclesiology,’ 449; Walter Kasper, The Catholic Church: Nature, Reality and Mission (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), Kindle edition, Kindle location 2174.
3
Communio ecclesiologies may be exemplified by the works of John Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary, 1985), ‘The Church as Communion,’ St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 38 (1994): 3–16, Jean-Marie Tillard, Flesh of the Church, Flesh of Christ: At the Source of the Ecclesiology of Communion (Collegeville: Liturgical, 2001), and Walter Kasper (The Catholic Church). Also see Richard R. Gaillardetz, Ecclesiology for a Global Church: A People Called and Sent (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2010), 85–131.
4
For more on the implicit contexts of communio ecclesiology, see Brian P. Flanagan, ‘Communion Ecclesiologies as Contextual Theologies,’ Horizons 40 (2013): 53–70.
5
On the revival of the doctrine of the Trinity see Christophe Chalamet’s and Marc Vial, eds, ‘Introduction,’ in Recent Developments in Trinitarian Theology: An International Symposium (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014), 1–8.
6
Flanagan, ‘Communion Ecclesiologies,’ 60–64.
7
For the distinctive ecclesiological perspectives this shift engenders see Jose Comblin, The People of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004); Peter C. Phan, In Our Own Tongues: Perspectives from Asia on Mission and Inculturation (Maryknol, NY: Orbis, 2003); Agbonkhianmeghe Orobotor, From Crisis to Kairos: The Mission of the Church in the Time of HIV/AIDS, Refugees and Poverty (Nairobi: Paulines, 2005); Elochukwu Uzukwu, The Listening Church: Autonomy and Communion in African Churches (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996).
8
Ormerod, ‘Non-Communio Ecclesiology,’ 451.
9
Functionalist account of society ‘stresses values of harmony and integration, while tending to disvalue or ignore evidence of tension or conflict’ (Ormerod, ‘Non-Communio Ecclesiology,’ 455). Also see Ormerod, Re-Visioning the Church: An Experiment in Systematic-Historical Ecclesiology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2014), Kindle edition, Kindle locations 804–930.
10
Ormerod, ‘Non-Communio Ecclesiology,’ 463–66.
11
Ibid, 463.
12
My main focus will be on Ormerod’s essay ‘Non-Communio Ecclesiology,’ but I will also engage his following works: The Trinity: Retrieving the Western Tradition (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University, 2005); ‘The Four-Point Hypothesis: Transpositions and Complications,’ Irish Theological Quarterly 77 (2012): 127–40; and Re-Visioning the Church.
13
Here and hereafter I refer to Ormerod’s non-communio Trinitarian ecclesiology, based on the four Trinitarian relations, as ‘four-point’ account.
14
15
Ibid.
16
Cf. Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, ed. Frederick Crowe and Robert M. Doran, vol. 3, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1992), 489–92. Ormerod notes that our ecclesial discourse is relatively rich in integrator symbols (such as Body of Christ) and poorer in operator symbols (for instance, Pilgrim People). See Ormerod, Re-Visioning the Church, Kindle Locations 2607–9 and 1538–44.
17
Ormerod, Re-Visioning the Church, Kindle Location 2604.
18
Ibid. Kindle Location 7844.
19
For more on Ormerod’s critique of communio ecclesiology, see Re-Visioning the Church, Kindle Locations, 2584-634 and ‘Non-Communio Ecclesiology,’ 454–57.
20
Ormerod, The Trinity, 30–31.
21
Ormerod, ‘Non-Communio Ecclesiology,’ 454.
22
Ibid. 455.
23
In this essay, I use Thomas Gilby’s edition of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (London: McGraw-Hill, 1964–73).
24
This witticism reported by Gerard O’Collins is quoted in Ormerod, The Trinity, 18. I believe that the last part (‘and no proof’) implies that Aquinas’s trinitarian treatise does not intend to prove the faith, but to demonstrate the intelligibility of Christian beliefs, expressed both in the early Creeds and Scripture, and to defend them against the heresies of Arianism and Sabellianism. See Lonergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, ed. Frederick Crowe and Robert M. Doran, vol. 2, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1997), 218–22; Gilles Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of St Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University, 2007), 27, 29, 41, 55–57.
25
Cf. STh I 28.1–2.
26
Cf. STh I 27.1–4. Also see Lonergan, Verbum, 204–13; Jeremy Wilkins, ‘Why Two Divine Missions? Development in Augustine, Aquinas, and Lonergan,’ Irish Theological Quarterly 77 (2012): 37–66, esp. at 53; Gilles Emery, Trinity in Aquinas (Ypsilanti: Sapientia, 2003), 153–54.
27
STh I 28.4
28
STh I 43.2.
29
ST I q. 43.5.
30
Ormerod, ‘The Four-Point Hypothesis,’ 128–29; also see Bernard J.F. Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, trans. Michael G. Shields, ed. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, vol. 12, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2007), 473.
31
Lonergan, The Triune God, 471.
32
Ibid. 473; also see Ormerod, ‘The Four-Point Hypothesis,’ 130.
33
Lonergan, The Triune God, 473. Quoted with Ormerod’s additions in parenthesis from his ‘Four-Point Hypothesis,’ 130.
34
Ormerod, ‘Non-Communio Ecclesiology,’ 460. Ormerod uses here Lonergan’s definition of faith as ‘knowledge born of religious love.’ See Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2013), 115–18.
35
Ormerod, ‘Non-Communio Ecclesiology,’ 460.
36
Cf. ibid. 461.
37
Ormerod, ‘Four-Point Hypothesis,’ especially 134–40.
38
Ormerod, ‘Non-Communio Ecclesiology,’ 463.
39
Ibid, 461.
40
Ormerod, Re-Visioning the Church, Kindle Locations 2885–87.
41
I allude here to Roger Haight who speaks of the church’s twofold relation to God and the world in Christian Community in History, vol. 1 (New York/London: Continuum, 2004), 63.
42
Following Lonergan, Ormerod interprets grace as a ‘healing vector’ that penetrates all the ‘natural’; he thus rejects an extrinsicist account of grace (Re-Visioning the Church, Kindle Location 2063).
43
Relying on Robert Doran’s definition, Ormerod points out that the dialectics of contraries ‘consist of two opposed but linked poles that must be held in creative and dynamic tension’ (Ormerod, Re-Visioning the Church, Kindle Location 1500). The dialectics of contraries are different from dialectics of contradictories (e.g., good and evil, truth and falsity): the former represents permanent tensions between aspects of reality that do not exclude each other, whereas the latter represents mutually exclusive alternatives.
44
Cf. Ormerod, ‘Non-Communio Ecclesiology,’466.
45
Ibid, 465.
46
This perspective is developed in Ormerod’s essay ‘Four-Point Hypothesis.’
47
Ormerod, ‘Four-Point Hypothesis,’ 139.
48
Ibid, 138. By ‘transsignification,’ Ormerod means fundamental and substantial change in the created reality through participation in the expression of divine meaning: for him, ‘transsignification is transubstantiation’ (ibid.).
49
This stream is best represented by the works of postliberal theologians, such as John Millbank and Stanley Hauerwas. The main tendencies of radical orthodoxy can also be exemplified by the essays of Hauerwas, Rodnay Clapp, Rober W. Brimlow, and Michael J. Baxter, published in Michael L. Budde and Robert W. Brimlow, eds, The Church as Counterculture (Albany, NY: State University of New York), 2000. Also see: Stanley A. Hauerwas, Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (London: Notre Dame, 1991); John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Malden/Oxford/Victoria: Blackwell, 2006), and The Future of Love: Essays in Political Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2009).
50
For Lonergan’s notion of the functions of meaning employed here see his Method, 78–81.
51
Ormerod, ‘Non-Communio Ecclesiology,’ 461.
52
‘The Church as a Sacrament of Hope,’ Theological Studies 72 (2011): 247–74, at 274.
53
Ormerod indicates such a dynamic in the beginning of his essay ‘Non-Communio Ecclesiology’: ‘The aim of this article is not just to raise these concerns, but to present an alternative Trinitarian ecclesiology, one not based in the notion of communio, but understood in terms of the inner-Trinitarian relations’ (449, last emphasis mine).
54
Ormerod, Re-Visioning the Church, Kindle Locations 2633–36.
55
Ormerod, ‘Non-Communio Ecclesiology,’ 463.
56
Emery, Trinitarian Theology of Aquinas, 13. As Jeremy Wilkins has recently pointed out to me, this does not mean that Aquinas starts in a vacuum. To a large extent, his return to Scripture, not unlike my present attempt, is a movement in which Aquinas re-reads the biblical narrative reflectively in the light of his theoretical account.
57
It must be noted, however, that a recent essay by Ormerod addresses the question of how the ‘four-point hypothesis’ provides an explanatory framework for understanding the distinctive roles that the persons of the Trinity play in the economy of salvation. Nevertheless, he does not explore ecclesiological implications of this distinction. See Ormerod, ‘A Trajectory from Augustine to Aquinas and Lonergan: Contingent Predication and the Trinity,’ in Irish Theological Quarterly 82 (2017): 208–21, esp. at 210.
58
STh I 27.1. See more in Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of Aquinas, 41.
59
Cf. STh I 37.3; 45.6; also see Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of Aquinas, 42.
60
Emery, Trinitarian Theology of Aquinas, 50.
61
For Aquinas, the presence of these distinctions (discussed predominantly in STh 43.6–7), however, does not abrogate the perichoretic mystery: ‘[t]he entire Trinity abides in the soul’ (STh I 43.5).
62
STh I 43.3.
63
Ibid.
64
Cf. ‘grounded in grace, lived in faith, hope, and charity’ (Ormerod, ‘Non-Communio Ecclesiology,’ 448).
65
Though, in his essay ‘Four-Point Hypothesis,’ Ormerod suggests the two visible created participations in paternity, namely, the Eucharist and the church as the body of Christ, the implications of this insight for ecclesial life are not developed.
66
I Sent. d. 16, q. 1, a. 2. Also see Emery, Trinitarian Theology of Aquinas, 410.
67
Ormerod, Re-Visioning the Church, Kindle Locations 238–41.
68
This metaphor is introduced by Lonergan and widely applied by Ormerod. He points out that ‘Lonergan uses the metaphor to speak of the coming together of the lower blade of data with the upper blade of theory to arrive at explanation.’ See more in Re-Visioning the Church, Kindle Locations 270–71.
69
See more in Nicholas Healy, ‘Ecclesiology and Communion,’ Perspectives in Religious Studies 31 (2004): 273–90, at 277.
70
This term for describing the New Testament foundations of the trinitarian doctrine is used by Gordon D. Fee in Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007), 586; also see Christoph Schwoebel, ‘Where Do We Stand in Trinitarian Theology?’ in Recent Developments in Trinitarian Theology, 9–71, at 18.
71
To be sure, Paul does not advocate a trinitarian doctrine as later fixed in the ontological categories of Thomas Aquinas. Nonetheless, his ‘proto-trinitarian grammar’ is communicated through expressions and images that show initial reflection on how Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are related. See more in Udo Schnelle, Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2009), 274; Fee, Pauline Christology, 586–91.
72
Cf. Rom 8:29; 2 Cor 3:18; Col 3:10; Eph 4: 24. Also see 1 Jn 3:2–3.
73
My citations of the New Testament here follow the New American Standard Bible translation.
74
2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15; Heb 1:3; also cf. Jn 14:8–9.
75
Schnelle, Theology of the New Testament, 330; cf. 1 Cor 12:13; Gal 3:26–28; Rom 1:14.
76
Though the language of the ‘kingdom of God’ is foreign to Pauline texts, there is in Paul a notion of the universal ‘reign’ of Christ as exalted Lord who comes to ‘reign’ post humiliation and death, e.g., Phil 2:6–1; this idea is expended in the imagery of Colossians and Ephesians.
77
Schnelle, Theology of the New Testament, 330–33.
78
Cf. Richard N. Longenecker, Introducing Romans: Critical Issues in Paul’s Most Famous Letter (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2011) Kindle Edition, Kindle Locations 4138–39.
79
Ibid, Kindle Locations 4105–25 and 4157–60.
80
Quoted from personal communication.
81
Nomina sacra refers to a special way the scribes distinguished the writing of the divine name by abbreviating it. Soulen argues that this tradition echoes the special writing of the Tetragrammaton, the divine unspoken name of YHWH, in the LXX tradition, and suggests that tracing the usage of the nomina sacra in the New Testament manuscripts, to some extent, reflects the development of trinitarian belief. See more in Kendall R. Soulen, The Divine Name(s) and the Holy Trinity: Distinguishing the Voices (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 2011), 31–46; see also Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), Kindle Edition, Kindle Locations 10329–55.
82
I am indebted for this term to Roger Haight (Christian Community in History, vol. 1, 63).
83
Cf. Frank J. Matera, Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), Kindle edition, Kindle locations 4143–44.
84
Matera, Romans, Kindle Locations 4345–47.
85
Ibid, Kindle Locations 4225–26.
86
For a discussion of the translation of ‘nomos,’ see Matera, Romans, Kindle Locations 4260–94. For more on Pauline sarx see N.T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Minneapolis, MI: Fortress, 2013), 459.
87
Matera, Romans, Kindle Locations 4381–82.
88
See more in Matera, Romans, Kindle Locations 4538–44.
89
See Fee, Pauline Christology, 590.
90
Ibid, 589.
91
Schnelle, Theology of the New Testament, 333.
92
Ibid, 269.
93
Ibid, 336.
94
Ibid, 336. Emphasis original.
95
I elaborate here on the metaphor of the church as ‘bounded openness’ proposed by Serene Jones in ‘Bounded Openness: Postmodernism, Feminism, and the Church Today,’ Interpretation 55 (2001): 49–59.
96
Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 641.
97
Richard Lennan, The Ecclesiology of Karl Rahner (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 60. Quoted in Ormerod, Re-Visioning the Church, Kindle location 7841, emphasis his.
98
For instance, the predominantly deconstructionist feminist ecclesiologies, as exemplified by the works of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, such as Discipleship of Equals: A Critical Feminist Ekklēsia-logy of Liberation (New York: Crossroad, 1993).
99
See more in Schnelle, Theology of the New Testament, 614.
100
For Haight, ecclesiology ‘from below’ is characterized by the historical approach, whereas movement ‘from above’ concerns the constitutive elements of the church which transcend its particular instantiations. See more in Haight, Chapter 1, in Christian Community in History, vol. 1, especially pp. 17 and 56.