Abstract
In an earlier work, I characterized ecclesial existence as a spirituality common to the whole church across the denominations.1 This effort responded to a stalled ecumenical movement by minimizing the divisions among the churches in relation to a core of spiritual existence that all churches share. This softened the historical fragmentation of the church that seems to be out of control by recognizing it as local adaptations in a wider Christian world. The focus centered on the vast area of Christian faith that all Christians and churches actually embrace in common if not together. The best way to describe our corporate ecclesial existence is in terms of a spirituality that holds the whole church together rather than by theological analysis of traditional doctrines. By spirituality, I mean the way a person or group directs their lives in the face of some transcendent principle. An ecclesial spirituality refers to the way the members of the church live. On the basis of principles and practices learned from Jesus of Nazareth, Christians organize their lives and act responsibly before God.
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Notes
Roger Haight, “The Promise of Constructive Comparative Ecclesiology: Partial Communion,” Ecclesiology 4, no. 2 (2008): 183–203.
Ulrich Beck, The Cosmopolitan Vision (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2006).
The Dalai Lama formulates this principle with Buddhist simplicity: “Generally speaking, the Buddhist attitude about the issue of spreading its message is this: unless someone approaches a teacher and requests specific teachings, it is not right for a teacher to impose his or her views and doctrines onto another person.” Dalai Lama, The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1996), 98.
The term “functional analogies” is an adaptation of the phrase “functional equivalents” used by Perry Schmidt-Leukel in an essay comparing Buddhism and Christianity. See Perry Schmidt-Leukel, “Buddha and Christ as Mediators of the Transcendent: A Christian Perspective,” in Buddhism and Christianity in Dialogue: The Gerald Weisfeld Lectures 2004, ed. by Perry Schmidt-Leukel (Norwich, Norfolk: SCM Press, 2005), 170.
Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian make this doctrine explicit over against both classical thought and biblical images of God ordering pre-existent chaos. See Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tra-dition (100–600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 35–36.
“Finitude or contingency mean that man and the world hang by themselves in a vacuum, above absolute nothingness. There is nothing that can be brought between the world and God to interpret the relationship between them. This is what people mean when in symbolic language they talk about ‘creation form nothing.’” Edward Schillebeeckx, “Kingdom of God: Creation and Salvation,” in Interim Report on the Books Jesus and Christ (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 114.
Science tends to understand reality itself as energy. The idea of physical energy provides a language by which mathematical formulas can describe its structures. The Hebrew and Christian scriptures use an analogous metaphor, “Spirit,” that refers to the energy of life and existence. But its meaning is very different than scientific energy and has to be understood in a religious way. Spirit in a religious sense is the immanent presence of the creating and enlivening power of God. Primary and secondary causality mean that “God is continuously involved in the dynamic unfolding of creation as its animating source and ground. Creation has no independent existence. It is given ex nihilo by the creator God who positively wills its very existence. The openness and autonomy of creation in its dynamic becoming is not contrastive with divine efficacy but is the very gift of that efficacy. Creatio ex nihilo explicitly affirms the contingency and open-ended ‘play’ of creation.” Brian D. Robinette, “Creatio ex Nihilo, Resurrection, and Divine Gratuity,” Theological Studies 72, no. 3 (2011): 541.
The historical interpretations of Jesus range from the popular to the scholarly exegetical, for example, Albert Nolan, Jesus before Christianity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1976) and
John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 5 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1991–2015).
Rita M. Gross, “Meditating on Jesus,” in Buddhists Talk about Jesus, Christians Talk about the Buddha, ed. Rita M. Gross and Terry C. Muck (New York: Continuum, 2000), 38.
The term “over-beliefs” is drawn from William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (London: Collins, 1971), 488–90. It refers to beliefs that have their roots in spiritual experience; these beliefs grow out of spiritual experience and refer back to it.
The missiological literature on the mission of reconciliation is extensive. Here is a sampling of works that have been consulted: Matthew D. Lundberg, “Repentance as a Paradigm for Christian Mission,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 45, no. 2 (2010): 202;
Robert Kaggwa, “Is Reconciliation the New Model for Mission? Reflections on the Rwandan Genocide and Conflicts in the Great Lakes Region of Africa,” Studies in World Christianity, 9, no. 2 (2003), 244–64;
Joerg Rieger, “Theology and Mission between Neocolonialism and Postcolonialism,” Mission Studies 21, no. 2 (2004), 201–27; World Council of Churches, “The Nature and Mission of the Church: A Stage on the Way to a Common Statement,” Faith and Order Paper 198 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2005); World Council of Churches, “Mission as Ministry of Reconcili-ation,” Preparatory Paper No. 10 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2005).
Behind much of this writing is the groundbreaking essay by Robert J. Schreiter, Reconciliation: Mission and Ministry in a Changing Social Order (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992).
Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004), 389–94.
Missiologists will recognize the analogy at this point with the strategy for mission described by Vincent J. Donovan in Christianity Rediscovered (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992).
John Makransky, “Buddha and Christ as Mediators of the Transcendent: A Buddhist Perspective,” in Buddhism and Christianity in Dialogue: The Gerald Weisfeld Lectures 2004, ed. by Perry Leukel-Schmidt (Norwich, Norfolk: SCM Press, 2005), 199.
Austen Ivereigh, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope (New York: Henry Holt, 2014), 321–26.
See Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Faith of Other Men (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972), 129.
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Haight, R. (2016). Where We Dwell in Common. In: Mannion, G. (eds) Where We Dwell in Common. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137503152_12
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