scholarly journals Ekklesia and Ecumenism in the Body of Christ: Unity from the Ground-Up

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 390
Author(s):  
Anastasia Wendlinder

This article explores the implications for Christian unity from the perspective of the lived faith community, the ekklesia. While bilateral and multilateral dialogues have borne great fruit in bringing Christian denominations closer together, as indeed it will continue to do so, considering how the ecclesiological identity of the faith community both forms and reflects its members may be helpful in moving forward in our ecumenical efforts. This calls for a ground-up approach as opposed to a top-down approach. By “ground-up” it is meant that the starting point for theological reflection on ecumenism begins not with doctrine but with praxis, particularly as it relates to the common believer in the pew. The ecclesiological model “Body of Christ” provides a helpful vocabulary in this exploration for a number of reasons, none the least that it is scripturally-based, presumes diversity and employs concrete imagery relating to everyday life. Further, “Body of Christ” language is used by numerous Christian denominations in their statements of self-identity, regardless of where they lie on the doctrinal or political spectrum. In this article, potential benefits and challenges of this ground-up perspective will be considered, and a way forward will be proposed to promote ecumenical unity across denomination borders.

1971 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. M. Wedderburn

This article takes as its starting-point certain questions raised by Ernst Käsemann's recently-published essay ‘Das theologische Problem des Motivs vom Leibe Christi’; it is, however, principally concerned with Paul's earlier letters and, more specifically, with I Corinthians, but this is done in the conviction that these writings provide the key to the later ones, and not vice versa.


2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 400-407
Author(s):  
Christopher Hill

In the Archbishop of Canterbury's Foreword to the findings of the Anglican Communion Legal Advisers' Network, Rowan Williams argues that law is a way of securing two things for the common good: equity and responsibility. Law is against arbitrariness and for knowing who is responsible for this or that. Law in the Church is also about equitable life in the communion of the Body of Christ and the mutual obligations of our interdependence. As Convenor of the Legal Advisers' Network, Canon John Rees observes that their work, which emerged as The Principles of Canon Law Common to the Churches of the Anglican Communion, is not a quick fix to the contemporary problems of the Anglican Communion. Nor is it a covert device for the introduction of a universal canon law for the whole Anglican Communion with an aim to impose covenantal sanctions for churches which do not toe the line.


1991 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Diana Wood

Michael Wilks’s best-known contribution to historical scholarship is The Problem of Sovereignty in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1963). This is an exploration of the political ideas of Augustinus Triumphus of Ancona (c. 1270-1328) and his contemporary publicists on the nature of sovereignty—or supreme authority—and its location within society. Like most medieval thinkers Augustinus saw society as the universal Church, the body of Christ, a single corporate entity which embraced all Christians, and within which all were united in pursuit of the common aim of salvation. Most thinkers would have agreed, too, that in theory society itself was the possessor of sovereignty. The ‘problem’ arose in trying to decide how and by whom sovereignty should be wielded in practice. There were various solutions. At one extreme the pope, as the vicar of Christ, was thought to represent Christ’s mystical body, the Church, on earth. He thus became the physical embodiment of sovereignty, and, as such, the sole source of power within society.


Theology ◽  
1943 ◽  
Vol 46 (273) ◽  
pp. 64-65
Author(s):  
A. R. Vidler

1979 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 41-52
Author(s):  
Lennart Rydén

There is a history of doctrinal controversies settled by the six ecumenical councils, from Nicaea (325) to Constantinople (680). It appears that he who makes a picture of a man and calls the man in the picture "Christ" is guilty of heresy. For either he thinks that he can circumscribe Christ's divine nature together with His human and so confuses Christ's two natures, which is monophysitism, or he says that he only wants to make a picture of Christ's flesh. But, in so doing, he gives the flesh of Christ a separate existence and adds a fourth person to the Trinity, and this is Nestorianism. The pictures of Christ that the painters produce are false pictures. What, then, constitutes a true image of Christ? This question was answered by Christ Himself on the eve of His passion, when He took bread, blessed it and said, "This is my body," and distributed wine and said, "This is my blood." The bread and wine that pass from the realm of the common to that of the holy through the blessing of the priest constitute the only true image of the body of Christ. This image does not have the form of man and therefore does not provoke idolatrous practices. It is further pointed out that there is no prayer that could transform the icons from mere matter into something holy. The pictures of the Virgin, the saints and the prophets do not offer the doctrinal dilemma which makes the picture of Christ unacceptable. Yet they must be rejected. The craft of idol-making, which makes what is not present seem to be present, was invented by the pagans, as they had no hope of resurrection.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Robert Dunaetz

Because the church is the body of Christ, research focused on the Great Commission and Jesus’ concern for evangelism and disciple-making needs to be church-based. The goal of such research is to better share God’s love to a world who does not know him by building up a collection of knowledge that will enable us to do so. This research may be both theological (focusing on what the Bible and other theologians have said) and scientific (focusing on collecting new data and interpreting it, especially in light of theology). Church-based scientific research may be either qualitative (exploring broad ideas and phenomena in a relatively subjective way) or quantitative (testing specific ideas by collecting data measuring the variables of interest as objectively as possible). The Great Commission Research Journal is an especially appropriate outlet for publishing such research.


2020 ◽  
pp. 55-59
Author(s):  
H.O. Verbivska

This article tackles the issue of aesthetic experience from the pathologized everyday discourse viewpoint in the system of relations between I and symbolic order, where transgressed and close to symbolic death I is predominant. The stage, in which I, crossing the symbolic borders, stay readable, appears to be the process of continuous constituting the aesthetic experience and its transforming into the primordial a priori structure of everyday discourse. The problem lies deeply in the preserving of evanescent borders which are said to exist in the cultural palpability and simultaneously to be exiled from the system. The article exemplifies pathological discourses by referring to the Beksinski' works, namely his numerous ways of articulating the ineffable. However, articulated ineffable, similarly to such culturally conditioned reactions as abjection and melancholia, declares double death of the discursive subject: the first time when the separation from primordial presymbolic world takes place and the second time during problematizing the symbolic borders and paradoxical immortalization concerning postulated frontiers. The aim of this article is to dig out kaleidoscope of images and sub-images from Beksinski' works through the motive of crucifixion resulting in the specific value of Christ's body and chimerical things inside the dehumanized catastrophic space. It is demonstrated how pathological discourse of melancholia could be intertwined with the discourse of abjection in the common point of transgressing the limits, making the symbolic space full of details indicating the risk of Ego being disintegrated, staying inside the transgressed limits as constituting aesthetical experience. Inexplicability of terrible post-apocalyptic world is readable via symbolic coordinates insofar as the main primal object (the body of Christ) occurs to be banished. Appearing of aesthetic experience is paralleled to the stages of psychosexual development in the existence of symbolic being where in opposition to classical freudism maternal authority is accentuated. That's how Kristevan style of psychoanalytic ruminations looks like.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-304

Summary <p content-type="flush left">Wondrously Wounded sets out to reconfigure our theological idea of what disability is. It moves away, not only from charity or medical models, but also from some current thinking in disability theology (that those labelled disabled reveal humanity’s true vulnerability) to a starting point of all life being a gift, so all capable of mediating God’s goodness. Brock grounds his argument in patristic ideas of a radical Christian human solidarity, and a convincing exegesis of 1 Corinthians 12, the body of Christ and spiritual gifts. The whole is brought to life by an account of Brock’s son, Adam, who is labelled disabled, but who under this analysis is perhaps the healthiest of us all. This is an important next step in the development of a convincing Christian theology of disability.


1957 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. F. Hettlinger

This passage must surely be unique in the variety and contrasts of the interpretations proposed by commentators and theologians. Not only are there at least three main lines of exegesis distinguishable, but within and across these general lines scholars disagree radically as to the source of St. Paul's teaching, its relation to 1 Cor. 15, its value as evidence of the Apostle's thought, and even its basic subject matter. Thus while Windisch (Commentary on II Corinthians, in loc), W. L. Knox (St. Paul and the Church of the Gentiles, pp. 128–43) and Rudolf Bultmann (Theology of the Mew Testament, I, pp. 201–2) regard the passage as evidence that St. Paul had modified traditional Jewish eschatology by introducing Hellenistic themes, Walter Grundmann (articles on εκδημεω,ενδημεω in Kittel's T.W.N.T. II, pp. 62–4), W. D. Davies (Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, pp. 308–14) and Schweitzer (The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, p. 134) maintain that the language can be explained without recourse to direct Hellenistic influence. Whereas Davies (op. cit., pp. 310–11) and Bultmann (op. cit., p. 201) believe that between 1 Cor. 15 and 2 Cor. 5 the Apostle's thought had undergone a significant development, G. B. Stevens (The Pauline Theology, p. 343 note 1), H. A. A. Kennedy (St. Paul's Conception of the Last Things, pp. 264–72), Alfred Plummer (II Corinthians, pp. 160–4), L. S. Thornton (The-Common Life in the Body of Christ, pp. 284–6) and H. L. Goudge (The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, pp. 45–55) deny any such development.


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