Between Magisterium and Marketplace

A Constructive Account of Theology and the Church

Robert C. Saler

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781451482836
• eBook ISBN: 9781451487619
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

What is the relationship of the church to theology? How does the church relate to the work of creative theological authorship, particularly when authors propose novel claims? Even more, how do ecclesial models, particularly of ecclesial authority, underwrite or authorize how theology is done? Saler takes up these challenging and provocative questions and argues for a fresh ecclesiology of the church as event, specifically as a diffusively spatialized event. Establishing this claim through the fascinating historical encounters between thinkers like Thomas More and William Tyndale, John Henry Newman and Friedrich Schleiermacher, Between Magisterium and Marketplace provides a theological genealogy of modern ecclesiology, arguing that modern and contemporary ecclesiology is a theological contest not between Barth and Schleiermacher, but rather Newman and Schleiermacher. Constructing an alternative path, Saler turns to the work of a diverse array of authors past and present to argue for a humble yet hopeful view of the theological task in light of contemporary ecclesial opportunities.

5

The Church as Diffusively Spatialized Event

My theological career has been a not-wholly-successful effort to drag my students out of the church—out of the church!—into what is happening in the world.

—Joseph Sittler, “Gravity and Grace”

I have two overarching goals in this final chapter. My first goal is to describe the fragmentation of the church not as a scandal to be overcome but as a positive good to be celebrated. The second is to argue that the mode of “profusion” in which contemporary theological discourse finds itself is, in a manner that corresponds to the fragmentation of the church, a salutary mode in which to pursue both the task and the appraisal of theological authorship.

The first stage of this argument begins with a concession, which may or may not disclose itself as a gambit. Having outlined in the final sections of chapter 4 the reasons why such polis ecclesiologists as Reno, Newman, Ratzinger/Benedict, and others have insisted that any vision of the church as a distinct public must finally acknowledge the necessity of a magisterium to norm authorship within that public, I here contend that such arguments are convincing. In fact, they are so convincing that we are justified in conceding the basic thesis: that an ecclesiology of the church as a concrete and distinct public must make provisions for a living, visible teaching authority with normative power over authorized theological production. If one wants the former, then one needs the latter.

My own reasons for this concession stem from my insistence, consistent throughout the argument thus far, that much of the impulse that drives polis ecclesiology is the desire for a space that escapes the optionality of the market. It is possible that one could find polis ecclesiologies attractive for entirely different reasons; should that be the case, then presumably one might be able to fashion a polis ecclesiology without a magisterium (perhaps in the vein of a Hauerwasian or Radical Orthodox project) that successfully meets a different set of concerns than those articulated by the polis ecclesiologists considered earlier. Such is not, however, our concern here. So, we can further specify: to the extent that one wishes to have the church function as a concrete, distinct public with the means of authorizing theological production in such a way that escapes the logic of the marketplace, then a magisterium is necessary. Again, the crucial opposition is between magisterium and marketplace.^[1]

This concession operates independently of the question of whether polis ecclesiologies that do promote a magisterium are fully successful in sponsoring theological authorship that avoids the logic of the marketplace.^[2] Rather than advance that line of critical questioning in what follows, I will pursue a different strategy. I will not contest the conclusion that a church seeking to be a concrete, distinct public whose theological authorship escapes the logic of the marketplace requires a magisterium. Instead, I will offer an alternative to the initial premise, that is, the idea that the church is in fact best conceived as a concrete, distinct public. In other words, I will offer a different ecclesiology, albeit one limited to the specific concerns about theological authorship heretofore discussed.

My method in doing so will not be to offer a critique of polis ecclesiology as a prelude to outlining an alternative to it. Rather than criticize polis ecclesiology directly, I immediately will commence my constructive description of an alternative to it; however, in the course of doing so, I will have occasion to say why I find that alternative to be a more compelling ecclesiological position from which to address the challenges to theological authorship posed by the logic of the marketplace. I trust, then, that by the time I have concluded my own reasons for preferring this second option, my critique of polis ecclesiology will be clear.

However, it should also be said that my primary interest here has less to do with proving the clear superiority of a nonpolis ecclesiology over polis ecclesiologies and more to do with proving that polis ecclesiology is not the only vision of the church that can sponsor a robust conception of ecclesially normed theological authorship. This point is important, because there is a certain sense in which the ecclesiology most amenable to one’s theology depends a great deal upon the presuppositions that one brings to the table. Again, the purpose of the previous chapters has been to signal my agreement with the contention that, should one wish to have the church be a concrete, distinct public with its own visible and normative influence upon theological authorship, then a magisterium of some sort is necessary. However, my further contention is that ecclesiological alternatives to a high-magisterial polis ecclesiology have their own internal logic when it comes to theological authorship. Put simply, I am less interested in convincing polis ecclesiologists that their ecclesiology is inadequate than I am in making the case that a very different sort of ecclesiology can have an equally vital conception of how the church author-izes theological authorship, however different that conception might be from that familiar to the high-magisterial mind-set. Sentire cum ecclesia, then, is not the sole possession of the high-magisterial polis.^[3]

What I will be outlining in the present chapter is a vision of the church not as a distinct public but as a diffusively spatialized event—a label in which the adverb, adjective, and noun will all require significant unpacking. My challenge in what follows will be to locate, in strands of contemporary theology as vital and distinguished as the ones described thus far, the materials by which such an account of the church and its normative authorization of theological authorship can be built. I will also need to demonstrate how such an ecclesiology relates to theological authorship and, moreover, how a phenomenon (church) that is at root a diffusively spatialized event can evade the most pernicious effects of the “marketplace” described previously. Although I cannot hope, within the bounds of an inquiry such as this, to offer a completely formed ecclesiology, my attempt will be to give the main outlines of what a more fully fleshed-out account might affirm in a manner that is provocative enough to inspire future work along these lines.

The ecclesiological vision that follows is sufficiently idiosyncratic that no one theologian’s work encapsulates it perfectly; therefore, outlining it will require synthesis of fragments from the work of several diverse thinkers (theologians and others). However, the work of one particular theologian does provide the overarching frame against which an account of the church as diffusively spatialized event unfolds; that thinker is Joseph Sittler, who at the time of his death, in 1984, was recognized as a pioneering Lutheran theologian but whose work has rarely been mined for any sort of concrete ecclesiological insight. It is to that task that we now turn.

Sittler’s Subversive Ecumenism

In what follows, I will be arguing that Sittler’s theology provides unique resources for contemporary ecclesiology in that his characteristic standpoint regarding both the church and its discourse supports a theological (and not merely sociological)^[4] vision of the church as diffusively spatialized. There can be little question that the most celebrated work in Sittler’s canon has been his 1961 “Called to Unity” address to the World Council of Churches (WCC) in New Delhi. Moira Creede describes its importance well:

In 1961, in an epoch-making address on Christian Unity, given at New Delhi to the Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Sittler brought into full prominence the complex of questions associated with Christ’s cosmic lordship, and proposed the bold thesis that only such a Christ-understanding is congruent with contemporary man’s understanding of himself and his world. . . . It was an address, splendid in its imagery, with accents deemed unusual for a Lutheran voice. Resounding in an Asian setting, as the growing presence of Eastern Orthodoxy was making itself felt in ecumenical activities, and as the younger churches were growing restive under an inward-looking, individualistic pietism brought to them from the West, but alien to their mentality, the address was timed to a nicety. For Sittler’s audacious proposal, “to claim nature for Christ,” not only offered a way to outflank the old impasse in the Faith and Order movement by setting Christology in the broader area of “the world.” In its call for the reconciliation of church with church, of church with world, of man with his neighbor and with his “sister,” nature, it also resonated with man’s growing appreciation of his earth as a “global village,” whose pressures are such that we must somehow learn to love one another or perish.^[5]

The radical nature of Sittler’s intervention into what, in 1961, was still a relatively fledgling ecumenical movement is brought into clear focus when one remembers that the New Delhi WCC conference was the occasion for what many ecumenists still regard as a definitive official statement in support of visible unity for the churches.^[6] Sittler was a supporter of the ecumenical movement for the entirety of his professional career; in fact, he had been instrumental in introducing Christology as a concern at both the 1952 Lund conference on faith and order and the 1954 WCC meeting in Evanston, Illinois.^[7] It seems reasonable to assume, then, that the invitation to speak to the New Delhi assembly about the relationship between Christology and church unity represented confidence in Sittler’s willingness to employ Christology as a locus for furthering the stated ecumenical goals of the WCC’s various working groups.

Sittler’s “Called to Unity” address did indeed draw upon Christology as an instrument in promoting church unity; however, as was clear from the reactions to his speech, the manner in which he did so came as a substantial surprise to most of the attendees.^[8] Rather than focusing upon the variegated doctrinal approaches to Christology characteristic of the various member communions of the WCC in order to think toward reconciling those differences via internal theological negotiation, Sittler widened the framework of Christological reflection well beyond the scope of the churches—and indeed, beyond humanity as a whole.^[9] According to him, the unity toward which the church is both “thrust and lured” is best articulated by means of a “Christology expanded to its cosmic dimensions, made passionate by the pathos of this threatened earth, and made ethical by the love and wrath of God.”^[10]

The argument of the “Called to Unity” address commences by restating what had become, since the Lund conference, a common assumption among the WCC member churches: that because Christ is the Lord of the church, a rethinking of Christology was the most promising avenue for moving past doctrinal impasses among the various communions. However, Sittler, drawing upon what he took to be salutary Eastern corrections of Western Christology and theological anthropology,^[11] deployed his understanding of the tradition of “cosmic Christology” (informed largely by the work of Allan Galloway and secondary scholarship on Irenaeus) to argue that “the imperial vision of Christ as coherent in ta panta has not broken open...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Situating Authorship: Insights from Contemporary Literary Theory
• The Rock or the Eagle?
• Magisterium or Marketplace?
• Authorship in Public
• The Church as Diffusively Spatialized Event
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index