Abstract
The sense of the author debating with himself here gives this book an energizing feel. The book is prefaced with a sentence from John Updike: ‘A company of believers is like a prisonful of criminals: their intimacy and solidarity are based on what about themselves they can least justify’ (p. vi). This sense of irony and tension within the nature of the Church follows the reader throughout. Small begins by indicating how ‘church’ itself is an unclear context. Quoting Bonhoeffer, who makes several guest appearances, he points to two churches, neither of which is theologically nor sociologically adequate.
From this critique he moves on to the creed, which he sees as ‘summoning a rule of faith’. Creeds act as lenses helping to give the Church identity without becoming tests of faith. Faith, he argues, is embodied in the people of God and the creeds signify this. From early on in the book, we are reminded that the Church belongs to the Lord: Christ is head of the Church. Small’s argument issues from the Reformed tradition and is generous and inclusive. Models of the Church offered by Paul Minear and Avery Dulles are revisited. Word and sacrament are determinative. Small includes an excellent and concise analysis of the multi-variety of meanings of communion or koinonia, a key concept in ecclesiology and ecumenical dialogue. Another key occupant in Small’s witness box is Dietrich Ritschl, who argues for a church with an identity formed by call and response between God and humanity.
One of the most refreshing and surprising elements in Small’s thesis is the crucial ‘continuity of God’ across the two Testaments. This leads him into an interesting analysis in which he ‘reclaims the Old Testament’ for the Church. Indeed, he argues for a continuity between Judaism and Christianity, both communities being designated in different ways the ‘People of God’. The much-quoted phrase from Deuteronomy 26.5 – ‘a wandering Aramean was my father’ – equally applies to Jesus: Jesus’ ‘Jewishness’ is emphasized and this leads into a chapter that deliberately embraces Judaism. This section of the book includes some very attractive theological reflection and looks at Paul’s attitude to Judaism. There is just a slight danger that the 40 pages which focus on Judaism, Christianity and the two Testaments unbalance the wider argument. Small concludes with challenging words on the contemporary Church, making it clear that the Church is as secularized as the rest of society. Referring to Robin Lane Fox and other historians of antiquity, he argues that the Church grew then at an exponential rate on account of its integrity to the gospel. It lived out a distinctive life.
This is an excellent and original addition to the contemporary library of books on ecclesiology. In an early Updike quotation, we read: ‘In general, the churches … bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola: they promoted thirst without quenching it.’ Small challenges the Church to reverse that experience.