The Israel of God: Scripture, Ecclesiology, and Ecumenism ...€¦ · “Israel-ology.” ND, as...

The Israel of God: Scripture, Ecclesiology, and Ecumenism in the Theology of George Lindbeck

by

Shaun Christopher Brown

A Doctoral Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Wycliffe College and the Graduate Centre for Theological Studies of the Toronto School of Theology.

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theological Studies awarded by Wycliffe College and the University of Toronto

© Copyright by Shaun Christopher Brown 2019

ii

The Israel of God: Scripture, Ecclesiology, and Ecumenism in the

Theology of George Lindbeck

Shaun Christopher Brown

Doctor of Philosophy in Theological Studies

Wycliffe College and the University of Toronto

2019

Abstract George Lindbeck laments that The Nature of Doctrine has often been read apart from his

ecumenical focus. He wrote the book as a prolegomenon to a comparative dogmatics, but later

abandoned the project. He came to believe that a comparative dogmatics must begin with an

account of the church, and in particular an “Israelology”: an account that sees the church and

Israel as a part of one elect people of God. While many Christians after the Holocaust have noted

the harm that supersessionsim brought to the Jews, Lindbeck focuses upon the harm that

supersessionism has done to the church. He argues that the appropriation of Israelhood by the

church can bring intra-Christian ecumenical benefits. His work on this project comes in two

stages. In the first stage, undertaken while he was an observer at the Second Vatican Council,

Lindbeck discusses a parallel between Israel and the church. The second stage, which begins in

the late 1980s and continues through the end of his career, Lindbeck initially discusses the

church as “Israel-like” before coming to prefer describing the church “as Israel.” The dissertation

will begin with a genealogy of the church’s understanding of its relationship to Israel. It will then

move on to discuss Lindbeck’s work as an observer at the Second Vatican Council in relation to

the first stage of his project. In order to discuss the second stage, this dissertation will engage his

understanding of Scripture, in particular his understanding of retrieval, narrative, intratextuality,

iii

and consensus. Then, it will look at Lindbeck’s discussion of the Old Testament as the

ecclesiological textbook of the early church. Next, it will look at Jesus as the Messiah of Israel

and incarnate Son of God in relation to the church’s social embodiment of the gospel. It will

discuss Lindbeck’s understanding of the church’s mission, which involves communal witness

and catechesis. Last, the dissertation will conclude by discussing some further ecumenical

implications of Lindbeck’s project.

iv

Acknowledgments

First of all, I want to thank my supervisor, Professor Joseph Mangina, as well as my other TST committee members, Professors Ephraim Radner and John Berkman, for their encouragement, feedback, and support throughout my Ph.D. program. Thanks to my University of Toronto examiner, Professor David Novak, and external examiner, Professor James J. Buckley, for their willingness to join the committee. I also want to thank Wycliffe College, the Toronto School of Theology, and the University of Toronto for the opportunity to pursue this program. Several friends and colleagues I have met while in the program have been a great help, including two fellow Campbellites, Dr. Lane Scruggs and Justin Schwartz. I want to thank the libraries at the University of Toronto, Christ the King Seminary, Emmanuel Christian Seminary at Milligan College, and Yale Divinity School for assisting me in tracking down George Lindbeck’s work. In particular, I want to thank the Special Collections staff at Yale Divinity School for accommodating me on my visit. I also want to thank David Kiger, librarian at Emmanuel Christian Seminary at Milligan College, for digitizing the cassette tapes of the Kershner Memorial Lectures that Lindbeck gave at the Seminary in 1988. Thanks to Dr. Philip Kenneson for informing me of the lectures’ existence. I want to thank the Ecclesiological Investigations Unit at the American Academy of Religion for allowing me to present some of my material on Lindbeck’s early Israelology. I also want to thank my co-chair in the Ecclesiology and Social Ethics Study Group at the Stone-Campbell Journal Conference, Kate Blakely, as well as one of the co-founders of the group, Dr. John Nugent, for allowing me to present a synopsis of my dissertation at the 2018 conference. Thanks also go to Dr. John Mark Hicks for helping me better understand Alexander Campbell’s perspective on the Jews and how my work relates to my own tradition. I want to thank my parents, Frank and Betsy Brown and Cindy and Daniel Merkovsky, for supporting me throughout my education. I also want to thank a few patrons that have assisted me financially and otherwise throughout my education, my grandmother Janet Frick, and her siblings Harry Thompson and Karen Hughes. Last but not least, I want to thank my wife, Sherri Lynn O’Neal Brown, for the sacrifices she has made in allowing me to pursue my doctorate, and our daughter, Adalyn Hope Brown. While I worked on this dissertation, George Lindbeck died on January 8, 2018. While I never had the chance to meet him, I have spent the last decade reading and benefiting from his writing, and the last three years delving into his work more deeply as I prepared to write this dissertation. I also benefited from the opportunity to study with two of his students, Professors Mangina and Radner. I feel as though I have had the opportunity to study with him indirectly. While I was a student at Johnson University, those of us in the Stone-Campbell Movement celebrated the bicentennial of the Cane Ridge Revival. Then while I was in seminary at Emmanuel, we celebrated the bicentennial of Thomas Campbell’s Declaration and Address. These celebrations instilled in me a passion for Christian unity, and I was drawn to the “free church catholicism” of William Robinson, Frederick Kershner, and Dean E. Walker through professors at both institutions. Close to the time I finished my dissertation, I heard Lindbeck’s voice for the first time through the recordings of his lectures at Emmanuel, and was moved as I heard him say this of Alexander Campbell: “Whatever the problems that his vision of Christian unity had, … he did have one thing emphatically right. His vision of unity made the Bible central, and any authentic and worthwhile effort to bring Christians together must follow his example in that respect.” I dedicate this dissertation to Lindbeck’s memory.

v

Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... iii Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1

Methodology ................................................................................................................ 5 Procedure ..................................................................................................................... 9 Original Research ....................................................................................................... 11

Chapter 1: Genealogy .................................................................................................................. 14 Scripture ..................................................................................................................... 15 First Three Centuries .................................................................................................. 16 Christendom ............................................................................................................... 20 Reformation ............................................................................................................... 23 Modernity ................................................................................................................... 26 Post-Holocaust ........................................................................................................... 30 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 34 Chapter 2: The Catholic Protestant: Vatican II and the Church and Israel in Parallel ...... 35 Background to Vatican II ........................................................................................... 38 The Council ................................................................................................................ 40 Types of Ecclesiologies ............................................................................................. 44 Church and Israel in Parallel ...................................................................................... 51 Diaspora Church ........................................................................................................ 65 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 70

vi

Chapter 3: The Role of Scripture in the Christian Community ............................................. 73 Retrieval ..................................................................................................................... 74 Narrative ..................................................................................................................... 84 Intratextuality ............................................................................................................. 94 Consensus ................................................................................................................. 108 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 113 Chapter 4: The Old Testament as Ecclesiological Textbook ................................................. 115 Scriptural Ecclesiology ............................................................................................ 115 Election .................................................................................................................... 124 Law and Gospel ....................................................................................................... 133 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 137 Chapter 5: Jesus the Christ as Israel’s Only Fulfillment ...................................................... 139 Jesus the Messiah and Son of God ........................................................................... 140 Jesus Christ as Savior and Example ......................................................................... 148 The Atonement and Justification ............................................................................. 154 Eschatological Fulfillment ....................................................................................... 158 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 163 Chapter 6: Christian Mission ................................................................................................... 164 Witness ..................................................................................................................... 164 Catechesis ................................................................................................................. 176 Cultural Mission? ..................................................................................................... 182 Baptism .................................................................................................................... 185 Holy Spirit ................................................................................................................ 186

vii

Discipleship and Missional Ecclesiology ................................................................ 192 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 194 Chapter 7: Further Ecumenical Implications ......................................................................... 195 Princeton Proposal ................................................................................................... 196 Consequence 1: Peoplehood .................................................................................... 204 Consequence 2: Communal Repentance .................................................................. 206 Consequence 3: The Role of Individuals and Individual Communities .................. 214 Ecclesial Structures .................................................................................................. 219 The Eucharist ........................................................................................................... 227 Church as Israel and Other Ecumenical Proposals .................................................. 232 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 235 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 237 How to Read The Nature of Doctrine ...................................................................... 240 Areas for Further Research ...................................................................................... 244 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 247 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 249

1

INTRODUCTION

“May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything! As for those who will follow this rule—peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.” – Galatians 6:14–161

George Lindbeck laments that his work, in particular his widely read The Nature of

Doctrine (ND), has often been read apart from its ecumenical focus.2 For example, in two

symposia on ND, one in Modern Theology and the other in The Thomist, some contributors do

not mention ecumenism at all,3 some mention Lindbeck’s work as an ecumenist but do not

engage this aspect in depth,4 and only two essays, one by James J. Buckley and another by

Geoffrey Wainwright, focus upon ecumenism in depth.5 This work will seek to correct these

misreadings by focusing, in particular, upon Lindbeck’s ecclesiology. For as he argues,

“Ecclesiology and ecumenism are inseparable.”6 This dissertation will demonstrate the centrality

1 Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations will come from the NRSV. 2 George Lindbeck, “Forward to the German Edition of The Nature of Doctrine,” in The Nature of

Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, 25th Anniversary Edition. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), xxix–xxxii.

3 Lee C. Barrett, “Theology as Grammar: Regulative Principles or Paradigms and Practices,” Modern Theology 4, no. 2 (January 1988): 155–172. Though ecumenism is not discussed, Kenneth Surin does discuss inter-religious dialogue. See “‘Many Religions and the One True Faith’: An Examination of Lindbeck’s Chapter Three,” Modern Theology 4, no. 2 (January 1988): 187–209.

4 Gordon E. Michalson, “The Response to Lindbeck,” Modern Theology 4, no. 2 (January 1988): 107–120; D.Z. Phillips, “Lindbeck’s Audience,” Modern Theology 4, no. 2 (January 1988): 133–154; Stephen N. Williams, “Lindbeck’s Regulative Christology,” Modern Theology 4, no. 2 (January 1988): 173–186; David Tracy, “Lindbeck’s New Program for Theology,” The Thomist 49, no. 3 (July 1, 1985): 460–472; Colman O’Neill, “The Rule Theory of Doctrine and Propositional Truth,” The Thomist 49, no. 3 (July 1, 1985): 417–442; William C. Placher, “Revisionist and Postliberal Theologies and the Public Character of Theology,” The Thomist 49, no. 3 (July 1, 1985): 392–416. It should be mentioned in Placher’s case that his primary concern in his essay is to respond to revisionist critiques of Lindbeck.

5 Geoffrey Wainwright, “Ecumenical Dimensions of Lindbeck’s ‘Nature of Doctrine,’” Modern Theology 4, no. 2 (January 1988): 121–132.. Even here, however, Wainwright spends significant time expressing his concerns about Lindbeck’s apparent anti-realism. James J. Buckley, “Doctrine in the Diaspora,” The Thomist 49, no. 3 (July 1, 1985): 443–459.

6 George Lindbeck, “The Church as Israel: Ecclesiology and Ecumenism,” in Jews and Christians: People of God, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 78.

2

of ecclesial and ecumenical concerns within Lindbeck’s body of writing by focusing upon his

“Israel-ology.”

ND, as well as many of Lindbeck’s writings on infallibility and justification in the 1970s

and early 1980s, must be understood in the background of what German scholars of the time

called Konfessionskunde, which he translates as “comparative dogmatics or symbolics,” or

“comparative study of the major theological dogmatic traditions in Christendom.”7 In a 1967

interview, Lindbeck said that he anticipated a course in comparative dogmatics being his regular

lecture course from that point on.

Lindbeck says that while he prepared to write a work of comparative dogmatics, he was

troubled by discussions of doctrine and what doctrine is. He says, “They did not adequately

reflect the tacit understandings embedded in operative practices either in the ecumenical present

or in the non-ecumenical past.”8 He therefore wrote ND as “a preliminary to a larger work, a

comparative dogmatics which would deal in comprehensive detail with the present status and

future possibilities of overcoming the ecclesial divisiveness of historical doctrinal differences

between the major Christian traditions, Reformation, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox.”9

His understanding of comparative dogmatics, however, shifted in the years after ND’s

publication. He thus concludes his “Forward to the German Edition of The Nature of Doctrine”

by saying:

As far as my own work is concerned, it has become clear to me in the last decade, not least because of the discussions prompted by this book, that a comparative dogmatics needs to take a different form than I originally envisioned. It should start with ecclesiology and, included in that, with what might be called “Israel-ology.” The two cannot be separated in a scriptural narrative approach: Israel and the Church are one elect people, and rethinking their relation is fundamental to ecumenism. This thinking must be

7 Patrick Granfield, “George Lindbeck,” in Theologians at Work (New York: MacMillan Company, 1967), 152. 8 Lindbeck, “Forward,” xxix. 9 Ibid.

3

theological, i.e. based on Scripture as it functions in communities for which the scriptural witness to the God of Israel and of Jesus is authoritative. It makes use of analyses such are found in the present work, but is not based on them.10

This shift in his thought led to a change in how he taught his comparative doctrine course at

Yale. By at least 1986, he began focusing primarily on ecclesiology. Then in the spring of 1994,

the same year he wrote the “Forward to the German Edition,” he taught a class at Princeton

University entitled “The Church as Israel.”11

Lindbeck argues for the interconnections of ecclesiology and ecumenism even though the

ecumenical movement has often pushed issues concerning the nature of the church to the side.

Lindbeck says, “One reason for this is the decision of the central committee of the World

Council of Churches in 1950 to focus on steps toward unity that served immediately possible and

to postpone indefinitely the ultimately divisive issue of the relationship of individual churches to

the ‘holy catholic church,’ as the Toronto statement put it.”12 Lindbeck seeks in his Israelology

to remedy this situation. He argues this despite the modern neglect of an understanding of the

church as Israel. He says:

This modern turn away from Israelhood by both traditionalists and liberals has been unfortunate for ecumenism and ecclesiology. Judging by the history that we shall review, the search for unity goes awry apart from a sense of the church as Israel, and the understanding of the church as Israel suffers in the absence of concern for visible unity. So it has been in the past, and there is no reason to suppose it will be different in the future unless the understanding of the church as Israel is somehow renewed.13 Lindbeck says that his proposal, that the church retrieve its identity as Israel, is a

linguistic one. This is consistent with his discussion of ecumenism elsewhere. For example, in

10 Ibid., xxxii. 11 Syllabi for Rel 728a: Comparative Doctrine at Yale (years 1986, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1991, and 1992) and Rel 361: The Church as Israel from Princeton were retrieved by this author from the Lindbeck archive at Yale Divinity School. 12 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 78. 13 Ibid., 80.

4

“Ecumenical Imperatives for the 21st Century,” Lindbeck makes four concluding points, each of

which deal with communication and the church’s ability to communicate. First, he says that in

the twenty-first century, there will be a need for “global communities of communication.”

Second, he says that the church is already to some extent such a community, and to an

“unparalleled extent.” Third, “this communicative community lives by interconfessional and

intercontinental argument—or, if you prefer, ecumenical dialogue—over what it means to be

faithfully Christian in word and deed.” Fourth, Jesus Christ is the focal point of these ecumenical

dialogues between Christians and churches.14

He says, “Language molds experience, and apart from reference to Israel, Christian

discourse (and to a lesser extent practice) has difficulty resisting the individualistic or

spiritualistic volitization of unity.”15 Apart from this retrieval, the church has difficulty

communicating, which makes its agreements and disagreements difficult to articulate. In order to

effectively communicate, the church needs a shared language. He says,

An Israel-like ecclesiology does not imply any particular systematic theory of the church’s nature and purpose nor specific prescriptions for its organization and practice, but rather, metaphorically speaking, a vocabulary and grammar for redescribing, re-assessing and re-experiencing all aspects of communal life including theories and prescriptions. This vocabulary and grammar consists of the narratives and other material, normed by the canonical witness to Christ, which tell of God’s people before, during, and after (so those who acknowledge tradition would say) the New Testament period. As in any communicative idiom, these provide resources, not algorithms for meaningful utterances such as sentences. What is said, in other words is determined, not only by vocabulary and grammar, but by the purposes, skills, and situations of those who use the language. Zion’s tongue can be employed aptly or inaptly, falsely or truly like any other semiotic system; and those who use another language in which the church is not Israel-like may in some situations be more faithful to the heart of the biblical message.16

14 George Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Imperatives for the 21st Century,” Currents in Theology and Mission 20 (1993): 365. 15 George Lindbeck, “An Israel-like Church (or The Language of Community and Unity): Scripture, Ecclesiology and Ecumenism in a Postmodern Age,” 9. 16 Ibid., 10–11.

5

While he acknowledges that Israel-like ecclesiologies can indeed be problematic, that an Israel-

like idiom “has a comparable superiority” due to its “greater scope and efficacy than those now

generally employed.”17

Lindbeck’s work on church-Israel relations can be seen in two phases. The first phase, as

seen in a few pieces while he was an observer at the Second Vatican Council, interprets the

church and Israel in parallel. His second phase, from the late 1980s–early 2000s, can be divided

into two sub-phases. Lindbeck begins by discussing the church as “Israel-like.” While he

continues to use this terminology, he comes to augment his position slightly. He says, “‘Seeing

the church as Israel’ is better because it suggests that there is a sense in which it really is Israel

and not merely similar.”18 Lindbeck hoped to write a short volume on this proposal,19 but

unfortunately it has not yet been published.

METHODOLOGY

Postliberal theology generally asserts, as Nicholas M. Healy says, that “theological

method should be determined as much as possible by its subject matter if the latter is not to

become irremediably distorted.”20 I will follow this in writing this dissertation by exploring

Lindbeck’s work in dialogue with Scripture, Christian history, worship, Christian practices, and

the ecumenical movement. While this dissertation will engage history and historical sources,

which is appropriate given Lindbeck’s training as an historical theologian, this is a work of

constructive theology.

17 Ibid., 11. 18 George Lindbeck, “Performing the Faith: An Interview with George Lindbeck,” Christian Century (November 28, 2006): 29. 19 E.g., George Lindbeck, “Paris, Rome, Jerusalem: An Ecumenical Journey,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 41, no. 3–4 (Summer-Fall 2004): 408n44.

20 Nicholas M. Healy, Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology, Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1.

6

The difficulty with researching Lindbeck’s thought is that Lindbeck did not write many

books. Most of his individual academic writings are occasional pieces that appear in journals and

edited volumes. He often repeats himself, sometimes word for word, in various publications.

Even one of his most read works, The Church in a Postliberal Age, was compiled and edited by

James J. Buckley. Fortunately for scholars interested in Lindbeck, one of his students, Bruce D.

Marshall, has compiled a complete bibliography of his writings that can be found in the twenty-

fifth anniversary edition of ND.

ND is one of the most widely read theological works in the closing decades of the

twentieth century. Many have read ND, but not read any of Lindbeck’s other writings. Or if they

have read any of Lindbeck’s other works, they have read them through their reading of ND.

Lindbeck, however, expressed frustrating with how ND was received because, as noted above,

few reviewers and responders read ND within the context of his ecumenical work. Lindbeck

acknowledges that this is partly his fault. Though a short volume, ND is several volumes in one:

a “pre-theological” book that advocates a cultural-linguistic understanding of religion; a critique

of trends in modern theology, both conservative and liberal; an analysis of contemporary cultural

and philosophical trends; a proposal for a type of theological ressourcement; a response to his

decades of ecumenical work; a prolegomena to comparative dogmatics. Because of its reception,

Lindbeck argues ND is “peripheral to my main concerns.”21 Due to ND’s widespread readership,

however, it cannot be ignored within a dissertation on Lindbeck’s work, but it must be read

21 George Lindbeck, “Ecumenisms in Conflict: Where Does Hauerwas Stand?,” in God, Truth, and

Witness: Engaging Stanley Hauerwas, ed. L. Gregory Jones, Reinhard Hütter, and C. Rosalee Velloso Ewell (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2005), 212.

7

within the context of Lindbeck’s life and work, rather than used as a lens by which to read

Lindbeck’s other writings.22

Lindbeck says that while ND and his work on the church as Israel are “intelligible

independently of each other, they are nevertheless continuous parts of a single project.”23 He

says, “They both grow out of an effort to understand and assess contemporary efforts to

overcome the doctrinal barriers which have historically separated Christian confessional

families. The first deals primarily with pre-theological background issues, while this second

study attempts to get on with the properly theological task.”24 To further clarify how he

distinguishes “pre-theological” from “properly theological,” Lindbeck likens the difference to

the Catholic differentiation between fundamental and dogmatic theology.25 Lindbeck assumes a

cultural-linguistic framework in his work on the church as Israel without apology. In that sense,

Lindbeck says that his work on the second volume can help make sense of ND. At the same time,

he says, “the background warrants and legitimations outlined in the first book are neither

necessary conditions nor compelling premises; and thus it is quite possible that a pre-theological

framework more congenial to the present work could be developed, or that a reader might find

this work persuasive quite part from background considerations of any kind.”26

He therefore distinguishes between the pre-theological background and the theological

foreground within these two books. The pre-theological background is influenced by Ludwig

Wittgenstein, Aristotle, Richard Rorty, Alasdair MacIntyre, Peter Berger, and Clifford Geertz.

22 Bernhard A. Eckerstorfer, “The One Church in the Postmodern World: Reflections on the Life and

Thought of George Lindbeck,” Pro Ecclesia 13, no. 4 (Fall 2004): 400; Robert Charles Greer, “Lindbeck on the Catholicity of the Church: The Problem of Foundationalism and Antirealism in George A. Lindbeck’s Ecumenical Methodology” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Marquette University, 2000), v–vi. 23 Lindbeck, “Israel-like Church,” 17. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 17n6. 26 Ibid., 18.

8

The foreground, Lindbeck contends, would appeal to those influenced by Karl Barth and Hans

Urs von Balthasar on the theological side and Robert Alter and Frank Kermode on the literary

side. He notes that few will appreciate both the background and foreground but is certain that

some may agree with the first volume while disagreeing with his anticipated second volume or

vice versa.27

In order to write a dissertation on Lindbeck’s ecclesiology, one cannot focus upon his

ecclesiological writings in isolation from the rest of his work. As Lindbeck himself argues, “a

full-scale ecclesiology” would discuss “the people of God as worshiping community created by

the Father and the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit, constituted by the proclamation of the

gospel in word and sacrament, and bearing fruit in works of suffering love.”28 Also, due to the

centrality of Scripture to Lindbeck’s ecclesiology, it will require an analysis of his understanding

of and use of Scripture, Christology, soteriology, sacramentology, and eschatology. While some

of the discussions in this dissertation do not always explicitly discuss Israel, such as Lindbeck’s

retrieval of a classical hermeneutic in chapter three or his emphasis upon Faith and Order

ecumenism in chapter seven, his project, both inside and outside of ND, cannot be understood

apart from these emphases.

To undertake a dissertation of this type, one must take note of two communities that

Lindbeck participated in. First, the study of Lindbeck’s ecumenical work must also give attention

to his distinctly Lutheran perspective and emphases. Though Lindbeck was, among other things,

a scholar of contemporary Roman Catholic life and thought, he remained a committed Lutheran.

Though he is a generous and charitable reader of the Catholics he engaged with, he remained

27 Ibid., 19.

28 George Lindbeck, “The Church,” in Keeping the Faith: Essays to Mark the Centenary of Lux Mundi, ed. Geoffrey Wainwright (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 191.

9

critical of several aspects of Catholic thought and has distinctly Lutheran answers to theological

questions.

Second, Lindbeck spent much of his life as a member of Yale Divinity School and Yale

University. His colleagues and students were significant dialogue partners within his work. He

engaged in dialogue with and was influenced by scholars of the Bible and early Christianity like

Nils A. Dahl, Brevard Childs, Richard Hays, and Wayne Meeks, scholars of Christian history

and historical theology like his teacher and mentor Robert Calhoun and Jaroslav Pelikan, and

theologians like H. Richard Niebuhr, Hans Frei, David Kelsey, Bruce Marshall, and Kendal

Soulen.

PROCEDURE

Chapter one analyzes Lindbeck’s genealogy of how the church has understood its

relationship with Israel. This genealogy describes how the church has at different times

appropriated, expropriated, minimized, and rejected its identification with Israel, and discusses

why a reassessment of this relationship is needed. In addition to a cursory treatment of the New

Testament and the earliest Christian communities, this genealogy describes how the Church

Fathers, Charlamagne, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and nineteenth century liberal

theologians like Schleiermacher understood the church’s relationship to Israel. It will close with

discussing how the Holocaust has changed the way Christians address these issues.

Chapter two focuses upon Lindbeck as an interpreter of Vatican II; especially regarding

Lumen gentium and Unitatis redintegratio. This period includes his essay, “A Protestant View of

the Ecclesiological Status of the Roman Catholic Church,” in which Lindbeck argues that there

is a sense in which the Roman Catholic Church is “more fully the Church” than Protestant

churches, though it may “be more unfaithful to the gospel than are the reforming movements

10

which it has expelled.”29 He makes this argument by discussing a parallel between Israel and the

church. Lindbeck’s continued engagement with the Roman Catholic Church in this period led to

his emphases upon the church as the “messianic pilgrim people of God” with a mission to be a

witness to the kingdom and of the church’s sectarian future.

Chapter three pertains to Lindbeck’s understanding of the role of Scripture in the

Christian community. This will deal with four principle terms in his thought: retrieval, narrative,

intratextuality, and consensus. He seeks to retrieve a classical way of reading Scripture in order

to recover the church’s identity as Israel. He is less interested in narrative as a general category

than in the role that the particular narrative of Israel and Jesus plays in the formation of the

Christian community. He then divides intratextuality into two aspects: 1) Scripture as its own

interpreter (scriptura sui ipsius interpres) and 2) the need for the church to socially embody the

narrative of Scripture. Lindbeck also sees the retrieval of pre-critical exegesis as having

ecumenical possibilities; it can assist the church in building consensus.

Then, chapters four and five will discuss Lindbeck’s later development of an “Israel-

ology.” The principle role of the first of these chapters will look at the Old Testament as an

ecclesiological textbook, looking at the ways that God elects and forms a people for himself. The

second of these chapters will focus on Jesus as the Messiah and fulfillment of Israel.

The next two chapters will deal with responses to Lindbeck’s work from two directions:

from evangelicals on the one hand and from those who emphasize JPIC on the other. Chapter six

will therefore discuss Lindbeck’s understanding of the church’s mission, which includes a

discussion of the church’s communal witness and catechesis. Chapter seven will then address

some further implications of Lindbeck’s ecclesiology for Christian ecumenical work. This later

29 George Lindbeck, “A Protestant View of the Ecclesiological Status of the Roman Catholic Church,”

Journal of Ecumenical Studies 1, no. 2 (Spring 1964): 243.

11

discussion will also briefly address the implications of Lindbeck’s project for Jewish-Christian

dialogue.

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

A dissertation on Lindbeck, including one on his ecclesiology, could be undertaken in a

variety of different ways. Therefore, it is important to note some areas in which I will not focus

within this dissertation. First, much scholarship engaging ND has focused upon whether or not

Lindbeck is a relativist or has an inadequate understanding of truth. Marshall has responded to

these critics, and another dissertation, one by Robert Charles Greer, also addresses Lindbeck’s

work in relation to realism.30 Lindbeck acknowledges that he is much to blame for his critics

(mis)understandings of his views due to confusion that arises from his tripartite division of

categorical, intrasystematic, and ontological truth, which “implies neither relativism nor lack of

objectivity.”31 This dissertation will not directly address these questions due to the adequacy of

Marshall’s and Greer’s responses. The dissertation may, however, indirectly address these issues

as it engages Lindbeck’s understanding of the people of God and the self-involving aspects of

truth.

Second, much attention has been placed upon Lindbeck’s typology from ND of

cognitive-propositional, experiential-expressivist, hybrid approach, and cultural-linguistic. While

attention will be devoted to Lindbeck’s advocacy of a cultural-linguistic understanding of

30 Bruce D. Marshall, “Aquinas as Postliberal Theologian,” The Thomist 53, no. 3 (July 1989): 353–402;

Bruce D. Marshall, “Absorbing the World: Christianity and the Universe of Truths,” in Theology and Dialogue: Essays in Conversation with George Lindbeck, ed. Bruce D. Marshall (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 69–102; Robert Charles Greer.

31 George Lindbeck, “George Lindbeck Replies to Avery Cardinal Dulles,” First Things 139 (January 2004): 15. See also George Lindbeck, “Response to Bruce Marshall,” The Thomist 53, no. 3 (July 1989): 403–406; Lindbeck, “Performing,” 29. Similarly, Ronald Michener argues, “[Postliberal theology] does not deny truth, but it places the locus of truth within the context of the Christian community instead of imposing an outside notion of justifiable truth upon the community.” Postliberal Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), 13.

12

doctrine and religion and the need for the church to socially embody Christian doctrine, I will not

attempt in this dissertation to defend Lindbeck’s typology in general, or discuss his reading of

Schleiermacher, Rahner, and Lonergan in relation to this typology. While several articles could

easily be written on this typology, it is outside of the scope of this dissertation. Suffice it to say,

with Michener, “It is not that our religious claims are completely void of cognitive truth claims

or experiences, but these are not the primary functions of Christian doctrine. Rather, doctrines

express the framework and grammar of the community, providing the basic framework for

communication within that community.”32

Third, while this dissertation topic has implications for Jewish-Christian dialogue, the

primary concern is for the intra-Christian benefits of Lindbeck’s ecumenical ecclesiology. I also

will not engage issues related to pluralism or a Christian understanding of other religions more

broadly other than in connection to a discussion of Christian mission. A postliberal approach to

these questions could be and has been pursued by others, but such a diversion would distract

from the focus of this dissertation.

In conclusion, the originality of this dissertation stems from its focus upon Lindbeck’s

ecumenical work in dialogue with his “Israel-ology,” as it developed from the time of the Second

Vatican Council until the end of his career. While others have briefly discussed these themes

within their writing, no dissertation length studies have made this a central emphasis. In addition,

in the process of writing this dissertation, I visited Yale Divinity Library, which houses the

George A. Lindbeck Papers. I, therefore, also engage unpublished writing, presentations, and

course syllabi in order to gain additional insight into Lindbeck’s work. There is some danger in

32 Michener, 67.

13

using unpublished writing, and so it will be necessary to test this work against in the light of

published pieces to make sure it is consistent with Lindbeck’s later published work.

14

CHAPTER ONE

GENEALOGY

“Perhaps the real test of theological authenticity is the capacity to incorporate the history of Israel and God’s people and treat it as one’s own.” – Andrew F. Walls33

Lindbeck’s discussion of the church as Israel centers upon three main theses: “First, the

eclipse of the identification of the church as Israel, while not without some welcome

consequences, has contributed to some of the most recalcitrant ecclesiological and ecumenical

problems; and, second, their solution requires retrieval of the classic identification.”34 Third, he

argues that the postmodern context may make such a retrieval possible. Lindbeck sets out five

eras of “use, misuse and non-use of church-as-Israel discourse before coming to its possible

future in connection with intra-Christian ecumenism.”35 They include Scripture, the first three

centuries, Christendom, reformation, and modernity. This chapter will provide a brief summary

of how Christians understood their relationship to Israel in these five eras, and then close with a

brief discussion of post-Holocaust Christian reflection.

Lindbeck says that the church and individual Christians have taken a few different

stances on the relationship of the church to Israel over the centuries. He first differentiates

between appropriation and expropriation: “When the church ‘expropriates the identity of Israel’

it replaces the Jews as Israel; when the church ‘appropriates the identity of Israel,’ it claims to be

Israel without replacing the Jews.”36 Then, he also notes that some Christians through the ages,

such as Marcion in the ancient world and Schleiermacher in the modern, have in different though

33 Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 15.

34 Lindbeck, “Israel-like Church,” 7. 35 George Lindbeck, “The Church as Israel and the Future of Ecumenism: Lecture One: Israel-Likeness

Unites and Disunites” (Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada, October 23, 2001), 2. 36 George Lindbeck, “Postmodern Hermeneutics and Jewish-Christian Dialogue: A Case Study,” in Christianity in Jewish Terms, ed. Tikva Frymer-Kensky et al. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), 110.

15

related ways rejected the connection of Israel and the church, while others have neglected or

minimized the question.

SCRIPTURE37

Lindbeck argues that descriptions of the church as Israel go back to the beginning. The

earliest Christians had their geographical center in Jerusalem, and the church was led by Torah-

observant Jews. Though they came to approve of Paul’s mission to the Gentiles, they understood

the church as “the beginnings of the enlarged Israel foretold by Isaiah and other prophets when

all nations will throng upward to worship on Mount Zion.”38 While later Christians, like the

second century author of the Epistle to Diognetus called Christians a “third race,” Lindbeck

argues that the earliest Christians understood the relation of Israel and Gentile Christians

differently. Instead, they understood Gentile converts as being absorbed into Israel (see 1 Pet

1:10; Rom 11:17–34; Eph. 2:11–21).39

These Christians “identified the church as Israel and employed their only Bible, the

Jewish scriptures christologically interpreted, to shape their communal existence.”40 He here

points to passages of the New Testament, like 1 Corinthians 10:1–11, in which the warnings

given to Israel are also given to the church. Israel sinned and suffered judgment, and Paul writes

of these events so that the church does not suffer the same fate.

Lindbeck acknowledges that the New Testament does not always speak univocally on

these matters. He argues that while it is possible to read the New Testament in a non-

supersessionist way, it is sometimes hard to reconcile the New Testament’s teaching on these

37 The section on Scripture will be discussed briefly here because it will be given an extended treatment in chapters 4–5. 38 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 83. 39 Ibid.

40 Lindbeck, “Israel-like Church,” 7.

16

matters, even within the same author. He mentions, for example, that Paul’s language about

unbelieving Jews sounds very different in 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16 than in Romans 9–11.41 At

the same time, however, he notes that a consensus is growing within biblical scholarship,

reaffirmed by official church statements, that the New Testament, and the Bible as a whole, does

not teach supersessionism.42 He says that those readings that assume various New Testament

passages, like Matthew 21:43, teach supersessionism have ignored the fact that the first

Christians were Torah-observant Jews.43

FIRST THREE CENTURIES

This situation changed in the decades after the destruction of the temple in AD 70. At this

point, Gentile and Jewish Christians were divided from the synagogue, and it became

increasingly difficult for Jewish and Gentile Christians to remain in communion with one

another due to cultural and linguistic differences. This led to a significant shift in the constitution

of the church. As Jaroslav Pelikan notes, “According to tradition, only one of the writers of the

New Testament, Luke, was not a Jew. As far as we know, none of the church fathers was a

Jew.”44

A range of views of the church and its relation to Israel existed as the church ceased to be

a sociologically Jewish sect, and its membership shifted from predominantly Jewish to Gentile.45

For some early Christian writers, Jews were expected to abandon Torah observance and their

41 Lindbeck, “Church,” 186. 42 George Lindbeck, “What of the Future? A Christian Response,” in Christianity in Jewish Terms, ed. Tikva Frymer-Kensky et al. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), 362. He does note the existence of modern exceptions to this rule, like in dispensationalism (363–364). 43 Ibid., 359. 44 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 12. Pelkian does note that Hermas and Hegesippus may have been Jews. 45 Lindbeck, “Church,” 187; Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 83; Lindbeck, “What,” 359.

17

Jewish identity. Some others came to believe “the church can be Israel without Jews.”46 For

example, the Letter of Barnabas rejects the notion that unbelieving Jews remain a part of God’s

people.47 Lindbeck says, “Completely forgotten was the need for Torah-observant Jewish

participation in the church if it is to be truly Israel in the new age.”48 While the language is

missing from the New Testament, they came to see the church as the “New Israel that had

replaced the Old.”49 He contends, however, that these shifts “cannot be flatly condemned as

simply unfaithful. They were the historically (i.e., contingently) necessary conditions for the

church’s appropriation of Israel’s story.”50 Such expropriations seem philo-Semitic in

comparison to Greco-Roman prejudices against the Jews, or those of Gentile Christians who

rejected an identification as Israel.

Chief among the “rejectionists” was Marcion. He was a biblical literalist who denied the

multivalency of Scripture and argued that the Old Testament could not reveal the God of Jesus

Christ. The Old Testament presents an angry and vindictive god, “a deity who bungled in

creating the world and thereby filled it with misery and evil.”51 This contrasts with the peaceful

and loving God present in the New Testament, and so this deity must not be the Supreme God,

but a lower deity, and thus the Jewish Bible must be false. Lindbeck says, “Marcion’s solution to

the problems raised by his critique was to replace the Jewish Bible with a bowdlerized New

46 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 4. 47 Lindbeck, “Church,” 186. Michael W. Holmes says in his introduction to the letter, “With respect to Israel and God’s covenant, the author of Barnabas asserts that Israel forfeited the covenant because of idolatry (4.8; cf. 16.1–2), disobedience (8.7; 9.4; 14.1–4a), and ignorance (they interpreted Mosaic laws literally, rathan than ‘spiritually,’ as intended [10.2, 9]). Now, he claims, Christians are the true heirs of the covenant (4.8; 6.19; 13.6; 14.4b–5).” “The Epistle of Barnabas,” in The Apostolic Fathers: English Translations (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1992), 271. 48 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 83–84. 49 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 5. See also Lindbeck, “Church,” 187; Wayne A. Meeks, The Moral World of the First Christians, Library of Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986), 159. 50 Lindbeck, “Church,” 187. 51 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 5; Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 84.

18

Testament and to postulate, beyond the lower creator god worshiped by the Jews, a semi-gnostic

highest god from whom Jesus came, and who is so far above the creaturely realm as to be

blameless for its sorry state.”52 This understanding of God, the universe, and the gospel did not

allow for a positive assessment of Israel or an identification of the church with Israel.

Many found Marcion’s anti-Jewish message appealing. Some scholars argue that

Marcionites may have been as numerous as catholic Christians throughout the Roman empire.

Lindbeck says that if one adds together the Marcionites, other Gnostic Christians, and those who

followed the teaching of Barnabas and the Letter to Diognetus, “it may well be that most gentile

Christians in much of the second century did not think of the church as Israel.”53

Lindbeck argues that, partly out of a reaction to Marcion, a shift occurred in the middle

part of the second century led by some Christian communities who still emphasized and oriented

themselves around the Old Testament. They read the Old Testament in the light of Jesus Christ,

included anti-Marcionite texts in the expanded biblical canon, and they underwent a time of

“Israelization,” coming “to view the church, Christ’s body, in increasingly Israel-like terms.”54

Though Adolf von Harnack denies that Christianity ever became a “religion of the book,” this

period of time brought it close.55 Pelikan also argued that this period of time was a “re-

judaization” of the Christian faith.56 Lindbeck says, “Thus it was that the most Israel-like part of

the Christian movement, the Great Church as it is commonly named, outdistanced rival forms of

52 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 6; Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 84. 53 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 7; Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 85. 54 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 7; Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 85. 55 Adolf von Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, trans. James Moffatt, Second, Enlarged and Revised Edition., vol. I (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908), 279. See 279–289. 56 Pelikan, 25–26. Pelikan says, “The growth of cultic, hierarchical, and ethical structures of Christianity led to the Christianization of many features of Judaism” (25). He also argues that Christian appropriation of Israel’s Scriptures helped them survive after the destruction of Jerusalem (26).

19

Christianity in the one hundred and fifty years after Marcion. By the time of Constantine, it

comprised the great majority of Christians.”57

Lindbeck sees Harnack’s writing as particularly important, though neglected, for

comprehending the early church’s understanding as Israel. Harnack says,

The conviction that they were a people—i.e., the transference of all the prerogatives and claims of the Jewish people to the new community as a new creation which exhibited and realized whatever was old and original in religion—this at once furnished adherents of the new faith with a political and historical self-consciousness. Nothing more comprehensive or complete or impressive than this consciousness can be conceived. Could there be any higher or more comprehensive conception than that of the complex of momenta afforded by the Christians’ estimate of themselves as “the true Israel,” “the new people,” “the original people,” and “the people of the future,” i.e., of eternity?58

Harnack says that this self-understanding strengthened the church’s resolve in the face of attacks

from their critics.

Lindbeck says, however, that Harnack’s account is incomplete, and so he seeks to build

upon Harnack’s work by emphasizing the role of the Old Testament in “contributing to its sense

of being a single, unitary people.”59 Lindbeck emphasizes the “crucial unifying power of the

church as Israel.”60 He argues that this unity came from the typological and Christological

reading of the Jewish Scriptures. He says, “The gentiles who entered this biblical world

developed in the course of time a Christian analogue to the Jewish sense of being a single

people.”61 This does not mean Christians had a uniform understanding of what it means for the

church to be an Israel-like community. Different Christians in different social and cultural

settings understood the church as Israel in different ways. For example, Tertullian and Cyprian in

Carthage and Clement and Origen in Alexandria may have seen the church as Israel, but “their

57 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 7; Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 85–86. 58 Harnack, 240–241. See also 241–278. 59 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 9. See Lindbeck, “Paris,” 406–407. 60 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 86. 61 Ibid.

20

visions were in part incompatible because of differences in the culturally conditioned lenses

through which they looked.”62 Lindbeck argues, however,

What they lacked in ethnic cohesion was surpassed by, in their view, an even greater unity: Israel was for them the body of Christ. Those who belong to it are members of one another no less than of Jesus; and through Christ Jesus, they share in the most intense and intimate of all unities, that of the triune God. To desert this community is sadder than the betrayal of family, and Christians are called to follow the example of the prophets and of Jesus by surrendering life itself rather than separating themselves from God’s elect and beloved people because of attacks from within or without.63

Their understanding of being a single people allowed separate Christian communities to mutually

care for and correct one another. They developed a rule of faith, as well as a unified

understanding of ministry, liturgy, and church structures. Lindbeck argues that this arose as

much from their reading of the Old Testament as much as the New. While other Scriptures, such

as the Qur’an or Buddhist texts, have also formed and shaped multi-ethnic communities, “The

people-and-unity creating power of the Jewish scriptures as read by early Christians seems, with

one exception, unparalleled.”64 He argues that without the expropriation of Israel’s identity by

these Christians, “Gnosticism would have wholly triumphed, the Marcionite rejection of Israel’s

Scriptures and Israel’s God would have become universal among Christians, and the Nazi heresy

that Jesus was not a Jew would have become orthodoxy from the second century on.”65

CHRISTENDOM

Lindbeck argues that the situation for the church changed significantly in 312, and here,

he argues, “Seeds of failure … were concealed in the harvest of success.”66 He says, “Catholic

Christendom … continued to practice the same basic interpretive strategies in both East and

62 Ibid., 82. 63 Ibid., 86–87. 64 Ibid., 87. Lindbeck says that the exception is rabbinic Judaism. 65 Lindbeck, “Church,” 187. He further says, “Because these modifications were the only available alternative to utter subversion of the christological center, they can be regarded, despite their magnitude and consequences, as scripturally faithful interpretations of the story of the church.” 66 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 88.

21

West throughout the middle ages, though now the applications were very different from

before.”67 As the Christian faith went from being a religio illicita to an imperially favored faith,

Christians came to see emperors differently. While they were previously associated with

Pharaohs, Eusebius identified Constantine’s victory over Maxentius at Milvian Bridge with

Moses and the drowning of Pharoah’s troops in the Sea.68 Lindbeck notes that one can

understand Eusebius’ enthusiasm, for the church went from a time of persecution and

marginalization to being imperially favored, and because of this, “Christians couldn’t help but

see a very different reflection of themselves in the mirror of Israel.”69

Years later, Christians began identifying emperors with David. Christians continued to

use strong language against their Jewish and pagan interlocutors as persecuted Christians became

persecuting Christians. Lindbeck says, “Power relations had been reversed, and what had been

cries of anguish in the mouths of the helpless became incitements to violence against the newly

defenseless when repeated from positions of strength.”70 Lindbeck still attempts to maintain,

however, that the era is not fully anti-scriptural. He instead compares the era of Christendom to

that of the Israelite monarchy, “which God consented to contra coeur (1 Samuel 8), and yet also

mightily used to preserve his people and prepare for the Messiah.”71 The church of Christendom

helped to preserve the gospel amid the empire’s struggles with the barbarian hordes and the

formation of western civilization. This does not mean, however, that he defends all aspects of the

Christendom church. He says, “Be that as it may, however, the antitypical pretensions of

67 Lindbeck, “Israel-like Church,” 7–8.

68 Eusebius, “The Life of the Blessed Emperor Constantine,” in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, vol. I, Second Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1890), I.XXXVIII. 69 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 88. 70 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 13; Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 88. See Lindbeck, “Church,” 187. 71 Lindbeck, “Church,” 188.

22

Western ecclesiastical establishments (from which Reformation state churches were by no means

wholly exempt) could not but evoke sectarian reactions.”72

This era reached its zenith during the reign of Charlemagne, who set himself up not only

as Holy Roman Emperor, but as a Davidic figure. He slaughtered thousands of Saxons and then

gave the survivors a choice between baptism and death.73 Lindbeck argues that the parish system

that Charlemagne established helped lay the foundation for western civilization, but with it came

the princely control of the church. He says the reactions to this “ecclesiology led to a reaction

that tilted the Western church toward a papal model whose scriptural warrants, such as they

were, were necessarily drawn from the New rather than the Old Testament (from, for example,

Matt. 16:18).”74

As ecclesiology moved in this direction, “The practice of the church as Israel weakened,

and sometimes the name dropped entirely.”75 For example, Thomas Aquinas “never refers to the

church as ‘new’ or ‘true’ Israel, much less as ‘Israel’ tout court (although it is clear when he

speaks of the church as the populus dei, the people of God, that Israel is the prototype).”76 He

says, “Seeing the people of God in the mirror of Old Testament sometimes continues even when

the language of church as Israel is little used.”77 Lindbeck concludes that in the era of

Christendom, the understanding of church-as-Israel split into two streams: one dealt with

72 Ibid. He argues, however, “The sectarian solutions to the church’s dilemma have on the whole been less biblical but not uniformly less faithful to Scripture than the earlier Catholic ones. They have been less faithful because for the most part they have no longer understood God’s people in terms of Israel’s story but rather have been modeled after New Testament depictions of fervent first-generation communities especially found in Acts. Yet however unbiblical one may think the ecclesiology of, for example, the Quakers, it is hard to deny that such groups have at times been faithful remnants amid the faithless masses. Insofar as they were protest movements against Constantinian churches, the sects were in general scripturally justified, but they are also deeply problematic.” 73 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 15. 74 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 89. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid. 77 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 16.

23

Christian people in their civil life, while the other referred to the church as an ecclesiastical and

worshiping community.

REFORMATION

Lindbeck notes that the Protestant Reformation did not bring an end to the identifications

of the church and/or Christendom with Israel. Luther and other Reformers still viewed emperors

and kings as Davidic figures, and various nations depicted themselves as Israel. The ecclesial

identification also continued. Lindbeck notes, however, that the Reformation led to a shift in

church-as-Israel discourse, but rather than uniting Christians within a common body politic or

within the church, “it now divided Christians from one another more than it unified, it sharpened

the swords with which they fought each other rather than lending itself to reconciling roots.”78

Catholics and various types of Protestants claimed exclusive Israelhood, and in particular the

identity of the southern kingdom of Judah or a remnant, for themselves, while identifying their

opponents with the idolatrous northern kingdom, Babylon, or other groups.

For example, Martin Luther identifies papacy with the Babylon that took the Israelites

into exile, saying that “the papacy enslaves the church with three ‘captivities’—the withholding

the cup from the laity, transubstantiation, and the sacrifice of the mass.”79 Elsewhere, he refers to

his opponents as Pharisees.80

John Calvin, according to Lindbeck, “reshaped and revitalized an Israel-like

understanding and experience of the church.”81 For example, Calvin says “those who turn to the

78 Ibid., 17. 79 Martin Luther, “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church,” in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull and William R. Russell, Third Edition. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012), 196. Calvin also makes an analogy to Babylon. See Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, The Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), IV.2.12. Because Luther and Lutheranism is treated at greater length elsewhere in the dissertation, he is treated briefly in this chapter. 80 Martin Luther, “On the Church and the Councils,” in The Annotated Luther, Volume 3: Church and Sacraments, ed. Paul W. Robinson (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), 382–383.

81 Lindbeck, “Israel-like Church,” 8.

24

cultivation of true godliness are said to inscribe their names among the citizens of Jerusalem.”82

He uses imagery from the Old Testament to reflect upon, and lament, the state of the church in

his time. Calvin says that the church is “called ‘catholic,’ or ‘universal,’ because there could not

be two or three churches unless Christ be torn asunder [cf. 1 Cor. 1:13]—which cannot happen.”

Rather, the elect are all united to Christ as one body. He says, “Although the melancholy

desolation which confronts us on every side may cry that no remnant of the church is left, let us

know that Christ’s death is fruitful, and that God miraculously keeps his church as in hiding

places. So it was said to Elijah, ‘I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed

the knee before Baal’ [1 Kings 19:18 p.].”83

Again, in the next chapter, Calvin discusses how the Roman church should be viewed,

and he does so by drawing an analogy from Old Testament Israel. He says, “Come now, let the

papists deny if they can—however much they extenuate their faults—that the condition of

religion among them is as corrupt and debased as it was in the Kingdom of Israel under

Jeroboam. But they have a grosser idolatry. And in doctrine they are not one droplet purer, but

actually even more impure in this!”84 Calvin says that the prophets did worship and pray along

with the assembled people of Israel. Though the priests of the time were unworthy of their office,

they did not meet away from Solomon’s temple for sacrifices. Calvin, however, reiterates that

these prophets were still “not compelled to any superstitious worship; indeed, they were

obligated to nothing that had not been instituted by God.”85 He defends the separate meetings of

Reformed Christians by arguing that it would be impossible to worship with the Roman church

82 Calvin, IV.1.4. 83 Ibid., IV.1.2. 84 Ibid., IV.2.9. See the wider context in IV.2.7–11. 85 Ibid.

25

without participating in idolatry. He does, however, acknowledge that vestiges of the true church

may remain among the church under the papacy just as it did among the Jews. He says:

God had once for all made his covenant with the Jews, but it was not they who preserved the covenant; rather, leaning upon its own strength, it kept itself alive by struggling against their impiety. Therefore—such was the certainty and constancy of God’s goodness—the Lord’s covenant abode there. Their treachery could not obliterate his faithfulness, and circumcision could not be so profaned by their unclean hands as to cease to be the true sign and sacrament of his covenant.86

Calvin says just as God preserved his covenant with the Jews despite unfaithfulness, so he

preserved his covenant with the church even though it was “oppressed by the tyranny of the

Antichrist.” He did so through two means: “First he maintained baptism there, a witness to his

covenant; consecrated by his own mouth, it retains its force despite the impiety of men.

Secondly, by his own providence he caused other vestiges to remain, that the church might not

utterly die.”87

Conversely, Ephraim Radner notes, “Catholics … could also make use of divided and

assaulted Israel, but in their case to cast the Roman Church in the figure of a chosen people

victimized by their own children.”88 Lindbeck says that as tensions escalated, and both

Protestants and Catholics claimed the title Israel for themselves, “the resulting polemics

discredited Israelhood.”89 These contrasting claims hardened and became irreconcilable.

Lindbbeck even argues that the so-called “wars of religion” would not have taken place apart

from this this rhetoric. He concludes, “It was thus partly in reaction to these monstrously divisive

86 Ibid., IV.2.11. 87 Ibid. 88 Ephraim Radner, The End of the Church: A Pneumatology of Christian Division in the West (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 30. Radner notes this practice among figures like Robert Bellarmine, Jansenist Jean Hamon, and Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (30n50). 89 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 17.

26

enormities that the theological (though not the nationalistic) use of Israel-like discourse was

increasingly abandoned after the Reformation.”90

MODERNITY

Lindbeck argues, “It was not until the beginnings of modernity, chiefly in the seventeenth

century, that the full break came.”91 Lindbeck argues that this break had “double-edged effects.

This weakening, to its credit, made it easier for Christians to affirm religious freedom, living

with denominational pluralism, and eschew ecclesial triumphalism. On the other hand, a sense of

common Christian peoplehood has largely disappeared.”92 He argues, “Since then the use of the

Old Testament interpreted by the New as the basic ecclesiological text has largely disappeared

across the whole range of positions from fundamentalist to liberal, traditionalist to non-

traditional.”93 It did not confine itself to one or a few denominational traditions either, but

spreads the gamut from Roman Catholics to those in the radical Reformation.

Christians came to see the New Testament as the exclusive source to develop their

ecclesiologies. Theologians gave increased attention to issues of when Christ founded the

church, and each of these answers led to very different ecclesiologies. For example, Roman

Catholics sought to defend their ecclesiology, and the papacy, by pointing to Jesus’ words to

Peter: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Matt 16:18).

Various Protestant groups identified the beginning of the church with other events, such as Jesus’

baptism or Pentecost. Each of these answers reflected a discontinuity, rather than a continuity,

between Israel and the church. They also came, under the influence of the Enlightenment, to see

90 Ibid., 17–18.

91 Lindbeck, “Israel-like Church,” 8. 92 George Lindbeck, “Comparative Doctrine: Ecumenism and Narrative Ecclesiology: The Prospects for an Israel-like Church,” 1990, 4.

93 Lindbeck, “Israel-like Church,” 8. See Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 79.

27

the church or the synagogue not as a group of people, but “Judaism and Christianity … as

religions that individuals believed in and/or practiced.”94

In other cases, Christians did not even look to the New Testament or the Christian

tradition to understand or bridge their differences. In reaction to the wars that plagued Europe,

they came to reject anything within Christianity resembling or coming from Judaism. In this,

they rejected the designation Israeliticam dignitatem and saw Jewish faith as “primitive,

tribalistic, legalistic and intolerant.”95 Those aspects of the Old Testament deemed good, like the

Ten Commandments, were seen “as simply crude expressions of truths available in principal to

all human beings through reason and experience.”96

This led some modern figures to renew a Marcion-like rejectionist position on how

Christianity relates to Judaism. Instead of expropriating Israel’s identity by seeing the church a

people that replaced Israel, they understood Christianity as a “universal religion that had

outgrown its anachronistic adherence to the Old Testament particularism and was now becoming

more and more a universal, independent, tolerant, individualistic and thus superior faith.”97 An

example of this can be seen in Friedrich Schleiermacher, who says, “Christianity does indeed

stand in a special historical interconnection with the Jewish mode of faith. Yet, as to its historical

existence and its aim, the way it is related to Judaism and heathen modes of faith is the same.”98

Lindbeck argues that within the modern period, this distaste for Judaism grew even though Jews,

as individuals, became more socially acceptable.99

94 Lindbeck, “What,” 360. 95 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 19. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. See Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 90. 98 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christian Faith Volumes One and Two: A New Translation and Critical Edition, ed. Catherine L. Kelsey and Terrance N. Tice, trans. Terrance N. Tice, Catherine L. Kelsey, and Edwina Lawler (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), § 12. 99 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 19.

28

While the churches under the influence of this rejectionist position continued to use

liturgy and hymns with references to Israel, Judah, Jerusalem, or Zion, and they use these words

to refer to the church, Lindbeck says, “they have become dead metaphors devoid of the

typological realism they once possessed.”100 They came to speak of fulfillment not as God

fulfilling his promises to his people, but “in terms of the impersonal patterns of evolutionary

progress according to which one religion provides the conditions for the emergence of a better

and higher one. Fulfillment now applies to religions, not peoples.”101 Lindbeck says that all of

the modern supersessionisms that developed, “from the least offensive to the most viscious,

vehemently repudiate the Israel-likeness of the church. They grant that Christianity originated in

Judaism but hold that it has mutated into a radically new reality.”102

During this same period, as in the Reformation era, various nations and ethnic groups

came to identify themselves with Israel: “Christians—ranging from British Israelites to Dutch,

Swedes, and Poles, and outside Europe, from South African Boers to Americans—have

represented their nations, but not the church, as somehow Israel-like.”103 For example, Conrad

Cherry says, “The belief that America has been providentially chosen for a special destiny has

deep roots in the American past, and it is a belief that still finds expression in our so-called

‘secular age.’”104 Cherry expounds upon the development of American civil religion, and his

demonstrates that in order to express this notion of America’s chosenness, Americans have, from

Jonathan Edwards to Martin Luther King, Jr., used biblical imagery to describe America.

Various people have said that the American people have been delivered by God from the

100 Lindbeck, “What,” 360. 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid., 361. 103 Ibid. 104 Conrad Cherry, “Introduction,” in God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny, ed. Conrad Cherry, Revised and Expanded Edition. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 1.

29

Pharaoh of Britain, portrayed George Washington as a Moses or Joshua or Abraham Lincoln as a

Christ-figure, or argued that America will play a special role in God’s eschatological work.105

They saw the United States as, in G.K. Chesterton’s words, “a nation with the soul of a

church.”106 Scott Bader-Saye refers to these American claims as a “national supersessionism,”

and notes that these views continued in Ronald Reagan’s references to the Unites States as a

“city on a hill” and Bill Clinton’s calls for a “New Covenant.”107

Within the United States, African American Christians, from the days of slavery in the

antebellum period on, “lived imaginatively in a world shaped by biblical stories largely drawn

from the Old Testament.”108 They drew upon the stories of Israel’s exodus from Egypt or Jericho

in their storytelling and the writing of spirituals. Lindbeck notes that “this continues to inform

their sense of community but not their theological understanding of church life.”109

Lindbeck notes that African Americans are not alone, among marginalized groups or

their advocates, in identifying themselves as Israel. Latin American liberation theologians have

used the Exodus narrative to understand their movements and social gospel advocates in

nineteenth century America identified themselves with the Hebrew prophets. For example,

liberation theologian J. Severino Croatto sees the Exodus as “the key event that models the faith

of Israel,” the interpretive key for the rest of Israel’s Scripture.110 It is also a text that has a

“reservoir” and “donation-of-meaning” that is “unlimited,” and therefore it has “unique

105 Ibid., 11–12. See, for example, the entries in God’s New Israel by Jonathan Edwards (54–58), Nicholas Street (67–81), Ezra Stiles (82–92), Samuel Langdon (93–105), Henry Ward Beecher (169–183; 235–248), Benjamin M. Palmer (184–200), Abraham Lincoln (201–202), Reinhold Niebuhr (296–300), and Martin Luther King, Jr (343–355). Lindbeck assigned these readings to students in Religion 361: The Church as Israel. 106 See Sidney E. Mead, The Nation with the Soul of a Church (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 48–77. 107 Scott Bader-Saye, Church and Israel After Christendom: The Politics Of Election, Radical Traditions: Theology in a Postcritical Key (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), 65–66. See 67–69. 108 Lindbeck, “Postmodern Hermeneutics,” 110. 109 Ibid. 110 J. Severino Croatto, Exodus: A Hermeneutics of Freedom, trans. Salvator Attanasio (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981), 12.

30

hermeneutical possibilities for Latin American theology.”111 He then moves on to see the exodus

event as,

an announcement of liberation for us, the oppressed peoples of the Third World. We are enjoined to prolong the Exodus event because it was not an event solely for the Hebrews but rather the manifestation of a liberative plan for all peoples. According to a hermeneutical line of thinking it is perfectly possible that we might understand ourselves from the perspective of the biblical Exodus and, above all, that we might understand the Exodus from the vantage point of our situation as peoples in economic, political, social, or cultural “bondage.”112

He says that if the church does not involve itself in this work of liberating oppressed peoples, it

shows that it is “‘asleep’ in its interpretation of the Gospel and does not understand the situation

of dependence and oppression of our peoples.”113 Lindbeck does not completely reject projects

like Croatto’s. He says, “Admittedly, sometimes associating Israel with something other than the

church has good, but ultimately limited consequences.”114 In other cases, groups identifying

themselves as Israel has led to disastrous consequences, “as when it is predicated of

‘Christendom,’ or of a ‘Christian’ nation, or, worst of all, of a race, as in the case of the apartheid

Boers in South Africa.”115

POST-HOLOCAUST

Christian reflection on Israel and the Jews has shifted in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

“More and more Christian communions, not least the Roman Catholic Church, have officially

affirmed that God has not revoked his covenant. Jews even today remain his elect and beloved

111 Ibid., 13. 112 Ibid., 15. This does not mean that Croatto ignores other aspects of liberation, like Christ’s work to liberate us from sin, the law, and death, which he calls the “three alienations” (67–79), but his primary focus is to understand “the spiritual liberation that Christ made possible for us in a political way” (79), to “liberate human beings oppressed by social and religious structures” (80). He says, “today we can interpret the Exodus and the paschal mystery only from the perspective of our situation as dependent and oppressed peoples, or as persons dominated by the power structures” (81). 113 Ibid., 10. 114 Lindbeck, “What,” 363. See Lindbeck, “Postmodern Hermeneutics,” 110. 115 Lindbeck, “What,” 363.

31

people.”116 For example, the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in

1948, just three years after the end of World War II, says,

In the design of God, Israel has a unique position. It was Israel with whom God made His covenant by the call of Abraham. It was Israel to whom God revealed His name and gave His law. It was to Israel that He sent His Prophets with their message of judgment and of grace. It was Israel to whom He promised the coming of His Messiah. By the history of Israel God prepared the manger in which in the fullness of time he put the Redeemer of all mankind, Jesus Christ. The Church has received this spiritual heritage from Israel and is therefore in honour bound to render it back in the light of the Cross. We have, therefore, in humble conviction to proclaim to the Jews, “The Messiah for Whom you wait has come.” The promise has been fulfilled by the coming of Jesus Christ. For many the continued existence of a Jewish people which does not acknowledge Christ is a divine mystery which finds its only sufficient explanation in the purpose of God’s unchanging faithfulness and mercy (Rom. 11:25–29).117

The document goes on to reiterate, “Anti-semitism is a sin against God and man.”118

Within two decades, the Second Vatican Council recognized that while many Jews in the

first century did not accept the gospel, “the apostle Paul maintains that the Jews remain very dear

to God, for the sake of the patriarchs, since God does not take back the gifts he bestowed or the

choice he made.” The Council said that Jews and Christians “have a common spiritual heritage,”

and that the Council “wishes to encourage and further mutual understanding and application.

This can be achieved, especially, by way of biblical and theological enquiry and through friendly

discussions.” While the Council says that the church is “the new people of God,” it

acknowledges that God has not rejected the Jews. It also critiques any and all forms of anti-

Semitism, and reaffirms that the Jews are not responsible for Jesus’ death. Rather, “The church

116 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 2. See 20.

117 “The First Assembly of the World Council of Churches,” in The Theology of the Churches and the Jewish People: Statements by the World Council of Churches and Its Member Churches (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1988), 6. 118 Ibid.

32

always held and continues to hold that Christ out of infinite love freely underwent suffering and

death because of the sins of all, so that all might attain salvation.”119

In light of this reassessment, Lindbeck argues that it has become safe, and “perhaps even

mandatory,” to reappropriate a discussion of the church as Israel.120 He defines this retrieval as a

“biblically mandated universal.”121 He defends this reappraisal, saying, “The emotions that have

motivated the rejection of supersessionism in our day may well have come mostly from horror at

the Holocaust, but this rejection would not have been possible without historical-critical ground-

clearing.”122

Lindbeck notes that many in a post-Holocaust environment would treat the retrieval of

the identification of the church as Israel with disdain, and for good reason. It has been associated

with the worst forms of supersessionism. He acknowledges that “church-as-Israel discourse has

almost always been anti-Jewish.”123 It is seen

as vicious, as a major contributor to the Shoah, the Holocaust. Supersessionist beliefs that Christians alone are now the true Israel, the chosen people, because God has rejected the Jews, once pervaded Western culture and must be counted among the historical sources of the anti-Semitism that made Auschwitz and comparable crimes possible. If it had not been for conceiving the church as Israel, so the argument runs, Western societies and churches would have better resisted the Nazi efforts to exterminate all Jews everywhere. In view of these horrors, any suggestion that the concept has a positive aspect has become taboo.124

Lindbeck notes that even some Christian theologians who do believe that Christianity has

replaced Judaism do not want to make the claim that the church is Israel. At the same time,

119 Austin Flannery, ed., “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions: Nostra Aetate,” in The Basic Sixteen Documents Vatican II: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations: A Completely Revised Translation in Inclusive Language (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014), § 4.

120 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 2. See Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 79–80, 90–91. 121 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 91. 122 Lindbeck, “What,” 362.

123 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 1. See Lindbeck, “What,” 362. 124 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 78–79. See Lindbeck, “Israel-like Church,” 13–14. Lindbeck also notes a second set of difficulties in retrieving an understanding of the church as Israel: “The use of stories of Israel to shape Christian communal existence is thoroughly unmodern” (14). This will be discussed at more length in chapter 3.

33

however, Lindbeck notes, “The discarding of ecclesial Israelhood has not diminished

supersessionism. Perhaps, then, the retrieval of the premodern understanding of the church as

Israel will accomplish what modern, progressivist theologies have not.”125

Lindbeck thus makes this argument for reappropriation under certain constraints.

Christians must disconnect the understanding of the church as Israel from anti-Judaism and

supersessionism by seeking to appropriate, and not expropriate, the identity of Israel. He

reiterates that it would be “indecent” for the church to again seek to expropriate Israel’s identity,

and thereby to “deny the Jews their birthright.”126 Christians must recognize the harm that

supersessionism has done to both Jews and Christians. While many, like Pope John Paul II, have

recognized the harm supersessionism has done to Jews, and has called the church to repentance,

Lindbeck says, “neither he nor anyone else has spoken much of the harm done to the church and

to intra-Christian unity by supersessionism, and when it comes to the need for the retrieval of an

understanding of the church as Israel, absolutely everyone, as far as I know, has been silent.”127

Lindbeck notes that the chances of the church retrieving this understanding of the church

of Israel are not great. He says, “The psychosocial trends in both high and popular culture run

counter to community and to a sense of a common and chosen peoplehood such as Christians

once had and Jews to some extent still retain.”128 He argues, however, that supersessionism

undermines the foundations of the Christian faith, for it affects not only the church, but the

church’s understanding of God. He says, “To affirm, as supersessionsim does, that God has

revoked his covenant with Israel, is to assert that God does not keep his word, does not abide by

125 Lindbeck, “What,” 361. 126 Ibid., 362.

127 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 20–21. See Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 80; Lindbeck, “Paris,” 406–408. Lindbeck acknowledged the Christian benefits of rethining the church/Israel relationship in “The Jews, Renewal and Ecumenism,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 2, no. 3 (Fall 1965): 471–473. 128 Lindbeck, “Comparative Doctrine,” 10.

34

his promises.”129 Lindbeck argues that “the churches desperately need this emphasis for their

own intramural and ecumenical health.”130

CONCLUSION

Throughout his genealogical sketch of the church’s understanding of its relationship with

Israel, Lindbeck argues that the earliest Christians appropriated Israel’s identity. In the second

century, some Christian thinkers started to deny Israelhood to unbelieving Jews, and thereby

came to expropriate Israel’s identity. Marcion and his followers then came to reject an

identification of the church with Israel. This led catholic Christians to reemphasize the Old

Testament and view themselves as an Israel-like community, though they did so by expropriating

Israel’s identity. As Christendom arose and reached its height in the reign of Charlemagne,

Christians came to identify secular rulers with Israelite rulers and kings like Moses and David.

This led church-as-Israel discourse to split into two streams: the civil and the ecclesial. As the

Reformation came about these two streams continued, however, Christians in different groups

identified themselves with Israel or with the southern kingdom of Judah and identified their

opponents with the idolatrous northern kingdom, Babylon, or another enemy. Due to the

conflicts that arose in the aftermath of the Reformation, the ecclesial stream waned, but the civil

stream continued. While some post-Christian thinkers have seen the church’s identification with

Israel as contribution to the Holocaust, Lindbeck argues that within certain constraints, the

reappropriation of Israelhood by the church can have ecumenical benefits. The next chapter will

describe the first phase of Lindbeck’s Israelology.

129 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 21. 130 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 80.

35

CHAPTER TWO

THE CATHOLIC PROTESTANT:

VATICAN II AND THE CHURCH AND ISRAEL IN PARALLEL “At all times and in every nation, anyone who fears God and does what is right has been acceptable to him (see Acts 10:35). He has, however, willed to make women and men holy and to save them, not as individuals without any bond between them, but rather to make them into a people who might acknowledge him and serve him in holiness. He therefore chose the people of Israel to be his own people and established a covenant with them.” – Lumen Gentium131 There are three primary reasons why a study of Lindbeck’s later emphasis upon the

church as Israel must include a discussion of his work within and around the Second Vatican

Council. First, his invitation to be a delegated observer to the Council marked a transition in his

career from a primary focus in medieval theology and philosophy to many of his remaining

publications pertaining to contemporary Catholic theology, Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue,

and ecclesiology and ecumenism in general. As Bruce Marshall says, “Lindbeck might have

remained primarily a historian of medieval thought had it not been for the Second Vatican

Council.”132 The invitation proved advantageous for Lindbeck, for he argues that a significant

reason for his study of medieval philosophy and theology stemmed from his interest in becoming

a specialist in contemporary Catholic developments. He concludes, “It was as if my life were

being designed in preparation for my later ecumenical work, even though I was oblivious to

ecumenism.”133

131 Austin Flannery, ed., “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen Gentium,” in Vatican II: The Basic Sixteen Documents: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations: A Completely Revised Translation in Inclusive Language (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014), § 9.

132 Bruce D. Marshall, “Introduction: The Nature of Doctrine after 25 Years,” in The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, by George Lindbeck, 25th Anniversary Edition. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), ix.

133 Lindbeck, “Paris,” 393. Lindbeck was not previously opposed to ecumenism per se, but he lacked interest in the pan-Protestant interdenominationalism he saw in China and in the Student Christian Movement.

36

In the first session of the Council there were around forty invited and delegated

observers, but by the last session, there were over ninety. John O’Malley says, “The presence of

the observers stimulated a more searching scrutiny of the deliberations and decisions of the

council, but it was also important for nudging the council to consider issues of concern to others

besides Roman Catholics—or, maybe better, besides Roman Catholic prelates.”134 Lindbeck was

sent as a representative of the Lutheran World Federation (L.W.F.) alongside senior scholars

K.E. Skydsgaard of Denmark and Vilmos Vajta from Hungary, though later some other

Lutherans, like fellow American Warren Quanbeck and German Edmund Schlink joined them.135

As the junior delegate, Lindbeck was tasked with residing in Rome with his young family

in order to provide information to the L.W.F. on what occurred between sessions. This gave him

a unique perspective on the Council. He later says, “As far as I know, only one other Delegated

Observer, the Anglican canon Bernard Pawley (who was also accompanied by his family), was

resident in Rome for the intersessions.”136 Lindbeck gave addresses around Europe, wrote

numerous articles on the council, and contributed to three multi-author volumes by Protestant

observers, editing one of them. He says of the Council, “Never before in 2,000 years of church

history have delegates from separated communions been brought so daringly, so fully, so

134 John W. O’Malley, “Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?,” in Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?, ed. David G. Schultenover (New York/London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2007), 61. Karl Rahner says that “observers played a real role in the proceedings.” The Church After the Council, trans. D.C. Herron and R. Albrecht (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966), 15.

135 Lindbeck, “Paris,” 398–399. Lindbeck elsewhere says, “Each of the world confessional organizations, such as the Lutheran World Federation was invited by Rome to delegate three observers. The Unites States in those days was still the major funder of the LWF, and so the powers that be in Geneva were obligated to send at least one American Lutheran who preferably would know Latin, German and French, have worked in the area of Roman Catholic theology, and be able to get leave of absence from his regular job. After scraping the barrel, all that was left at the bottom was an untenured teacher at Yale whose dean and senior faculty, untrammeled by the employment policies now in force, had the flexibility to lend me to the LWF for what amounted to close to three years.” “Reminiscences of Vatican II,” in The Church in a Postliberal Age, ed. James J. Buckley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 12.

136 Lindbeck, “Paris,” 399.

37

warmly, and so efficaciously into the supreme councils of a major Christian body, nor has

anything equal to it happened since.”137

Second, Lindbeck considers the 1960s the pinnacle in the emphasis upon unitive

ecumenism. In New Delhi in 1961, the World Council of Churches released what many consider

the definitive statement on the goal of the ecumenical movement. Then at Vatican II, the Roman

Catholic Church fully entered the ecumenical scene. He says, “There is … nothing new which

matches the drama, enthusiasm and sense of progress which characterized the conciliar and

immediate post-conciliar period.”138 Lindbeck argued as early as 1976, “It is often noted by

observers of the ecumenical scene that the popular enthusiasm generated by the Second Vatican

Council has rapidly faded. The cause of Christian unity is no longer greeted with the enthusiasm

which it once evoked.”139 Vatican II was a unique event in church history. It left a definitive

mark on everything he wrote for the rest of his career.

Third, in this period Lindbeck made his first attempt at an “Israelology” in places like his

1964 essay, “A Protestant View of the Ecclesiological Status of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Though his later Israelology differs in some respects from this first attempt, it demonstrates that

his attention to the relationship of the church to Israel occupied his thought much earlier in his

career than is generally assumed. To better understand this first Israeloligical attempt, this

chapter will also explore Lindbeck’s description of the shifts in Roman Catholic understandings

of the church and the “sectarian future” of the church. The purpose of this chapter is not to

137 Ibid. He goes on to say, “For me as for many people, the practice of the search for church unity peaked

at Vatican II, and unitive ecumenism has gone downhill ever since.” 138 George Lindbeck, “Two Kinds of Ecumenism: Unitive and Interdenominational,” Gregorianum 70, no. 4 (1989): 647. He clarifies this further, saying, “Then ecumenism was in the headlines and the television broadcasts of much of the world, not only occasionally, but day after day, whereas now it is rarely mentioned in the media, and then usually inconspicuously and often negatively.” 139 George Lindbeck, “Two Types of Ecumenism,” in Wisdom and Knowledge: Essays in Honor of Joseph Patin, vol. 2 (Villanova, PA: Villanova University Press, 1976), 371.

38

provide an overview or assessment of the Council and its documents, but rather to survey how

Lindbeck’s work interacted with and was stimulated by the Council.

BACKGROUND TO VATICAN II

Lindbeck argues that so-called “traditional” monarchical understandings of the church are

a rather recent development. They were not even undisputed at Vatican I. They stem from the

Counter-Reformation and may have become general only through the work of Robert Bellarmine

in the seventeenth century. This ecclesiology was not only monarchical, but also “static,

juridical, and externalistic.”140 For Bellarmine, the church is a society “as visible as the

Commune of Rome, or the Kingdom of France, or the Republic of Venice.”141 Though Lindbeck

also defends a view of the church as a visible and political society, his view differs from

Bellarmine’s, for Bellarmine saw the church as a “perfect (i.e., complete) society,”142 thus

demonstrating certain Platonic tendencies.143 Monarchical ecclesiological views like

Bellarmine’s served as an apologetic for Roman Catholic ecclesial structures against Protestant

critiques.144

Lindbeck argues that in the nineteenth century, changes in understandings of human

society developed through the growth of historical awareness, philosophical romanticism and

idealism, and an implicit Aristotelianism led to a rethinking of the nature of the church. Roman

Catholics like John Henry Newman, Johann Adam Möhler, and Matthias Joseph Scheeben, as

well as Protestants like Friedrich Schleiermacher, thought of the church as “comparable to a

140 George Lindbeck, “Ecclesiology and Roman Catholic Renewal,” Religion in Life 33 (1964): 388. See

George Lindbeck, The Future of Roman Catholic Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), 29–30. 141 As quoted in Lindbeck, “Ecclesiology,” 388. 142 Ibid., 392. 143 Lindbeck, “Protestant View,” 258. Lindbeck sees a trace of this in Augustine’s City of God “even

though his is a remarkably historical view when it is contrasted with the classical outlook from which he drew his intellectual tools.” Lindbeck places the blame more upon writers like Pseudo-Dionysius.

144 Lindbeck, “Ecclesiology,” 389.

39

developing organism in which the inner life, the ‘spirit’ (of a nation, for example), is of decisive

importance.”145 Their study of patristic sources and dependence upon Paul’s image of the church

as the body of Christ strengthened their work. It took time, however, for the Roman Church to

accept their views. Vatican I rejected a proposal to define the church as the “Mystical Body of

Christ,” and while it left room for later developments, it also dogmatized papal infallibility and

reaffirmed Bellarmine’s view of the church. Thus the new views of the church were not as

widely accepted until after World War I.146

Lindbeck believes the reform and renewal within the Roman Catholic Church began with

Pope Leo XIII. Leo opposed the identification of the Roman Church with royalism,

acknowledged the appropriateness of certain aspects of the socialist agenda, sponsored biblical

and archaeological research, reversed prohibitions of private Bible reading among the laity, and

spoke of Protestants as “most beloved brethren.”147 Such progress has increased, however, it has

not been without disruptions. Liturgical reforms that encouraged congregational participation in

the mass began with Pope Pius X, and he, along with Pope Pius XII, were responsible for further

liturgical and biblical renewal.148

Lindbeck argues that in the newer ecclesiological perspectives, “The church as mystery

was set over against the church as institution, the church of love against the church of law, and a

spirit-filled community against a legally constituted society.”149 While controversy arose

concerning these developments, Pius XII sought to incorporate aspects of the newer perspective

145 Ibid. See Lindbeck, “Protestant View,” 259–260. 146 Lindbeck, “Ecclesiology,” 389. 147 George Lindbeck, “Roman Catholicism on the Eve of the Council,” in The Papal Council and the

Gospel: Protestant Theologians Evaluate the Coming Council, ed. Kristen E. Skydsgaard (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1961), 68.

148 Ibid., 73; George Lindbeck, “The Future of Roman Catholic Theology in the Light of the First Session of the Second Vatican Council,” Dialog 2 (1963): 248.

149 Lindbeck, “Ecclesiology,” 389.

40

while not jettisoning a juridical understanding of the church. For example, in Mystici corporis

Christi, Pius XII says, “One must not think, however, that this ordered or ‘organic’ structure of

the body of the Church contains only hierarchical elements and with them is complete; or, as an

opposite opinion holds, that it is composed only of those who enjoy charismatic gifts—though

members gifted with miraculous powers will never be lacking in the Church.”150 Pius XII

recognizes a variety of ministries in the church: those who receive Holy Orders, those who

accept the evangelical councils or devote themselves to works of mercy, married people, and

godparents; clergy and laity. These reforms continued through Pope John XXIII, the convener of

the Second Vatican Council, as well as his successor Pope Paul VI.

THE COUNCIL

It is commonly noted that the theology of the Second Vatican Council incorporated two

motivations—aggiornomento and ressourcement—both of which emphasize change. In regards

to aggiornomento, Lindbeck argues that the Roman Church has come to have a new attitude, or

an increased openness, toward the modern world. The Catholic Church seeks to communicate the

Christian message in ways that are intelligible to modern people. In one sense, Protestants can

look at these attempts at updating as a way for the Roman Catholic Church to “catch up” with the

150 Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi [Encyclical on the Mystical body of Christ], § 17, accessed January 24, 2017, http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_29061943_mystici-corporis-christi.html. Prior to Vatican II, Lindbeck anticipated that Mystici corporis would “undoubtedly provide the framework for the dogmatic constitution which will be proposed to the Council.” “Reform and the Council,” Lutheran World (1962): 311. Lindbeck notes, however, that Pius XII only goes so far within the document, which “attempted to neutralize the new concepts by saying, in effect, that these simply refer to the inner reality of the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Church is still to be understood in its outer aspects as essentially the kind of fundamentally juridical society which Bellarmine thought it to be. This, at least, is the interpretation of the intention of this encyclical which is suggested by the works of its original drafter, Sebastian Tromp, who to this day remains one of the right-hand men of Cardinal Otaviani in the Holy Office.” “Ecclesiology,” 389–390.

41

rest of Christendom. He notes, however, that Protestants also need to address many of the same

questions.151

Also, there is “a movement of resourcement, ‘back-to-the-sources,’ which manifests

itself in the biblical, liturgical and patristic revivals. There is a real and widespread passion to

bring the church’s life and theology into harmony with early Christianity.”152 Lindbeck notes that

these two motivations are not necessarily mutually exclusive. He argues the present age is one in

which people recognize the need for “both adaptation and faithfulness to the sources,” and this

allows for reforms such as liturgical renewal.153 Lindbeck’s prognosis, however, “is that because

the Council is part of a dynamic, ongoing process, it is the new theological emphases which are

likely to prove the most significant as a basis and guide for further developments.”154

In addition to those twin themes, Lindbeck says there are two competing tendencies in

contemporary Catholic thought. First, there is an increased emphasis upon “central Christian

realities,” which leads him to argue there is a “genuine ‘evangelical revival’ within the Roman

Church.”155 This tendency stems from the increased focus on biblical study noted above. This

has included a willingness to learn from non-Catholics and increased cooperation between

Protestant and Catholic biblical scholars. The liturgical renewal movement is also connected

151 George Lindbeck, “Reform and Infallibility,” Cross Currents 11, no. 4 (September 1961): 345.

Lindbeck says, “New questions are being raised for which Protestants, like Catholics, have no definite answers.” Examples include what to do about scientific and technological developments, atomic war, population growth, racial justice, and the family. “Church and World: Schema 13,” in Dialogue on the Way: Protestant Report From Rome on the Vatican Council, ed. George Lindbeck (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1965), 231.See George Lindbeck, “Pope John’s Council: First Session,” in Dialogue on the Way: Protestant Reports From Rome on the Vatican Council, ed. George Lindbeck (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1965), 20–22; O’Malley, 63–64.

152 Lindbeck, “Reform and Infallibility,” 345. 153 George Lindbeck, “Ecumenism and Liturgical Renewal,” Una Sancta (1964): 9. 154 Lindbeck, FRCT, 4. Lindbeck argues this is the correct understanding for two reasons. First, “the majority of most active drafters and interpreters of the documents understand them as favoring fresh approaches.” Second, the significance of past councils “has been determined by what is new in them, by the redirection they have given the thinking of the church.”

155 Lindbeck, “Roman Catholicism,” 61. See Lindbeck, FRCT, chap. 5.

42

with this evangelical revival because the liturgy has come to be seen as the proper context for

instilling a biblical orientation.156

Lindbeck argues that the Roman Church’s emphasis upon the irreformable character of

doctrine is not as restrictive as Protestants have generally assumed. He points to examples of

Catholic theologians, like Louis Bouyer and Hans Küng, who have articulated doctrine in a

“sounder” or “more ‘Lutheran’” direction.157 Lindbeck also points to Karl Rahner and Küng who

emphasize a flexibility in dogma, even acknowledging that “dogmas are inadequate, sometimes

egregiously inadequate, statements of revealed truth.”158 He points to Catholic rethinking of the

doctrines of limbo, justification, and the role of Scripture saying, “When the Bible is taken as

seriously as the above remarks suggest, it cannot help but have a transforming influence in all

areas of theology.”159 So the concern is not with Catholic doctrinal inflexibility, but instead with

whether or not doctrinal developments “will be in the direction of increasing faithfulness to

God’s word, or away from it.”160

Second, there are “contrary movements,” both in popular piety as well as in official

documents like Munificentissimus Deus (1950), which introduced the dogma of the Assumption

of Mary. Lindbeck says that this doctrine is “without biblical warrant. This has inevitably

aroused fears that, despite the biblical renewal, future dogmatic developments may be

156 Lindbeck, “Roman Catholicism,” 71–72. Lindbeck says, “Those familiar with Reformation

controversies recognize that the liturgical movement meets many of the most serious of the original Protestant objections to Roman Catholic sacramentalism” (74). See Lindbeck, FRCT, chap. 3. In this chapter Lindbeck does provide some balance to the optimism he previously had: “Many of the practices which the Reformation regarded as liturgical abuses are not eliminated” (61).

157 George Lindbeck, “The Evangelical Possibilities of Roman Catholic Theology,” Lutheran World 7 (1960): 142–143. See George Lindbeck, “A New Phase in the Protestant-Roman Catholic Encounter?,” The Ecumenical Review 11, no. 3 (April 1959): 334–340.

158 Lindbeck, “Reform and Infallibility,” 346. 159 Lindbeck, “Evangelical Possibilities,” 148. 160 Ibid., 150.

43

increasingly independent of Scripture.”161 The Roman Catholic Church is a diverse body, and

some areas of the world place a greater emphasis upon the first tendency, while other areas

emphasize the second. He says, “Future developments within Roman Catholicism depend in

large part on which of these two attitudes prevail.”162

Lindbeck argues that for the Protestant there is a temptation to emphasize the former

tendency and ignore the latter, but to have a balanced view of contemporary Roman Catholicism

one must take account of both. While in places like the United States doctrinal discussions

between Catholics and Protestants have become more civil, there is a cooperative search for the

fullness of truth, a greater recognition of Christian brotherhood, and a common opposition to

secularism, the second tendency reminds Christians that real irreconcilable differences remain.163

So while Protestants and Catholics held to a variety of perspectives about the council,

ranging from optimism to pessimism to skepticism, Lindbeck held to a moderate optimism, both

during and after the Council, even in the midst of his own disappointments with the Council’s

slowness.164 While acknowledging the danger of making predictions, he projects that the future

of Catholic theology will belong to the “avant garde”—the “progressives” such as Karl Rahner,

Yves Congar, Jean Daniélou, and Hans Küng, whom he argues were the most influential

theologians at the Council.165

161 Lindbeck, “Roman Catholicism,” 79. Lindbeck does note concerning the Marian doctrines and others that Protestants find problematic, “there are more, as well as less, evangelical ways of adhering to the Roman position.” “Evangelical Possibilities,” 152.

162 Lindbeck, “Roman Catholicism,” 88. Lindbeck extends hope that the Council’s discussion of a hierarchy of truths may lead to increased Christian unity. FRCT, 106–108.

163 Lindbeck, “Roman Catholicism,” 61–64. 164 E.g., George Lindbeck, “The Second Vatican Council: II,” Christianity and Crisis 22, no. 16 (October 1,

1962): 164–168; George Lindbeck, “Reform, Slow but Cautious,” Concordia Theological Monthly 35, no. 5 (May 1964): 284–286.

165 Lindbeck, “Future,” 245–246.

44

TYPES OF ECCLESIOLOGIES

Lindbeck notes a few different ecclesiologies came to dominate in the postwar period,

and each can be seen within Lumen Gentium. This is largely because Lumen Gentium is “a

highly ambiguous document,” in part due to the compromises that needed to be made.166

Lindbeck, however, also calls the document a “watershed in the history of the Roman Catholic

Church,” and “the fullest dogmatic statement on the nature of the church that has ever been

formulated by any Christian body.”167 While Lindbeck says that Lumen Gentium includes

contributions from various ecclesiological perspectives, he argues, “a relatively coherent doctrine

of the church requires that one or another of the fundamental motifs be made systematically

central, because otherwise there will be unresolved conflicts between different possible lines of

interpretation.”168 He therefore looks at the distinct perspectives represented at the Council.

There is the continued emphasis upon the church as the (mystical) body of Christ. Lumen

Gentium says, “For by communicating his Spirit, Christ mystically constitutes as his body his

brothers and sisters who are called together from every nation.”169 Lindbeck argues, however,

that this type of ecclesiology has decreased in influence: “[F]urther historical study has made it

clear that even though ‘body of Christ’ is important for St. Paul and the early fathers, still it does

not represent their fundamental conception of the church.”170 Lindbeck also expresses a concern

that an “incautious use” of describing the church as the mystical body can lead to an

“‘obliteration of all distance, … the effacement of all difference’ between Christ and the

166 George Lindbeck, “A Protestant Point of View,” in Vatican II: An Interfaith Appraisal, ed. John H. Miller (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 219. 167 Ibid. 168 Ibid., 221. 169 Lumen Gentium, § 7. 170 Lindbeck, “Ecclesiology,” 390.

45

Church.”171 In the face of the decreased emphasis upon the church as mystical body, three

perspectives emerged.

First, some have embraced a discussion of the church as the “‘people of God’ on the

grounds that this notion is ecclesiologically fundamental for the Bible and the early fathers.”172

Lumen Gentium devotes chapter two to a discussion of the church as the people of God.

Lindbeck expresses a concern that “people” is term that can be used in various ways. He,

however, still sees it as an important description:

It stresses the historical-eschatological aspect of the church in contrast to the ontological aspect which is underlined by the “body of Christ” image. In the latter, it is Christ’s continued presence in and through the church which is thrown into relief, while “people of God” reminds us that the church, like Israel, is a wanderer through time, moving toward the eschatological kingdom, subject to historical vicissitudes and sometimes unfaithful to the Lord. It is hard to think of the body of Christ needing reform, whereas the pilgrim people of God is obviously the ecclesia semper reformanda.173 Second, some others within the Catholic Church, primarily French Dominicans like Yves

Congar, emphasize the church as “mystery” or as “interior community of the saints in faith and

love.”174 For example, Congar says in Divided Christendom, “The oneness of the Church is a

communication and extension of the oneness of God Himself. The Life which is in the bosom of

the Father is not only communicated within the Godhead itself, thus constituting the Divine

Societas of the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity; it is further communicated to creatures by

grace, to angels first and then to men.”175 Lindbeck does clarify that for advocates of this

perspective, the exterior dimensions cannot be separated from the interior. For them, “The visible

church … is most vividly present, most fully actualized, in the worshiping community, especially

171 Ibid. 172 Ibid. 173 Ibid., 391. 174 Ibid. 175 Yves Congar, Divided Christendom: A Catholic Study of the Problem of Reunion, trans. M.A. Bousfield (London: The Centenary Press, 1939), 48–49.

46

in the celebration of the Eucharist. Juridical and magisterial institutions are secondary and

instrumental rather than fundamental.”176 The over-emphases upon the hierarchical elements of

the church in previous centuries “have not altered the essential constitution of the church.”177

Third, German Jesuits such as Karl Rahner have come to emphasize a sacramental

ecclesiology. Rahner says, “By the very fact of being in that way the enduring presence of Christ

in the world, the Church is truly the fundamental sacrament, the well-spring of the sacraments in

the strict sense.”178 Lumen Gentium engages this type within the first paragraph, describing the

church as “a sacrament—a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of the unity

of the entire human race.”179 Within this framework, the emphasis is placed upon the external,

rather than interior, aspects of the church. Lindbeck says, “Like the individual sacraments, the

church is described as the visible and efficacious sign of invisible grace.”180 He notes, however,

that this view of the church does not ignore the interior aspect.

Because this grace must be understood as the reconciliation and union of man with God and man with man, the sacramental theory can equal the communio ecclesiology in the emphasis it places on the interior communion of the saints. In another respect it is superior. The exterior elements of the church are not only said to cause the interior grace, as the communio theory asserts, but the nature of this causation is specified as sacramental symbolization. This means the central question is that of effective symbolization.”181 The church is therefore meant to visibly witness to God’s grace, and for that reason, it is

important for the church to be unified, and for the church’s liturgy, service, structures, and

communal life to effectively communicate; to enable the church to witness to Christ and serve

176 Lindbeck, “Ecclesiology,” 391. E.g., see Congar, 63. 177 Lindbeck, “Ecclesiology,” 391. 178 Karl Rahner, The Church and the Sacraments, Quaestiones Disputatae 9 (Herder and Herder, 1963), 18. Karen Kilby says that for Rahner, the Church can be called a sacrament “because of its connection to Christ.” A Brief Introduction to Karl Rahner (New York: Crossroad, 2007), 45. 179 Lumen Gentium, § 1. 180 Lindbeck, “Ecclesiology,” 392. 181 Ibid. Kilby says for Rahner, “The sacraments … cause grace by symbolizing it,” but this is because “‘real symbols’ … are intimately connected with what they symbolize.” Brief Introduction, 40.

47

humanity.182 Lindbeck and Quanbeck thus note, “This new vision of the church embraces not

only its internal life, but also its relation to the world.”183

Lindbeck notes that within these perspectives on the church, there is a tension between

two views of the universe. The first one is a classical “two-story” or “three story” view of the

universe.184 This view is a “relatively static, perpendicular contrast between the two sharply

different levels of created reality, an immaterial and timeless heaven above, and the realm of

temporality beneath.”185 When discussing this classical view as a “three story” view, he says that

the lowest level is the material one, the second story is an immaterial one of angels and

supernatural realities, and at the highest point, God is beyond the “supernatural but created

heaven above.”186 Connected with this view of the world is a dualistic anthropology in which

salvation is primarily individualistic, and it “consists of souls, one by one, escaping—or being

catapulted—from here into heaven above.”187 While historical events, like Christ’s incarnation,

may provide the means for this escape, this view, in general, makes history unimportant: “The

physical universe and secular history were viewed not as the world which God loves and

182 Lindbeck, “Ecclesiology,” 392–393; Lindbeck, FRCT, 48, 56–60, chap. 4. Rahner says, “The Church exists in the full sense, in the highest degree of actual fulfillment of her nature, by teaching, bearing witness to Christ’s truth, bearing the cross of Christ through the ages, loving God in her members, rendering present in rite in the sacrifice of the mass the saving grace that is hers.” The Church and the Sacraments, 20. 183 George Lindbeck and Warren A. Quanbeck, “Paul VI Becomes Pope: Second Session,” in Dialogue on the Way: Protestant Report from Rome on the Vatican Council, ed. George Lindbeck (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1965), 51. See Lindbeck, “Church and World,” 231. 184 Lindbeck says two story in “Protestant Point,” 220; “A Framework of Catholic-Protestant Disagreement,” in The Word in History: The St. Xavior Symposium, ed. T. Patrick Burke (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1966), 106; “The New Vision of the World and the Ecumenical Revolution,” Religious Education 62, no. 2 (April 1967): 85–88. He says three-story in “Ecumenism, Cosmic Redemption, and the Council,” in Ecumenism, the Spirit, and Worship, ed. Leonard Swidler (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1967), passim. He mentions both options in FRCT, 12ff. Bernard Lonergan makes a similar argument that there is a shift from a “classical” to modern view of the world in “The Transition From a Classicist World-View to Historical Mindedness,” in A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., ed. William F.J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrell (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), 1–9. 185 Lindbeck, “Protestant Point,” 220–221. 186 Lindbeck, “Cosmic Redemption,” 64. See Lindbeck, FRCT, 12. 187 Lindbeck, “Cosmic Redemption,” 64. See Lindbeck, FRCT, 12–14, 30–31.

48

redeems but as the religiously unimportant background for God’s saving work in the hearts of

individuals.”188

Within the second view, creation is conceived as “a single whole, a historical-

evolutionary development, culminating in a total transformation when all things are united in

Christ and God becomes all in all.”189 This view emphasizes the “modern sense of the historical

character of existence.”190 Also, salvation is understood as corporate and cosmic, working itself

out “in and through history,” and the church has a distinctive role to play.191 While this view is

modern in various respects, Lindbeck argues it “is a more biblical one emphasizing the

eschatological history of salvation.”192 He says, “For the Bible, the great divide is not the vertical

ontological contrast between material and immaterial, natural and supernatural but the

horizontal, temporal contrast between the two ages of the same world’s history.”193

The Council also expresses this eschatological perspective in Lumen Gentium, which

calls the church the “pilgrim church.” Chapter seven begins by saying, “The church, to which we

188 Lindbeck, FRCT, 14. 189 Lindbeck, “Cosmic Redemption,” 65. 190 Lindbeck, “Framework,” 109. 191 Lindbeck, “Cosmic Redemption,” 65. Lindbeck says, “Not since the early days of the church, perhaps since Irenaeus, has the mainstream of the Catholic tradition spoken in such realistically escathological germs of a universe which is heading not towards total destruction, not toward annihilation, but towards cosmic redemption.” FRCT, 25. 192 Lindbeck, “Protestant Point,” 221. While this view makes room for evolutionary theory, Lindbeck says, “This is not at all the same as an immanentism which substitutes evolution, creative or otherwise, for God. The final manifestation of the Kingdom will not be an earthly achievement; it will burst disjunctively into history from above just as it began in Jesus Christ, not as an emergent novelty, but as God’s transcendent act. Yet, according to this application of eschatology to the modern world view, God is now guiding all the processes of nature and history in preparation for the fulfillment, just as all history before Christ was preparation for Him who came in the fullness of time and as the fulfillment of all times.” “Framework,” 110–111. See Lindbeck, FRCT, 19. While theologians of hope like Pannenberg and Moltmann argue similarly, Lindbeck notes that many Protestants are leery of such “evolutionary optimism” due to the failure of nineteenth century liberalism, he notes that the earliest Reformers also held to eschatological “objectivities” (“Framework,” 112–113; FRCT, 19–22.). This makes such a view of eschatology an ecumenical one. See Lindbeck, “Cosmic Redemption,” 69–79; Lindbeck, FRCT, chap. 1. In FRCT, Lindbeck argues that at the Council, “[N]o recent thinker was discussed more frequently and more favorably than Teilhard de Chardin. Even theologians who had never mentioned him in print and who insisted he was a poor theologian found his ideas enormously suggestive” (11–12). 193 Lindbeck, FRCT, 13.

49

are called in Christ Jesus, and in which by the grace of God we attain holiness, will receive its

perfection only in the glory of heaven, when the time for the renewal of all things will have come

(Acts 3:21).”194 The church is already holy in a very real sense, but that “sanctity … is true

though imperfect.”195 The church is “at once holy and always in need of purification,” and it

“follows constantly the path of penance and renewal.”196 While the final age has begun and God

has begun the work of renewing the world, “the pilgrim church, in its sacraments and

institutions, which belong to this present age, carries the mark of this world which will pass, and

it takes its place among the creatures which groan and until now suffer the pains of childbirth

and await the revelation of the children of God.”197 Lindbeck says:

Because it is a pilgrim people journeying from one epoch to another and from one culture to another, it is seen as deeply involved and affected by the vicissitudes of history, not as skimming lightly over the waves of change. This image of the people fits in with our contemporary awareness that the church is an historically and sociologically concrete community subject in one dimension of its being to the same laws of change as any other society. This is the ecclesiological foundation for that call to constant aggiornomento, to constant “updating,” which is a major theme of all the Council documents.198 Views of the church as a “divine and changeless institution” fit more into the first view,

while concepts like the church as the pilgrim people of God fit better into the second view. Some

other views, like the church as mystical body of Christ, can fit into either framework.199

194 Lumen Gentium, § 48. 195 Ibid. 196 Ibid., § 8. See Austin Flannery, ed., “Decree on Ecumenism: Unitatis Redintegratio, in Vatican Council II: The Basic Sixteen Documents: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations: A Completely Revised Translation in Inclusive Language (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014), § 6. Lindbeck notes, “Admittedly, it is never explicitly said that the church has sinned, but the theological foundations for such a confession are clearly present.” FRCT, 35. Rahner goes further than the Council here by saying that the church is the “ecclesia semper reformanda in capite et in membris, the Church always needing reform in head and in members.” The Church After the Council, 28. Later in this same volume, Rahner says, “the church now appears as the sinful Church of sinners” (71). Kilby says it is for that reason that Rahner believes, “Catholics not only may criticize the Church, but they must do so, for the Church, like its members, is sinful and always in need of reform.” This criticism, however, is different from an external criticism. Rather, “One criticizes on the basis of a deeper acceptance.” Therefore, internal critics must also be self-critical. Brief Introduction, 86. 197 Lumen Gentium, § 48. 198 Lindbeck, FRCT, 34. 199 Lindbeck, “Protestant Point,” 221.

50

Lindbeck argues that to understand the Council’s discussion of the church and its role in the

world, one must understand this “new vision of the world.”200 For within the Council documents,

“The church and its mission as well as the coming of Christ are described chiefly in the context

of the history of salvation rather than of a two-story universe.”201

Also within Lumen Gentium is an increased emphasis upon the role of the laity in the

church, and an increased emphasis upon collegiality.202 Bellarmine and those that followed him

identified the church with the institution, and thus their understanding of the church did not

include the laity, who were seen as “passive recipients of the ministrations and guidance of the

clergy.”203 The Second Vatican Council, however, calls the clergy not to direct the laity, but

instead to equip the laity. “The clergy would be the ministers of the ministers, the servants of the

servants of Christ in the world.”204 Herein the Council moved away from a primarily hierarchical

view of the church to one in which emphasizes various spheres of church life.205

Lindbeck speaks highly of Lumen Gentium and other Council documents in many

respects. For example, he argues Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio make “ecumenism

central to the purpose of the church in a way that is not in traditional views of the mission of the

Church.”206 He goes so far as to say, “the Roman Catholic Church is now doctrinally committed

to the urgency of the ecumenical enterprise more thoroughly than any other church.”207 Also, he

200 Lindbeck, FRCT, 9. 201 Ibid., 23. 202 Lindbeck and Quanbeck, “Paul VI,” 50. See O’Malley, 62. 203 Lindbeck, FRCT, 30. 204 Lindbeck, “Church and World,” 237. For example, see Lumen Gentium, § 18: “Christ the Lord set up in his church a variety of offices whose aim is the good of the whole body. Ministers, invested with a sacred power, are at the service of their brothers and sisters, so that all who belong to the people of God and therefore enjoy true christian dignity may attain to salvation through their free, combined and well-ordered efforts in pursuit of a common goal.” 205 Lindbeck and Quanbeck, “Paul VI,” 59–60; Lindbeck, FRCT, 87–88. 206 Lindbeck, “Protestant Point,” 229. 207 Lindbeck, FRCT, 80.

51

sees the claim that the church “subsists in” rather than “is” the Roman Catholic Church as an

improvement.208 He, however, remains concerned that the Council identifies too closely the

church with God’s final kingdom. Lindbeck says, “it does not so much as hint that the coming of

the kingdom stands over against the church as judgment (e.g., Rev. 2–3), and not only as

deliverance, victory, and fulfillment.”209

CHURCH AND ISRAEL IN PARALLEL

In 1964, Lindbeck published an essay entitled, “A Protestant View of the Ecclesiological

Status of the Roman Catholic Church.” Therein, Lindbeck attempts a thought experiment to

determine if a Protestant can accept the Roman Catholic Church’s ecclesiological claims and still

remain Protestant. Lindbeck sees this as an ecumenical imperative because of Roman Catholic

ecumenists who are conversely attempting to discern if they can affirm the self-claims of

Protestant churches. To do so, Lindbeck explores two theses: 1) The claim that the Catholic

Church “has an ecclesiological character which makes it in important respects a fuller

manifestation of the Church than are Protestant churches.”210 2) A church with a higher

ecclesiological status can “be more unfaithful to the gospel than are the reforming movements

which it has expelled.”211

Lindbeck acknowledges that this thought experiment may appear absurd at first glance.

He argues, however, that Luther and the earliest Reformers held very similar views: “For the

Reformers in the first decades, the ‘Roman’ Church was the one and only true catholic church in

208 George Lindbeck, “A Definitive Look at Vatican II,” Christianity and Crisis 25, no. 23 (January 10, 1966): 295; Lindbeck, FRCT, 84. 209 Lindbeck, “Church and World,” 246.

210 Lindbeck, “Protestant View,” 243. 211 Ibid. Lindbeck clarifies this second thesis more by saying, “this second thesis simply proposes the

general principle that substantial infidelity in life and even doctrine is not incompatible with a privileged ecclesiological status, and that consequently a thorough-going Protestant can maintain that the Roman Catholic Church is more fully a church than is his own denomination, even while maintaining that it is right to remain outside of it because it is unfaithful.”

52

the West…. They insisted that they had no intention of founding a new church, but simply of

reforming the old.”212 The earliest Reformers even understood the necessity of ordaining

ministers as a “temporary expedient” until the reform and reunion of the western church.

Lindbeck says, “The Catholic Church was for the early Protestants the one and only church, it

was their home church, it was their ecclesiastical homeland—but it was under enemy

occupation.”213 Because the Roman Church continued to expel those who sought to reform her, it

was necessary

to form a government, an ecclesiastical order, in exile. But the Reformers at first no more thought of this as a new, second church than De Gaulle thought of his war-time regime as a replacement, a substitute for France…. Their claim was not that they represented the only legitimate regime, but rather that theirs was a legitimate interim order until such time as reforms made it possible to rejoin the homeland.214

Lindbeck notes, however, that these early views did not persist. Protestants came to no

longer view the Roman Catholic Church as the homeland. Rather, “Catholicism became the

country of Egypt, and they thought of their own churches as the Promised Land.”215 Later,

another shift in viewpoint arose among certain Protestants. They now view their churches as

“independent nations,” but at the same time are willing to acknowledge that the Roman Church

is also a nation like them. He calls this viewpoint the “‘federal’ doctrine of the visible unity of

the church.”216

212 Ibid., 244. He says, “They very early bean to suspect that the Orthodox in the East had an equal claim to

catholicity and apostolicity, so we must put in the qualification ‘West.’” 213 Ibid. 214 Ibid. See Lindbeck, FRCT, 89. 215 Lindbeck, “Protestant View,” 245. Lindbeck elsewhere distinguishes between Reformers, such as

Luther, who saw the Reformation as a corrective, and second generation Reformers, like John Calvin, who described the Reformation as “constitutive of a new type of Christianity” or as “re-establishing the original order of the church.” See Granfield, 153. Lindbeck agrees with the corrective interpretation of the Protestant Reformation. He says, “I cannot conceive of Protestantism as a separate branch of Christendom. We must consider Protestantism as a reform movement within the Universal Church, and its purpose is to assist in the formation of circumstances that make its separate existence unnecessary. It works toward eventual reunion” (154-155).

216 Lindbeck, “Protestant View,” 245.

53

Lindbeck asks if Protestants can recapture the view of the earliest Protestants. He does so

while still agreeing with what he calls “the traditional Protestant critique of the Roman Church.”

This critique expresses concern that the Catholic doctrine of infallibility, in particular papal

infallibility, leads to a denial that the church is “creatura Verbi, the creature of the Word of God.

It denies that Christ is effectively the head of the Church.”217 He does not believe with the

federalists that “equal repentance of all the churches is all that is requires for union.”218 Instead

he argues that the Protestant who values the Roman Catholic Church may “paradoxically, find it

easier to denounce its crimes.”219 The Roman Church may indeed need more reform than other

Christian bodies.

Lindbeck says it is possible to hold this view because of the

increasing awareness that the visible and invisible are inseparable and reciprocally related. Any inwardly real unity, including the greatest of all which we have in Christ, strives to manifest itself outwardly, or it is not real. Furthermore, the visible unity is the means by which the invisible is nourished. Visibility has a sacramental character in the sense that it is both sign and cause of inward grace, of the res.220 He notes, however, that visibility cannot be reduced to individual behavior, for an individual’s

behavior is conditioned by various social factors, including ecclesial ones. For contemporary

Christians, “it becomes impossible to believe that the unity Christ promised and willed for his

church is a purely spiritual and inward love. There is no such thing. Love is not love unless it

takes concrete social and, where appropriate, organizational shape.”221

217 Ibid., 247. Lindbeck elsewhere has a more nuanced view of infallibility. He says as early as 1960, “It is

becoming clearer and clearer that the Roman Catholic Church’s emphasis on the unalterable and irreformable character of its dogma does not have anywhere near as limiting and restrictive an influence on theological development as has generally been supposed” (“Evangelical Possibilities,” 142.) And again in 1961, “In comparison to most post-Tridentine theology, contemporary Roman Catholic thought displays an astonishing flexibility” (“Reform and Infallibility,” 145).

218 Lindbeck, “Protestant View,” 248. 219 Ibid. 220 Ibid. 221 Ibid. Lindbeck elsewhere says, “[A]s [Otto Piper] repeatedly says, [the church’s] unity is essentially

spiritual and cannot be destroyed by its visible divisions. Everyone, I supposed, accepts this proposition in some

54

Lindbeck argues that early Christians were insistent upon providing an institutional

means for the preservation of unity. They did not simply rely upon charismatic leaders. Even

Paul sought to have his apostolic vocation recognized by the church in Jerusalem. He concludes,

“For those who are imbued with the outlook fostered by empirical historiography and empirical

sociology it is difficult simply to condemn the ecclesiological developments of the first centuries

and of later periods as a fall from gospel simplicity.”222 He says that “the process of

‘institutionalization’ and the growth of traditions must occur in every historical movement. It is

part of the human condition. To object to it is to object to the Incarnation, as Roman Catholics

like to remind us, and as Protestants are increasingly inclined to agree (within limits).”223

Contemporary Christians cannot skip over the last two millennia and have a “direct

relation to the early church…. The history of the Catholic Church (as, indeed, of the Jews also) is

our history, and we cannot repudiate it without impairing our relation to God’s action in

history.”224 On this basis Protestant theologians from non-episcopal traditions have come to

recognize the historic episcopate as “both a sign and means” of “this unity and continuity of the

church.”225 The office of the bishop is a reminder of the apostolicity and catholicity of the

undivided church. Lindbeck argues a similar argument can also be advanced about the papacy.

He concludes, “It is quite possible to believe all this and yet assert, as many Protestants do, that

the visible apparatus of the dogmas, canon law and ecclesiastical authority can be and often are

‘diabolical.’”226

sense or other. The indestructibility of the unity of the Church is a basic datum of the faith. What is in dispute is the relation between the visible and invisible aspects of this unity.” “There Is No Protestant Church,” Una Sancta 23, no. 1 (1966): 92.

222 Lindbeck, “Protestant View,” 249. 223 Ibid. 224 Ibid. 225 Ibid., 250. 226 Ibid.

55

So while Protestants tend to be offended by the Roman Church’s notion of an

“ecumenism of return,” Lindbeck acknowledges that for the catholic Protestant there is a sense in

which it is appropriate: “[T]he full restoration of visible unity can occur only by the

reincorporation of Protestantism into the re-united Catholicism of East and West. The Orthodox

and Roman Catholics have something which Protestants lack. They have visible institutional

continuity with the early church, and this, under proper circumstances, fosters also an inner

continuity.”227 That does not mean the Roman and Eastern Churches would, in this reunited

church, not also undergo significant reform. Lindbeck argues,

All parties in a truly Christian re-union would undergo tremendous changes in their comprehension of both the center and the fullness of the gospel, and in their concrete practice, organization and psychology. There would, of course, be great diversity within the re-united church, but the originally Roman and Orthodox parts might come to differ as much from their present shape as they now differ from the churches of the early, pre- Constantinian era, and the originally Protestant segment would become as different from contemporary Protestantism as this is from the 16th century Reformation.228 He also acknowledges the global church by pointing to the role of African and Asian forms of

Christianity in this future united church.

While privileging the Roman and Eastern Churches and their continuity with the ancient

church, Lindbeck also emphasizes the important contribution Protestantism can make to the

future united church. Just as Protestant ecumenists can come to appreciate their “mother church,”

Catholics ecumenists can and do acknowledge the Protestant case against Rome. They can

concede “that aspects of the heritage of the mother country have been best preserved and

developed in the new ecclesiastical settlement.”229 They can even say some who were driven out

227 Ibid., 251. Elsewhere Lindbeck says, “I don’t use the term ‘return,’ even though I can think of an

objective sense in which it may be used correctly. But, psychologically, the word has been thoroughly spoiled for us.” Granfield, 154–155.

228 Lindbeck, “Protestant View,” 251–252. 229 Ibid., 253. See Unitatis Redintegratio, § 4; Lindbeck, FRCT, 83–84.

56

of the Catholic Church did the right thing, for one should be willing to “take the risk of

excommunication out of loyalty to Catholic truth.”230 One thing the Catholic ecumenist cannot

admit is the permissibility of setting up a government in exile, for the government in Rome is the

only legitimate one.

Lindbeck notes that one criticism of the position he has outlined so far is that his

approach appears to create “an impossible disjunction between ‘faithfulness’ and ‘churchly

character.’”231 The Roman Catholic argues that ecclesial superiority entails an immunity to

“substantial infidelity,”232 while the Protestant says that her own church’s (possibility of)

superior faithfulness gives her church a higher ecclesial status than Rome’s. This opens

Lindbeck’s view to criticism from both sides. He offers a counter-argument to the typical

Catholic and Protestant views by exploring the parallel between Israel and the church. “It seeks

for an approach which will make it possible to affirm that just as Israel remained the elect and

chosen People of God even when it was radically unfaithful, so also does the Church.”233 He

defends this view in eight points.

First, Lindbeck points to the fact that the Jews remain God’s covenanted people even

when unfaithful. Paul indicates in Romans 11 that they remain an elect people even after Christ.

“They continue to be the covenanted race because, in the jargon of the schools, their

eschatological role and significance is not lost even when they are unfaithful…. God often used

Israel against the will of both the masses and their leaders.”234 They possessed a certain

indefectibility, but this did not guarantee they would remain faithful. The indefectibility stemmed

230 Lindbeck, “Protestant View,” 253. 231 Ibid., 254. 232 This term was used by Pope Paul VI at the beginning of the second session of Vatican II. Ibid. 233 Ibid., 255. 234 Ibid., 256.

57

entirely from God’s faithful and unfailing promises to his people. God did not abandon his

people in times of unfaithfulness, and though they did not fully understand their role, God

continued to provide “tangible memories” of Abraham’s calling, such as circumcision or the Law

and Prophets. Through these memories, Israel was the chosen people through whom Christ and

the new creation came.

Lindbeck then asks if the same claims can be made of the church. Doing so means that

the Church’s self-understanding is “necessarily obscure.” The church does not know how God

“is using its tragic history, full of both triumphs and disasters, to prepare for the future Kingdom,

for the second coming of Christ.”235 Catholics acknowledge something similar. Lindbeck notes

that two collects in the Catholic liturgy say that God is “purifying his church,”236 and Lumen

Gentium says that the church is “at once holy and always in need of purification” and “follows

constantly the path of penance and renewal.”237

As a part of this first point, he proposes that the papacy may be parallel to the Israelite

monarchy, which was permitted by God due to Israel’s unbelief, but also was used by God to

preserve the people of Judah and to bring about the Messiah. The monarchy was thus both a

human and a divine institution, and Lindbeck notes that Protestants and Catholics may come to

see the papacy the same way. He also notes, “[T]he prophetic protest (even that of Jesus) was

intended to purify, not subvert, the traditional institutional orders, and yet the establishment

killed or drove out those whom God had sent.”238 One can draw an analogy between the

relationship of the prophet to the establishment to the relationship of sects to established

churches that does not provide comfort to either.

235 Ibid.

236 Lindbeck, “Roman Catholicism,” 76–77. 237 Lumen Gentium, § 8.

238 Lindbeck, “Protestant View,” 257.

58

Second, Lindbeck asks if the parallel between Israel and the Church can extend to “the

possibility of comparably grave infidelity.”239 He reiterates again that the Church, like Israel, is

indefectible, and also that the Church has been promised the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit.

“It is a continuation of the true, the spiritual Israel, and it is the body of Christ.”240 He notes that

if one thinks only of these descriptions of the Church, then “substantial faithfulness to the

gospel” appears to be “an essential property of the Church,” and a community that lacks that

faithfulness ceases to be part of the Church.241

Lindbeck notes, however, that other descriptions of the Church in the New Testament

seem to allow for the possibility of “substantial unfaithfulness.” For example in Revelation 3, the

Lord says to the Church in Sardis, “I know your works; you have a name of being alive, but you

are dead” (1b). And to the Church in Laodicea the Lord says, “I know your works; you are

neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and

neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (15–16). Lindbeck notes, “The fact

that these are genuine churches is taken for granted, but they are also, to continue with the

quotation, ‘wretches, pitiable, poor, blind and naked’ even though they boast, ‘I am rich, I have

prospered and need nothing’ (3:17).”242 Revelation 3 is not an isolated incident in the New

Testament. Paul also critiques the unfaithfulness of genuine churches within his letters. For

example, in Romans 11:20–21, Paul says, “So do not become proud, but stand in awe. For if God

did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you.” Lindbeck concludes:

These passages, it seems to me, indicate at least the possibility of making a scriptural case for the view that a church, even while losing none of its character as a church, can be in some respects substantially unfaithful to its Lord. It would appear that much the same violent paradoxes can apply to the New Israel as the Old. Both, for instance, are

239 Ibid. See Lindbeck, “Ecclesiology,” 392. 240 Lindbeck, “Protestant View,” 257. 241 Ibid. 242 Ibid., 257–258.

59

described as brides, and both, it would seem, can be unfaithful, whoring after false gods. In both cases, there will always be a faithful remnant, but this does not apply to the people as a whole, nor to their leadership.243

Lindbeck does not deny the significance of descriptions of the Church such as “body of

Christ,” but he argues that just as Israel can be identified as a people by certain physical marks

such as the Torah or circumcision, so the Church can be identified by physical marks such as

baptism and a confession in Christ. They are both socio-historical communities capable of

betraying their raison d’être, while still having a “self-identity … constituted by the visible

marks of this raison d’être.”244 Lindbeck, however, does not deny the differences between the

Church and Israel. He says, “Christ has literally come. The new age has literally begun.”245 The

Old Covenant people has never been described as the body of Christ. Lindbeck seeks to reconcile

these two lines of thought by on the one side taking seriously the “historical realism” of the

biblical text and “the fact that the local churches (which are presumably the only places the

Church is ever visible) seem to remain unambiguously the communities of the People of God,

just as Israel does.” On the other side Lindbeck emphasizes the radical newness of churches that

“surpass and fulfill Israel.”246

Third, Lindbeck argues that little help can come from traditional ecclesiologies, either of

the Catholic or Protestant variety, in describing the church in the same historical sense that one

describes Israel. He actually sees Protestant theology as more closed to the idea of the Church as

“the concrete, thoroughly historical People of God” due to a tendency in certain Protestant

circles to contend that “the visible institutionalized aspects do not belong to the essence of the

243 Ibid., 258. 244 Ibid. 245 Ibid., 259. 246 Ibid. Lindbeck later denies that the church fulfills Israel.

60

Church at all.”247 This leads some Protestants to say that the visible institution can be unfaithful,

but not the “Church itself.”248

Fourth, Lindbeck looks to Rahner’s sacramental definitions of the Church as “a way of

getting out of this impasse.”249 According to Rahner, Christ is the “basic sacrament,” and the

church is then “the sacrament of Christ.” Lindbeck summarizes Rahner’s view of the church

saying, “Its own seven sacraments, together with its proclamation, institutional forms, moral

action and all other aspects of its visible life and being, constitute the particularizations of the

sacramental sign which is the Church itself.”250 Therefore, for Rahner, people without saving

faith who participate in the visible rites of the church are still members of the Church. This

means that the Church is not equivalent to the “interior communion of saints,” but rather exists

for its sake.251

Lindbeck acknowledges that such a perspective may offend Protestant sensibilities, but

“it can be made to stress that the church is the people of God in the same thoroughly concrete

way that Israel is.”252 The church does not exist for its own sake, but rather for a mission: to be

“a sacramental sign and anticipation in all that it is and does, to Christ and to the kingdom,”253 or

“to be an adequate, efficacious symbol, a transparent testimony, to God’s saving love in Jesus

247 Ibid., 260. He notes, “Those who follow Luther and Calvin have placed more emphasis on visibility,

maintaining that the Church becomes visible when God acts in the preaching of the gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and in concrete deeds of obedience.” Elsewhere Lindbeck gives this summary of the Reformers’ position: “[T]he Reformers, even though this is not true of many of their successors, recognized that the visible unity of the church is part of the normative pattern of the existence of a Christian community, but they believed that it was less damaging to abandon this than to compromise with the works’ righteousness and other corruptions of late medieval Catholicism” (“Reform and Infallibility,” 351.) Lindbeck also offers a critique of pietism detached from the church in “The Confessions of Ideology and Witness in the History of Lutheranism,” Lutheran World 7 (1961): 391–392.

248 Lindbeck, “Protestant View,” 260. 249 Ibid. 250 Ibid., 261. 251 Ibid. See Lindbeck, “Ecclesiology,” 392.

252 Lindbeck, “Ecclesiology,” 392. 253 Lindbeck, FRCT, 27.

61

Christ.”254 This mission differentiates the church from all other peoples.255 Lindbeck argues,

“The whole being of the church, therefore, is mission.”256 He sees this sacramental view of the

Church as coherent with his discussion of the Church/Israel parallel: “it is one and the same thing

to describe the Church as sacramental and to describe it as fundamentally a concrete historical

people.”257

Fifth, point four not only assists in discussing the Church, but Israel as well. Lindbeck

looks at a particular quotation from Rahner: “The Church in her visible historical form is herself

an intrinsic symbol of the eschatologically triumphant grace of God.”258 Lindbeck says of this,

“Clearly this can be said not only of the Church, but of Israel…. Yet this does not minimize the

difference between the Old and the New People of God.”259 The Old Israel, according to

Lindbeck, points back to God’s covenant with Abraham and forward to the coming of the

Messiah and “the eschatological triumph of God’s grace.”260 It does so less clearly than the

Church does, however, because the Church points back to the Incarnation and forward to the

second coming and the complete manifestation of God’s victory.

Sixth, Lindbeck argues the similarity and difference of Israel and the Church can be

described as the distinction between the res sacramenti and the sacramentum tantum. He says,

“Just as circumcision and baptism have a similar nature on the level of sacramentum tantum, but

not of res sacramenti, so also with the Old and New People of God.”261 Just as circumcision and

254 Lindbeck, “Protestant View,” 261. The pilgrim church will, as Lumen Gentium argues, “receive its

perfection only in the glory of heaven, when the time for the renewal of all things will have come” (§ 48). See Lindbeck, “Ecclesiology,” 392–393. 255 Lindbeck says that the church “is not self-contained, and it cannot be thought of as existing for its own sake as so often happens in the case of a state.” “Ecclesiology,” 392. 256 Lindbeck, FRCT, 28.

257 Lindbeck, “Protestant View,” 262. 258 Rahner, The Church and the Sacraments, 39. 259 Lindbeck, “Protestant View,” 263. 260 Ibid. 261 Ibid.

62

baptism are both physically tangible, but due to human sinfulness can be less fully effective,

“The historically perceptible People of God may be present even when the res sacramenti is

largely absent because of human sin.”262 Even when unfaithful the People of God under both the

Old and New Covenant do not cease to be God’s people, but rather exist as God’s unfaithful

people, “They may be so unfaithful that they gravely distort the message of salvation in their

manner of life.”263 They only remain the People of God “because they are indelibly marked in

their community life by signs which point to God’s grace, by signs which point to what God has

done in the Old Testament and in Christ, and by what he will do in the Second Coming.”264 As

long as a community continues to confess Christ’s name, Lindbeck concludes, it “cannot escape

being part of the historically perceptible People of God, even when its profession of faith is

largely hollow and its interpretations gravely distorted. The sacramentum tantum, the memory

and the hope, is engraved upon the people and becomes fruitful again when obstacles are

removed.”265

Seventh, Lindbeck connects the sacramental approach to the church with “the importance

of the visible, structural unity and continuity of the Church.”266 From Lindbeck’s point of view,

historical continuity is an important symbol, but it does not guarantee faithfulness to the gospel.

It does not work magically. A church with apostolic succession can “deprive this sign of its

proper effect by making itself the master, rather than the servant, of the apostolic message as

witnessed to in Scripture.”267 Lindbeck argues a Protestant can say this while acknowledging the

benefits of Roman Catholic structural continuity and hoping for the reformation and reunion of

262 Ibid., 264. 263 Ibid. 264 Ibid. 265 Ibid. 266 Ibid. 267 Ibid., 265.

63

the Church. Lindbeck says, “He can hope the visible institutional continuity will again become

what it was in the early centuries, a truly and efficacious sacramental sign of faithfulness to the

apostolic message and of the Church’s union with Christ as his body.”268 Lindbeck notes that

something similar can be said about eucharistic unity, for, “eucharistic fellowship is the normal

way of fostering the reality of unity among Christian believers…. When divided at the table of

the Lord, the Church is a pitifully defective symbol of God’s salvation, of the fact that in Christ

all men are in principle reconciled with God and with each other, and that at the end of time they

will be manifestly reconciled.”269

Eighth, Lindbeck asks how the ecclesiological status of the Catholic and Orthodox

churches compares with Protestant ones. He says, “Our thesis will be that although ‘essentially’

there is no difference in the ecclesiological status of the various churches, there is a non-

essential, but still important, sense in which Catholic and Orthodox churches have a higher

rank.”270 Lindbeck comes to this conclusion because, “Essences are not susceptible of

degrees.”271 Every community that qualifies as a church is a part of “the Church” or “the People

of the New Covenant,” and is essentially and equally a church.272

Lindbeck also argues that in addition to a church’s essential qualities, churches have

“accidental” differences. “Using Aristotelian language, one might say that they differ in the

268 Ibid. 269 Ibid. 270 Ibid., 266. 271 Ibid. 272 Ibid., 267. Lindbeck does say, “There may be border line cases which are hard to identify, but there are

no degrees of membership…. There may be other classes of communities which resemble churches more or less closely, and in reference to them one can speak of degrees of ecclesiological status, but they are not ‘really’ churches” (266–267). Border line cases, for Lindbeck, may include extreme liberal Protestant groups, the “German Christians” under Nazi Germany. Lindbeck also recognizes that not everyone defines the word “church” as he does. For instance, some only define their own community as “church.” He says, “Our own definition of ‘church’ is so broad that it presumably includes all the specifically Christian ecclesial communities which normally call themselves ‘churches’” (267).

64

degree to which they actualize their common essence. In other words, they differ in the adequacy

with which they fulfill their professed purpose of manifesting God’s grace in Jesus Christ.”273

For example, “Some forms of sacramental celebration more adequately symbolize the grace

which they effect than do others.”274 So a less improved Eucharist, for example, is still

essentially and equally a Eucharist, however, it is inferior in its accidents.

Lindbeck argues the accidental status of an ecclesial community stems from “all that goes

to make up its visibility,” and includes both its “‘charismatic’ and ‘institutionalized’ aspects.”

There is a sense in which the charismatic aspects are more important, for the institutional

elements “should be completely in service of works of love and prophetic proclamation.”275 He

says though, “[D]espite the instrumental character of the institutionalized aspects of a church, it

is fundamentally through them that its ecclesiological status must be judged.”276 This is because

the charismatic quality of an ecclesial community can vary greatly over time.

Lindbeck concludes that in doctrine, catholic Protestants like himself do not believe their

Protestant churches have a lower ecclesiological status than the Roman Church. The Roman

Church is in some sense heretical, and while the Reformational churches may have “doctrinal

deficiencies,” they have not “dogmatized positive error.”277 In fact, the Protestant churches, with

their emphases on the solas, have made significant doctrinal advances. He concludes, “It is, then

only in reference to ‘organizational structures’ that the catholic Protestant accords a higher

ecclesiological status to Catholic and Orthodox churches than to his own.”278 The

“organizational structures” that Lindbeck refers to are the continuity and unity that began in the

273 Ibid., 268. 274 Ibid. 275 Ibid. 276 Ibid. 277 Ibid., 269. 278 Ibid.

65

early church and continued “under God’s providential guidance.”279 Though the organizational

developments may have been corrupted at certain points, it has a continuing value. He argues

that if the Reformation had remained within the Roman Church, “its contributions would have

proved even more fruitful and less subject to dissolution and fragmentation.”280 Not only the

Protestant churches, but the Roman and Eastern churches are impoverished because of the

Churches’ divisions. Also,

It is possible that the ‘faithful remnant’ may sometimes be found more outside than within them, and that they would gain more in fulfilling the purpose of the Church, viz., the manifestation of God’s grace, through reunion than would the churches from which they are separated. Yet the visible continuity in ecclesiastical orders which they possess is an important element in the full sacramentally symbolic visibility of the Church. Churches which are separated from them necessarily lack this, while they do not necessarily lack the doctrinal and charismatic gifts which have, on occasion, developed more fully outside than within their boundaries.281

He concludes that the Protestant communities should see themselves as reform movements

within the Church, and that their institutional existence is justified. At the same time, “they

should be eager to sacrifice their own institutional autonomy whenever this can be done without

imperiling the witness to these truths.”282

DIASPORA CHURCH

Connected with the Second Vatican Council’s aggiornomento, Lindbeck discusses the

recognition of many at the Council and in the early post-conciliar years that the church has

moved into a post-Constantinian period. While some residual Christian traits remain in

traditionally Christian cultures, the church will no longer dominate entire societies.283 There are a

279 Ibid. 280 Ibid. 281 Ibid., 269–270. 282 Ibid., 270. 283 Lindbeck, “Future,” 248; Lindbeck, “Pope John’s Council,” 20; Lindbeck, “Church and World,” 235;

George Lindbeck, “The Sectarian Future of the Church,” in The God Experience: Essays in Hope, ed. Joseph Whelan (New York: Newman, 1971), 226–242; George Lindbeck, Infallibility, Pere Marquette Theology Lecture (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1972), 3.

66

range of possibilities of how this will look, from indifference to hostility toward distinctive

confessions of faith.284

While he remains cautious in his prognostication, Lindbeck argues that the contemporary

church is in a “period of transition,” and, “As a result, proposals come to us in the guise of

predictions.”285 Against those who think the future church will be an avant-garde church that is

accommodationist, that is “an open and theologically relativistic movement of revolutionary or

counter-cultural type,” he says, “I anticipate a sociologically sectarian future in which the

exclusivist claims of the orthodox mainstream of the Christian tradition are maintained, even if

reinterpreted.”286 In making this argument, Lindbeck draws upon a biblical image: the church as

a diaspora community. In this, his emphasis resembles Karl Rahner’s thought in The Christian of

the Future and The Church After the Council.287 This line of thinking also comes into Lumen

Gentium: “While on earth it journeys in a foreign land away from the Lord (see 2 Cor 5:6), the

church sees itself as an exile.”288

Though the church was “catholic” in the sense of including people from different classes

and ethnic backgrounds, “It consisted of a small strongly deviant minority, unsupported by

cultural convention and prestige, within the larger society.”289 This sectarianism was a

sociological rather than ecclesiological sectarianism. Later, when the majority of people within

the empire became Christians, there were times in which, as was the case with groups like the

Montanists, sociological and ecclesiolgical sectarianism coincided, as a minority group insisted

284 Lindbeck, “Sectarian Future,” 229; Lindbeck, FRCT, 45. 285 Lindbeck, “Sectarian Future,” 226. 286 Ibid., 226–227. 287 Karl Rahner, The Christian of the Future, Quaestiones Disputatae 18 (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), 77–101; Rahner, The Church After the Council, 49–52. See George Lindbeck, “The Thought of Karl Rahner, S.J.,” Christianity and Crisis 25, no. 17 (October 18, 1965): 212–213. 288 Lumen Gentium, § 6. 289 Lindbeck, “Sectarian Future,” 227.

67

upon a “narrow interpretation of Christianity and to recruit its adherents from a single racial,

social or cultural group.”290 In the period of the Reformation, Roman Catholics likely saw

Protestant groups as being theologically, but not sociologically, sectarian. Lindbeck asks, “What

will happen if we move into a period when once again catholic or ecumenical Christianity which

emphasizes a comprehensive and internally diversified unity will itself be sociologically

sectarian?”291 He looks to the early church to answer this question, arguing, “with the exception

of Judaism, Christianity probably has greater resources in its tradition for sectarian existence

than any other world religion.”292

Lindbeck proposes a few theses. First, the Christianity that survives in an increasingly

post-Christian culture will be “sociologically sectarian, sharply distinguished from society at

large, and continuing to make the traditional Christian claims regarding the unsurpassable

finality of revelation in Jesus Christ.”293 For Christians to maintain faith in particular orthodox

claims, they cannot look at faith individualistically; they must instead “gather together in small,

cohesive, mutually supportive groups. They must become, sociologically speaking, sectarian.”294

A certain type of exclusivism or absolutism is “a necessary though not sufficient prerequisite for

Christian survival in a de-Christianized world.”295 Indeed, one of the early church’s greatest

290 Ibid., 228. 291 Ibid. 292 George Lindbeck, “Ecumenism and the Future of Belief,” Una Sancta 25, no. 3 (1968): 6. He then says, “The Bible does not anticipate that the Church will ever be anything except a little flock until the end of time. From this point of view, majority rather than minority existence is anomalous for Christians.” 293 Lindbeck, “Sectarian Future,” 228. See Lindbeck, “Ecumenism and the Future,” 4. Philip D. Kenneson, in part building upon Lindbeck’s “Sectarian Future,” argues that there are six different contexts in which one can use language related to sects or sectarianism: sociological, ecclesiological, theological, epistemological, legal, and media. Beyond Sectarianism: Re-Imagining Church and World, Christian Mission and Modern Culture (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999), chap. 1. 294 Lindbeck, “Sectarian Future,” 230. 295 Ibid., 231. Lindbeck also says, “[I]n the absence of exclusivist claims, Christians would not be socially deviant enough to qualify as sects.” See George Lindbeck, “The Future of Dialogue: Pluralism or Eventual Synthesis of Doctrine?,” in Christian Action and Openness to the World, ed. Joseph Papin (Villanova, PA: Villanova University Press, 1970), 51. There Lindbeck says, “The diaspora church will need desperately to be united—far more desperately than the church in the age of Christendom.”

68

strengths was its sense of belonging. Lindbeck imagines that this Christian survival, sense of

belonging, and ecclesial continuity may be in a place and time very different than the church’s

contemporary experience:

This Christianity would, of course, be in the far future, perhaps a few million years from now. Christian orthodoxy is committed to believing that even then there would be a community, a church, which would be identifiably Christian. It would exist in a situation unimaginably different from the present. The planet on which we live might have vanished. Men might be living in immeasurably distant stellar systems or galaxies. Their physical setting, their flora and fauna, might have no resemblance to the seascape and landscape, the plants and animals, of old mother earth. Intellectual culture, the social environment and perhaps even the genetic constitution of these distant descendants of ours might be far more different from our own than we are different from the first muttering ape men. Perhaps, as Huxley predicted, embryos will then grow in artificial wombs, not in their mothers' bodies. Perhaps individuals will live for hundreds or even thousands of years. Maybe telepathy will be a tool of concretely controllable communication so that humanity will be knit together with unimaginable intensity and extensity. Or, on the other hand, perhaps mankind will have split into various branches which have lost touch with each other in the vastness of stellar space.296 Yet these Christians will continue to confess faith in a crucified and risen Lord, they will engage

in similar liturgical practices, and they will have sacred scripture in some form.297

Second, a catholic or ecumenical sectarianism will have an advantage over “‘divisive’ or

‘schismatic’ varieties.”298 Lindbeck defends this thesis saying, “A Catholic position which

embraces variety is internally more consistent, and in that sense plausible, than a schismatic

position.”299 Christians root their exclusivist claims not in secondary things, but in the person of

Jesus Christ, and thus “allow for pluralism and that unity in love which includes the really

diverse (as were Jewish and Gentile Christians in the first generations, and Eastern and Western

Christians in later periods).”300 Christians in the ancient church were not only accepted in one

296 Lindbeck, “Future of Dialogue,” 45. 297 Ibid., 45–46. 298 Lindbeck, “Sectarian Future,” 228. 299 Ibid., 237. 300 Ibid. See also Lindbeck, “Future of Dialogue.”

69

locale, but within churches wherever they migrated. “[T]he early Church was an association

which had some of the characteristics of a primary community, a family, and yet was a

worldwide and comprehensive fellowship.”301 A catholic sectarian church has an advantage over

schismatic groups, for as the need for a sense of belonging increases, such a church “would be

able to supply an experience of community which many would treasure above all price;” it

would have a wider appeal to people across cultural barriers.302

Third, Lindbeck discusses what the church must do to instantiate this catholic sectarian

vision.303 On this, Lindbeck remains somewhat pessimistic, “for none of the current institutional

developments favor ecumenical sectarianism.”304 The current institutional structures of the major

Christian bodies developed to serve establishment churches. Though he still believes a catholic

or ecumenical sectarianism has an advantage over schimsmatic forms of Christianity, he

acknowledges that the schismatic groups may indeed be the ones to maintain the identification

“Christian.”305 Ecumenical sectarianism will require “deliberate action of the major churches,”

such as “new types of parishes, religious orders and secular institutes.”306 He, however, remains

unconvinced that the current denominations will do this because it could lead to the elimination

of their own group. The current institutions therefore prevent such moves. Lindbeck, however,

does not end this discussion on a pessimistic note. He says:

[D]e-Christianization, if it comes, may well take a very long time, thus providing the opportunity of all kinds of preparatory developments. Perhaps we will not stumble into the future with only divisive sectarians to carry the Christian banner. Further, given the pressures of a hostile environment, a new and catholic ecumenism might coalesce out of schismatic fragments. The empirical grounds for these projections may be slim, but then, after all, I am not only a sociologist or only a theologian, but a would-be believer, and

301 Lindbeck, “Sectarian Future,” 239. 302 Ibid., 239–240. See Lindbeck, “Ecumenism and the Future,” 12–13. 303 Lindbeck, “Sectarian Future,” 228. 304 Ibid., 240. 305 Ibid., 240–241. 306 Ibid., 241.

70

this sometimes sparks transcendent hopes that God will unite and strip his Church for action in whatever times or trouble may lie ahead.307 This emphasis upon the church as sectarian does not only pertain to the church’s internal

relation, but to its relation to the world as well. Lindbeck argues, “In this new situation the only

way to exert an effective Christian influence is for the church to serve human needs as humbly

and self-forgetfully as did Christ himself.”308 There is an increased emphasis upon the church as

“the church of the poor.”309 Lindbeck says, “Perhaps one might say that in contemporary

Catholicism a Franciscan theologia paupertatis is beginning to replace the old theologia

gloriae.”310

CONCLUSION

In his work in the 1960s, Lindbeck traces the shifts that arose in Roman Catholic

ecclesiology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from the continued emphasis upon

monarchical views seen in Vatican I to the developments that led to understandings of the church

as mystery, pilgrim people, or sacrament within the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic

Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. Within this discussion, Lindbeck speaks positively

about the Roman Church’s increased openness to the modern world. He says that there are

genuine evangelical impulses in these developments, but at the same time the Marian dogmas

affirmed in this same time period demonstrate some counter movements.

These developments lead Lindbeck to ask to what extent Protestants can accept the

Roman Catholic Church’s self-claims while remaining Protestant. He does so in light of two

307 Ibid., 242. 308 Lindbeck, “Church and World,” 235. See Lindbeck, “Cosmic Redemption,” 64–66. 309 Lindbeck, “Ecclesiology,” 393. See Lindbeck, “Ecumenism and the Future,” 14–15; Rahner, The Church After the Council, 28. 310 Lindbeck, “Church and World,” 236. He says, “This is by no means identical with theologia crucis, but it must be recognized as giving authentic expression to a central element of the gospel.” See Lumen Gentium, § 8; Lindbeck, FRCT, 48–49.

71

claims: 1) The Roman Catholic Church has, in a certain nonessential or accidental sense, a

higher ecclesiological status than Protestant churches. 2) Higher ecclesiological status does not

guarantee greater faithfulness. He does this by emphasizing the Reformation as a corrective

movement and by drawing a parallel between the church and Israel. Just as God remains faithful

to Israel despite its lack of faithfulness, so God maintains his faithfulness to the church. He also,

drawing upon imagery of Israel’s exile, recognizes that the church has moved into a post-

Christendom context. He prognosticates that the future church will be a diaspora people.

Within the period surrounding Vatican II, Lindbeck tends to place greater emphasis upon

the Roman Church’s possibility to change and update the gospel. Lindbeck remained “cautiously

optimistic.” He reiterates that the time leading up to the Council was the golden age of American

Catholicism. Catholicism became the largest and most powerful of American minorities, with

strong schools and seminaries, the first Catholic president, and Catholic film protagonists played

by stars like Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman. Lindbeck says:

For the overwhelming majority of observers, both Catholic and non-Catholic, the Council made an astonishingly good beginning. Secularists joined in acclaiming the aggiornamento, the new openness to the world; and Protestants enthusiastically greeted the passing of the Counter-Reformation, the concern for what Hans Küng called the legitimate demands of the Reformers, the return to the Bible. Almost everyone—not least Albert C. Outler and other Protestant observers at the Council (including myself)—forecast a great upsurge of Christian vitality and faithfulness within the Roman Catholic communion.311

By 1975, Lindbeck’s tone changed. He says that much of what transpired after the

Council is the reverse of what he and others projected. He contends, “The aftermath of Vatican II

can be read as disastrous.”312 Visible piety, church attendance, Catholic schools, and

311 George Lindbeck, “The Crisis in American Catholicism,” in Our Common History as Christians: Essays

in Honor of Albert C. Outler, ed. John Deschner, Leroy T. Howe, and Klaus Penzel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 48–49. Both Bruce Marshall and Bernard Eckerstorfer see this essay as representative of this shift in Lindbeck’s thought. See Marshall, “Introduction,” x–xi; Eckerstorfer, 407–408.

312 Lindbeck, “Crisis,” 49.

72

commitment to priestly and religious vocations dropped. Open dissention and confusion over

how to implement the Council’s reforms wreaks havoc. He says, “The progressive avant garde is

basically the Catholic wing of contemporary Western liberalism and has all the elitist defects of

the liberal establishment.”313 The Roman Catholic Church is not alone in experiencing these

difficulties, but Lindbeck concludes, “both the sharp contrast with the recent past and the sheer

intensity make Roman Catholic difficulties seem far greater than those of other major Christian

bodies.”314

Lindbeck did not completely lose hope, however. He projects that while Catholicism in

the United States and elsewhere may at first be substantially weakened by conciliar changes,

“eventually the liturgical and biblical renewals in particular will be assets in forming a new and

more Christian Catholic culture.”315 He argues this will be more likely as the church becomes a

diaspora community. He still sees various developments of Vatican II, such as the emphasis

upon the church as the messianic pilgrim people of God, as positive, but notes that these

developments can be interpreted in various ways by various camps within the Roman Catholic

Church. Lindbeck says, “There is no publicly persuasive way of showing who is the faithful

Catholic simply because the Council is equivocal on these and a whole range of other

questions.”316 These changes in understanding led to shifts in Lindbeck’s approach to the

interpretation of Scripture, which will be the subject of the next chapter.

313 Ibid., 53. He clarifies this statement further saying, “In short, the process of reforming popular Catholicism started by the Council is draining it of its communal, cultural, and religious substance. Traditional Catholicism may have needed reform both for worldly reasons and from the point of view of the original Christian message, but not at the cost of administering cures worse than the disease.”

314 Lindbeck, “Crisis,” 49–50. 315 Ibid., 58. 316 Ibid., 60. He notes, “This ambiguity, it should be remembered, was for the most part deliberate. In order

to get as wide a consensus as possible, the new and old were simply placed side by side in the new documents, leaving open the question of whether the new is to be interpreted in terms of the old or visa versa.”

73

CHAPTER THREE

THE ROLE OF SCRIPTURE IN THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY

“[T]he sacred word is a precious instrument in the mighty hand of God for attaining to that unity which the Saviour holds out to all.” – Unitatis Redintegratio317 In his emphasis upon retrieval, Lindbeck does not merely seek to retrieve Reformers like

Martin Luther, medievalists like Thomas Aquinas, or church fathers like Augustine, though he

does in different ways draw upon their work. Lindbeck argues that the church needs to recover or

retrieve something lost from its memory: its identification as Israel. Though the church continues

to sing of this identity as Jerusalem or Zion in its hymns, it has become a dead metaphor for most

Christians. Lindbeck notes, however, that this retrieval does not entail “represtination or

replication.” Instead, “It inevitably involves change, especially when it is a matter … of making

explicit what was before largely implicit.”318 Lindbeck sees this as a historical task and one that

involves constructive and critical theological work. He says, “What historical work unearths can

be tested and reformulated in terms of faithfulness to the sources (ressourcement) and

appropriateness to the present (aggiornomento).”319

In order for this retrieval to take place, the church’s identification as Israel “must be both

acceptable and advantageous, both defensible against objections and constructively useful.”320

Lindbeck argues that in order for the church to identify itself as Israel in a nonsupersessionist

way, the church must come to retrieve a “premodern narrative-typological” way of interpreting

Scripture, but in such a way that it is not anticritical. Lindbeck argues that this reception and

reintegration of the identification of the church as Israel can aid in redeveloping a communal

317 Unitatis Redintegratio, § 21. 318 Lindbeck, “Comparative Doctrine,” 6–7. 319 Ibid., 7. 320 Ibid., 16.

74

language, which would be ecclesiologically and ecumenically promising. This chapter will

introduce Lindbeck’s approach to Scripture by focusing on his use of four key terms: retrieval,

narrative, intratextuality, and consensus.

RETRIEVAL

Lindbeck argues denominationalism, or “the recognition that divided Christian churches

even within a single locality can each be a genuine ecclesial community with a right to separate

existence and to recruit members on a voluntary basis,” enabled modern ecumenism’s

existence.321 This understanding of denominationalism first developed among seventeenth

century Independents associated with the Westminster Assembly, and then developed further in

the colonies of Maryland and Rhode Island. Ecumenical practice, however, began in the

nineteenth century with the evangelical revivals. Protestants of various stripes partnered with one

another in various mission and social reform projects, such as the sending of missionaries, the

publication and distribution of Bibles, Sunday Schools, and societies devoted to causes like

abolition. Protestants within societies like the Student Christian Movement minimized

denominational difference, and that “made interdenominational cooperation possible.”322

This Protestant evangelicalism combined with theological liberalism led to the

beginnings of the modern ecumenical movement in the early twentieth century, as exemplified in

conferences like the International Missionary Conference in 1910 and Stockholm Life and Work

Conference in 1921. Lindbeck says, “The goal was for the churches to work, live, and (for many)

321 Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 648. See George Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” in The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century, ed. David F. Ford, vol. II (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 256. 256. 322 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 256. See Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 648–649.

75

commune together even while agreeing to disagree on many matters of faith and order.”323 At

this stage, however, ecumenism remained interdenominational.

Anglicans in the early twentieth century were the first to advocate for unitive ecumenism,

and this emphasis was strengthened by Orthodox participation in the ecumenical movement.

Unitive ecumenical concerns developed further through the initial Faith and Order Conference in

Lausanne in 1927, the formation of the World Council of Churches in 1948, major ecumenical

statements that stem from the New Delhi statement on unity in 1961, and the entrance of the

Roman Catholic Church into ecumenism following the Second Vatican Council. Lindbeck goes

on to say,

There is now, at least on paper, a consensus in the organized ecumenical movement that God-willed unity of the church involves more than interdenominational cooperation and inter-communion between autonomous bodies divided in faith and order. This does not mean uniformity is desirable. There may be great variations, as even Rome now insists, in practice, worship, organizational structures, and doctrinal formulations, but the differences must be compatible or reconcilable.324 This has been the case in both bilateral and multilateral statements since Vatican II.

Despite this unitive consensus, Lindbeck remains concerned about the

interdenominational ecumenism that has gained in influence since Vatican II, that has led to a

shift in emphasis from ressourcement to aggiornamento. Lindbeck argues that when he was a

student in the 1940s and 50s, ressourcement appeared to be the future trend in theology. “It was

the way of escape from tired liberalism or oppressive fundamentalism for Protestants, and from

neoscholasticism for Catholics.”325 This was seen among conciliar progressives who appealed to

the church fathers on the Catholic side, such as de Lubac, Congar, Rahner, Küng, and Ratzinger,

and from “neo-orthodox” Protestants, like Karl Barth, who appealed to the Reformers. Both

323 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 257. See Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 649. 324 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 257. See Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 649. 325 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 258; Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 650.

76

Protestant and Catholic advocates of ressourcement agreed “that it is possible to read the Bible in

ways that are both faithful to the historic faith and yet also critically historical.”326

Lindbeck says, however, that emphases upon ressourcement have waned while the call

for aggiornamento has increased. He points not only to the increase in contextual and

liberationist theologies, but also to “‘hermeneutic’ approaches” and interreligious theologies that

question or reject the unsurpassability of Christian faith. These various postconciliar theological

movements differ from one another, but within each of them,

the visible unification of the historically institutionalized church is of secondary importance. It is hard from their perspectives to see the relevance of church unity to liberation struggles, or to the search for hermeneutic understanding, or to the promotion of human unity through interreligious dialogue, and this tends to make them indifferent or hostile to the doctrinal and structural concerns of ressourcement.327 Some Catholic advocates of these new approaches appeal to Vatican II’s emphasis on

aggiornomento to defend their positions. They make aggiornomento “the primary theme of the

council, and they use it to interpret the other two major conciliar emphases on Scripture and the

early church and on continuity with the specifically Roman tradition as it developed after the

first centuries.”328 Rather than seeing Dei Verbum as the central document of the Council, they

instead place Gaudium et Spes as the central document.

Lindbeck notes that while emphasis upon unitive ecumenism has decreased, other forms

of ecumenism have arisen in its place. In fact, “The way theologians do their work is more

ecumenical than ever before.”329 Various “interconfessional coalitions, movements, and interest

groups” have arisen, and “Theologians are less and less restricted by ecclesiastical frontiers. The

methods they use, and the themes they treat, and the conclusions they reach are increasingly

326 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 259; Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 651. 327 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 259. See Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 651. 328 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 259. See Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 651–652. 329 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 260; Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 652.

77

transconfessional.”330 For example, Protestant scholars read Catholic biblical scholars like

Raymond Brown or theologians like Hans Urs von Balthasar not primarily as members of the

Roman Catholic Church, but as fellow Christians, and “they agree or disagree with them in ways

which transect ecclesiastical boundaries. We are no longer surprised … that Catholic, Protestant,

and Orthodox theologians are often closer to each other in basic theological orientation than they

are to many members of their own communions.”331

Despite the closeness that theologians work with each other across denominational

boundaries, Lindbeck concludes, “[I]t would be a mistake to conclude from this that church unity

is immanent. Interdenominational ecumenism and the weakening of distinct ecclesiastical

identities which often accompanies it can have the effect of making the unification of the

churches less appealing or more difficult.”332 The interdenominationalism of nineteenth century

evangelicalism did not lead to unity, and their twentieth century successors have often opposed

to the ecumenical movement because it is a distraction from “the saving of individual souls.”333

Lindbeck notes, however, that this anti-ecumenical interdenominationalism is not unique to

evangelicalism, but is a marker of Protestantism. Many Protestants see the denominations as

interchangeable and belong to several denominations in their lifetimes. This

interdenominationalism is “content to stop short with mutual respect, cooperation and

intercommunion.”334 This type of ecumenism is reinforced by this shift to aggiornomento and

“world-oriented” ecumenical perspectives that have come to the forefront within the World

Council of Churches. Those who advocate justice, peace, and the integrity of creation (JPIC)

330 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 260. See Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 652. 331 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 260; Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 653. 332 Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 653. See Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 260–261. In “Ecumenical Theology,” Lindbeck uses the terms “formal” and “procedural” ecumenism as synonymous to unitive and interdenominational ecumenism. 333 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 261; Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 653. 334 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 261.

78

have come to see traditional Faith and Order ecumenism, as seen in Baptism, Eucharist, and

Ministry or in Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue, as a distraction from justice concerns. This is

all occurring despite their impressive achievements. “Theology, to repeat, is less unitive though

more interdenominational.”335

Lindbeck argues that this situation likely arose for two reasons. First, the sociological

roots of ressourcement, on both the Protestant and Catholic side, were shallow. He says,

Ressourcement on both sides of the confessional divide was the product of small and formidably learned theological elites who had mastered modem scholarship yet also learned to live in the world of the sources and to understand modem problems from that perspective. Most of those who followed them, however, did not have the same rootage in Scripture and the pre-modem heritage. They were not so steeped in the thought and the spirituality of the sources that they could, so to speak, absorb modernity into historic Christian outlooks, and thereby view present reality through the spectacles, the lenses, of Scripture and early tradition.336

Ressourcement was initially seen as the only alternative to fundamentalism/traditionalism and to

nineteenth-century liberalism, but even when turning to neo-orthodoxy or to la nouvelle

théologie, much post-conciliar theology sought to update the faith and address modern concerns

rather than return to Christianity’s roots. When their attention shifted away from ressourcement

to aggiornamento, it also shifted away from a concern for Christian unity.

Those who emphasize aggiornamento and JPIC may welcome church unity, but only

insofar as it is instrumental to the unification of humanity. This is true not only for Protestants

involved with the World Council of Churches, but for Catholics as well. Catholics may come to a

similar conclusion by pointing to Lumen Gentium’s emphasis upon the church as a “sacramental

and efficacious sign of the coming unity of all humankind.”337 Lindbeck notes that those who,

335 Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 654. 336 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 264. See Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 655. 337 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 265; Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 656.

79

like himself, continue to emphasize ressourcement do not necessarily reject calls for justice, but

they also do not see the unity of the church as an instrumental good. Rather,

Work for unity is for them a divine imperative which Christians are bound to obey even when they are unable to see what practical effects it might have. Jesus’ prayer that his followers be one “so that they world may believe” (John 17:21) is not conditional on Christians seeing how unity contributes to that end. Thus unitive ecumenism is optional for one group and necessary for the other.338

Second, Lindbeck says that those who advocated ressourcement have come to read

Scripture almost exclusively by way of historical criticism: “the interpretation has become the

province of specialized scholars rather than a communal enterprise in which all theologians, as

well as lay folk, have a part.”339 He does not deny the indispensability of historical criticism for

the study of the Bible and for returning to the sources, but he argues, historical criticism “by

itself it provides little positive guidance on how to meet new challenges.” He thus argues that

contemporary neglect of historical criticism by those who emphasize aggiornomento is

understandable, for it “gives little help in meeting contemporary challenges.”340

Lindbeck thus argues that those who stress ressourcement and unitive ecumenism should

not simply lament recent theological trends that emphasize aggiornomento. He says, “These

movements have directed attention to contemporary problems and to biblical insights which

otherwise would have gone unnoticed. Christian engagement with Marxism and feminism, for

example, has helped open eyes to what the world is and what Scripture says.”341 He indeed

argues, “The renewal of a communal tradition involves almost by definition ressourcement and

aggiornomento.”342 What he opposes is what he calls “unmediated aggiornomento,” which he

338 Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 656–657. See Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 265–266. 339 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 265. 340 Ibid.; Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 656. 341 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 266. See Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 657. 342 Lindbeck, “Comparative Doctrine,” 6.

80

defines as “the updating of faith and practice by direct translation into presumably more

intelligible and relevant modern idioms and actions.”343 He says of these recent movements of

aggiornomento,

One may think that these insights need to be incorporated into another framework in which faithfulness to the sources rather than present relevance is primary, and yet be grateful for them. For this perspective, recent theological trends are not a defeat for unitive ecumenism, but a challenge which may in the long run contribute to the fullness and faithfulness with which reunited churches find guidance in Scripture and tradition.344 He notes, however, that if this is to take place, “there is need for better ways of reading the

sources. Familiarity with them does not by itself provide guidance to new situations.”345

Christians do not need completely new and unforeseen ways of reading Scripture in order to

relate Scripture to the present or to these social challenges. Rather, Christians can look to

previous generations of Bible readers, because for them, “Narrative and typological

interpretation enabled the Bible to speak with its own voice in new situations.”346

Lindbeck defines postliberalism as “an attempt to recover premodern scriptural

interpretation in contemporary form.”347 By premodern he means three things. First, the reading

of Scripture prior to the development of foundationalism.348 Lindbeck says that a

nonfoundational approach to biblical inspiration does not seek to provide “an explanation or

theory of why the Bible is authoritative or how it comes from God, but simply a reiteration of the

343 George Lindbeck, “Confession and Community: An Israel-like View of the Church,” Christian Century 107, no. 16 (May 9, 1990): 494. 344 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 266. See Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 657. 345 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 266. See Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 657. 346 George Lindbeck, “Scripture, Consensus, and Community,” in Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, ed. Richard John Neuhaus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 86. 347 Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm, eds., “A Panel Discussion: Lindbeck, Hunsinger, McGrath & Fackre,” in The Nature of Confession: Evangelicals & Postliberals in Conversation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 246. 348 Ibid.

81

primacy of the text.”349 Lindbeck also points out in his discussion of a non or prefoundational

doctrine of Scripture, “It is as foolish from this perspective to seek foundational justifications (as

is done in systematic apologetics) for employing the scriptures of one’s own tradition as it is for

utilizing the language of the society in which one lives.”350

Second, premodern refers to the time before “scriptural reasoning was molded and

distorted, in many cases, by the inerrancy and inspiration controversies.” Lindbeck says

postliberal theology is “agnostic about these controversies and positions that came out of them,

just as premodern scriptural interpretation was.”351

Third, premodern refers to a time before individualism and the rise of “conversionist

revivalism.” Lindbeck says, “To speak of individualism in this context means that postliberalism

tries to divorce itself from the antiecclesial, the anti- or low-sacramental and the anti- or

noncreedal ways of reading Scripture that have prevailed on the modern evangelical side.”352

While scholars are often dismissive of the devotional or spiritual readings of Scripture, Lindbeck

notes the importance of devotional readings “to the degree that they have escaped

fundamentalist, liberal, and historical-critical influences,” and thus resemble premodern reading

strategies: “The Bible continues to be treated by those who use it to guide their lives as a self-

referential interglossing whole with multiple and changing applications in varying situations.”353

Despite the respect Lindbeck gives to devotional reading, he remains concerned that “popular

349 George Lindbeck, “Hans W. Frei and the Future of Theology in America,” December 2, 1988, 8. See George Lindbeck, “Hans Frei and Biblical Narrative: The Prospects for a Postmodern Anselmianism,” November 22, 1989, 9–10. In both these essays, Lindbeck cites Ronald Thiemann, who says that Scripture should be “treated as a gift of prevenient grace.” He also points to Thomas Aquinas, “who treats the doctrines of revelation as grounded in, but not grounding, the authority of scripture.” “Frei and the Future,” 18; “Frei and Biblical Narrative,” 23–24. 350 Lindbeck, “Frei and the Future,” 7; Lindbeck, “Frei and Biblical Narrative,” 8. 351 Phillips and Okholm, “Panel Discussion,” 246. 352 Ibid. 353 Lindbeck, “Frei and the Future,” 8; Lindbeck, “Frei and Biblical Narrative,” 10–11.

82

Bible reading, where it persists, has become increasingly individualistic and/or sectarian.”354 He

thus argues that the church needs to develop skills, in connection with its worship and liturgy, in

order to “make of scripture a communally and personally interesting, followable, and powerful

text.”355

He notes, however, that this retrieval of premodern, precritical exegesis does not deny the

importance of historical criticism, but instead it involves “placing it in a very subordinate role as

far as the theologically significant reading of Scripture is concerned.”356 In his earlier work,

Lindbeck argued that historical criticism of the Bible is “of fundamental ecumenical

importance.”357 He later has some ambivalence about historical criticisms ecumenical

helpfulness, and argues the method has a negative or “ground-clearing” function.358 It is to

“make impossible many of the traditional arguments for post-biblical developments and

positions.”359 It is “absolutely indispensable in keeping theologians and the church honest.”360

For example, Protestants and Catholics can no longer cite Matthew 16:18 as a prooftext to settle

disputes over the papacy.361 Or, to provide another example central to the thesis of this

dissertation, the historical critical project helped modern Christians reread the relationship of

church and synagogue.362 Historical criticism in and of itself, however, is not capable of bridging

354 Lindbeck, “Frei and the Future,” 9; Lindbeck, “Frei and Biblical Narrative,” 11. 355 Lindbeck, “Frei and the Future,” 9; Lindbeck, “Frei and Biblical Narrative,” 11. Lindbeck believes literary theory can assist in this development. 356 Phillips and Okholm, “Panel Discussion,” 246. 357 Lindbeck, FRCT, 113. See Lindbeck, “Pope John’s Council,” 20–21; George Lindbeck, “Ecumenism and the Future,” 13. 358 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 265. 359 George Lindbeck, “The Bible as Realistic Narrative,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 17, no. 1 (Winter 1980): 82. 360 Ibid., 85. 361 Ibid., 82. Lindbeck clarifies this further, saying, “Yet this negative conclusion does not, of course, settle the issue, because it is always possible to discover new arguments. Catholics, for example, may no longer hold that the historical Jesus founded the papacy, but they can maintain that this institution is a God-willed and irreversible providential development.” 362 Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 85–86.

83

past divisions.363 Secondarily, historical-criticism can influence the “theological-literary

interpretation of texts.”364 Lindbeck also argues that “traditional exegesis can accommodate

historical-critical conclusions,” but not the other way around.365

Lindbeck sees the postmodern context as an opportune time to retrieve precritical

exegesis. There is an increased interest among biblical scholars in the “literary features, social

and communal functioning, and canonical unity of the scriptural text.”366 This has led to a more

positive attitude toward premodern exegesis.367 He also argues, “Postmodernism is compatible

with scripturalism because it has taken the linguistic turn.”368

He notes that this retrieval has already begun prior to these developments. Lindbeck

believes that the beginning of a retrieval of classical hermeneutics can already be seen in the

work of Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar. He says:

Here are twentieth-century theologians whose use of the Bible is more nearly classical than anything in several centuries and who yet are distinctively modem (e.g., they do not reject historical criticism). Both are wary of translating the Bible into alien conceptualities; both seek, rather, to redescribe the world or worlds in which they live in biblical terms; both treat Scripture as a Christ-centered and narrationally (or, for von Balthasar, “dramatically”) and typologically unified whole; and in both the reader is referred back to the biblical text itself by exegetical work which is an integral part of the theological program. In short, these two theologians inhabit the same universe of theological discourse as the fathers, medievals and Reformers to a greater degree than do most modem theologians.369

363 George Lindbeck, “The Reformation Heritage and Christian Unity,” Lutheran Quarterly 2, no. 4 (Winter 1988): 499. Lindbeck says, “If Christians are to be guided towards unity, so the Reformers would say, they need to place themselves within the total community of faith and read the authoritative sources as witnesses in their entirety to Jesus Christ who in his very humanity is Immanuel, God with us, and is alone to be trusted and obeyed in life and death.” 364 George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, 25th Anniversary Edition. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 108. 365 Lindbeck, “Reformation Heritage,” 499. See George Lindbeck, “The Gospel’s Uniqueness: Election and Untranslatability,” Modern Theology 13, no. 4 (October 1997): 438. 366 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 268. 367 Lindbeck, “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 439. 368 Lindbeck, “Frei and the Future,” 6; Lindbeck, “Frei and Biblical Narrative,” 7. 369 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 268–269; Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 98. See Lindbeck, “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 440.

84

Because they depended upon Scripture in similar ways, differences between them can be decided

in reference to Scripture, whereas for theologians who do not have such a dependence upon

Bible, differences between them cannot be settled through biblical study. This is despite the fact

that their approach(es) to Scripture have not been adopted widely by their devotees.

NARRATIVE

Lindbeck says, “I am chiefly indebted to Hans Frei for my understanding of narrative and

its place in Scripture,” in particular his 1974 book The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative.370 He

argues that Frei is attempting to do in a postmodern situation what Barth did in a modern

situation.371 Frei begins that book arguing, “Western Christian reading of the Bible in the days

before the rise of historical criticism was usually strongly realistic, i.e. at once literal and

historical, and not only doctrinal or edifying.”372 While other approaches to reading Scripture,

such as the spiritual or allegorical senses, were permissible, they could not violate the literal

sense. The literal sense held primacy.373 As Jason Byassee says, “The rule that nothing can be

argued allegorically from scripture that is not also present literally is as old as Origen.”374

Frei also argues:

Most eminent among them were all those stories which together went into the making of a single storied or historical sequence. Long before a minor modern school of thought made the biblical “history of salvation” a special spiritual and historical sequence for historiographical and theological inquiry, Christian preachers and theological commentators, Augustine most notable among them, had envisioned the real world as formed by the sequence told by the biblical stories. That temporal world covered the span

370 Lindbeck, “Church,” 202n9. Lindbeck says, “I also owe much to two other colleagues, David Kelsey

and Brevard Childs, and to those, beginning with Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou, who have contributed to a better understanding of the functions of typology in patristic and medieval exegesis.” Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 75n2. 371 Lindbeck, “Frei and the Future,” 6; Lindbeck, “Frei and Biblical Narrative,” 6–7. 372 Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974), 1. 373 Frei, “Literal Reading,” 36, passim; Hans W. Frei, “‘Narrative’ in Christian and Modern Reading,” in Theology and Dialogue: Essays in Conversation with George Lindbeck, ed. Bruce D. Marshall (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 151.

374 Jason Byassee, Praise Seeking Understanding: Reading the Psalms with Augustine, Radical Traditions: Theology in a Postcritical Key (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 39.

85

of ages from creation to the final consummation to come, and included the governance both of man’s natural environment and of that secondary environment which we often think of as provided for man by himself and call “history” or “culture.”375 This mode of reading Scripture continued in western Christendom, and was bolstered in the era

of the Renaissance and Reformation.376

Such a way of reading Scripture had three key elements. First, when readers discerned

that a given biblical story should be read literally, “it followed automatically that it referred to

and described actual historical occurrences.”377 Frei, however, differentiates this from modern

attempts to see the literal sense “as evidence that it is a reliable historical report.”378

Second, “if the real historical world describe by the several biblical stories is a single

world of one temporal sequence, there must in principle be one cumulative story to depict it.”379

The various biblical narratives make up one narrative, and “The interpretive means for joining

them was to make earlier biblical stories figures or types of later stories and of their events and

patters of meaning.”380 While not losing their own “literal meaning or specific temporal

reference, an earlier story (or occurrence) was a figure of a later one.”381 Old Testament

narratives have their fulfillment in the New Testament. “The Jewish texts are taken as ‘types’ of

the story of Jesus as their common ‘antitype.’”382 The narratives of Jesus are, therefore, the

central and unifying narratives within Christian Scripture. Frei argues, “It was a way of turning

the variety of biblical books into a single, unitary canon, one that embraced in particular the

differences between Old and New Testaments.”383 This figural reading did not violate the literal

375 Frei, Eclipse, 1. 376 Ibid., 18–37. 377 Ibid., 2. 378 Ibid. 379 Ibid. 380 Ibid. 381 Ibid. 382 Frei, “Literal Reading,” 39. 383 Frei, Eclipse, 2.

86

sense of the biblical text, but instead “figuration or typology was a natural extension of literal

interpretation.”384 This way of reading Scripture reaffirmed the primacy of the literal sense.

Third, since the biblical world is identical with the “one and only real world, it must in

principle embrace the experience of any present age and reader…. He was to see his dispositions,

his actions and passions, the shape of his own life as well as that of his era’s events as figures of

that storied world.”385 As an example of this, Frei briefly discusses the narrative of creation and

the fall of humanity (Gen 1–3). He notes that the story has a narrative integrity of its own, but it

also, as Paul and other Christians interpreters have noted, exists as a part of the overarching

narrative of Scripture and creation. Then, figural exegetes have also read the narrative as a part

of human experience. Christians exegetes adapted the narrative of Scripture to new situations,

but “in steadily revised form it still remained the adequate depiction of the common and

inclusive world until the coming of modernity.”386

In the rest of The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, Frei sketches how this mode of

interpretation broke down. He says the breakdown began in the seventeenth century among

radical interpreters like Spinoza and among some conservative interpreters like Cocceius, but the

breakdown developed further in the eighteenth and nineteenth century through the development

of empiricism, Deism, and historical criticism on one side and romanticism and pietism on the

other. Within this new mode of interpretation, “There is now a logical distinction and a reflective

distance between the stories and the ‘reality’ they depict.”387 Biblical interpreters came to see “its

meaning is detachable from the specific story that sets it forth.”388 For this reason, Frei tends to

384 Ibid. 385 Frei, Eclipse, 3. See Frei, “Literal Reading,” 40. 386 Frei, Eclipse, 3–4. 387 Ibid., 5. See Lindbeck, ND, 105. 388 Frei, Eclipse, 6. Frei says this is true for both liberal and conservative interpreters of the Bible.

87

discuss the realistic narratives of Scripture as “history-like.” For example, in The Identity of

Jesus Christ, Frei says:

In other words, whether or not these stories report history (either reliably or unreliably), whether or not the Gospels are other things besides realistic stories, what they tell us is a fruit of the stories themselves. We cannot have what they are about (the “subject matter”) without the stories themselves. They are history-like precisely because like history- writing and the traditional novel and unlike myths and allegories they literally mean what they say. There is no gap between the representation and what is represented by it.389 Christians, for example, affirm Jesus’ resurrection even though it cannot be historically or

empirically verified.390

While previously seen as an extension of the literal reading of Scripture, these modern

readers illegitimized figural reading. This happened for three reasons. First, the “verbal or literal

sense was now equated with the single meaning of statements.”391 This disallowed the possibility

that a text could have multiple or fuller meanings. Second, reading the Bible as a unified text

“appeared different from, if not incompatible with, the self-confinement of literal reading to

specific texts.”392 Third, scholars no longer saw figural reading as a proper way to unify the

biblical canon. Instead, “Literal reading came increasingly to mean two things: grammatical and

lexical exactness in estimating what the original sense of a text was to its original audience, and

the coincidence of the description with how facts really occurred.”393 The chief question, for both

conservative and liberal readers, was “How reliable are the texts?”394 Conservatives argued for

the factuality of the texts, while liberals argued that the Bible must be read in the same way as

389 Hans W. Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ: The Hermeneutical Bases of Dogmatic Theology, Updated and Expanded Edition. (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013), 11–12. This does not mean, however, that all of the Bible is realistic narrative. 390 Hans W. Frei, “On Interpreting the Christian Story,” in Reading Faithfully Volume 1: Writings From the Archives: Theology & Hermeneutics, ed. Mike Higton and Mark Alan Bowald (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), 79–80. 391 Frei, Eclipse, 7. 392 Ibid. 393 Ibid. 394 Ibid., 8.

88

other books, “and that ancient writings containing miracle reports as well as reports of

unexperienceable happenings have to be reconstructed in the light of natural experience and

explanatory theory.”395 For both camps, the conservative inerrantists and the liberal historical

critics, “the narrative meaning had collapsed into the factual and disappeared.”396

Frei attempts, as Lindbeck notes, a “postcritical retrieval of classic ways of reading the

Bible which were widespread until well past the Reformation.”397 A key aspect of Frei’s retrieval

is the emphasis that while modern interpreters came to divide meaning and narrative, “Meaning

and narrative shape bear significantly on each other.”398 Frei argues that the narrative shape of,

for example, the Gospel accounts, is indispensable to the subject discussed. Therefore, for Frei,

“He is not Jesus Christ apart from that story of his.”399

In addition, Frei emphasizes the biblical canon as a unified canon, and “Figural

interpretation, then, sets forth the unity of the canon as a single cumulative and complex pattern

of meaning.”400 He follows Luther and Calvin in having a “literary-literal” rather than a

“grammatical-literal” sense. So instead of a doctrine of verbal plenary inspiration, Frei says “the

biblical narratives described and depicted precisely what they meant to describe and depict.”401

This means, “When the reformers said that they found Christ in the Old Testament as both

Luther and Calvin said, this was in no sense an allegory for them, it was a figural interpretation

of the Old Testament.”402

395 Ibid., 18. 396 Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 83. 397 Lindbeck, “Frei and the Future,” 2; Lindbeck, “Frei and Biblical Narrative,” 1. 398 Frei, Eclipse, 11. 399 Frei, “On Interpreting,” 78. 400 Frei, Eclipse, 33. 401 Frei, “On Interpreting,” 75. 402 Ibid., 75–76. Frei and Lindbeck both maintain this distinction between allegory and typology or figural interpretation.

89

It is important to note that while Frei emphasizes narrative in his work, he has, as

Lindbeck argues, “resisted the tendency to develop a general hermeneutical theory of narrative

(sometimes even an anthropology) which is then applied to the Bible. Each text should be

interpreted in its own terms: the Bible has its own hermeneutics.”403 In addition, “Communal

traditions, as Frei was inclined to think, give to the scriptures which they formed and which form

them a logic and corresponding interpretive strategies which are unique.”404 Frei and Lindbeck

also critique the notion of utilizing a general hermeneutic with regional applications, however,

they do not deny that general hermeneutical theories, even deconstructionist ones, may be

“useful selectively.”405

Frei speaks critically of “story” or “narrative theology,” which he argues has its roots in

the intersection of Christianity and certain forms of psychology. This type of theology depends

upon a general understanding of human nature or religion. “It is almost invariably—covertly or

overtly—a theory that texts are variable, written instances that really express a fixed, universal,

and interiorized personal condition of consciousness.”406 In a Christian narrative theology, it

403 Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 82n3. See Lindbeck, “Frei and the Future,” 12; Mike Higton, “Forward,” in The Identity of Jesus Christ: The Hermeneutical Bases of Dogmatic Theology, by Hans W. Frei, Updated and Expanded Edition. (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013), xi. Frei would want to emphasize the plural “hermeneutics” here, for different hermeneutical rules may apply to different genres and texts. He says, “I hope nobody thinks of something called ‘narrative sense’ as a kind of hermeneutical absolute.” Frei, “Specificity,” 105. See also 106–107. 404 Lindbeck, “Frei and the Future,” 12; Lindbeck, “Frei and Biblical Narrative,” 16. 405 Frei, “Literal Reading,” 59. Frei says in this context, “It is doubtful any scheme for reading texts, and narrative texts in particular, and biblical narrative texts even more specifically, can serve globally and foundationally, so that the reading of biblical material would simply be a regional instance of a universal procedure.” For critiques of a general hermeneutics or a general theory of narrative in Lindbeck, see, “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 433; “Unbaptized God: The Basic Flaw in Ecumenical Theology, by Robert W. Jenson, 1992; Review Essay,” Pro Ecclesia 3, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 237. Frei and Lindbeck point to Paul Ricoeur as an example of someone who has both a general theory of narrative and attempts to regionalize a general hermeneutic. See Hans W. Frei, “Letter to Gary Comstock, November 5, 1984,” in Reading Faithfully Volume 1: Writings From the Archives: Theology & Hermeneutics, ed. Mike Higton and Mark Alan Bowald (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), 36; Frei, “Narrative,” 158–159; Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 82n3. Frei defends his use of literary theory, saying, “As for the New Criticism, a literal reading of the Gospels is appropriate under its auspices, but only because and to the extent that it is in fact a disguised Christian understanding of them and not a reading under a general theory, nor even a more low-level theory of meaning than the general hermeneutical scheme.” “Literal Reading,” 67. 406 Frei, “Narrative,” 161. In a letter to his friend, John Woolverton, Frei expresses a concern that his writing would be identified with “story theology.” Hans W. Frei, “Letter to John Woolverton, April 26, 1978,” in

90

involves the telling of one’s own story alongside the telling of a narrative such as Jesus’ death

upon the cross, which in certain liberal or neo-orthodox forms is “the equivalent of revelation-as-

event.”407 He points, as examples, to Paul Tillich and David Tracy. For the former, “Symbols,

myths, and stories evoke in us our ultimate concern.”408 For the latter, “[S]ymbols (and stories a

symbolic expressions in narrative form) are the natural linguistic expressions for expressing

human ‘limit situations’ or ‘limit experiences’ by which he means very much the same thing that

Tillich does: concerns and expressions that cannot, as I say, be reduced to pure conceptual

form.”409 This kind of theology seeks to encapsulate and repeat Protestant theology from Kant to

Schleiermacher and understands theology as “an expression of … the religious character of

humanity.”410 It begins with a general or universal anthropology, and then seeks to draw certain

theological conclusions from it in narrative form.411 Within this understanding of theology,

statements about God are indirect. They are not really statements about God’s essence or

character, but rather statements about God and humanity in relationship.412 Frei says, “Whatever

the merits of this enterprise, it is quite different from an inquiry into the conditions for reading

the narrative texts of the Bible as texts—and from any theology that would find the latter a

‘foundational’ task.”413

One can clearly see the influence of Frei upon Lindbeck’s discussion of narrative, though

differences remain. While both of them emphasize the unity of the biblical canon, Lindbeck

Reading Faithfully Volume 1: Writings From the Archives. Theology & Hermeneutics, ed. Mike Higton and Mark Alan Bowald (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 30-31), 30. 407 Frei, “Narrative,” 161. 408 Frei, “On Interpreting,” 70. 409 Ibid. It should be noted that this piece was originally presented in 1976, and that Frei is interacting with the early David Tracy of Blessed Rage for Order. 410 Ibid. Frei’s description of “story/narrative theology” has similarities with Lindbeck’s description of experiential/expressivism in The Nature of Doctrine. 411 Frei, “Letter to John Woolverton,” 30–31. 412 Frei, “On Interpreting,” 71. 413 Frei, “Narrative,” 161.

91

places more emphasis upon the overarching narrative of Scripture.414 The canon of Scripture,

Lindbeck argues, possesses a “typological and Christological narrative unity in ways which are

imaginatively rich, conceptually exact, argumentatively rigorous, and forever open to the

freedom of the Word, to new understandings.”415

While Lindbeck emphasizes narrative, he does not minimize or ignore the other genres

present within the biblical canon. He rather argues that the overarching biblical narrative holds

together the various materials present within the biblical canon, such as the “poetic, prophetic,

legal, liturgical, sapiential, mythical, legendary, and historical.”416 Apart from the “narrative

meaning,” the unity of the biblical canon and the function of central Christian doctrines that

guide the church’s reading of Scripture (e.g., christological and trinitarian ones), are lost.417

Lindbeck cites David Kelsey, who says that for Karl Barth, the Bible is like a “vast, loosely-

structured, non-fictional novel.”418

Lindbeck again cites Kelsey, who argues that for Barth, “scripture is taken to have the

logical force of stories that render a character, that offer an identity description of an agent.”419

Lindbeck says this has implications both for how Christians understand God and for how they

live:

414 While one can see Frei discussing a premodern understanding of a cumulative narrative within Eclipse, as cited above, he later comes to have misgivings about such a concept. Especially in his later writing, Frei discusses how Christians should read biblical narratives, but not the “biblical narrative.” See Ibid., 160–161. 415 George Lindbeck, “Barth and Textuality,” Theology Today 43, no. 3 (October 1986): 362. See George Lindbeck, “The Church’s Mission to Postmodern Culture,” in Postmodern Theology: Christian Faith in a Pluralist World, ed. Frederic B. Burnham (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), 41. 416 Lindbeck, “Realistic Narrative,” 84; Lindbeck, ND, 106. See George Lindbeck, “Letter to Robert M. Adams,” 2. 417 Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 82–83. 418 David H. Kelsey, Proving Doctrine: The Uses of Scripture in Modern Theology, Trinity Press Edition. (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999), 48. Lindbeck cites this in “Realistic Narrative,” 84; ND, 106–107. 419 Kelsey, Proving Doctrine, 48. Lindbeck cites Kelsey in “Realistic Narrative,” 48; ND, 107. In both places, Lindbeck says that the God is the person that is given an “identity description,” but within this section of Proving Doctrine, Kelsey speaks of Barth’s discussion of Jesus Christ as “Risen Lord.”

92

[Narrative] has historically been treated in mainstream Christianity as the primary biblical literary device by which the God of Israel and of Jesus has identified and characterized himself in relation to human beings in such fashion as to guide the shaping of their thoughts and lives, under the impulse of the Holy Spirit, into conformity with his being and will.420

The primary purpose of Scripture is not to describe “what actually happened,” provide doctrinal

propositions, or symbols of religious experience, though, as Lindbeck notes, “it may do these

things as well.”421 For example, parables like the prodigal son are able to help us understand who

God is in relation to creation. Therefore, “the ability to depict who and what God is like in

creation is not in every case logically dependent on facticity.”422

Lindbeck argues there are two benefits to an emphasis upon the canonical narrative of

Scripture. First, it allows more weight to be given to the Old Testament. He says, “The

fundamental identity description of God is provided by the stories of Israel, Exodus, and

Creation. The identity description is then completed or fulfilled by the stories of Jesus’ life,

death, and resurrection, but the latter stories must be read in the context of what went before.”423

The narratives of Jesus’ life are the climax of the biblical story, and in the Gospels Jesus as the

“Son of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the same strong sense that the Hamlet of

Shakespeare’s play is Prince of Denmark.”424 He sees this as an improvement over historical-

critical approaches that focus primarily upon “what actually happened.” For example, such

approaches tend to ignore the canonical importance of events like the exodus because so little

can be known from the time period it is purported to have taken place. Because of this, modern

420 Lindbeck, “Letter to Robert M. Adams,” 2. See Lindbeck, ND, 107; Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 82. 421 Lindbeck, “Realistic Narrative,” 84–85. Lindbeck says, echoing Frei, “Given this canonical intent, it is not surprising that the Bible is often ‘history-like’ rather than ‘likely history.’” See Lindbeck, “Hans W. Frei and the Future,” 10; Lindbeck, “Hans Frei and Biblical Narrative,” 14. See Lindbeck, “Frei and the Future,” 10; Lindbeck, “Frei and Biblical Narrative,” 14. 422 Lindbeck, “Realistic Narrative,” 85. See Lindbeck, ND, 108. 423 Lindbeck, “Realistic Narrative,” 85. See Lindbeck, ND, 107. 424 Lindbeck, ND, 107.

93

readers of Scripture often miss the literary parallels between, for example, the exodus account

and the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus.

Secondly, Lindbeck argues, “when looked at canonically rather than historically-

critically, the purpose of the gospels is not at all to provide information for its own sake about

the earthly Jesus, but rather to tell about the risen, ascended, and now-present Christ whose

identity as divine-human agent is irreplaceably enacted in the stories of Jesus of Nazareth.”425

Christ is also, for Lindbeck, the center of the biblical narrative, and the person who gives the

biblical text its narrative unity. This christological center differentiates Christian interpretation of

the Old Testament from the Torah-centered Rabbinnic interpretation of the Tanakh.426

Lindbeck notes that a strength of Frei’s emphasis upon realistic narratives is that it “can

better incorporate the strengths of precritical Bible reading without excluding historical criticism,

i.e., without lapsing into either countercriticism or paracriticism.”427 This differentiates the

postcritical form of biblical study from its precritical forbearers.428

In addition to the influence of Frei, as well as other Yale colleagues like David Kelsey,

Lindbeck’s own Lutheran background plays a role in his understanding of narrative. Luther says,

“[T]he gospel is and should be nothing else than a chronicle, a story, a narrative, about Christ,

telling who he is, what he did, said, and suffered.”429 Shortly after, Luther sets Jesus within the

context of the entire Christian canon, Old and New Testaments, by saying, “The gospel is a story

about Christ, God’s and David’s Son, who died and was raised and is established as Lord. This is

425 Lindbeck, “Realistic Narrative,” 85. 426 Lindbeck, ND, 66; Lindbeck, “Barth,” 362. 427 George Lindbeck, “Dulles on Method,” Pro Ecclesia 1, no. 1 (Fall 1992): 57. 428 Lindbeck, ND, 108. 429 Martin Luther, “A Brief Instruction on What to Look For and Expect in the Gospels,” in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull and William R. Russell, Third Edition. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012), 71. In the same context, Luther treats “story” and “discourse” as more or less interchangeable.

94

the gospel in a nutshell.”430 Lindbeck says, “[I]t is narrative, rather than dogma, which is

epistemologically and motivationally of central importance for Luther.”431 This does not mean

that dogmas are unimportant for Luther, rather they are useful to guide the interpretation of the

Bible’s narratives and to form people as Christians. These dogmas or doctrines, however, “lose

their meaning when abstracted from their narrative and practical settings.”432

Lindbeck differentiates his own theology and understanding of God from Robert Jenson.

He extends the criticism of general theories of narrative to Jenson, arguing it “is likely to have

unfortunate consequences when it is made a guide to biblical interpretation.”433 Connected with

this, Lindbeck critiques Jenson’s (and Ebeling’s) attack on substance metaphysics and traditional

attributes of God such as impassability or upon the communicatio idiomatum.434

INTRATEXTUALITY

Related to Lindbeck’s discussion of narrative is his introduction of the term

“intratextuality.” He argues, “The task of descriptive (dogmatic or systematic) theology is to give

a normative explication of the meaning a religion has for its adherents.”435 He places this

intratextual methodology in opposition to “extratextual” approaches to theology. He says, “The

latter locates meaning outside the text or semiotic system either in the objective realities to which

it refers or in the experiences it symbolizes.”436 Within his cultural-linguistic understanding of

theology, “meaning is immanent. Meaning is constituted by the uses of a specific language rather

430 Ibid., 72. 431 George Lindbeck, “Martin Luther and the Rabbinic Mind,” in Understanding the Rabbinic Mind: Essays on the Hermeneutic of Max Kadushin, ed. Peter Ochs, South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 14 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990), 147. 432 Ibid., 148. 433 Lindbeck, “Unbaptized God Review,” 237. 434 Ibid., 235; George Lindbeck, “Article IV and Lutheran/Roman Catholic Dialogue: The Limits of Diversity in the Understanding of Justification,” Lutheran Theological Seminary Bulletin 61, no. 1 (1981): 44–45. 435 Lindbeck, ND, 99. 436 Ibid., 100.

95

than being distinguishable from it.”437 So, for example, to understand what a word like “God”

means in a given context, one must see how it operates therein rather than determining what

“God” means first, and then reading that definition into that context.

Lindbeck uses the term intratextuality in a few different ways. First, he uses it to refer to

the self-interpreting character of Christian Scripture (scriptura sui ipsius interpres). For

Lindbeck, “Scripture is interpreted in light of Scripture, and the biblical canon is read as a single

interglossing whole.”438 Lindbeck notes that this type of intratextual reading can happen in a

variety of ways. He notes three examples. One could read the Bible in search of certain

propositional doctrines (e.g., Westminster Confession), concepts within the text (biblical

theology movement), or for symbolism (Ricoeur). While the biblical canon does contain

propositions, concepts, and symbols, he centers his understanding of intratextuality firstly upon

the overarching narrative of Scripture from creation to consummation, and secondly upon the

“more intramundane and realistically told stories of God’s chosen ones centering and

culminating in Jesus Christ.”439 The story of Jesus provides “the hermeneutical key to the

whole,” and figural reading assisted in holding together a unified canon.440

Secondly, Lindbeck uses the term intratextuality to say that “all of reality is interpreted in

this same scriptural light—the biblical world absorbs all other worlds.”441 The Bible is “the

interpreting framework for all reality.”442 This builds upon Frei’s third marker of precritical

exegesis: that the biblical world is identical with the “one and only real world” and that “it must

437 Ibid. 438 George Lindbeck, “Atonement & The Hermeneutics of Intratextual Social Embodiment,” in The Nature of Confession: Evangelicals & Postliberals in Conversation, ed. Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 226. 439 Ibid., 228. 440 Ibid. 441 Ibid., 226. This echoes what Lindbeck said a decade earlier: “It is the text, so to speak, which absorbs the world, rather than the world the text” (ND, 104). 442 Lindbeck, ND, 77.

96

in principle embrace the experience of any present age and reader.”443 Christians used typology

not only to unify the canon, but to “embrace extrabiblical reality.”444 For example, King David

was not only seen as a type of Jesus, but later readers also saw David as a model for kings like

Charlamagne and Charles V.445 Unlike allegory, however, typology did not “empty the Old

Testament or postbiblical personages and events of their own reality, and therefore they

constituted a powerful means for imaginatively incorporating all being into a Christ-centered

world.”446 The Bible is not simply used as a metaphor for contemporary events. Lindbeck says,

It does not suggest, as it is often said in our day, that believers find their stories in the Bible, but rather that they make the story of the Bible their story. The cross is not to be viewed as a figurative representation of suffering nor the messianic kingdom as a symbol for hope in the future; rather, suffering should be cruciform, and hopes for the future messianic.447

Lindbeck cautions against allowing “extrabiblical materials” to become “the basic

framework of interpretation.”448 That was the mistake of the Gnostics, who, among other things,

transformed the crucified and risen Messiah of the Gospel accounts into a mythological figure

due to their overdependence upon certain strains of Hellenistic thought. Catholic Christians did

not fully escape these dangers, but “often read Scripture in so Hellenistic a way that Jesus came

to resemble a semipagan demigod.”449 The church needed some exegetical rules to prevent such

abuses, and Lindbeck argues that the insistence of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, as well as

Luther and Calvin, on the primacy of the literal sense provided it. Lindbeck notes, “Whatever the

443 Frei, Eclipse, 3. 444 Lindbeck, ND, 103. 445 Lindbeck says, “Thus an Old Testament type, filtered through the New Testament antitype, became a model for later kings and, in the case of Charlemagne, provided a documentable stimulus to the organization of the educational and parish systems that stand at the institutional origins of Western civilization.” Ibid. 446 Ibid., 103–104. 447 Ibid., 104. 448 Ibid. 449 Ibid.

97

failures in actual execution, and there were many, the interpretive direction was from the Bible to

the world rather than vice versa.”450

Lindbeck does not simply limit this to the words on a page, however. He says,

“Christians are to see all things in relation to God, or, in the words of Scripture, ‘Do all to the

glory of God’ (1 Cor. 10:31) and ‘Take every thought captive to obey Christ’ (2 Cor. 10:5).”451

Christians cannot relate the all things to God, however, apart from Scripture. He notes, “For

Thomas Aquinas, the Bible is the ultimate authority on how to relate everything to God, and

Calvin was fond of the comparison of Scripture to spectacles that comprehensively correct the

vision of those who wear them.”452 This enables Christians to not only look at the world outside

of the church correctly, but also aids in communal self-criticism. Lindbeck points to Karl Barth

as an example of the latter, as he “not only rejected the oath of allegiance to Hitler and the Nazi

worldview but also, and no less vehemently, Christian compromises with those evils.”453 This

means, as Marshall notes, that even when applying a hermeneutic of charity, not all practices or

beliefs cohere with Christian faith. So in an example like Barth’s criticism of Nazi ideology, “the

discourse in question is ‘absorbed’ into the world by being denied any legitimate place within it,

that is, by being held false.”454

Under the umbrella of this second understanding of intratextuality, Lindbeck introduces

three related terms. First, he discusses the importance of “habitable texts,” or texts that can

“supply followable directions for coherent patterns of life in new situations.”455 While noting that

450 Ibid. 451 Ibid., 132. See Lindbeck, “Barth,” 369. There he says, “Theologians who find some system of thought useful are thereby mandated to transform it and absorb it into the biblical intratextual world.” 452 Lindbeck, ND, 133. See Lindbeck, “Atonement,” 227; Lindbeck, “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 429. 453 Lindbeck, ND, 133. 454 Marshall, “Absorbing the World,” 77. 455 George Lindbeck, “The Search for Habitable Texts,” Daedalus 117, no. 2 (Spring 1988): 155; Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 97.

98

a habitable text does not necessarily have to have a “primarily narrative structure,” it helps.

Classical biblical hermeneutics, practiced among both Jews and Christians, came into being

during a time in which habitable texts were needed. He says, “[N]ot only did the monotheistic

character of their sacred book give it universal scope and unity, and not only did the long history

and diversity of the writings give it extraordinarily wide applicability in varying circumstances,

but it had directive force and community-building power far superior to the philosophical

systems that were its only real rivals.”456 The followability of Scripture appealed to the masses,

and Christianity grew, in part, because of it. Lindbeck contends that this can be the case again,

for, “[m]uch contemporary intellectual life can be understood as a search for such habitable

texts.”457

Second, and related to this notion of a text’s habitability or followability, Lindbeck

borrows the term “hermeneutics of social embodiment” from his Yale colleague Wayne

Meeks.458 Meeks argues, while interacting with the last chapter of The Nature of Doctrine, that

“a hermeneutical strategy entails a social strategy.”459 Meeks defends this thesis by saying:

That is true because, on the one hand, texts do not carry their meanings within themselves, but “mean” insofar as they function intelligibly within specific cultures or subcultures. Where an adequate social context is lacking, the communication of the text is frustrated or distorted. On the other hand, to understand the text is … to be competent to use the text in an appropriate way. Perhaps it is not too much to say that the hermeneutical circle is not completed until the text finds a fitting social embodiment.460

Lindbeck builds upon Meeks by arguing that this social embodiment is an “ecclesial

embodiment.”461 He says, “A theological way of making this point is to say that the Bible exists

456 Lindbeck, “Search,” 155–156; Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 268; Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 97. 457 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 268. See Lindbeck, “Search,” 155; Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 97. 458 Lindbeck gives Meeks credit for this term in “Atonement,” 227. 459 Wayne A. Meeks, “A Hermeneutics of Social Embodiment,” Harvard Theological Review 79, no. 1–3 (July 1986): 183. 460 Ibid., 183–184. 461 Lindbeck, “Atonement,” 226. Emphasis added.

99

for the sake of the church…. The purpose of the Old and New Testaments is the formation of

peoples who live in accordance with God’s commands and promises and embody his will for the

world…. The Bible, from this perspective, is a tool or collection of tools for the upbuilding of the

body.”462

Truth is self-involving. Paul asserts that “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the

Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3b). Lindbeck says, “Luther frequently insists in a similar vein that I

cannot genuinely affirm that Christ is ‘the Lord’ unless I thereby make him ‘my Lord.’”463 He

goes on to say, “For Christian theological purposes, that sentence [‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ is Lord’]

becomes a first-order proposition capable … of making ontological truth claims only as it is used

in the activities of adoration, proclamation, obedience, promise-hearing, and promise-keeping

which shape individuals and communities into conformity to the mind of Christ.”464

This is the context in which one should understand Lindbeck’s famous illustration of the

crusader. He says that when a crusader calls out “Christ is Lord” while cleaving the skull of an

infidel, his statement is false, for “it contradicts the Christian understanding of Lordship as

embodying, for example, suffering servanthood.”465 As Bruce Marshall says, “the use of words

in sentences fixes their meaning,” and this use includes the practical and social setting in which

sentences are used.466 Therefore the sentence “Christ is Lord” means something different in the

mouth of the Crusader than it does when used in a context of worship and praise, or, as Marshall

argues, in the mouth of St Francis of Assisi. Marshall says, “What St. Francis means presumably

includes a life wholly devoted to self-sacrificial redemptive service of a suffering world—the

462 Ibid., 227. 463 Lindbeck, ND, 52. 464 Ibid., 54. 465 Ibid., 50. 466 Bruce D. Marshall, Trinity and Truth, Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 192.

100

sort of life dimly mirrored in his own servant existence as a follower of Jesus of Nazareth—

while the crusader apparently means by ‘est Dominus’ a life of militant knighthood, devoted to

conquest by violence.”467 Practice, as Marshall notes, has “considerable epistemic bearing.”468

This does not mean, however, that the practices of a speaker make a statement true, and thus in

this case, make Christ Lord. Instead, Marshall argues that “what people do when they utter this

sentence determines what the sentence itself means. It is therefore beside the point to emphasize

that Christ’s lordship fails to depend on the practices of those whose Lord he is, since the issue at

hand is not whether Christ is the Lord, but whether the sentence ‘Christus est Dominus’ is, as

spoken, true.”469

Third, Lindbeck discusses the gospel’s “untranslatability.” By this, Lindbeck does not

mean translation of the Bible from Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic into modern natural languages.

Rather, Lindbeck says, “To the degree that religions are like languages and cultures, they can no

more be taught by means of translation than can Chinese or French. What is said in one idiom

can to some extent be conveyed in a foreign tongue, but no one learns to understand and speak

Chinese by simply hearing and reading translations.”470 People come to learn the grammar of

Christian faith much like how they learn a language, through practice. Languages “provide a

model or metaphor for understanding communal traditions of textual interpretation,” which can

include the study of western classics or religious texts.471

Within pre-critical exegesis, as the world was absorbed into the text, Christians could

utilize Platonism or Aristotelianism by assimilating and Christianizing them.472 They attempted

467 Ibid., 192–193. 468 Ibid., 193. 469 Ibid., 193–194. 470 Lindbeck, ND, 115. 471 Lindbeck, “Comparative Doctrine,” 21. 472 Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 86–87. He says, “The inescapability of this task of putting non-Christian thought to Christian uses needs to be emphasized. Even theologians who want to be entirely biblical cannot avoid it. Luther,

101

to, as mentioned above, “Take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor 10:5). In much of

modern theology the direction has been reversed. Rather than absorbing or assimilating

philosophy or science into the biblical world, “the biblical message is translated into

contemporary conceptualities.”473 The results have not always been negative. In some cases, it

has helped people maintain Christian faith that they otherwise would have rejected. Lindbeck

doubts, however, that such translation possesses evangelistic promise.

Attempts to translate the biblical message create more problems than they solve. If one

reads the Church Fathers, medieval figures like Thomas Aquinas, or the Reformers, reading their

references to Scripture alongside their texts, “one’s understanding of what they are saying is

enriched.”474 He notes that this is often not the case with modern thinkers. One could, for

example, “learn to think well in [Karl Rahner’s] categories while remaining biblically illiterate.

This is impossible in the case of Augustine, Luther (pace Ebeling), or Aquinas (pace the neo-

Thomists or even Gilson).”475 Lindbeck’s critique of translation does not necessarily mean he

completely excludes apologetics, but apologetics “must be of an ad hoc and nonfoundational

variety rather than standing at the center of theology.”476

Brevard Childs is critical of Lindbeck’s second definition of intratextuality for two

reasons. He says, “For my part, I am unconvinced that this is the way the Bible actually functions

within the church. The proposal of the text creating its own world—some would call it a fictive

world—into which the reader is drawn has its origins far more in high church liturgical practice

despite his detestation of Aristotle, continue to employ, often quite consciously, the ockhamist Aristotelianism in which he had been trained, and there is not a little Platonism in Calvin’s thought.” See Lindbeck, ND, 86–87; Marshall, “Absorbing the World,” 78–83. 473 Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 87. 474 Ibid. 475 Ibid. 476 Lindbeck, ND, 115.

102

than from the Bible.”477 He does not believe this understanding of the Bible coheres with the

message of either testament, which emphasizes that “God’s word enters into our world to

transform it.”478 He does, however, acknowledge with Lindbeck that the Bible possesses a “very

concrete, earthly quality which is not different from human experience.”479

Lindbeck does not completely deny Childs’ charge that the Bible may not actually

function within the church in the way that he describes it. He says, “There are fewer and fewer

people for whom the truly real world in which they live and think is that defined by the stories of

Israel and of Jesus.”480 Lindbeck observes the increasing lack of Bible knowledge among the

student body at Yale Divinity School. When he arrived at Yale in the 1940s, “my fellow students

could generally be counted on to have been well socialized in distinctively Christian beliefs and

practices, to be familiar with biblical content even when they were from Quaker or Unitarian

churches to an extent which is now exceptional even from those of fundamentalist

backgrounds.”481 The situation has since drastically changed, as many of his students lack

sufficient understanding of Christian beliefs and practices. This is the case even though

ministerial candidates are likely in greater need of biblical literacy and spiritual formation than

in the past.

477 Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), 21. Childs extends this criticism to Hans Frei, David Kelsey, Wayne Meeks, Stanley Hauerwas, and Richard Hays. 478 Ibid., 22. 479 Ibid., 21. 480 Lindbeck, “Hans W. Frei and the Future,” 10–11; Lindbeck, “Hans Frei and Biblical Narrative,” 14. 481 George Lindbeck, “Spiritual Formation and Theological Education,” Theological Education 24 (Supplement 1) (1988): 15. Lindbeck says further, “I am not saying, be it noted, that students were more theologically conservative in the 1940’s (at Yale, they were not), but that on both the theological left and theological right, some degree of spiritual formation was present” (15–16). Lindbeck evidence here is not only anecdotal. He bases it upon his research in University Divinity Schools: A Report on Ecclesiastically Independent Theological Education (New York: The Rockefeller Foundation, 1976).

103

Lindbeck notes that this phenomenon is not limited to seminary students and ministerial

candidates at places like Yale Divinity School, but to western society in general. Gallup Poll data

in the late 1980s says American society is not becoming less Christian. A greater percentage of

people claim to be Christians or to have born-again experiences. He says, “Yet all strata are

being debiblicized including professedly biblicistic ones.”482 In bestselling book Habits of the

Heart, Robert Bellah and associates note that within evangelical circles there is an increasing

emphasis upon an individual faith that sees Jesus less as savior or redeemer, and more as “the

friend who helps us find happiness and self-fulfillment.”483 Lindbeck argues that this

“therapeutic expressive individualism” is thus displacing biblical discourse.484 He says, “When

compared to Billy Graham back in the ’fifties, Bible-thumping TV preachers seem

extraordinarily casual about what the book actually says. Playing fast and loose with the Bible

needed a liberal audience in the days of Norman Vincent Peale, but now, as the case of Robert

Schuller illustrates, professed conservatives eat it up. They do not know enough Scripture to

notice the difference.”485 This lack of biblical literacy has continued and increased from when

Lindbeck discussed it in the 1970s–1990s.

Lindbeck argues that this lack of biblical literacy brings with it two related problems. The

first one pertains to language. He argues, “There was a time when unbelievers and believers alike

shared a common scriptural language. They could communicate, even when they did not agree,

on a whole range of issues on which our society, having lost the linguistic and conceptual means,

perforce remains silent.”486 Lindbeck points as an example to the discourse of Abraham Lincoln.

482 Lindbeck, “Barth,” 369. 483 Robert N. Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York: Perennial Library, 1985), 232. 484 Lindbeck, “Barth,” 369. 485 Ibid., 370. 486 Ibid.

104

Though Lincoln did not call himself a Christian (or a non-Christian) and was not a regular

church attender, he utilized biblical language of sin and forgiveness and spoke of both God’s

mercy and judgment, and he was understood by his audience. He says, “The proslavery party

resisted his message, but they understood it, and tried to reply in kind: that is, they sought to

legitimate their position biblically.”487 Lindbeck says that the same, to a lesser extent, can be said

of the discourse of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr in the twentieth century. He

notes that when Karl Barth wrote and spoke, “he presupposes an audience which is well-

informed about the Bible however disastrously they misread it.”488 He says that if a politician in

the contemporary context were to speak as Lincoln did in, they would be largely

misunderstood.489

The second problem that stems from the lack of biblical literacy is that “imaginative

living within the Bible has also become difficult.”490 The intratextuality discussed above has

largely vanished, though “dead biblical metaphors” remain: “We speak of so and so, for

example, as a Martha, a Mary, a Samson, a Solomon, or a Judas. This is quite different, however,

from imaginatively inscribing the world in the biblical text and troping all that we are, do, and

encounter in biblical terms.”491 Brent Strawn says, “Unfortunately many Christians—whatever

their age—appear to experience arrested development” when it comes to biblical literacy. He

notes that this is particularly true of the Old Testament. He argues, “Without further language

487 Lindbeck, “Church’s Mission,” 47. Lindbeck contrasts this with the language used surrounding apartheid. 488 Lindbeck, “Barth,” 369. 489 Ibid., 370; Lindbeck, “Church’s Mission,” 48. 490 Lindbeck, “Barth,” 370. 491 Ibid., 370–371. See Lindbeck, “Church’s Mission,” 38.

105

training, practice, and instruction, such individuals are left without a primary-school-level

capacity to engage with the Old Testament, including its moral dilemmas.”492

Lindbeck argues that in past times, even unbelievers saw the world imaginatively through

scriptural lenses. For example, Thomas Huxley spoke of “justification by verification,” rather

than Paul’s justification by faith.493 The same is true for various novelists, poets, and playwrights

within the western canon, such as Dante, Milton, Bunyan, Wordsworth, and even Shakespeare,

whose imaginations were shaped by the Bible. He says, “There is a sense in which most of

western literature is midrashic commentary; one does not have to be a Jungian to agree with the

conclusion reached by Northrop Frye … : that the basic substructure of the literary imagination

of the West is biblical.”494

Lindbeck argues the same has remained true for black preachers. He quotes Henry

Mitchell, who said

The black preacher is more likely to think of the Bible as an inexhaustible source of good preaching material…. It provides the basis for unlimited creativity in the telling of rich and interesting stories (about the biblical characters), and these narrations command rapt attention while the eternal truth is brought to bear on the black experience and struggle for liberation. The Bible undergirds remembrance and gives permanent reference to whatever illuminating discernment the preacher has to offer.495 Lindbeck notes that this description of black preaching sounds remarkably similar to rabbinic,

patristic, reformational, and puritan biblical exegesis.496 People in previous periods were also

492 Brent A. Strawn, The Old Testament Is Dying: A Diagnosis and Recommended Treatment, Theological Explorations for the Church Catholic (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017), 173. 493 Lindbeck, “Barth,” 371. Lindbeck elsewhere says, “Even the deists and athiests of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, who for the first time made the high culture of the West avowedly non-Christian, were imaginatively saturated with scripture.” “Church’s Mission,” 38. 494 Lindbeck, “Barth,” 371. See Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (Toronto: Academic Press Canada, 1982). 495 As cited in Lindbeck, “Barth,” 371; Lindbeck, “Church’s Mission,” 42. No citation to original source provided in either place. Lindbeck argues this is not only the case in historic black preaching, but in the present. Lindbeck says, “In the United States, if I may judge the example of some of the students I have had, [classical biblical hermeneutics] remains particularly powerful in black churches.” “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 431. 496 Lindbeck, “Church’s Mission,” 43.

106

shaped by other sources. Lindbeck says, “the poorly catechized masses lived also in a world of

hobgoblins, fairies, necromancy, and superstition” and “the educated classes, everyone, not least

devout Christians, had their imaginations shaped by the pagan classics of the Greeks and

Romans, to a degree we tend to forget.” Despite this, Lindbeck argues:

[T]he text above all texts was the Bible. Its stories, images, conceptual patterns, and turns of phrase permeated the culture from top to bottom. This was true even for illiterates and those who did not go to church, for knowledge of the Bible was transmitted not only directly by its reading, hearing, and ritual enactment, but also indirectly by an interwoven net of intellectual, literary, artistic, folkloric, and proverbial traditions…. There was a time when every educated person, no matter how professedly unbelieving or secular, knew the actual text from Genesis to Revelation with a thoroughness which would put contemporary ministers and even theologians to shame.497 Childs’ second critique deals with Lindbeck’s reading of Karl Barth. He argues that

Barth’s emphasis upon the “strange new world within the Bible” does not involve “drawing a

community of faith into the world of the Bible.” Instead, Barth emphasizes the fact that Scripture

“bears witness to a reality outside the text, namely to God, and through the biblical text the

reader is confronted with the Word of God who is Jesus Christ.”498

Lindbeck responds to both of these charges: upon his reading of Barth and that his view

of Scripture neglects the ways in which Scripture witnesses to external reality. To address the

first one, he draws upon Richard Hays’ work in Moral Vision of the New Testament. Lindbeck

introduces Hays’ reading of Barth by first saying, “Biblical narrative is fundamental for the

shaping of Christian life.”499 Hays says:

By virtue of his attentiveness to narrative patterns, Barth values the biblical stories as paradigms. In particular, the story of Jesus Christ functions in Barth’s theology as the single definitive template for obedience and authentic humanity. The “identity of

497 Ibid., 38. 498 Childs, Biblical Theology, 22. 499 George Lindbeck, “Postcritical Canonical Interpretation: Three Modes of Retrieval,” in Theological Exegesis: Essays in Honor of Brevard S. Childs (Grand Rapids. MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 33.

107

authority and freedom” that is accomplished in the person of Jesus Christ “becomes normative for what is demanded of us.”500 Like Lindbeck, Hays too argues that within this framework, Barth invites people to enter “the

strange new world within the Bible.”501

In response to the second part of this critique, it is true that Lindbeck and Frei both have

their hesitancies about modern theories of revelation or inspiration. For example, Lindbeck says,

“the historical evidence indicates that biblical authority prospered among Christians without such

theories until the seventeenth century, and among Jews, down to the present.”502 This does not

mean, however, that Lindbeck denies the role that Scripture plays as a witness. He says,

“Interpreting Scripture for its witness to God in his dealings with his creatures is an inseparable

part of premodern Bible reading, and no responsible attempt at retrieval can exclude it.”503

Lindbeck sees this emphasis upon Scripture as witness as important because it helps retrievalists

“escape the anthropocentric and/or subjectivist reductionism of contemporary hermeneutical

strategies, which make God dependent on human needs and desires.”504 As a Lutheran, Lindbeck

sees Scripture as a verbum externum, an external word, which as a whole includes “the verbal,

sacramental, and behavioral witness to Jesus Christ.”505 Lindbeck, however, raises a concern

500 Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation, A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1996), 237. Lindbeck cites this quotation in Lindbeck, “Postcritical,” 33–34. 501 Hays, Moral Vision, 237. 502 Lindbeck, “Hans W. Frei and the Future,” 18. 503 Lindbeck, “Postcritical,” 31. 504 Ibid., 32. 505 Lindbeck, ND, 130. See George Lindbeck, “Modernity and Luther’s Understanding of the Freedom of the Christian,” in Martin Luther and the Modern Mind: Freedom, Conscience, Toleration, Rights, ed. Manfred Hoffman, Toronto Studies in Theology 22 (New York/Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985), 12. Here, Lindbeck associates this position with the Reformers. Lindbeck does not deny, however, that the verbum internum, “(traditionally equated with the action of the Holy Spirit) is also crucially important,” but within his model, “it would be understood in a theological use of the model as a capacity for hearing and accepting the true religion, the true external word” (ND, 20.) He later says, “[F]aith, so the cultural-linguistic interpreter would say, comes from the acceptance and internalization of the external word…. The salvific role of the Holy Spirit is to join hearers and potential hearers (publicly and communally and thereby internally) to the Word who is Jesus Christ rather than to offer the gratia Christi in hidden ways to all human beings in only some of whom does it become public and

108

about treating the Scripture as witness mode as primary: “It is not as clear that doing so is

anywhere near as successful in providing guidance to Christian communities as its proponents

would like to think. To the extent Scripture is construed as pointing Godward, it does not directly

address human beings.”506

In addition to making room for a discussion of the Bible as witness, through interactions

with Nicholas Wolterstorff and his volume Divine Discourses: Philosophical Reflections on the

Claim That God Speaks, Lindbeck, in his later work, also incorporates a discussion of Scripture

as authorial discourse.507 All three modes of postcritical retrieval, “narrationally structured

symbolic worlds,” witness, and authorial discourse “are needed, and when taken in isolation …

they wrongly appear mutually exclusive or contradictory.”508

CONSENSUS

Lindbeck says that the retrieval of pre-modern ways of reading Scripture has ecumenical

potential; that classical ways of reading Scripture have “consensus-and-community-forming

potential,” which he argues is deeply needed.509 He does so through a discussion of the sensus

fidelium—the sense of the faithful, which “persists in relative independence of professional

theologians. It is nourished by Scripture as transmitted through liturgy, preaching, catechesis,

personal reading, and the general culture; and it is sustained by communal bonds which are

sociological and ethnic as well as specifically ecclesial.”510 If the sensus fidelium is strong, then

“communal authority survives hermeneutical conflict among the teachers of the church…. The

interpretation best adapted to the instinct of faith will then ultimately triumph even if it is

communal fellowship with Jesus” (130). Lindbeck elsewhere argues that the Spirit does not work apart from the external word. “Theologians, Theological Faculties, and the ELCA Study of Ministry” (1989): 205. 506 Lindbeck, “Postcritical,” 32. Lindbeck notes that Childs is aware of this difficulty (32–33). 507 Ibid., 40–48. 508 Ibid., 26. 509 Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 74. 510 Ibid., 89.

109

initially a minority one.”511 Scripture is at the center of this sensus fidelium because “communal

authority, in the Christian sphere, depends on consonance with the Bible.”512 Without this

common text, “social cohesion becomes more difficult to sustain and depends more on

bureaucratic management, the manipulation of public opinion, and ultimately, perhaps,

totalitarian force.”513 Despite differences that exist among Christians on issues related to

tradition and a magisterium, all Christian groups agree on this point, be they Protestants with an

emphasis upon sola scriptura, Orthodox who follow the patristic tradition of Scripture’s

primacy, or Roman Catholics, who as Verbum Dei contends, see the magisterium as having a

servant role in relation to Scripture.514

Lindbeck argues that an example of this can be seen within the early church. While it was

initially “Old Testament-oriented,” the church soon became largely Gentile in membership.

Despite this, they, analogously to the Jews, came to see themselves as a single people “bound

together by ties of mutual helpfulness, responsibility, and openness to each other’s correction.

Because of this, they were able to cooperate in developing, not only congruent versions of a

single rule of faith and a common enlarged canon, but also unified, though not uniform,

ministerial, liturgical, and disciplinary patterns and structures.”515 These early Christian were

better able to claim the name “Catholic” than sects like the Marcionites. The Scriptures they

recognized became the Christian Bible, and thus “in this sense the church is prior to the Bible.

Yet, on the other hand, it was Scripture—initially Hebrew Scripture read Christologically which

had the consensus, community, and institution-building power to make of these communities the

511 Ibid., 91. 512 Ibid., 90. 513 Ibid., 96. 514 Ibid., 90–91. Lindbeck says in a footnote within this context, “I here follow the general view that although Vatican II did not explicitly reject a two-source interpretation of Trent’s statements on Scripture and tradition, it nevertheless favors a one-source construal” (91n6). 515 Ibid., 78.

110

overwhelmingly dominant and therefore Catholic church.”516 Arguments that prioritize the Bible

make as much sense as those that prioritize the church. He concludes, “No choice is necessary,

however: it is best to think of the coinherence of Bible and church, of their mutually constitutive

reciprocity. It was, furthermore, the church as sensus fidelium, not as separately institutionalized

magisterial authority, which was decisive in this process. Those writings which proved profitable

in actual use among the people were the ones which were included in the canon.”517

Lindbeck notes, however, that the situation has changed because the canon is now closed.

The church does not form Scripture, “but is rather formed by it.” At the same time, however,

“the Bible’s community-forming role … is not independent of community. It helps constitute the

ecclesia only when interpreted communally in accordance with a community-constituting

hermeneutics.”518 Yet this hermeneutic continued to play a role within the church well into the

Middle Ages, even for the illiterate masses. In that time, “The laity learned the fundamental

outline and episodes of the scriptural drama through liturgy, catechesis, and occasional

preaching,” and they came to see the world through that formation.519

The church made many missteps along the way, which continued into the time of the

Reformers: various teachers legitimated liturgical and devotional abuses, inquisitions, crusades,

and anti-Semitism, “Yet the Bible within the classical framework resists definitive capture by

even communally self-interested misreadings.”520 The church was reminded, through Scripture,

that just as God’s judgment came upon the disobedient people of Israel, it could come upon them

516 Ibid. 517 Ibid. 518 Ibid., 78–79. 519 Ibid., 79. 520 Ibid.

111

(1 Cor 10). They were called to remain loyal to their community and its leaders “even if they are

unbelieving high priests.”521

The Reformation, and the excommunication of Luther and others by the Roman Catholic

Church, brought about a crisis for the church. It became difficult to maintain an emphasis upon

the sensus fidelium with a divided church. Yet even after the division, one can continue to see

glimpses of the consensus-building power of Scripture. He points as an example to the early

Reformed tradition. Though it had scattered churches throughout Europe and in North America,

“They constituted a self-consciously united communion held together by nothing except a

common approach to Scripture.”522 They continued to read the Bible ecclesially and classically,

looking to it for guidance to shape their lives, and through an emphasis upon preaching and Bible

study, “the laity in many congregations came to know the Bible from Genesis to Revelation with

a thoroughness never equaled before or since.”523 Yet, their reading of Scripture had its share of

flaws: they sought to formulate an unchanging system of doctrine based upon a hyper-

Augustinian doctrine of double predestination that “obscured God’s mercy and, as Lutherans

complained, unwittingly undermined the Reformation sola gratia and sola fide.”524 Their success

in building consensus was limited because, “They did not unite the Reformation churches.”525

The Reformed even came to divide among themselves.526

521 Ibid., 80; George Lindbeck, “Problems on the Road to Unity: Infallibility,” in Unitatis Redintegratio: 1964-1974-Eine Bilanz Der Auswirkungen Des Ökumenismusdekrets, ed. Gerard Békés and Vilmos Vajta, Studia Anselmiana 71 (Frankfurt: Lembeck/Knecht, 1977), 108. See Acts 23:35. Lindbeck acknowledges the difficulty that Luther did not follow Paul’s advice in Acts. 522 Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 80. 523 Ibid., 81. 524 Ibid. 525 Ibid. 526 Ibid., 82. Lindbeck argues, “Most of the Protestant divisions after the sixteenth century originated among the Reformed, and the loss of the classic interpretive pattern is largely responsible.” He notes that the loss of the classical way of reading Scripture was not restricted to them, but existed throughout western Christendom.

112

Lindbeck argues that a classical, but not anticritical, way of reading Scripture can come

to inform the sensus fidelium, but only given certain conditions:

The condition for this happening is that communities of interpretation come into existence in which pastors, biblical scholars, theologians, and laity together seek God's guidance in the written word for their communal as well as individual lives. Their reading of Scripture will be within the context of a worship life which, in its basic eucharistic, baptismal, and kerygmatic patterns, accords with that of the first centuries. They may differ in their views of the de iure divino status of the threefold pattern of ministry and of the papal institutionalization of the Petrine function, but not on the legitimacy of these forms of ministry as servants of word, sacrament, and unity, nor on the fundamental character of the ministerial office as divinely instituted to feed and lead God's flock. There will be in these communities a renewed sense that Christians constitute a single people chosen to witness among the nations in all they are, say, and do to the salvation that was, that is, and that is to come, and guided by God in his mercy and judgment and in their faithfulness and unfaithfulness, toward the promised consummation. They will care for their own members and will also be deeply concerned about Christians everywhere. Openness to receive and responsibility to give help and correction from and to other churches will be embedded in their institutional and organizational fabrics.527 So within the sensus fidelium disagreements will continue. Lindbeck does not advocate

for the consensus forming power of Scripture naively. He notes that within the contemporary

context, “There seems to be less and less communal sense of what is or is not Christian.”528 This

is true not only across denominational lines, but within single congregations. He says,

“Knowledge of the Bible (which is transmitted through general culture, folklore, proverbs,

catechesis and liturgy, as well as direct Bible-reading and preaching) is in decline. The use of

Scripture is not part of people’s lives, and thus reading and hearing it (when they do read and

hear it) has little impact.”529 Christians lack a common language by which they can resolve

differences. While one can see any number of reasons why this situation has arisen and how the

situation can be improved, he says, “the need for more and better knowledge of the Bible is not

527 Ibid., 99–100; Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 269–270; Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 658–659. 528 Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 74. 529 Ibid., 75. He says, “Perhaps this is why the change to the vernacular and the renewed emphasis on Scripture at Vatican II seem to have done little to make the Roman Catholic sensus fidelium more biblically informed.”

113

likely to be denied.”530 This lack of biblical literacy is another argument for why one should

avoid “translation theology.” Such theology is “doubly pluralistic and thus doubly unlikely to

contribute to the formation of a coherent ‘sense of the faithful’ whether biblical or

nonbiblical.”531

CONCLUSION

Lindbeck argues that in order for the church to identify itself with Israel in a

nonsupersessionist way, it must retrieve a narrative typological approach to reading Christian

Scripture. Expressing concern about the rise of aggiornomento apart from ressourcement,

Lindbeck calls for a postliberal theology that seeks to “recover premodern scriptural

interpretation in contemporary form.”532 Lindbeck argues, drawing upon the work of Frei, that a

part of this postcritical retrieval of premodern exegesis involves an emphasis upon the narrative

and christological unity of Scripture. This emphasis upon a unity of the biblical text allows for

the possibility of typological or figural exegesis and an increased role for the Old Testament.

Related to this emphasis upon the narrative unity of Scripture, Lindbeck emphasizes

“intratextuality.” He defines this in a few ways. First, he uses intratextuality to refer to

Scripture’s self-interpreting character. Second, he uses it to argue that all of reality should be

interpreted according to Scripture. Within these two definitions of intratextuality, he argues that

Scripture is a “habitable text,” one that forms the church and that Christians should socially

embody in their witness to the triune God.

He also does not discuss these issues of scriptural interpretation in isolation, but notes

that the embrace of aggionromento apart from ressourcement has been accompanied by a shift

530 Ibid. 531 Ibid., 88. 532 Phillips and Ockholm, 246.

114

from an emphasis upon unitive ecumenism to interdeonominationalism, and also from seeing

Christian unity as a good in itself to seeing it as a means to an end. Lindbeck critiques these

shifts, and argues that Scripture can help build community and consensus within the church.

Despite the difficulties the church faces in forming a people with biblical fluency and a

sensus fidelium, Lindbeck says that the church should not lose hope or be discouraged.

Scripture permits and even encourages us to dream dreams and see visions. Barriers have been erased, retrieval has begun, and we can begin to imagine far more than was possible a mere generation ago that Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and heirs of the Reformation will learn to read the Bible together as the Christ-centered guide for themselves and their communities. God’s guidance of world and church history has sown the seeds for the rebirth of the written word, and it is for believers to pray, work, and hope against hope that God will bring these seeds to fruition through the power of the Holy Spirit.533 The type of retrieval that Lindbeck envisions, one that can bring about consensus, is a

linguistic and ecclesial one. It provides for the church “a vocabulary and grammar for

redescribing, re-assessing and re-experiencing all aspects of communal life including theories

and prescriptions.”534 Single language conversations have a superiority over multilingual ones,

and translation often brings about confusion, especially when the differences between the two

languages are not known. For example, the churches’ responses to Baptism, Eucharist and

Ministry “compounded confusion by eliciting a bewildering variety of not only contradictory but

apparently incommensurable reactions.”535 A shared language is needed, and the classic

understanding of the church as Israel could provide that idiom.536 The next chapter will introduce

this further.

533 Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 101. See Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Theology,” 271; Lindbeck, “Two Kinds,” 659–660.

534 Lindbeck, “Israel-like Church,” 10. 535 Ibid., 11–12. 536 Ibid., 12. Lindbeck says, “It is not that the classic tongue would automatically decide the issues raised

by BEM, but it would provide a vocabulary and grammar by means of which they could be more profitably discussed. That is why retrieval is necessary.”

115

CHAPTER FOUR

THE OLD TESTAMENT AS ECCLESIOLOGICAL TEXTBOOK

“If the Church is, or has, a culture of her own, then the Church’s claim somehow to be Israel must also be a claim somehow to continue the culture of Israel.”537

- Robert Jenson

This chapter will introduce Lindbeck’s ecclesiology proper by discussing his emphasis

upon the Old Testament as the ecclesiological textbook of the early church. This chapter will

then discuss Lindbeck’s understanding of election, which he draws primarily from the Old

Testament. It will then conclude with a discussion of how he, in dialogue with Luther, relates the

law to the gospel.

SCRIPTURAL ECCLESIOLOGY

Lindbeck argues that in order for an ecclesiology to have an ecumenical advantage, it

must “be consistent with the total witness of Scripture as this centers on Jesus Christ. Without

this, it can be neither catholic nor ecumenical.”538 There are occasions in which certain scriptural

perspectives must be abandoned for Christians to be more faithful to the central message of the

gospel (e.g., New Testament tolerance of slavery), and non-biblical formulations, such as those

regarding christology at Nicaea and Chalcedon, may at times be necessary due to heretical

misuses of Scripture. While the same may be true of the doctrine of the church, Lindbeck

concludes, “The burden of proof is on those whose fundamental categories for thinking about the

church are nonbiblical.”539 He acknowledges that Scripture describes the church in various ways,

and that readers’ pre-understandings determine what they take as relevant data, but in order to

537 Robert W. Jenson, “Christ as Culture 1: Christ as Polity,” in Theology as Revolutionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation, ed. Stephen John Wright (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014), 182.

538 Lindbeck, “Church,” 181. 539 Ibid., 182. See also George Lindbeck, “The Story-Shaped Church: Critical Exegesis and Theological

Interpretation,” in Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation, ed. Garrett Green (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 163.

116

avoid “squaring this circle,” he says, “we shall … proceed on the doctrinally and ecumenical

mandated hypothesis that the Church was primarily the people of God in the biblical writings,

and ask what that meant.”540 He clarifies this further by defining the church as “the messianic

pilgrim people of God typologically shaped by Israel’s story.”541

He sees strong evidence for the hypothesis that the church is fundamentally the messianic

pilgrim people of God. Early Christians were a Jewish sect who came to accept Jesus of

Nazareth as the crucified and risen Messiah, and while they began to welcome Gentiles into their

fellowship without the requirement of circumcision, “this did not diminish their desire to

maintain their legitimacy as Jews.”542 They derived their communal self-understanding from the

Old Testament, which “functioned as the ecclesiological textbook except where it was trumped

by the New,” and they interpreted the text as Jews.543 Lindbeck says,

It was natural that they should understand their communities as ekklēsia, as qahal, the assembly of Israel in the new age…. Thus the story of Israel was their story. They were part of that people of God who lived in the time between the times after the messianic era had begun but before the final coming of the kingdom. Whatever is true of Israel is true of the Church except where the differences are explicit.544

Lindbeck sets four guidelines for reading the New Testament testimony to the church in

light of this perspective. First, “early Christian communal self-understanding was narrative

shaped.”545 Images like “body of Christ” or the traditional marks of the church as “one, holy,

catholic, and apostolic” cannot be defined first and then used to determine what is and what is

not “church.” Rather Lindbeck asserts, “The story was logically prior. It determined the meaning

540 Lindbeck, “Church,” 182. 541 Ibid., 179. 542 Ibid., 182. See also Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 169. 543 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 81. 544 Lindbeck, “Church,” 182–183. Lindbeck says of ekklēsia and qahal, “For once philology and etymology

cohere with broader historical considerations.” See Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 169; Childs, Biblical Theology, 429.

545 Lindbeck, “Church,” 183.

117

of images, concepts, doctrines and theories of the Church rather than being determined by

them.”546

Connected to the narrative shaped understanding of the earliest Christian communities

was the understanding that “church” referred to “concrete groups of people” and not to

“something transempirical. An invisible Church is as biblically odd as an invisible Israel.”547

Apart from a narrative whole that draws the various descriptions of the church in the New

Testament together, the descriptions “fragment into distinct and perhaps incompatible

ecclesiologies.”548 References to the church as “holy” or as “bride of Christ” within the New

Testament were references to “empirical churches in all their actual or potential messiness.”549

For this reason, Lindbeck critiques what he calls “traditional ecclesiologies,” whether

they derive from Catholics, Protestants, or sectarians. These ecclesiologies, even if they have

some “scriptural authenticity,” tend to depart from both Israel’s story and “the referential

primacy of empirical communities.”550 While these ecclesiologies define the church denotatively

as “event or mission or liberating action or the communion of Christ’s justifying grace,” and

while they tend to critique notions of the church as invisible, their main referent is not to a

people. Lindbeck says, “what for the Bible are predicates are in these modern outlooks turned

into subject terms.”551 These ecclesiologies do not refer to “empirical churches in all their

concreteness. These latter are rather imperfect manifestations, realizations, participations or

thematizations of the Church’s true, eschatological reality.”552 Lindbeck thus prefers a

“narrational” rather than “systematic” ecclesiology.

546 Ibid. See Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 165. 547 Lindbeck, “Church,” 183. 548 Ibid., 186. 549 Ibid., 183; Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 165. 550 Lindbeck, “Church,” 188. 551 Ibid., 189; Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 173. 552 Lindbeck, “Church,” 189; Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 173.

118

Lindbeck is also careful to note that an emphasis upon the church as the people of God

“does not necessarily indicate a return to either narrative or denotative concreteness.”553 At times

“people of God” is used as an attributive rather than a denotative term. For example, in his

Images of the Church, Paul Minear seeks to delineates various images or pictures of the church

and their interdependence, one of which is the people of God.554 A notable exception to this is

Lindbeck’s Yale colleague Nils A. Dahl, who argues, “To say that the church is the people of

God is not simply to name one metaphor among other qualifications of the church. The idea of

the people of God is implied in the very conception of the Church: the ekklēsia tou theou is the

assembled laos tou theou.”555

Second, for early Christians, “Israel’s history was their only history.”556 They did not yet

have a New Testament or sources of church history to look to. While they read the Old

Testament in the light of Christ, it served, as noted above, as their “sole ecclesiological

textbook.”557 John Behr argues that much of this continues into subsequent generations of

Christians. He notes that in On the Apostolic Preaching, the New Testament documents, though

known and recognized as Scripture, are not foundational for Irenaeus. Rather, “The whole

content of the apostolic preaching is derived … from the Old Testament.”558 Behr argues that

Irenaeus is not alone in this. He says, “Scripture for the apostolic fathers, as in the New

Testament itself, refers to the writings of the Old Testament: the Gospel is still very much a

proclamation.”559 He cites as an example a passage in Ignatius of Antioch’s Philadelphians, in

553 Lindbeck, “Church,” 203n13.

554 Paul S. Minear, Images of the Church in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 11–13. 555 Nils Alstrup Dahl, “The People of God,” Ecumenical Review 9, no. 2 (January 1957): 154.

556 Lindbeck, “Church,” 183; Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 165. 557 Lindbeck, “Church,” 183; Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 165.

558 John Behr, “The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching,” in On the Apostolic Preaching, by Irenaeus, Popular Patristics Series 17 (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 8. 559 Ibid., 9.

119

which he says, “If I do not find [it] in the archives,” by which he means the Old Testament, “I do

not believe [it to be] in the Gospel.”560

Third, the early Christians appropriated the whole of Israel’s story, not just the favorable

parts or those that refer to a faithful remnant. Lindbeck says, “All the wickedness of the Israelites

in the wilderness could be theirs.”561 The paradigmatic example of this can be found in 1

Corinthians 10. There Paul says that “our ancestors” were all in the wilderness with Moses. They

all “were under the cloud, and passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the

cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink

that followed them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of

them, and they were struck down in the wilderness” (vv. 1–5). Some of them became idolaters,

engaged in sexual immorality, put Christ to the test, and complained, and they were destroyed.

Paul says in verses 6 and 11 that these things were written “as examples” (NRSV) or “warnings”

(RSV), as τύποι or τυπικῶς, as “types,” in order to “instruct us” (11). Paul says, “So if you think

you are standing, watch out that you do not fail” (12).

Lindbeck says, “The lesson to be drawn from these verses is that for Christians to

practice being the church as Israel is for them to apply to their own community what they read

about Israel in the Tanakh, the Old Testament.”562 The church is to see itself “in the mirror of

O.T. Israel in the light of Jesus Christ.”563 So, as Bonhoeffer argues, in order to read the Bible

seriously, the church must come to not only read the Bible “for ourselves,” but “against

ourselves.”564

560 As cited in Ibid., 10.

561 Lindbeck, “Church,” 184; Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 166. 562 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 81.

563 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 3. 564 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ecumenical, Academic, and Pastoral Work: 1931-1932, ed. Victoria Barnett, Mark S. Brocker, and Michael B. Lukens, trans. Anne Schmidt-Lange et al., Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 11 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012), 378.

120

Paul uses similar imagery in Romans 11:17–24. He says that some of the “natural

branches,” Jews, have been cut off from the tree, and that believing Gentiles, the “a wild olive

shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree.” He warns these Gentile

believers, however, not to boast that they have been grafted in place of these unbelieving Jews.

He says, “They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand only through faith. So

do not become proud, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he

will not spare you (vv. 20–21). He also reminds them, “even those of Israel, if they do not persist

in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again” (v. 23).

Lindbeck notes that while such ways of depicting the church, though they have not

always been emphasized in official doctrine, have survived liturgically. As an example, he cites a

hymn written by John of Damascus:

Come ye faithful, raise the strain of triumphant gladness! God has brought his Israel into joy from sadness, Loosed from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke Jacob’s sons and daughters, Led them with unmoistened foot through the Red Sea waters.565

Those who received this hymn did not see this imagery as mere metaphor, and neither did

African American slaves who sang similar hymns. Lindbeck says, “More important, both groups

passed through the Red Sea waters in baptism and become members of the community that is the

body of Christ, partakers of the very flesh and blood of the one who is the summation of

Israel.”566

Fourth, early Christians saw Israel and the church as one people: “There was no breach in

continuity.”567 Lindbeck illustrates this point further saying, “The French remain French after the

revolution, the Quakers remain Quakers after becoming wealthy, and Israel remains Israel even

565 As cited in Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 81. 566 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 3.

567 Lindbeck, “Church,” 184; Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 166.

121

when transformed by the arrival of the eschaton in Christ. The Church is simply Israel in the time

between the times.”568 While Paul does speak of those Jews who have been cut off from the root,

Lindbeck argues, “it does not alter the identity of the people of the promise.”569 He says, drawing

on the work of Krister Stendahl, “So strong was this sense of uninterrupted peoplehood that the

only available way to think of gentile Christians was … as ‘honorary Jews.’”570 As Paul says in

Ephesians 2:

So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth … were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us…. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone (vv. 11–14, 19–20).

Those who were foreigners from Israel have been included into the covenant of Abraham

through the new covenant of Christ. This, for early Christians, “did not … constitute the

formation of a different people but rather the enlargement of the old.”571

The Pauline literature is not alone in speaking of the church this way. For example,

though 1 Peter was likely primarily addressed to Gentile Christians in the five Roman provinces

of modern day Turkey, the author refers to them using terminology from the Old Testament. He

begins by calling them “exiles of the Dispersion” (1:1), and this imagery of the church as aliens,

strangers, and exiles continues elsewhere in 1 Peter (1:17; 2:11). Boring and Craddock argue,

568 Lindbeck, “Church,” 184; Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 166–167. Lindbeck goes on to say,

“Discontinuity and nonidentity are problems in the New Testament, not for the Church per se, but for unbelieving Jewry on the one hand and gentile Christians on the other. The apostle Paul says of the first group in Romans 11 that they have been cut off, but that this can happen does not differentiate them from Christians. Churches also, as we have already noted, can be severed from the root.” “Church,” 184–185.

569 Lindbeck, “Church,” 185; Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 167. 570 Lindbeck, “Church,” 185; Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 167. 571 Lindbeck, “Church,” 185. See also Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 167.

122

“The Dispersion (Diaspora) is a technical term for the scattered (NIV) people of Israel who live

as Jews throughout the world, united not by having a homeland but by belonging to the chosen

people of God. The author addresses his Christian readers as inheritors of this status.”572 Verse

two then tells them that they are “chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the

Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood.” Boring and Craddock

say here that “1 Peter considers the Christian community, as members of the renewed Israel, to

be the continuing people of God.”573 As the text goes on, the author utilizes Passover imagery, in

particular references to Jesus as a pascal lamb who delivers God’s people from the old way of

life (1:14–23).

The text of 1 Peter also refers to the people using priestly language. They are told, “as he

who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, ‘You shall be

holy, for I am holy’” (1:15–16). They are reminded that God has “purified their souls,” which

“echoes the biblical word found 34x in the LXX, used of the consecration of priests, Levites,

Nazirites, and the people of Israel as a whole.”574 Indeed the addresses are told, “let yourselves

be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to

God through Jesus Christ” (2:5). And a few verses later, it says, “you are a chosen race, a royal

priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of

him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (2:9).

Lindbeck does not deny that the people of God look different in this new age, but Israel

also looked different in the wilderness than it did under the judges, under the kings, or in exile.575

572 M. Eugene Boring and Fred B. Craddock, The People’s New Testament Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 725. 573 Ibid. 574 Ibid., 729.


123

The people of God have new special features and functions in this new age: “Who and what the

people is becomes more fully manifest now that the Messiah has come. The bride of Yahweh is

the bride and body of Christ. The Spirit is now offered and may be poured on all flesh as it was

not before (Acts 2:17ff).”576 The identity of the people, however, remains. There is, according to

Lindbeck, “not a New Israel.”577

The use of these four guidelines did not persist within the church. This resulted from two

factors. First, there was a “hardening of opposition” between synagogue and church. This led

Jewish Christians, like the author of the epistle of Barnabas, to argue that unbelieving Jews are

no longer a part of God’s people. Lindbeck says, “Faithfulness became the mark of election, and

election, conversely, became conditional on faithfulness.”578 Second, the church became almost

entirely Gentile, and so it became increasingly difficult for the church to see itself as “naturalized

citizens in the continuous, uninterrupted commonwealth of Israel.”579 This led to the

understanding that the one people of God was two peoples: the old (Old Testament Israel) and

the new (the church).

Christians ceased applying all of Israel’s story to the church. For example, in reading 1

Corinthians 10, “They have focused selectively on the favorable prefigurations Paul mentions—

on Christ the rock, on manna as type of the eucharist, on baptism under the cloud—and have

neglected his more numerous warnings of the punishments for disobedience to which Christians

are liable.”580 In reading the Old Testament, Christians no longer saw critiques of Israel’s

unfaithfulness as applying to the church. This led to the development of a medieval

576 Ibid., 185–186.

577 Ibid., 186. 578 Ibid.; Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 171. 579 Lindbeck, “Church,” 187. See also Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 171. 580 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 91.

124

hermeneutical rule that Ephraim Radner paraphrases from the work of Rupert of Deutz: “all good

elements in the texts (e.g., consolations, etc.) should be referred to Jesus Christ and his Church,

while all the bad elements (e.g., sufferings, punishments) should be referred to the Jews and to

human sin in general.”581

ELECTION

Instead of rooting the church’s identity in her own faithfulness, Lindbeck first says that

“the identity and being of the Church rests on God’s election.”582 David Novak defines election

as “the choice by one person of another person out of a range of multiple candidates. This choice

then establishes a mutual relationship between the elector and the elected, in biblical terms a

‘covenant’ (berit).”583 Novak notes that while Baruch Spinoza sought to invert the biblical

doctrine of election so that Israel elects God, the traditional view of election states that God

elects Israel.584 Within this traditional view, as Michael Wyschogrod notes, “The relation

between God and his people is not a symmetrical one.”585 For Lindbeck, the God who elects

Israel and the church is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus; the God revealed in

Scripture.

Lindbeck argues, “When the church is identified by its faithfulness rather than by God’s

election, Christian communities look for some property within themselves that ensures God will

continue to acknowledge them as his own.”586 The church should not look within themselves,

however, but within the free will of God. Just as God was under no compulsion to create,

581 As cited in Ibid. Originally in Radner, 292n30. 582 Lindbeck, “Church,” 192.

583 David Novak, The Election of Israel: The Idea of the Chosen People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 23. 584 Ibid., 22. 585 Michael Wyschogrod, The Body of Faith: God in the People Israel, First Jason Aronson Inc. Edition. (Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson, 1996), 57.

586 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 92.

125

God was under no necessity to call Abraham, choose Israel, bestow the Torah, send his Son, the Jewish Messiah, that the world might live, open the ranks of the chosen people to the uncircumcised nor, finally, to promise in and through these acts to establish his reign at the end of time. These events are interlocking and interdefining so that the full significance becomes more and more as one considers them together.587 While one cannot understand election apart from Christ, “the Old Testament accounts of Israel

are basic. They, more than the New Testament, tell what it means to be God’s chosen people;

and what they predicate of Israel, it will be recalled, also applies to the church unless there are

biblical indications to the contrary.”588

The Reformation emphasis upon “sola gratia, the unconditionality of grace, is seen most

clearly in God’s choice of Israel. It has two aspects: first, there was no reason for the choice and,

second, it is irrevocable. God is faithful; he cannot break his promises; he must fulfill his

oath.”589 Lindbeck points to Deuteronomy 7:6–8 to illustrate the unconditionality of God’s

election of Israel: “For you are a people consecrated to the Lord your God: of all the peoples on

earth the Lord your God chose you to be his treasured people. It is not because you are the most

numerous of peoples that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you—indeed, you are the

smallest of peoples” (JPS). He notes that Christian and Jewish readers can agree that God does

not chose Abraham because of his virtue. He cites Novak, who argues there is “no clue as to why

God elects Abraham and his progeny or as to why Abraham obeys the call…. Any righteousness

attributed to Abraham is seen as subsequent not prior to God’s election of him.”590

Lindbeck follows Novak and prioritizes God’s decree over human action. “Even when

Israel (and the church as part of Israel) is de facto desperately unfaithful and unlovable, election

is not revoked. Looked at in canonical context, God’s call and covenant remain unconditional for

587 Lindbeck, “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 441. 588 Ibid. 589 Ibid. 590 Novak, 115. See also Wyschogrod, Body, 213.

126

Israel no matter what its behavior.”591 This emphasis can also be seen in the Old Testament, for

both Ezekiel and Hosea depict idolatrous Israel as an adulterous spouse. Lindbeck says, “In

whoring after false gods, so Ezekiel in particular affirms, Israel becomes worse than the heathen

nations—corruptio optimi pessima est, as the pagan poet puts it—but God does not abrogate his

covenant.”592 There is also New Testament evidence, both in Paul and in Revelation 1–3, for the

irrevocability of Israel’s election. For example, In Romans 11:28–29, Paul says, “As regards the

gospel they are enemies of God for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved, for the

sake of their ancestors; for the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.”

Lindbeck draws upon the work of Michael Wyschogrod in developing this understanding

of Israel, election, and (un)faithfulness. Wyschogrod says that Hashem takes the initiative in

electing and loving Israel, and despite continued unfaithfulness, Hashem continues to love Israel

like a parent loves a child.593 He says, “The history of Israel, was, like the history of man, from

the beginning, a history of disobedience.”594 God intended all of humanity to be his people, but

due to humanity’s sin, God elected a smaller group of people through whom God as “an example

to the rest of humanity with the final goal remaining the reconciliation of humanity,” but Israel

often acted like the rest of humanity.595

Wyschogrod argues that Christian theology has almost exclusively focused upon Israel’s

unfaithfulness. Indeed, he says, “there is nothing more important that I have learned from [Karl]

591 Lindbeck, “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 442. 592 Ibid. See also George Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Directions and Confessional Construals,” Dialog 30 (1991): 122. See also George Lindbeck, “Response to Michael Wyschogrod’s ‘Letter to a Friend,’” Modern Theology 11, no. 2 (April 1995): 206. 593 Wyschogrod, Body, 120–124. Jews sometimes refer to God as “Hashem,” which is Hebrew for “the Name.” 594 Ibid., 183. Wyschogrod considers not only Israel’s unfaithfulness in Scripture, but in the contemporary world, because most Jews today do not observe the Torah. 595 Ibid.

127

Barth than the sinfulness of Israel.”596 He says, however, one cannot look at Israel’s

unfaithfulness in isolation from its faithfulness.597 He says, “There is nothing but faithfulness on

God’s part but it is not the case that there is nothing but unfaithfulness on Israel’s part. Along

with the unfaithfulness, there is also Israel’s faithfulness, its obedience and trust in God, its

clinging to its election, identity, and mission against all odds.”598 While God takes the initiative

in loving Israel, Israel loves God in return, though it may at times take a time of punishment to

lead them to repentance.599 He says,

The general message is clear. Israel’s election is irrevocable. If and when Israel sins, it is punished, even severely. The people will be expelled from their land and sent into exile. But this punishment will not destroy Israel, and it will not last forever. God’s love for Israel will return, and a reconciliation will take place. God will bring back the exiles from wherever they are and reestablish the kingdom as before.600 Lindbeck argues that Wyschgrod’s writing has been important for him in coming to not only

understand Israel, Jews, and Judaism, but in coming to understand his own Christian faith. He

argues that Wyschogrod’s book, The Body of Faith, is “ecclesiologically foundational.”601

As the church came to believe it had replaced Israel as God’s people, they created an

ecclesiological problem for themselves. “Having denied by their supersessionism that Israel

remains God’s beloved despite its unfaithfulness, they could not claim the irrevocability of

God’s promises on the church’s behalf.”602 This is true for both Catholics and Protestants. For

Catholics have assumed that the church, in and of itself, does not sin. They have relegated sin to

596 Michael Wyschogrod, Abraham’s Promise: Judaism and Jewish Christian Relations, ed. R. Kendall Soulen, Radical Traditions: Theology in a Postcritical Key (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 223. 597 Wyschogrod, Body, 120, 184. 598 Wyschogrod, Abraham’s Promise, 223–224. 599 Wyschogrod, Body, 120. Novak also discusses the “human side of election,” or the response of the people to the electing God (117–118). 600 Wyschogrod, Abraham’s Promise, 65. Wyschogrod says further, “Could the enemies of Israel succeed in eliminating the last vestiges of the Jewish people from the world? I do not believe so. If that were to happen, it would constitute a clear falsification of biblical faith” (66). See also 94, 151, 174, 179–187, 223. 601 Lindbeck, “Response to Wyschogrod,” 205. 602 Lindbeck, “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 443.

128

the church’s members. Protestants, meanwhile, have at times argued that when the church sins

and lacks faithfulness, it ceases to be church. Lindbeck says, “Both positions, it can be argued,

are triumphalistic. They make impossible that combination of unbreakable communal loyalty

despite unflinching recognition of unbearable communal sins characteristic of Jesus and the

prophets.”603 He thus makes a revolutionary proposal by applying simul justus et peccator to not

only individuals, but to the church. He argues that while Luther did not make this move, it is a

logical extension of his thought, for Luther affirmed that the Roman Church remained the church

even under the papacy. Lindbeck says,

It was horribly flawed, and yet it continued to be an earthen vessel which contained gospel treasures through which saving faith could be truly communicated despite all the obstacles placed in its way. The vessel is the bearer of the communio sanctorum in time and space. It consists of sociologically and historically concrete mixed communities which constantly betray or rebel against the gospel.604 Second, “the elect communities are stamped by objective marks,” such as eating and

drinking in the eucharist, circumcision or baptism, the recitation of the shema or the creed,

“which are both blessing and curse depending on how they are received.”605 An example of this

can be seen in 1 Corinthians 11:29–30, in which Paul says, “For all who eat and drink without

discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. For this reason many of you are

weak and ill, and some have died.”

Third, Lindbeck argues that “election is communal. Individuals are elect by virtue of

visible membership in God’s people.”606 Though God begins by electing an individual person,

Wyschogrod says, “In the case of Israel, the relationship that started with Abraham, the

603 Ibid. 604 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Directions,” 122. See also Lindbeck, “Response to Wyschogrod,” 206; George Lindbeck, “Church Faithful and Apostate: Reflections from Kansas City,” Lutheran Forum 28, no. 1 (Lent 1994): 18.

605 Lindbeck, “Church,” 192. See 1 Corinthians 11:29. 606 Ibid.

129

individual, soon becomes a relationship with a nation that becomes the elect nation.”607 For

Wyschogrod, an individual can only be understood within their national setting. For him,

Judaism is not a voluntary association of people who affirm a set of propositions or beliefs, but a

people.608 Wyschogrod seeks to dissuade Jews and Christians from becoming a part of what he

calls the “the ‘I’ generation.” He argues that while some good has been done in recognizing the

image of God within individuals, “God has set human beings in communities. And among these,

the community of Israel is central.”609

Lindbeck argues that this sense of belonging to a common peoplehood, which even

secular Jews have maintained but Christians have mostly lost, should be recaptured, and would

make a difference in how Christians relate to others, but even more so how they relate to one

another within their communities. This understanding of the church as a people better allows for

communal self-criticism. “It implies that Jews and Christians can be maximally critical of their

own communities without disloyalty, as is abundantly illustrated by their own scriptures.”610

Fourth, the church’s mission is to “witness to the God who judges and who saves, not to

save those who would otherwise be damned (for God has not confined his saving work

exclusively to the Church’s ministrations).”611 This calling to be witnesses in the world began

with God’s call to Abraham: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make

your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who

curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:2–4).

607 Wyschogrod, Body, 68. 608 Ibid., 68, 174–175; Wyschogrod, Abraham’s Promise, 51. Novak agrees, arguing, “Election is primarily generic and only secondarily individual. Abraham is elected as the progenitor of a people. Every member of this people is elected by God and every member of this people is called upon to respond to his or her generic election” (117). 609 Wyschogrod, Body, 253. 610 Lindbeck, “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 443.


130

Wyschogrod says that the election of Israel is a sign not only of God’s concern for Israel, but

humanity as a whole.612 This theme continues elsewhere in the Old Testament, as in Isaiah 42:6,

in which it says Israel shall be “a light to the nations.” Lindbeck notes, “the New Testament

applies this verse to Jesus; and Jesus, in turn, tells his followers they are ‘the light of the world’

(Mat. 5:14) or, in the words of Ephesians, ‘light in the Lord’ (5:8).”613 Lindbeck notes that God

has multiple aims within creation, but “at least one aim in choosing Israel, Jesus and the church

is the redemption of the world.”614

While Lindbeck has such a high view of election and its unconditonality, that does not

mean that he rejects the possibility and reality of apostasy. As mentioned elsewhere in this

chapter, disobedience may lead to persons being severed from the root (Rom 11:21). He says,

Portions of the chosen people may lose their identity, they may be destroyed as was the Northern Kingdom, but that does not alter the unconditionality of the election of those which remain recognizably Jewish or Christian even when they apostatize. God chastises them when they err—indeed, he does this with special severity—but as his chosen ones, beloved above all nations.615 Lindbeck notes that there are three possible views of apostasy. The first view sees

faithfulness and apostasy as mutually exclusive. A person or a church is either faithful or

apostate, and not a mix of the two. In the second view, which he calls the “double-perspectival”

or “bifocal” view, the church is simultaneously faithful and apostate, justified and sinful. He

says, “When judged by God’s law they are apostate, but faithful from the eschatological

perspective of the Gospel promises.”616 While Lindbeck does not affirm the first view, the

second view is consistent with Lindbeck’s discussion of the church above and of the early

612 Wyschogrod, Body, 68. 613 Lindbeck, “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 443. 614 Ibid. See also Wyschogrod, Body, 103–104.

615 Lindbeck, “Church,” 190. See also Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 171. 616 Lindbeck, “Church Faithful,” 18.

131

Lutheran Reformers. Those Reformers did not seek to break communion with Rome, but waited

for Rome to excommunicate if communion would be severed.

Yet, as Luther reminded the sectarians in his treatise “Concerning Rebaptism” of 1528, the church under the tyranny of the Renaissance papacy (which as the anti-christ was worse than apostate) remained the church. Within her is found the one, holy, catholic and apostolic communion of saints. Everything we have, Luther says, came from her. She recited the creed, prayed the Pater Noster, preserved the riches of the life-giving sacraments and holy Scriptures even if she dreadfully misused them. She was not apostate though ruled by the Scarlet Woman, the Whore of Babylon, and that is why it was apostasy to sever oneself voluntarily from her.617 Lindbeck argues that contemporary evangelical catholics like himself can learn from this

approach, and should seek to remain within their own churches.

Lindbeck also offers a third approach to apostasy, one in which faithfulness and apostasy

“are thought of as mixed together in varying proportions.”618 This view may resemble the church

of Laodicea in Revelation 3, a church of which the text says, “So, because you are lukewarm,

and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (v. 16). While the text speaks

in such a harsh way toward the Laodiceans, it is also clear that God has not abandoned the

church there, but rather seeks to correct it. Verses 19–20 say, “I reprove and discipline those

whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if

you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.”

Lindbeck says, “One can scarcely call this church faithful, and yet it is not simply apostate. It

continues to be part of the elect people whom God has chosen to be his witnesses and with whom

he continues to plead even when they are faithless.”619 Lindbeck goes on to argue that Laodicea

most clearly resembles the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as he observed it at its

biennial conference in Kansas City in August 1993. He says, “Indiscriminate inclusiveness in

617 Ibid. 618 Ibid. 619 Ibid., 19.

132

which faithfulness and apostasy are heedlessly conjoined even in worship results in insipidity.

Punishment is to be expected but, as in the case of Laodicea, for the sake of repentance.”620 He

warns the ELCA that if it continues to wither, that it, like the Northern Kingdom, may be cut off

from God’s people. He also argues that as Revelation does not call individual members of the

church in Laodicea to leave their church and start a new community, that faithful members of the

ELCA are called to remain and work on behalf of their church.

To discuss another example of apostasy in the modern period, he says, “Theologically,

and perhaps empirically also, the first thing to say about the Holocaust is that it was an onslaught

by apostates from one part of God’s elect people (viz., the church) against another part (viz.,

Israel).”621 One cannot compartmentalize the Nazi crimes from the fact that they were ex- or

post-Christians. They rejected the election and calling upon their lives, and they turned that

hatred upon the Jews.

Lindbeck summarizes his ecclesiological perspective by saying,

My own surmise is that the vision of the church which God is seeking to impart now at the end of the twentieth century will seem Calvinist in its emphasis on election (though now communally rather than individually focused), Lutheran in its application to the church (and not simply to persons) of the simul justus et peccator, Eastern Orthodox in the centrality of worship, of the lex orandi, for theology and life, and patristic Catholic in the pattern of church government. Perhaps the overall impression will be more Jewish, more in continuity with the Old Testament understanding of the people of God, than anything in Christian ecclesiology since, for example, Romans 9–11, 1 Cor 10, and Eph 2.622 Because of this, he argues that there needs to be a “re-judaizing” of Christianity.

620 Ibid. 621 George Lindbeck, “Election, Christian Apostasy, and the Holocaust,” 1971, 1.

622 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Directions,” 123. Lindbeck previously gave a shorter version: “The Church thus sounds Catholic in its comprehensiveness, Calvinist in the unconditionality of its chosenness, and Lutheran in its possibilities of unfaithfulness while remaining genuinely the Church; but the total effect, not surprisingly, is more Jewish than anything else” (“Church,” 192–193.). Elsewhere, Lindbeck also adds this view of the church is “Roman in its acknowledgment of the legitimacy of developments such as the papacy.” “Comparative Doctrine,” 24. He also says in this context that these characteristics do not necessarily make this view of the church more acceptable, but more controversial.

133

LAW AND GOSPEL

More so than other Christian groups, Lutherans have emphasized the relationship of the

law to the gospel. In Lindbeck’s discussion of the relationship of the two, he seeks to challenge

popular conceptions of Martin Luther. Many have viewed Luther as primarily a “theological

controversialist,” as someone seeking to critique and overturn. Lindbeck instead argues that the

emphasis should be placed upon Luther as a pastor and catechist. He says, “According to this

depiction, Luther offered his theological ideas only in the context of his recommendations for

practice.”623 Lindbeck thus seeks to analyze Luther from the perspective of parishioners rather

than historians and theologians.

Lindbeck argues that Luther’s Large and Small Catechisms “provide the most

authoritative normative description of Reformation Christianity as a religion of the population at

large.”624 He notes that a treatment of Luther’s Reformation that focuses on the Catechisms

would differ greatly from typical scholarly treatments that emphasize Luther’s controversialist

writings, for, “In the Catechisms, the theological issues of justification by faith alone, of the total

corruption of fallen human nature, of double predestination, and of the opposition between law

and gospel are never mentioned expressis verbis.”625 The Catechisms do not place a strong

emphasis upon the Christian faith as reducible to beliefs apart from works, or of the individual

apart from community, or subjective experience apart from liturgical practices.

While acknowledging Luther’s later anti-Semitic polemics, Lindbeck argues that Luther’s

work resembles certain rabbinic practices as described by twentieth century Conservative rabbi

623 Lindbeck, “Rabbinic,” 141. Lindbeck says that one can see that the pastoral/catechetical side of Luther overwhelms the controversialist side by perusing the table of contents within Luther’s collected works. He says, “the bulk of them are devoted to pastorally-oriented sermons, commentaries, table talk, letters, and, of course, the catechisms.” 624 Ibid., 143. 625 Ibid.

134

Max Kadushin. Luther centered his catechisms upon the five topics of the Ten Commandments,

Apostle’s Creed, Lord’s Prayer, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, which roughly correspond to

“the rabbinic concepts of torah, the shm’a, the amidah, circumcision and the Passover seder.”626

Lindbeck argues, “The crucial test of Luther’s similarity to the rabbis is his attitude

toward law.”627 This on the surface appears challenging because Luther is commonly said to

have placed a great disjunction between law and gospel. In some of his controversial writings,

Luther argues that the Christian life is freedom from the law as both a demand and accusation.

Even for those redeemed by Christ, who are simul totus justus et totus peccator, the law still

plays this dual role. Even though they are free, they are still in bondage. Lindbeck encapsulates

this perspective by saying, “They are, so to speak, bilocated, living both in the coming

eschatological kingdom and in the present age when the messianic reign has begun but is not yet

consummated. It is thus that they are totally under the heteronomous and condemnatory law and

yet, at the same time, totally liberated from the law.”628 Though the simul is intended to dissuade

antinomianism, some Lutherans have stressed this law/gospel distinction to the point that they

have emphasized gospel at the expense of the law, leaving no room for a discussion of the law as

“a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps 119:105).

Lindbeck notes that some more recent scholars concerned with avoiding antisemitism

have argued that Calvin’s understanding of a third or didactic use of the law enabled him to be

more positive about the law and Israelite religion than Luther. He says,

[Calvin] interprets their religion in its own reality as a typological anticipation and preparation for Christ rather than making it, as Luther tends to do, a mere shadow of the

626 Ibid., 144. Lindbeck cites the work of Peter von der Osten-Sackon and says, “The traditional ordering of topics may, as a matter of fact, be influenced by Jewish catechisms for gentile proselytes in the first centuries of the C.E.; and, interestingly enough, the Jewish ones which appeared from 1587 until well into the 19th century were indirectly influenced by Luther’s” (144n7). 627 Ibid., 149. 628 Ibid., 150.

135

coming promise. This helps account for the historically much greater emphasis in Reformed than Lutheran circles on the continuity between the two covenants and the enduring affinity between Judaism and Christianity.629 Lindbeck argues that when one looks at the Catechisms, one gets a different and more nuanced

picture of Luther. “The theological polemic against the law is absent, and Luther meditates on

the commandments at length and not without pleasure.”630 Luther treats the Ten Commandments

first in both the Large and Small Catechisms, and spends nearly half of the Large Catechism

discussing the Commandments. This leads Lindbeck to conclude, “the Luther of the Catechisms

is, at least quantitatively, primarily a halakhist, just as were the rabbis of the Talmud.”631

Lindbeck defends this perspective with five points.

First, Luther “never called the Decalogue ‘law’ (lex/Gesetz) in the Catechisms, but,

rather, instruction or teaching (doctrina) of the type which can variously be termed praeceptum,

Gebot, and mandatum.”632 Within the Catechisms, Luther does not refer to the God’s commands

as “law.” He reserves that term to refer to human commands. Second, Luther saw the Ten

Commandments as “the complete guide for human life.”633 Third, Luther saw the commands as

“the only reliable way of knowing God’s will for human life.”634 Fourth, “Luther treated the

denigration of uncommanded works as liberating, rather than limiting.”635 He argued that

humans tend to invent their own commands in order to avoid the impossibility of perfectly

following God’s laws, but then see their own commands as oppressive by seeing the fulfillment

629 George Lindbeck, “Luther on Law in Ecumenical Context,” Dialog 22 (1983): 274. Lindbeck says further, “It is not surprising that the Reformed have been the least anti-Semitic—indeed, often philo-semitic—of the major Christian traditions. For many in our day this is a powerful consideration in favor of something like Calvin’s rather than Luther’s view of the law; and after Auschwitz, Lutherans cannot be indifferent to the argument.” 630 Lindbeck, “Rabbinic,” 151. 631 Ibid. 632 Ibid. 633 Ibid., 152. 634 Ibid. Lindbeck notes that this kind of knowledge is different from “knowing who God is, which knowledge comes only through historia, or aggadah.” 635 Ibid.

136

of these human laws as necessary for salvation. Luther therefore believes, “The divine law

therefore liberates from the expectation of fulfillment.”636

Fifth, “Luther nowhere suggested that humanity’s inability at present to fulfill the

commandments perfectly is any reason for not trying.”637 He encourages people to do their best

to follow them, arguing they will benefit from doing so. Luther does not even note until the end

of his exposition of the Decalogue that it is impossible to perfectly fulfill them, and he does so in

passing. Lindbeck says that for Luther, “they are not a tyrant from which one escapes to the

gospel as quickly as possible, but a treasure to be constantly cherished and for whose sake the

gospel itself is given.”638

In addition to discussing the Ten Commandments within the Catechisms themselves,

Luther says in a letter to Peter Beskendorf that in addition to reading and praying through a

psalm, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and if he has time another passage in the Gospels or Paul, he

prays through the Ten Commandments. Luther says praying in such a way is necessary to guard

oneself from sin. In this context he cites Psalm 1: “Blessed is he who meditates upon his law day

and night.”639 He prays through the Ten Commandments by breaking down each commandment

into four parts: “I think of each commandment as, first, instruction, which is really what the Lord

God demands of me so earnestly. Secondly, I turn it into a thanksgiving; third, a confession, and

fourth a prayer.”640 For example, with the first commandment, he begins by thinking of God’s

636 Ibid. Lindbeck argues that the human commands that Luther likely hand in mind were “the suffocating medieval panoply of ascetic, monastic, and religious practices, which, he argued, were unwarranted by Scripture and turned people away from ‘all that God wishes us to do or not to do,’ namely, the Ten Commandments” (152–153). 637 Ibid., 153. 638 Ibid., 154. In this context, Lindbeck cites Luther, who says, “Therefore it is not without reason that the Old Testament commands men to write the Ten Commandments on every wall and corner, and even on their garments. Not that we are to have them merely for a display, as the Jews did, but we are to keep them incessantly before our eyes and constantly in our memory.” 639 Martin Luther, “A Practical Way to Pray,” in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull and William R. Russell, Third Edition. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012), 34. 640 Ibid., 36.

137

instruction to put him first and trust him. Second, he thanks God for his provision and care.

Third, he confesses his sin and his idolatry. Fourth, Luther says that he prays:

O my God and Lord, help me by your grace to learn and understand your commandments more fully every day and to live by them in sincere confidence. Preserve my heart so that I shall never again become forgetful and ungrateful, that I may never again become forgetful and ungrateful, that I may never seek after other gods or other consolation on earth or in any creature, but cling truly and solely to you, my only God. Amen, dear Lord God and Father. Amen.641 He sees practices such as this as a necessary aid in learning to obey God’s commands.

Luther acknowledges that while justification is by faith alone, “this faith is itself commanded and

is for the sake of the commandments.”642 Lindbeck concludes this discussion by arguing that as

Christians increasingly become a minority within their own cultures, in order to avoid

sectarianism, “Christianity will need to follow the historic, mainstream practice of seeking

guidance, not primarily from the Sermon on the Mount in isolation from the Tanakh, nor from

the spirits of the Zeitgeist, but from the Decalogue interpreted from the New Testament.”643 He

argues that Martin Luther, as well as some modern rabbinic reformers like Kadushin, can assist

Christians in this task.

CONCLUSION

In his work upon the church as Israel, as “the messianic pilgrim people of God

typologically shaped by Israel’s story,”644 Lindbeck seeks to root ecclesiology not only in the

New Testament, but in the entire canon of Christian Scripture. He argues that early Christians

read the Old Testament as “the ecclesiological textbook except where it was trumped by the

New,”645 and they, both Jews and Gentiles, interpreted the text as the enlarged Israel. While

641 Ibid., 37. 642 Lindbeck, “Rabbinic,” 155. 643 Ibid., 164. 644 Lindbeck, “The Church,” 179.

645 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 81.

138

some Christians later came to see only the positive aspects of Israel’s story as relating to the

church, Lindbeck calls upon the church to apply all of Israel’s story to itself (1 Cor 10).

Connected to this, Lindbeck says that the church must not root its own identity in the church’s

faithfulness, but in God’s election of a people. This chapter then a discussion of Lindbeck’s

revisionist interpretation of Luther on the law. Within it, Lindbeck argues that Christians can,

and must, seek ethical guidance from a christologically interpreted Decalogue.

Lindbeck sees Israel’s Scripture as having the capacity to form the identity of the church

in a variety of situations. He argues,

History shows that Israel’s story has unique ability to confer communally significant meaning on whatever happens: it has, one might say, unrivaled power to encode successfully the vicissitudes and contradictions of history. Christianity, it can be argued, has urgent need to make greater use of the same biblical tale if it is to be comparably tenacious and flexible in maintaining its identity as a people irresistibly called (and ineluctably failing) to witness by selfless service of all humankind to the universal though thoroughly particular God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus.”646 While some have sought to engage this history by minimizing the christological distinctives of

the Christian faith, Lindbeck rejects this move, for Jesus Christ is the only fulfillment of Israel,

the one who fulfills the law and the prophets (Matt 5:17). This will be the subject of the

following chapter.

646 Lindbeck, “Church,” 190–191.

139

CHAPTER FIVE

JESUS THE CHRIST AS ISRAEL’S ONLY FULFILLMENT

“‘Christ’ is a title, and therefore is itself meaningful only within a particular culture, in this case the culture of Israel.”647

- Robert Jenson In a 1997 article, Mike Higton came to the conclusion: “where Lindbeck had a cultural-

linguistic theory Frei had Christology.”648 Higton notes that, unfortunately, the work of Hans

Frei is often read in the light of The Nature of Doctrine, even though the Frei’s work “differs

significantly” from Lindbeck due to his “more subtle and Christologically focused”

methodology.649 He sees Lindbeck as proposing a secular theory of religion and doctrine, and

then seeking to apply it to theology. He says, “We could bring in a social theorist like Bourdieu,

who could all too pertinently critique the first-order/second-order distinction, the talk of rule-

governed behavior, the implicit distinction of cultural system from the lived situation; and if the

critique worked we would have devastated Lindbeck’s position without so much as nodding in

the direction of theology.”650 He goes on to argue that Frei is not susceptible to the same critique

because of how he roots his theology christologically, while the same cannot be said for

Lindbeck because when he refers to Christology, he does so illustratively and not

substantively.651

While Higton is indeed correct that Frei’s work should not be read through the lens of

The Nature of Doctrine, he acknowledges in a 2013 essay, “Reconstructing the Nature of

647 Jenson, “Christ as Culture 1,” 181. 648 Mike Higton, “Frei’s Christology and Lindbeck’s Cultural-Linguistic Theory,” Scottish Journal of Theology 50, no. 1 (1997): 95. 649 Ibid., 83. 650 Ibid., 86. 651 Ibid., 94.

140

Doctrine,” “I was wrong.”652 He says there that it is possible to read The Nature of Doctrine as “a

sketch of a postliberal theology of doctrine—a postliberal theological construal of the kind of

reasoning needed for fruitful ecumenical engagement.”653 Lindbeck, in The Nature of Doctrine,

“offers a postliberal repair of an ecumenical culture hobbled by its liberal entanglements.”654

Lindbeck’s ecumenical work has its own christological focus, and this can be seen in

Lindbeck’s discussion of Christ’s person and atoning work, as he seeks to recognize a unity in

diversity. This ecumenical work involves understanding Jesus Christ not only in light of the

Gospels, but through the Old Testament Scriptures and God’s work among the people of Israel

and its continuation in the church. He argues, “Jesus Christ is the center, touchstone, matrix—

that is, womb—of these [ecumenical] discussions.”655 The chapter will begin by discussing Jesus

as both the messiah of Israel and the Son of God, before moving onto a treatment of Jesus as

savior and example, and then conclude with eschatology.

JESUS THE MESSIAH AND SON OF GOD

In Matthew 16:16, Simon Peter confesses, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living

God.” Lindbeck says of this passage, “For most Christians down through history, this confession

says that Jesus is equally and unitedly the messiah of Israel and the incarnate Son of the living

God.”656 He notes, however, that the christological and trinitarian creeds have not maintained the

symmetry of these two teachings, the particular and the universal. The name Christ or Messiah

has moved from being an honorific title to being a part of Jesus’ proper name: Jesus Christ. In

652 Mike Higton, “Reconstructing the Nature of Doctrine,” Modern Theology 30, no. 1 (January 2014): 30n98. 653 Ibid., 30. 654 Ibid., 16. 655 Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Imperatives,” 365. 656 George Lindbeck, “Messiahship and Incarnation: Particularity and Universality Are Reconciled,” in Who Do You Say That I Am? Confessing the Mystery of Christ, ed. John C. Cavadini and Laura Holt (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), 63.

141

this the “two interwoven strands of christological discourse have separated, and one of them has

largely disappeared from doctrinal formulations even if not from hymnody and liturgy.”657

Christians have only recently come to see this minimization of Jesus’ messiaship as a problem.

At the same time, however, some of the ways contemporary theologians have sought to

reemphasize Jesus’ messiahship are problematic and do not assist in maintaining the balance

between the two.

Lindbeck says, “My basic suggestion is that, formally considered, messiahship

singularizes incarnation and incarnation universalizes messiahship.”658 He clarifies this further,

saying, “Messiahship singularizes because there can be only one messianic person, coterie, or

age.”659 Also, “Incarnation by itself, in turn, lacks singularity as is perhaps most vividly manifest

in the proliferation of incarnate deities in Hinduism. If the divine can be enfleshed, then there

seems nothing to prevent this from happening over and over again.”660 Lindbeck connects these

two strands of Christology, messiahship and incarnation, with so-called “Christology from

below” (horizontal) and “Christology from above” (vertical). The emphasis upon Jesus’

messiahship is needed because christologies from above have historically had difficulty

explaining why the Second Person of the Trinity had to be incarnate as a Jewish man in first-

century Palestine rather than in another form. “Thus the vertical incarnational move into the

world of space and time whether from above or from below lacks self-evident concreteness and

particularity apart from the intersection with the horizontal messianic dimension. Incarnation

657 Ibid., 64. 658 Ibid. 659 Ibid. 660 Lindbeck, “Messiahship,” 65.

142

needs singularizing no less than messiahship needs universalizing.”661 Both emphases are

strengthened when the symmetry is maintained, and both lose when one or both are minimized.

Both emphases are present in different places within the New Testament. John and Paul

place greater emphasis upon incarnation while Mark, Luke, and Matthew place more emphases

upon the messianic. While historical-criticism tends to argue that one should not seek to

reconcile these two emphases, exceptions exist to this rule within the biblical studies guild. He

points, as an example, to his Yale colleague Nils A. Dahl, who “argues that Jesus ‘crucifixion as

‘King of the Jews’ occasioned, not a break with a pre-existent view of messiahship, but the

forging of the multiple first-century messianisms into a unified and specifically Christian New

Testament understanding.”662 He then points to the work of William Horbury, who understands

the New Testament’s christological proclamations as having their root in quasi-incarnational

messianic hopes within the Old Testament. He also notes Jacob Neusner and Michael

Wyschogrod, who discuss, in slightly different ways, the centrality of God’s embodied presence

among the people of Israel within the Jewish Scriptures. He still says, however, that the

historical-critical emphasis upon a text having a single meaning determined by its original

context places limits upon the method’s ability to reconcile messiahship and incarnation. Instead,

scholarship needs a broader focus that pays attention to literary concerns as well as the multiple

senses of Scripture emphasized within pre-critical exegesis.663

The earliest examples of a shift from messianism to incarnationalism can be seen within

the pages of the New Testament. Paul likely emphasized incarnation as a part of an apologetic

for his Gentile mission, and this type of work can also be seen within the prologue to John’s

661 Ibid. 662 Ibid., 68. 663 Ibid., 69.

143

Gospel. While it has its benefits, the focus upon Jesus as universal “tended to displace the

particularistic messianic expectations of Israel as the primary praeparatio evangelica.”664 Jesus’

messiahship could not be fully excluded for the church to oppose Marcion and insist upon the

Old Testament as Christian Scripture, but it was minimized, and this minimization continued and

climaxed in Nicaea and Chalcedon.

Lindbeck argues that the difficulty of maintaining the symmetry of particular and

universal in Christology has parallels in ecclesiology, eschatology, and soteriology. One of the

problems with the mainstream emphasis upon Jesus’ universality at the expense of his

particularity is that the soteriological focus is upon “spiritualization more than visible

transformation. It abstracts the Savior and those he saves from the particularities of their

historical and communal situations: salvation is conceived is conceived in terms that are both

universalistic and individualistic, as a spiritual reality that is basically the same for all individuals

everywhere.”665 While discussions of the church as an institution are maintained, its “this-

worldliness” is neglected: “it deprives the redemption for which Christians hope of its temporally

futuristic and this-worldly social aspect, and reduces it to individualistic other-worldliness.”666

Swinging to the opposite extreme and minimizing incarnationalism to emphasize

messianism also comes with its share of problems. Lindbeck argues, “messianisms have tended

throughout church history to be as one-sided as the incarnational hegemonies that they oppose,

and, as could be expected of protest movements, much more divisive.”667 As these messianisms

lack an emphasis upon universality, “The individual is lost in the communal, the universal in the

664 Ibid., 71. 665 Ibid., 73–74. 666 Ibid., 72. 667 Ibid.

144

tribal, and the spiritual in the material.”668 While great emphasis is placed upon the church’s

revolutionary or transforming role in the world, it often comes with a violent strain, or an

“imagining” of “the revenge of the saints in the last days.”669 This demonstrates further the need

for a reconciliation between messiahship and incarnation, between the particular and the

universal, in order to provide mutual correction.

Messianic christologies are currently more widespread, with the possible exception of the

Joachimites in the Middle Ages, than any time since the early church. The “collapse of

incarnational hegemony” that began near the time of the Reformation but did not become

dominant until centuries later, as illustrated by the Socinians and other critics of christological

and trinitarian dogma, as well as the rise of historical-criticism, made this increased interest in

messianic christologies possible. Many of these modern and contemporary messianisms, as seen

within certain theologies of hope or liberation, have an aversion to incarnationalism, and thus do

not make a reconciliation between messianism and incarnation possible.670

In bringing about a reconciliation between the messianic and incarnational strands, the

church should not deny the dogmas enshrined in Nicaea and Chalcedon. The church should

recognize the significance of these ecumenical achievements. In The Nature of Doctrine,

Lindbeck argues that they are indicative of three rules or guidelines that were operative for those

Christian communities. First, they advocate a “monotheistic principle,” which says, “there is

only one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus.”671 Second, they point to a

particular person, Jesus of Nazareth, “who was born, lived, and died in a particular place and

668 Ibid., 74. 669 Ibid. 670 Ibid., 77–80. 671 Lindbeck, ND, 80.

145

time.”672 Third, they include what Lindbeck calls “Christological maximalism: every possible

importance is to be ascribed that is not inconsistent with the first rules.”673 These rules led

Christians to affirm that Jesus is the Messiah, “unsurpassably Immanuel, God with us, both in

history as we know it and in that consummation of history when the Messianic age which has

begun in him is fully manifest.”674

In addition to these rules, these creedal formulations, especially those of the Nicene

Creed, continue to possess extremely important liturgical, formative, and unitive functions for

the contemporary church.675 Worship, for Christians, has throughout history been “trinitarian: to

God, through Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit; and because the law of faith follows the law

of prayer, the one God of Israel was conceived (without loss of unity, so it was claimed) as

triune.676 He also says,

Lastly, and rather oddly, archaic and even unintelligible conceptuality may in some ways be better fitted for the statement of general rules than is language alive with contemporary meaning. Unfamiliar concepts can more easily be treated as replaceable. They function as “x’s,” blanks, or open variables to be filled by whatever symbolic or intellectual content is most effective in a given setting. An updated version of the creed, in contrast, is less likely to invite believers to worship, proclaim, and confess the faith in their language rather than its own.677 Therefore, the church must acknowledge that these creedal statements do not exhaust what can

be said of Jesus. They must be supplemented with an emphasis upon Jesus as Israel’s Messiah.

Lindbeck says, “Christians need to turn to the Old Testament more intensely than they have ever

done in order better to understand salvation, and inseparable from that, their Savior, Jesus

672 Ibid. 673 Ibid. 674 George Lindbeck, “Doctrine in Christianity: A Comparison with Judaism” (presented at the American Theological Society Meeting, Princeton, NJ, April 25, 1987), 14. 675 Lindbeck, ND, 81. 676 Lindbeck, “Doctrine in Christianity,” 14. Lindbeck later says, “I am one of those who find it difficult to think of the christological and trinitarian developments which led to Nicea and Chalcedon as an intellectualization of Christianity, as a matter of turning it into a religion of ideas rather than of worship and conduct” (17). 677 Lindbeck, ND, 81.

146

Christ.”678 This will allow Christians to better understand the relation of horizontal and vertical,

and what it means to confess Jesus as Israel’s Messiah and the incarnate Son of God.

Lindbeck points to the example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who grew concerned with the

neglect of a public and social understanding of salvation and an emphasis upon “religiousness,”

which Lindbeck defines as “something very much like the spiritualizing inwardness” that is seen

in “the modern turn to the subject.”679 Bonhoeffer’s solution was for Christians to read the Old

Testament, for the New Testament read apart from the Old “can easily be twisted into a source

and defense of the very religiousness which is the danger.”680 This turn to the Old Testament,

however, cannot be selective and fragmentary. Christians should not follow advocates of the

social gospel who emphasize the prophets or liberationists who emphasize the exodus at the

expense of the rest of the Old Testament. Instead, Lindbeck contends, “Christians should saturate

themselves in the piety of the Old Testament as a unified whole…. When it comes to the

understanding of what God wants human beings to be, the Old Testament is fundamental and the

New Testament is commentary.”681

As the Messiah, Jesus is “the climax and summation of Israel’s history,”682 as well as

“the fulfilment of Old Testament promises.”683 He recapitulates Israel in himself. Lindbeck

makes this argument in his earlier work, saying, “it is asserted that all God’s acts in history from

the call of Abraham and the exodus from Egypt to the New Testament period are summed up in

678 Lindbeck, “Messiahship,” 82. 679 Ibid., 81. Lindbeck credits Kendall Soulen for this understanding of Bonhoeffer (86n23). See The God of Israel and Christian Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996), 17–18. 680 Lindbeck, “Messiahship,” 81. 681 Ibid. Lindbeck thus concludes that the Old Testament “is not sufficient in itself. Although it is now an indispensable guide to the reading of what for the first Christians was their only Bible, it is incapable of being rightly construed as an independent body of writings.” 682 Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 75–76. 683 Lindbeck, ND, 67.

147

Jesus Christ, in his life, death, and resurrection.”684 So, Christians not only read the Old

Testament in order to better understand Jesus, but they understand the Old Testament and Israel

through Jesus.685 Or as Richard Hays similarly says, “we learn to read the OT by reading

backwards from the Gospels, and—at the same time—we learn how to read the Gospels by

reading forward from the OT.”686

Lindbeck says, “The doctrine that Jesus is Messiah … functions lexically as the warrant

for adding the New Testament literature to the canon.”687 This makes a profound difference for

the church. It is through Christ that Gentiles are made citizens of the enlarged Israel (Eph

2:12).688 Also, as she gathers to worship, for, “It is Christ himself who, embracing the whole

reality of God’s redemptive action, is present and communicates himself in the liturgy.”689

The greatest difference between Lindbeck’s early and later Israelology is on the question

of whether the church fulfills Israel. In his earlier work, he says that the churches “surpass and

fulfill Israel.”690 In his later work, Lindbeck argues that as the church became largely Gentile, it

ceased applying all of Israel’s Scriptures to themselves. They came to understand Israel as if it

were a type, not only of Christ or of the coming kingdom, but of the church. This made the

church “the antitype, the fulfillment.”691 He comes to reject this understanding, saying,

despite most later exegesis, the relation of Israel’s history to that of the church in the New Testament is not one of shadow to reality, or promise to fulfillment, or type to antitype. Rather, the kingdom already present in Christ alone is the antitype, and both Israel and the church are types. The people of God existing in both the old and new ages are typologically related to Jesus Christ, and through Christ, Israel is prototypical for all

684 Lindbeck, FRCT, 70. See also Frei, Identity, 131, 138, 148. 685 Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 75–76. 686 Richard B. Hays, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness (London: SPCK, 2014), 4. 687 Lindbeck, ND, 67. 688 Lindbeck, “Scripture,” 75–76. 689 Lindbeck, FRCT, 70.

690 Lindbeck, “Protestant View,” 259. 691 Lindbeck, “Church,” 187.

148

later Israelite history in much the same way that the exodus story, for example, is seen as prototypical for all later Israelite history.692 He says further, “in being shaped by the story of Christ, the church shares (rather than fulfills)

the story of Israel.”693 He thus argues that the relationship of church to Israel should be seen as

one of prototype to ectype, original to copy.694

JESUS CHRIST AS SAVIOR AND EXAMPLE

This emphasis upon Jesus as both Messiah and Son of God influences Lindbeck’s

discussion of the atonement. Jesus’ death upon the cross is “the center of the center: it is central

to the central narrative” of the biblical text.695 Jesus’ death is prefigured by the Old Testament

and presupposed in the epistles and Revelation in the New. The narratives of Jesus’ birth and

ministry in the Gospels climax in this saving event, and “[i]t is as the Crucified One that Jesus

rose, ascended, abides with us now and will come again…. In the Gospel accounts,

accommodated to human understanding as they are, person and work coincide.”696 Jesus’ identity

as fully human and fully divine, as Messiah of Israel and universal Son of God, are revealed

most clearly in Jesus’ saving work. Lindbeck argues:

In view of this inseparability of person and work, it is not surprising that the atonement, despite great differences in representation, has not been a distinct subject of controversy leading to dogmatic decisions in any of the major traditions. The affirmations about Christ’s person incorporated in the trinitarian and christological creeds have been sufficient to set the guidelines for acceptable atonement teachings. What was decisive for church fellowship was that the cross is necessary for salvation, not the explanation of how or why.697

692 Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 166. See also Lindbeck, “Church,” 184; Lindbeck, “Messiahship,”

82. 693 Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 166.

694 Lindbeck, “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 434–435. 695 Lindbeck, “Atonement,” 231. See George Lindbeck, “Justification and Atonement: An Ecumenical Trajectory,” in By Faith Alone: Essays on Justification in Honor of Gerhard O. Forde, ed. Joseph A. Burgess and Marc Kolden (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 211. 696 Lindbeck, “Atonement,” 231. See Lindbeck, “Justification and Atonement,” 211. 697 Lindbeck, “Atonement,” 231. See Lindbeck, “Justification and Atonement,” 212.

149

This does not mean that all theologies of the atonement are created equal, but that no theory

could claim to be the only proper and sufficient view of the atonement.

The New Testament authors use two primary images for Christ’s atoning work: liberation

and reconciliation. The first depicts humans as in bondage to evil and Jesus as the one who

liberates humanity from captivity to sin and death, with death being the last enemy to be

destroyed (1 Cor 15:26). Within this image, “Evil is something we undergo rather than

undertake.”698 Conversely, the reconciliation image includes a “focus on human complicity in

evil.”699 Liberation from sin and death is not fully sufficient, for humanity also needs to be

reconciled with God. While the liberation image focuses upon Christ as victor, reconciliation

focuses upon Christ as sacrifice and victim. Death, in turn, is not just an enemy of God, but a

consequence for sin. These two images coexist within Scripture, sometimes being placed side by

side in the same pericope. For example, in Colossians 2:13–14, Paul begins with the image of

reconciliation, saying, “And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your

flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the

record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.” He

then in verse 15 uses a liberation image: “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a

public example of them, triumphing over them in it.”

Lindbeck argues that this does not indicate a “passion for paradox,” but,

Rather, the clusters of images serve as interpretations of the narratives, and narrative tensions are not paradoxical (or much less contradictory) except when transposed into putatively primary rather than properly interpretive images or concepts. This is a benign transmutation as long as one remembers that the meaning of the concepts and images is in this context inseparable from the story, and thus avoids the essentialist mistake of supposing that the meaning of the story is better expressed in the images or concepts. It is the narratives, we recall, that primarily identify and characterize the biblical God and through which we have access to Jesus Christ as personal agent. This is why images and 698 Lindbeck, “Atonement,” 232. 699 Ibid.

150

concepts, liberation and reconciliation, are to be understood by means of the stories, not the other way around.700 Unfortunately, this narrative priority was not fully maintained in Christian history. Rather,

different ages tended to emphasize one image or another. For example, liberation images

dominated in the patristic period and reconciliation images dominated in the West after the

eleventh century. Lindbeck notes, however, that a certain degree of flexibility existed in different

times and places, and that these differences were not church dividing.

Despite this, the contemporary church faces a crisis in its discussion of the atonement as

western Christians critique and abandon Anselmian views of the atonement.701 For centuries, a

penal substitution view dominated the western church, and not only for ill. Many Christians were

nourished in their faith through this teaching. It led to them to love God and their neighbor,

shaped piety and missionary fervor, led to revivalism and reform movements, and opposition to

the slave trade among both Protestants and Catholics in various ways.702 Though penal

substitution still remains dominant among traditionalist Roman Catholics and some evangelicals,

an increasing number have come to question and/or abandon it. This abandonment is not new,

but something that H. Richard Niebuhr observed when he said of some views of the atonement

among mainliners in the early twentieth century, “a God without wrath brought men and women

without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministration of a Christ without the

cross.”703

700 Ibid. 701 Ibid., 233–235; Lindbeck, “Justification and Atonement,” 205–206. Lindbeck uses the term “Anselmian” or “Anselmic” to differentiate later views of the atonement that build in certain ways upon Anselm’s work from Anselm’s own views. He, in fact, refers to penal substitution as a distortion of Anselm’s views. 702 Lindbeck, “Justification and Atonement,” 205. 703 As cited in Ibid. Lindbeck also notes that this distaste for satisfaction and/or penal substitution is not unique to the modern period, but can be seen in Peter Abelard’s work in the Middle Ages.

151

Lindbeck argues that part of the cause for this is, “Our increasingly feel-good therapeutic

culture is antithetical to talk of the cross.”704 This is true, for Protestants, among evangelicals and

mainliners alike. In addition, there are also other cultural and economic factors that emphasize

self-indulgence. Others have come to reject such views because of the misuse of atonement

theology to tell abused women or oppressed people groups to accept their suffering. Others,

however, have questioned penal substitution for confessional reasons, or in a post-Holocaust

context to avoid depicting Jews as “Christ-killers.”

Lindbeck notes that Gustav Aulen’s Christus Victor “is less than fully reliable on Anselm

and Luther, but it made my generation of theological students intensely aware that what we had

learned about the atonement in Sunday school and confirmation class was based on a theory that

had not existed for the first millennium of Christian history.”705 It also had not been central for

some of the West’s greatest teachers, such as Luther and Aquinas, and even John Calvin did not

see it as the central atonement motif. Lindbeck says that he, like many in his generation, initially

approved of Aulen’s third alternative between penal substitution and moral influence views of

the atonement, but he and others came to have reservations because it was difficult to preach and

teach on a popular level, and so a vacuum was created in which there was a lack of atonement

teaching within churches.706 His second concern is that for many scholarly advocates of the

Christus Victor motif, “it has come to be understood in revelational rather than soteriological

terms.”707 Lindbeck argues that within a revelational context, salvation is primary defined as

“being grasped by the truth,” and so within this context, “it is perhaps inevitable that Christ is

704 Lindbeck, “Atonement,” 236; Lindbeck, “Justification and Atonement,” 207. 705 Lindbeck, “Atonement,” 236. See also Lindbeck, “Justification and Atonement,” 208. 706 Lindbeck, “Justification and Atonement,” 208. Lindbeck says, “The attempt to replace the medieval Western emphasis on Christ as victim with the patristic stress on Christ as victor has failed on the popular level.” 707 Lindbeck, “Atonement,” 237.

152

encountered chiefly as Model to be imitated rather than Savior to be trusted.”708 Lindbeck

observes that this view reverses the proper order. Jesus is first Savior and then Example. He says,

[Jesus] is trusted and loved as the One who saves from sin, death and the devil, and it is from this trust and love that there arises a longing to be like him in his life and death. Theologies of the cross that stress the imitatio Christi have their place, but that place is not with atonement but with what Calvinists call the third use of the law, and with what Luther, if I may coin a phrase, might call a Christian’s use of the first use of the law.709 In emphasizing Jesus as Savior before Example, Lindbeck follows Luther, who says in

his essay, “A Brief Introduction on What to Look for an Expect in the Gospels,” that the church

should come to understand Christ in two ways. “First, as an example that is presented to you,

which you should follow and imitate.”710 Christ shows his followers how to live, pray, and love

and serve others. Luther says, however, “this is the smallest part of the gospel…. The chief

article and foundation of the gospel is that before you take Christ as an example, you accept and

recognize him as a gift, as a present that God has given you and that is your own.”711 Luther says

that one must first accept Christ as gift and blessing, as the one through whom God saves, makes

people Christian, and nourishes faith, before accepting him as example.712

Lindbeck says, “It seems self-evident to most Christians who have interiorized the faith

that love of Jesus best flourishes when it is believed that he died that sinners might live (or,

emphasizing the Reformation pro nobis, that you might live, and I might live, and all humankind

might live) and that without his freely offered and utterly agonizing death, none of this would

and will happen.”713 A minority of Christians down through the centuries of Christendom have

708 Ibid. 709 Lindbeck, “Justification and Atonement,” 209. See also Lindbeck, “Atonement,” 237. 710 Martin Luther, “A Brief Instruction on What to Look For and Expect in the Gospels,” in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull and William R. Russell, Third Edition. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012), 72. 711 Ibid. 712 Ibid., 72–73. 713 Lindbeck, “Atonement,” 237. See also Lindbeck, “Justification and Atonement,” 213.

153

“lived these convictions with deep intensity, but those who have are a major source of whatever

glimmers of Christlikeness have shone amidst the sins of Christendom. These lovers of Jesus are

much of the leaven in the lump, of the faithful remnant, of the salt that saves the church from

insipidity or worse that constantly threatens it.”714 He asks where this devoted service to God

could possibly come apart from an “atonement-centered love of Jesus.”715 Apart from this

emphasis, the church will not have heroes of the faith like Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Mother

Theresa to emulate.

He argues that “interiorizing the message of Christ’s atoning death is a necessary

condition for Christian vitality.”716 Apart from this message the church cannot pass the pragmatic

test: “You will know them by their fruits” (Matt 7:20). He notes as well, however, that the

message of Christ’s atoning work is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for this fruit.

There are many ways of preaching the gospel that do not distill passionate and committed

faithfulness within Christian communities. He notes, “Christ’s death understood in

unreconstructedly substitutionary ways has legitimated revolution as well as reaction…. The

atonement, in short, has been the source of vitality for exceedingly diverse agendas across the

political spectrum from left to right.”717 Lindbeck argues, however, that the solution for the

church is not to abolish discussions of the cross and Jesus’ death, but rather to reform the

church’s preaching, teaching, and liturgy.718

714 Lindbeck, “Justification and Atonement,” 213–214. See also Lindbeck, “Atonement,” 238. 715 Lindbeck, “Atonement,” 238. 716 Ibid. 717 Lindbeck, “Justification and Atonement,” 210. 718 Lindbeck, “Atonement,” 238–239.

154

Lindbeck commends an approach to the atonement that is orthodox, dogmatic, and reliant

upon a classical hermeneutic, but at the same time modern in the sense that it has an awareness

of historical particularity and cultural diversity. He says that in this “generous orthodoxy,”

Its practitioners will know, as their ancestors in the faith could not know, of the variety of biblically legitimate ways of proclaiming the saving power of Christ’s death in the church’s past. They will be open to new ways of telling one and the same story of redemption in unprecedented settings, and at the same time they will have resources in tradition as well as Scripture for distinguishing between fruitful and unfruitful retellings. The truth that God speaks differently to his people in different situations through one and the same scriptural words is self-evident from the perspective of a critically retrieved understanding of premodern hermeneutics.719 Such an approach can help bring together Christians from diverse backgrounds, as well as break

out of conservative-liberal binaries.

THE ATONEMENT AND JUSTIFICATION

In order to discuss further how Jesus is Savior, Lindbeck discusses justification. He

argues that in the modern period, the atonement and justification are often discussed separately

from each other. As an example, he points to the two volume Christian Dogmatics, a work

composed by Lutheran scholars and edited by Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson. This work

divides dogmatics into twelve loci, and while the atonement and justification are both authored

by the same person, Gerhard Forde, the atonement is discussed in the context of the work of

Christ, locus seven, while justification is discussed in relation to the Christian Life, locus

eleven.720 Lindbeck also notes the absence of a connection between the two in ecumenical

statements.

719 Ibid., 240. He also clarifies this discussion, as well as what he elsewhere means by (un)translatability: “Adaptability to different audiences and contexts is more a matter of interpreting different cultural and historical worlds in the language of Scripture and tradition than of translating that language into contemporary conceptualities (as most modern theology has done, not despite itself, but as a matter of principle).” “Justification and Atonement,” 217. 720 See Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds., Christian Dogmatics: Volume Two (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1984). Lindbeck notes that elsewhere, Forde does make the connection between the two.

155

Lindbeck argues, against the modern practice, that they should be discussed together.

They were discussed together in light of each other in the past, but twentieth century ecumenical

discussions largely ignored the deep connections between them. He notes the commonalities that

existed between the Reformers and those in the Catholic Counter-Reformation on the

relationship between the atonement and justification. Both sides tended to emphasize Christ as

Victim rather than Victor, though a variety of atonement motifs were utilized.721 The emphasis

was placed upon Christ’s death to the point that “Christ’s atoning death was seen as almost the

whole of his saving work.”722 Also, “Both parties in the Reformation debates agreed that the

atonement is a necessary cause or condition of justification not only as an event in the order of

executive reality, but also as an object of faith in the cognitional or subjective order.”723 They all

agreed that Christ’s death is necessary for the forgiveness of sins, and that Christ’s work is not

only the necessary, but also the sufficient condition for justification.

Lindbeck says, “Luther in particular emphasized that atonement and justification can be

seen as correlative aspects of the single reality of God’s redemptive action.”724 This could be

seen in Luther’s utilization of the medieval mystics’ notion of the “blessed exchange.” Lindbeck

explains Luther’s views further by saying,

What God does to Christ in cross and resurrection he also does to sinners in word and sacrament through the Spirit’s gift of faith. In both cases he slays and makes alive. Justifying faith has Christ as its object in such a way that it is Christo formata, formed by Christ. In view of this intimate union, the necessity and sufficiency for salvation which belongs to Christ also belongs to faith, for they make ‘one cake’ and are united as are the fire and the metal in glowing iron.725 721 Lindbeck, “Justification and Atonement,” 185, 187. Lindbeck sketches a history of this division on pages 192–204. Though he is critical of this division, Lindbeck still, in general, speaks positively of these modern ecumenical statements concerning justification, of which in some cases he is a contributor. 722 Ibid., 185. 723 Ibid. 724 Ibid. 725 Ibid., 186. Lindbeck says, ““This pericoretic imagery makes it difficult to understand why justification was disputed and atonement was not.”

156

In this, Christians are not only united with Christ’s work, but with his person.

Lindbeck here is interested in not only what Christians believe, but in the embodiment

and proclamation of the gospel.726 He paraphrases Forde by saying “to proclaim the gospel is ‘to

do’ it.”727 It is not enough to simply communicate information that justification is sola Christi or

sola fide. Rather, “to proclaim or do the gospel is to pronounce the te absolvo whereby faith is

created and forgiveness takes place.”728 One can illustrate how this works in terms of J.L.

Austin’s discussion of “speech-acts” or “performative utterances.”729 Lindbeck says, “The gospel

in its proclamatory role is like a marriage vow, or judicial verdict, or last will and testament; it

does not describe but instead creates or ‘performs’ the reality it utters.”730 This performative

understanding allows for a diversity of approaches to justification, from the forensic/juridical to

the Finish emphasis upon theosis. He says, “The one thing necessary is the proclamatory or

performative—not, to be noted, the descriptive—sola fide: God in Christ alone is to be trusted

for salvation—not anything else, not even the ‘faith, virtues or merits’ that we may acknowledge

‘God working [in us] by grace alone.’ This is the norm by which everything is to [be] judged.”731

726 Lindbeck, “Atonement,” 221. 727 Lindbeck, “Justification and Atonement,” 188. 728 Ibid. 729 See J.L. Austin, Philosophical Papers, ed. J.O. Ormson and G.J. Warnock, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 233–235; J.L. Austin, How to Do Things With Words, ed. J.O. Ormson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962). 730 Lindbeck, “Justification and Atonement,” 188. 731 Ibid., 189. This more positive assessment of theosis, and its use by the Finish school, is in marked contrast to Lindbeck’s earlier work. In 1967, Lindbeck said, “I am enough of a Lutheran to believe that the greatest thing on heaven and earth is the forgiveness of sins, and cannot help but read with dismay the offhand remarks, even of Catholic theologians with whom I am in great sympathy, to the effect that salvation is not simply a matter of the forgiveness of sins but rather of the divinization of man. Karl Rahner, for example, has said this, and in his case I am sure that what is involved is not so much a fundamental disagreement but rather what, from my point of view, is an extraordinarily limited use of the phrase ‘forgiveness of sins.’ The forgiveness of sins, after all, is the breaking down of the middle wall of partition between man and God, it is the reconciliation of humanity to God, it is their unification in personal love and communion. Surely, this is the essence of what is meant by divinization, and this, to be sure, is something with which Karl Rahner agrees.” “Cosmic Redemption,” 78.

157

Also, in socially embodying the gospel, Christians must recognize their own complicity

in Jesus’ crucifixion. As noted in the previous chapter, for the earliest Christians, “All the

wickedness of the Israelites in the wilderness could be theirs.”732 The same can be said not only

of the people of God in the Old Testament, but those in the New as well. For example,

commenting on Jesus’ parables in Luke 15, Fred Craddock says:

In texts in which Jesus is facing opponents, we who deal with these so easily, but certainly not intentionally, preach and teach them as the voice of Jesus rather than as those who need to hear the voice of Jesus. This does not mean we must label ourselves Pharisees and scribes, but it does mean we realize that these texts were written not simply out of historical interest in the religious community surrounding Jesus but primarily because these texts addressed a church with the problems herein associated with Pharisees and scribes. There is no room to say, “Lord, I thank thee that I am not as they were.”733 Luther makes a similar argument concerning Jesus’ crucifixion in a 1519 sermon. He says that

some in his day meditated upon Christ’s passion by “venting their anger on the Jews,” and in

particular, upon the wickedness of Judas. He says, “That might well be a meditation on the

wickedness of Judas and the Jews, but not on the sufferings of Christ.”734 Luther instead argues

that one should contemplate Christ’s passion by not blaming Jews, but with the awareness that

one’s own sin put Jesus on the cross: “You should get it through your head and not doubt that

you are the one who is torturing Christ thus, for your sins have surely wrought this.”735 Here

732 Lindbeck, “Church,” 184; Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 166.

733 Fred B. Craddock, Luke, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, 1990, 184. Thanks to Rev. Dr. Herbie Miller for this reference. 734 Martin Luther, “A Meditation on Christ’s Passion,” in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull and William R. Russell, Third Edition. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012), 126. 735 Ibid., 127. The editors note here, “Luther’s attitude toward the Jews reflects common views in the late-medieval and early modern Europe society. And it finds occasional expression in his works. Relatively early his career, his position was one of benevolent hope of converting them to Christianity. This is reflected in this treatise, as well as in his That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew (1523), LW 45: 195–229. Over the years his position took a more violent turn, because of the refusal of the Jews to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. This is evidenced in his treatise of 1547, On the Jews and Their Lies, WA 53:(412) 417–552.” Thomas Kaufman argues that while Luther’s view on the Jews did indeed shift, that he was not consistent in his speech about the Jews in the early period. Kaufman says that Luther stated “at roughly the same time that the Jews ‘crucified’ Christ; they deserved their misery. They had ‘always been Christ’s greatest enemy’ and would not grant that he was God, ‘enduring sin and death, but they

158

Luther attempts to echo Peter’s words to the crowds on Pentecost: “Therefore let the entire house

of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom

you crucified” (Acts 2:36). This led the crowds to ask, “Brothers, what should we do?” (2:37).

Lindbeck says, “The point, put starkly, is that faith alone can save the murderers of the Lord.

Only the victim can forgive, and when the victim is God incarnate his forgiveness encompasses

all forgiveness and can be trusted to the uttermost.”736 Lindbeck hopes that future ecumenical

discussions of justification will “turn from the anthropological correlates to a fuller consideration

of their Christological and soteriological reference.”737

ESCHATOLOGICAL FULFILLMENT

Eckerstorfer notes that while Lindbeck’s earlier ecclesiology emphasizes salvation as

communal and cosmic, “[u]nfortunately, the cosmic dimension remains underdeveloped in later

writings which, in the postliberal mode, gives way to an underestimation of the salvific role of

the world and correspondingly of God’s presence in human culture.”738 While this cosmic and

eschatological plays a larger role in Lindbeck’s earlier work, it is not fully absent from his later

writing. He argues that not only does Jesus’ atoning work have a cosmic scope, but also,

“devotion to the One to whom one owes one’s life has cosmic scope and force.”739

In an essay originally presented and published in French, and then translated and included

as an afterward to the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of The Nature of Doctrine, Lindbeck does

address the relation of soteriology to eschatology. His words here also have implications for

understanding the church as a pilgrim people. He argues that his cultural-linguistic approach to

continue to live in their sins.’” See Luther’s Jews: A Journey into Anti-Semitism, trans. Lesley Sharpe and Jeremy Noakes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 47. 736 Lindbeck, “Justification and Atonement,” 190. 737 Ibid., 215. 738 Eckerstorfer, 406. 739 Lindbeck, “Atonement,” 238.

159

theology seeks to avoid “the presentism or implicit realized eschatology of an individualistic

experiential-expressive inwardness in favor of a prospective outlook appropriate to a communal

(indeed cosmic) futuristic eschatology.”740 Instead, his approach emphasizes the communal

nature of salvation, and that this salvation has “broken into the present from the future above all

in Jesus Christ and in the communities that publicly witness to him,” but this salvation will not

come to its fullness until the consummation and end of history, when “all humanity and—indeed,

all creation—will acknowledge him as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”741 Jesus Christ is, as

Paul says in 1 Corinthians, “the first fruits of those who have died” (15:20). He is the second

Adam, and just as death and sin came through that first man, so resurrection comes through the

second Adam, “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (v. 22). In the end

Christ will destroy every ruler and authority, the last of which is death. In that time God will

subject all things to Christ, and then, “When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself

will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be

all in all” (v. 28).

Disagreement exists among some of Lindbeck’s students on how to carry this Christology

forward. David Yeago argues that a challenge for contemporary Christian theology, especially in

light of the Holocaust, is how to account for these christological claims in light of the shame that

comes from the church’s supersessionistic past. Some have responded to these issues in

problematic ways. For example, Rosemary Radford Ruether says,

Our theological critique of Christian anti-Judaism … must turn to what was always the other side of anti-Judaism, namely Christology. At the heart of every Christian dualizing of the dialectics of human existence into Christian and anti-Judaic antitheses is Christology, or, to be more specific, the historicizing of the eschatological event…. Christ becomes the vengeful instrument to persecute that people who hoped for his coming and who fail to recognize in such a Christ their own redemption. But is it possible

740 Lindbeck, ND, 131. 741 Ibid.

160

to purge Christianity of anti-Judaism without at the same time pulling up Christian faith? Is it possible to say “Jesus is Messiah” without, implicitly or explicitly, saying at the same time “and the Jews be damned”?742

Reuther goes on to answer these questions with the acknowledgment, “The most

fundamental affirmation of Christian faith is the belief that Jesus is the Christ.”743 Ruether,

however, roots Christian anti-Semitism and the errors of Christendom in the “historicizing of the

eschatological,” the attempt by Christians to say that the Messianic era arrived with Jesus

Christ.744 Ruether seeks to reformulate this understanding by seeing Jesus as a faithful Jew who

lived and hoped in anticipation of God’s coming Kingdom, and that, “Ultimately, God will

vindicate his hope.”745 She likens Jesus’ resurrection to a reduplication of Exodus, saying that it

provides a foundation for Christian hope, and reaffirms Jesus’ hope. His followers in the church,

in turn, reaffirm his hope. Ruther argues, “But this hope was not finally fulfilled either in his

lifetime or in his death…. The messianic meaning of Jesus’ life, then, is paradigmatic and

proleptic in nature, not final and fulfilled.”746 In this, Ruether rejects or minimizes distinct

Christian claims about Jesus in order to have common ground with Jews. Bader-Saye expresses

concern that Ruether’s view has not only denied Christian particularity, but Jewish particularity

as well.747 Bader-Saye says, “Given that neither Novak nor Wyschogrod welcomes a dedivinized

Jesus as particularly helpful for Judaism or Jewish-Christian dialogue, one wonders what is

742 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism. (New York: Seabury Press, 1974), 246. 743 Ibid. 744 Ibid., 248. 745 Ibid., 249. 746 Ibid. See also 256–257. 747 Bader-Saye, 77–78. Bader-Saye comes to the conclusion that Ruether’s position is an “experiential-expressivist” one that “interprets Jesus as the paradigmatic expression of the experience of eschatological hope…. Ruether affirms that other paradigms, such as the Exodus, will provide the same symbolic and evocative function for other religions. Only when Christians will come to realize that Easter means the same thing as Exodus will they finally be able to end their anti-Jewish polemic. This construal, however, does no favors to the Jews, for it relativizes Jewish claims of chosenness just as much as it does Christian claims about Christ” (78).

161

really gained by the Christian move to jettison traditional christological and trinitarian

claims.”748

Yeago says, “The hallmark of all these hasty responses is their common reduction of the

universal significance and eschatological finality of the particular Jew Jesus Christ.”749 As

another example he points to Kendall Soulen’s The God of Israel and Christian Theology.

Therein, Soulen argues that Jesus is the “victorious guarantee of God’s end-time fidelity to the

work of consummation.” This is a twofold claim: Jesus is victorious because God vindicates

Jesus in the resurrection, and he is also a guarantee “because while everything about Jesus

pertains to God’s eschatological reign, Jesus himself is not that reign in its fullness. Jesus is only

the ‘first fruits of those who have died’ (1 Cor 15:20). Paul does not say that in Christ all of

God’s promises are fulfilled but rather that they are confirmed.”750 Soulen again later reiterates

this point: “Without doubt everything turns on Christ, but not everything concerns Christ.

Redemption is for the sake of consummation, not consummation for the sake of redemption.”751

Yeago is critical of this move because in it Soulen downgrades Jesus’ role so that “he is

seen as guaranteeing the final consummation of God’s reign through his act of ‘redemption,’ but

not as being himself the consummation in person…. In other words, Christ is a means to an end

beyond himself, the Way but not the Truth and the Life.”752 While Soulen believes this approach

allows him to avoid Christian triumphalism and understand the eschaton as the fulfillment of

both Christians and Jews, Yeago says Soulen has “severed the Kingdom from the particularity of

Jesus.”753 Soulen instead relates the consummation to a “reign of wholeness, righteousness,

748 Ibid., 80. 749 David S. Yeago, “The Apostolic Faith Part II” (unpublished, n.d.), 121. Cited with permission from the author. 750 Soulen, 165. 751 Ibid., 175. 752 Yeago, 121n30. 753 Ibid.

162

justice, and peace.”754 Yeago says of this, “he is reduced to describing” the coming Kingdom “in

terms of abstract values … which have no essential connection with either the Church or

Israel.”755

Yeago is not alone in this critique. Scott Bader-Saye says, “The lingering question for

Soulen’s Christology is this: If Jesus does not inaugurate Israel’s redemption but only confirms

it, then how is Jesus different than other faithful Jewish witnesses?”756 Soulen says, “Jesus’ story

is grounded in God’s work as Consummator by means of genealogy (Matt 1:2–16; Luke 3:23–

38).”757 While Jesus shares much of this genealogy with others, Soulen contends that the

message of Jesus takes on a “distinctive character on Jesus’ lips: it becomes gospel, an

unambiguous proclamation of good news.” It has this uniqueness because of two characteristics

of Jesus’ expectation and proclamation: “First, Jesus trusted God’s reign to consummate the

economy of mutual blessing between God and the house of Israel, and therefore between God

and the nations as well. Second, Jesus trusted God’s reign to consummate Israel and the nations

in a manner that reclaimed, redeemed, and restored the lost.”758 Bader-Saye notes, however, that

neither of these characteristics are unique to Jesus, for many faithful people in Abraham’s

lineage share these characteristics. While Soulen could go on to point to Jesus’ willingness to

die, Bader-Saye again notes that there are other examples of Jewish martyrs. Again, while

Soulen can point to Jesus’ resurrection, he also says that Jesus is the first fruits. Bader-Saye

concludes, “All that Soulen says about Jesus seems amenable to an adoptionist Christology, and

thus it is unclear what might make us worship Christ…. Soulen’s discussion of Christ’s life,

754 Soulen, 176. 755 Yeago, 121n30. 756 Bader-Saye, 83. 757 Ibid. 758 Soulen, 159.

163

death, and resurrection does not require that we attribute to Christ any more that that he was an

extremely faithful Jew, trusting in God’s promises and living the way of blessing faithfully even

unto the cross.”759 Lindbeck avoids the trap that Soulen falls into by maintaining an explicit

commitment to creedal orthodoxy and supplementing it with an attentive eye toward the entire

canon of Scripture.

CONCLUSION

Lindbeck’s theology, in particular his ecclesiology and understanding of ecumenism, has

its own christocentrism. This can be seen in his identification of Jesus as both the Messiah of

Israel and the incarnate Son of God. Just as Christians must develop their ecclesiology in

dialogue with the entire canon of Scripture, Lindbeck argues that they must come to understand

the person and work of Jesus in light of the entire canon of Scripture, for Jesus sums up all of

Israel’s history in himself. Jesus alone fulfills Israel.

As the summation of Israel, Jesus serves as an example to the church on how to socially

embody Scripture. At the same time, Lindbeck affirms that Jesus must first be understood as

savior. The center of Jesus’ person and work, as well as Scripture’s overarching narrative, is the

cross. There, Jesus liberates humanity from bondage to sin and death and reconciles them to

God. Christians must, as those seeking to follow Jesus’ example, come to interiorize the gospel

message. Lindbeck argues this by drawing deeper connections between the atonement and

justification. Through Christ, “the first fruits of those who have died” (1 Cor 15:20), God will

bring all things to completion. While some have argued that Christians should minimize

christological distinctives to create common ground with Jews, Lindbeck resists this impulse

while also seeking to avoid the supersessionistic perspective that the church fulfills Israel.

759 Bader-Saye, 83–84.

164

CHAPTER SIX

CHRISTIAN MISSION

“In the end, may God be merciful to us and may God’s face shine upon us, that God’s way might be known on earth and his saving power among all nations.” – Martin Luther760

Lindbeck’s approach to ecclesiology opens him up to criticism from both the right and

the left. Those on the right may come to criticize him for a perceived lack of emphasis on

evangelism. Those on the left may criticize him for his approach to ecumenism. The next two

chapters will respond to these criticisms. This chapter will discuss Lindbeck’s understanding of

Christian mission by focusing upon his discussions of witness and service, catechesis, and

baptism. It will then close with a pneumatological corrective to Lindbeck’s ecclesiology. The

concluding chapter will then discuss some further ecumenical implications of Lindbeck’s project.

WITNESS

Lindbeck says that the church’s mission is to “witness to the God who judges and who

saves, not to save those who would otherwise be damned (for God has not confined his saving

work exclusively to the Church’s ministrations).”761 Throughout the Old Testament, from the

calling of Abraham to the prophets, it is emphasized that Israel is “a light to the nations” (Isa

42:6). The New Testament then reapplies this theme by saying that Jesus is the light that came

into the world (John 1:9). In addition, Jesus tells his followers, “You are the light of the world. A

city built on a hill cannot be hid” (Matt 5:14). Lindbeck notes that God has multiple aims within

creation, but “at least one aim in choosing Israel, Jesus and the church is the redemption of the

world.”762

760 Martin Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian,” in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull and William R. Russell, Third Edition. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012), 427.

761 Lindbeck, “Church,” 192. 762 Lindbeck, “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 443.

165

The Messiah plays a different role than God’s people: “His role is redemption itself,

while they are witnesses…. Christ alone is the true light ‘that enlightens every one coming into

the world’ (Jn. 1:9).”763 Israel and the church have a unique “communal witness to salvation.”764

Lindbeck says, “Witnessing to salvation is a matter of pointing all things to the true God who, in

view of what we have called untranslatability, can be rightly identified only in the unique

language of the elect peoples.”765 The emphasis upon God’s people as a witness to salvation,

rather than as a means of salvation, allows the church to avoid triumphalism while remaining

faithful to the Bible; to maintain a biblical understanding of election while avoiding arrogance

and pride.766 Lindbeck argues that God does in this time, the time between the times, what God

did before: “choosing and guiding a people to be a sign and witness in all that it is and does,

whether obediently or disobediently, to who and what he is.”767 So while the church’s identity

does not rest in her faithfulness, her primary mission is still “not to save souls but to be a

faithfully witnessing people.”768 The church is called “to be a light to the nations primarily by the

quality of their communal life rather than by the quantity of their individual converts.”769

Lindbeck sees his position, that “the Bible on the whole is exclusivist in regard to

communal witness even if not individual salvation,” as having merit. Nowhere in the Old

Testament is any nation other than Israel seen as “especially beloved of God as a means of

blessing to all peoples.”770 The New Testament echoes this: “salvation is from the Jews” (John

4:22). And again, “For in the first place the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God” (Rom

763 Ibid., 443–444. 764 Ibid., 444. 765 Ibid. 766 Ibid.

767 Lindbeck, “Church,” 192. See Lindbeck, “Spiritual Formation,” 28. 768 Lindbeck, “Church,” 194.

769 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 24. 770 Lindbeck, “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 445.

166

3:2). Also, Paul, echoing Isaiah 45:23, argues that every knee will bow to the Jewish Messiah,

Jesus (Phil 2:10; cf. 1 Cor 15:26ff). While the Old Testament does at times say that foreign

rulers, like Cyrus, have salvific significance (e.g., Isa 45:1, 13),771 and that God may choose

people other than Israel for specific tasks (Amos 9:7), “it does not warrant pluralism…. The

communities which God uses in public history as witnesses are in their self-understanding in the

Abrahamic line.”772

Lindbeck identifies two primary ways in which the church witnesses to God’s salvific

work. First, God desires from the elect people, and from all of creation, “praise, doxology, joy in

God and God’s creation. From this it follows that the fundamental witness of the elect peoples to

the coming Kingdom is being communities which whole-heartedly laud and bless the Holy

Name.”773 This praise of God should not be based solely upon what God has done for us (pro

nobis), but as the rabbis maintained, God should be loved for God’s own sake. Praise takes place

not only within a worship service, but in obedience to God’s precepts and commandments. One

does not obey these commands for some instrumental or extrinsic good, such as merit or the

development of virtue, but because obedience to God’s commands has its own intrinsic benefits.

“They are their own reward and for that reason meritorious, virtue-producing, and neighbor-

benefiting.”774 Lindbeck argues, “Doxologically-minded Christians, needless to say, agree.

God’s self-communication occurs in and through the church’s liturgical, communal and diaconal

practices as these are done for their own sake in praise of God, not for some extrinsic good.

Faithful witness is doxology and vice versa.”775 He compares the relation of praise of God and

771 In that same context in Isaiah 45, however, it is reiterated, “Israel is saved by the LORD with everlasting salvation; / you shall not be put to shame or confounded to all eternity” (v. 17). 772 Lindbeck, “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 445. 773 Ibid. 774 Ibid., 446. 775 Ibid.

167

service of outsiders to discussions of the relation between faith and works in Reformational

theology: “the second is a necessary by, in one sense, accidental by-product of the former.”776

The church’s witness differs depending upon the given circumstances, which the church

cannot control. The church’s way of life will lead to diverse responses. Lindbeck says, “Faithful

witness will sometimes attract converts, but in other situations it will repel them, and exactly the

same can be said about unfaithfulness.”777 Rowan Greer notes, for example, that early Christians

were, to use Tennyson’s phrase, “‘broken lights’ that reflected dimly the ineffable glory of God,”

and these lights “in various ways mended human lives.”778 Through the witness of the church

sinners came to faith and baptism and their lives were changed. While they may have spoken

hyperbolically in some cases about the extent of the church’s sanctity, church fathers like Justin

Martyr and Origen saw these mended lives as “the best apology for the truth of the Gospel.”779

Faithful witness, however, can lead to persecution and death. Christian de Chergé and the

Cistercian monks of the Abbey of Our Lady of Atlas in Tibhirine, Algeria provide a modern-day

example of this.780 Also, sin and disunity obscures the church’s witness and negatively impacts

the credibility of the gospel.

While it is difficult, and maybe even impossible, to provide a general principle for how

elect communities witness to God, Lindbeck provides two guidelines. “First, communal faith is

fundamental. It is not only individuals but communities.”781 He says in this context that Israel

and the church are called to “not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God” (Ex

776 Ibid. 777 Ibid. 778 Rowan A. Greer, Broken Lights and Mended Lives: Theology and Common Life in the Early Church (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986), 2. 779 Ibid., 15. 780 See Christian Salenson, Christian de Chergé: A Theology of Hope, trans. Nada Conic (Trappist, KY: Cistercian Publications, 2012). 781 Lindbeck, “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 446.

168

20:7). What it means to faithfully witness to God cannot and should not be judged by the world’s

standards, for it can lead to martyrdom.

Lindbeck says, however, that this call for faithfulness need not be carried out recklessly,

but “must be exercised with prudence.” Lindbeck thus provides a second guideline: “It may

sound repellently ethnocentric, but the survival and welfare of the chosen people is a criterion

distinguishing between the prudent and the imprudent.”782 He notes that such a concept may be

foreign to Christians, but is still maintained by Jews. This is especially the case after the

Holocaust. Lindbeck notes that premodern Christians thought in these terms. They prayed for the

church more fervently than they did for the nations in which they lived, and had more concern

for the poor in their midst than for those outside the church. They also understood, however, that

their welfare was connected to the nations in which they dwelt. They were thus instructed in the

New Testament to pray for those in governing authority (1 Tim 2:1–2). Lindbeck says,

Because of the community in its corporate existence which is chosen by God to witness to the world, members have responsibilities for each other and for their own people as a whole which do not extend to society at large or to other groups. Premodern supersessionist Christians in some ways spiritualized the notion of the church as Israel, but much of its sense of concrete peoplehood remained.783 The second way that the church witnesses to the world is in “her serving role in our

religiously pluralistic world. Her motives are not disinterested; she serves others in part for her

own sake.”784 While there is some multivalence in the use of the term “servant” within the Old

Testament, there are definite references to Israel as YHWH’s servant. Israel is called “my

servant,” and told, “You are my servant; I have chosen you and not cast you off” (Is 41:8–9).

Two chapters later, it says,

You are my witnesses, says the LORD,

782 Ibid., 447. 783 Ibid. 784 Ibid.

169

and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you will know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no God was formed, nor shall there be any after me (Is 43:10).

Some passages also reaffirm God’s salvific action among his people: “The LORD has redeemed

his servant Jacob!” (48:20). Others proclaim that Israel is the people “in whom I will be

glorified” (49:3). Various other passages in the servant songs of Isaiah and in other prophetic

texts continue these themes God’s election of Israel, God’s continued faithfulness to Israel, and

Israel’s calling to serve and witness to God (Isa 42:1–9; 44:1–2, 21; 45:4; 52:13–53:12; 54:17;

56:6–8; 63:17; 65:8–9, 13–15; Jer 30:10; 46:27–28).785

To expound upon this further, Lindbeck points to the exilic or diaspora reality of both

Israelites and early Christians. He does so because the contemporary church’s context is most

like that of the people of Israel in exile or the early church than any intervening period.786 The

prophet Jeremiah says to the exiles in Babylon, “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens

and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons,

and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and

do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to

the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (29:7). Here the prophet is

reminding them to have concern for the sustenance of their community, as well as for the cities

in which they live. They are reminded, as Lindbeck says, “They will be served by what benefits

Babylon.”787

785 New Testament texts associate Jesus as the servant in the case of Isaiah 42 and 52:13ff, and some of the references to YHWH’s servant clearly refer to a particular prophet or a king like David. See John Goldingay, “Servants of Yahweh,” in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Prophets, ed. Mark J. Boda and J. Gordon McConville (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2012), 700–707. 786 Lindbeck, “Church,” 190. Though Lindbeck continues to speak of the contemporary church as a diaspora, some of his later writing speaks of it with more ambivalence. 787 Lindbeck, “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 447.

170

Similar passages arise in the New Testament as well. For example, in 1 Peter, the author

refers to his audience as “the exiles of the Dispersion” (1:1), and he tells them, “If you invoke as

Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear

during the time of your exile” (1:17). He says, “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to

abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves

honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your

honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge” (2:11–12). In order to conduct

themselves honorably, they are instructed to honor the governing authorities in the Roman world:

For the Lord’s sake accept the authority of every human institution, whether of the emperor as supreme, or of governors, as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing right you should silence the ignorance of the foolish. As servants of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil. Honor everyone. Love the family of believers. Fear God. Honor the emperor (2:13–17). After providing instructions for various members of households, they are told, “have unity of

spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for

evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing. It is for this that you were

called—that you might inherit a blessing” (3:8–9). While they may inherit a blessing from not

retaliating when persecuted, the author does not guarantee they will move forward without

further persecution. Rather, he encourages them saying,

But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God (3:14–18a).

171

While in the past they lived as Gentiles, they are called to live disciplined lives, loving

and serving one another for the glory of God (4:1–11). Again, they are told not to be surprised if

they are persecuted, “But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may

also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed (4:13), and “if any of you suffers as a

Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name” (4:16). At

the same time, however, they are reminded that if they suffer, it should be for the right reasons:

“If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is

the Spirit of God, is resting on you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, a criminal,

or even as a mischief maker” (4:14–15). He also instructs the elders in the community to humbly

oversee, serve, and care for their flocks, and to be steadfast in the face of suffering (5:1–11).

A part of this role as servant within the world, Lindbeck notes, includes service to people

of other faiths. He says:

Seeking and praying for the welfare of the earthly cities in which Christians live cannot be separated from concern for the religions without which these societies could not in many cases survive. It is on how these religions sustain these societies that the worldwide diaspora of peoples of biblical faith is increasingly dependent for the peace without which they cannot freely and communally glorify and witness to the Name which is above every name. Thus helping other religions is imperative. The service of God and neighbor in this case intersects with communal self-interest.788 Christians are to serve their neighbors regardless of whether or not this service leads to

conversions. Lindbeck speculates, on the basis of passages like Amos 9:7–8, that “nations other

than Israel—and, by extension, religions other than biblical ones—are also peoples elected (and

failing) to carry out their own distinctive tasks within the world.”789 If this is the case, then God

788 Ibid., 448. 789 Lindbeck, ND, 40. Amos 9:7–8 says, “Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, / O people of Israel? says the Lord. / Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, / and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir? / The eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, / and I will destroy it from the face of the earth / —except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, says the Lord.” Lindbeck makes this argument cautiously, saying, “This obviously is a biblical argument for a practice of interreligious dialogue that was unthinkable in biblical times and that the Bible nowhere discusses, either to approve or disapprove” (41).

172

has not tasked his people within Israel and the church with every task pertaining to the coming

kingdom. If this is indeed the case, “Christians may have a responsibility to help other religions

make their own particular contributions, which may be quite distinct from the Christian one, to

the preparation for the Consummation.”790 Therefore, the Christian missionary task may involve

calling Marxists, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists to become better Marxists, Jews, Muslims, and

Buddhists. Lindbeck clarifies this, however, by saying, “although admittedly their notion of what

a ‘better Marxist,’ etc., is will be influenced by Christian norms.”791 While the primary motive

may not be to convert others, conversions may happen as a by-product of the church’s sacrificial

witness and love for people inside and outside of the church.792

Lindbeck says that he is not alone in advocating such views. He points to Nostra Aetate,

the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Non-Christian Religions. Within this document,

the Council says, “Ever aware of its duty to foster unity and charity among individuals, and even

among nations, [the church] reflects at the outset on what people have in common and what

tends to bring them together.”793 They do so with the acknowledgment, “Humanity forms one

community,” and this is so because of God’s creative and providential work.794 The Council

affirms that while the church “rejects nothing of what is holy and true in these religions,” it does

not advocate pluralism, but instead proclaims that “Christ who is the way, the truth and the life

(John 14:6).”795 The Council then provides this directive:

The church, therefore, urges its sons and daughters to enter with prudence and charity into discussion and collaboration with members of other religions. Let Christians, while witnessing to their own faith and way of life, acknowledge, preserve and encourage the 790 Ibid. 791 Ibid. 792 George Lindbeck, “Are There Limits to Religious Pluralism? If so, Why?” (presented at the IJCIC-WCC Consultation, Harvard University, November 25, 1984), 9. Within this presentation, Lindbeck affirms pluralism in the sense that he affirms religious freedom. 793 Nostra Aetate, § 1. 794 Ibid. 795 Ibid., § 2.

173

spiritual and moral truths found among non-Christians, together with their social life and culture.796 Lindbeck says that the vision of witness that he articulates is “Jewish sounding…. It is

above all by the character of its communal life that it witnesses, that it proclaims the gospel and

serves the world.”797 This changes the way that the church views evangelism. He says, “The

mode of evangelization that this approach sustains is that of Christians arousing curiosity by their

mode of life and being prepared to answer those who ask about the reasons for the hope that is in

them.”798 It is also necessary that the church consist of many types of human beings. Galatians

3:28 says, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer

male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Similarly, Colossians 3:11 says, “In that

renewal there is no longer Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian,

slave and free; but Christ is all in all!” Lindbeck argues, however, that “sheer numbers are, at

most, of tertiary importance.”799

In light of Paul’s discussion of the gospel being open to Jews and Gentiles, Michael

Wyschogrod reflects upon Paul’s understanding of how Christ allows Gentiles to enter the

community apart from circumcision. He says, noting Deuteronomy 28, that the following of the

Law includes both blessings and curses. He says that for Paul, “Because of the Christ event these

penalties were no longer applicable. When Paul says in Galatians 3:13, ‘Christ brought us

freedom from the curse of the Law by becoming for our sake an accursed thing,’ he does not

mean that Law is a curse…. He does mean that there is a curse attaching to disobeying the holy

796 Ibid. 797 Lindbeck, “Church,” 193. 798 George Lindbeck, “The Church as Israel and the Ecumenism of the Future: Lecture Two: Israel, Non-Christian Religions and Dominus Iesus” (Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada, October 23, 2001), 22. 799 Lindbeck, “Church,” 193.

174

Law.”800 Paul obviously does not think the entire Law is a curse because he says, “the law is

holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good” (Rom 7:12).

Wyschogrod says, “Paul must have been aware that the Law of Moses was never thought

of as obligatory for non-Jews.”801 This does not mean God, in Jewish understanding, was

indifferent to the moral lives of Gentiles, but instead that they were called to follow the

“Noachide commandments” from Genesis 9, which Wyschogrod calls “the Torah of the

gentiles.” He says, “They are under obligation to it as the Jews are under obligation to obey all of

the Torah. A gentile who obeys the Noachide Law pleases God and has a portion in the world to

come. For this reason, it is not advisable for gentiles to convert to Judaism since, once

circumcised, the gentile becomes a Jew and is under obligation to obey the whole Torah as are

all Jews.”802 Though Jews permit Gentiles to convert, they discourage them from doing so

because they place themselves not only under the blessings of the law, but the curses as well. In

this, Jews differentiated between Ger Toshav, or “the indwelling stranger,” and Ger Tzedek, a

Gentile convert to Judaism. Wyschogrod argues that for Paul, Christ creates a new category:

“gentiles who were not circumcised and not obedient to the Torah but who were still not

excluded from the house of Israel.”803 They have been, as Paul argues in Romans 11, grafted in.

Paul thus discouraged Gentiles from submitting to circumcision, because by converting, they

reject the way into the people of Israel opened to them by Christ (Gal 4:2). Paul is thus, in a

sense, more continuous with rabbinic Judaism than his opponents who expected Gentiles to

become Jews in order to follow Jesus.804

800 Wyschogrod, Abraham’s Promise, 188–189. 801 Ibid., 189. 802 Ibid., 190. 803 Ibid., 191. 804 Ibid., 192–193.

175

Lindbeck extends this understanding to what it means for non-Christians to convert to

Christianity. He says, “Christians have as much reason as Jews to eschew heedless invitations to

outsiders (whether rootless or adherents of other religions) to bear the burdens of election. The

possibilities of damnation as well as of salvation are increased within the people of God.”805 As 1

Peter 4:17a says, judgment “begin[s] with the household of God.”806 Lindbeck says, “The Bible

gives us no warrants for saying that all those who do not become Christians are, in any case,

excluded from the coming kingdom, although it cannot be said of them as of Christians that

salvation, the kingdom, is already present among or in them (Luke 17:21).”807 Also, Lindbeck

provides the reminder that the New Testament nowhere assumes that Christians “will become a

majority before the end of history, much less convert the world.”808

In his attempt to reconcile the solo Christo with the salvation of non-Christians, Lindbeck

rejects the route suggested by Karl Rahner and others. This view argues that God has already

made salvation present to “anonymous Christians”: “They identify the prereflective, inarticulate

experience of the divine, which they hold is at the heart of every religion, with the saving grace

of Christ.”809 Lindbeck instead offers an eschatological or “prospective” view, which argues that,

postmortem, every person will be confronted in the eschaton with Jesus. He says, “It has been

proposed that non-Christians can share in the future salvation even though they, unlike those

805 Lindbeck, “Church,” 193. 806 Lindbeck says, “When one considers these and related passages, one sometimes gets the impression that the Bible balances Cyprian’s claim that there is no salvation outside the church (extra ecclesia nulla salus) with an at least equally emphatic insistence that the beginning of damnation, of deliberate opposition to God, is possible only within the church, within the people of God: Jesus pronounced his woes (and wept), it will be recalled, over the cities of Israel, not those of the Gentiles. On this view, there is no damnation—just as there is no salvation—outside the church.” ND, 45. 807 Lindbeck, “Church,” 193. See Lindbeck, “The Church as Israel Lecture Two;” George Lindbeck, “Dominus Iesus: A Lutheran Perspective” (presented at the One Path to God?, Andover Newton Theological School, May 16, 2001). 808 Lindbeck, “Limits,” 10. 809 Lindbeck, ND, 42.

176

with living Christian faith, have not yet begun to do so. According to this view, saving faith

cannot be wholly anonymous, wholly implicit, but must be in some measure explicit: it comes, as

Paul puts it, ex auditu, from hearing (Rom. 10:17).”810 Not only must one hear the word and

understand it to come to faith, but to reject it as well: “One must, in other words, learn the

language of faith before one can know enough about its message knowingly to reject it and thus

be lost.”811 Lindbeck concludes, “The purpose of that presence of salvation, furthermore, is

witness, and it is up to God to add whom he will to the company (Acts 2:47).”812

CATECHESIS

Lindbeck notes that Jesus chastised the Pharisees because they “cross sea and land to

make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as

yourselves” (Matt 23:15).813 Lindbeck reminds contemporary Christians to avoid following the

Pharisees example. He does so by focusing on some of the ways that Christians have sought to

practice evangelism, particularly after Constantine legitimized the Christian faith within the

Roman Empire. Christians took on the practice of mass conversions, both among barbarian

groups and in modern missions. Lindbeck cautions against such practices, and instead calls the

church to follow the early Christian practice of extended catechesis. While some who place

810 Ibid., 43. Lindbeck advocates for this second position humbly. He says, “Each of these options can appeal with varying degrees of persuasiveness to early scriptural or patristic models” (42), and that, “Both options, it seems, can be made consistent with Scripture and tradition and with contemporary need for interreligious dialogue” (43). He, however, argues the second view, due to its emphasis upon fides ex auditu, has the advantage. He also finds the second view more consistent with his cultural-linguistic approach. He makes a similar argument in “Fides Ex Auditu and the Salvation of Non-Christians: Contemporary Catholic and Protestant Positions,” in The Gospel and the Ambiguity of the Church, ed. Vilmos Vajta (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), 92–123; “Unbelievers and the ‘Sola Christi,’” Dialog 12 (1973): 182–189. 811 Lindbeck, ND, 45. See also 54. 812 Lindbeck, “Church,” 193–194. 813 Lindbeck, “Gospel’s Uniqueness,” 435. Here Lindbeck says, “It was said that the synagogue unlike the church had no universalist aspirations and did not seek to win the heathen, but it is now general knowledge that this is too simple. Jews also were in in the business of converting pagans, and some did this with an eagerness which some Christians found unseemly. Why else would the words of Jesus criticizing Pharisees for their proselytizing zeal (Mat. 23:15) have been preserved?”

177

primary emphasis upon adding numbers to the church may not agree with his approach, he

contends it has been the primary way Christians throughout the centuries have transmitted the

faith to others. Here he points to examples like Ambrose, John Chrysostom, and Cyril of

Jerusalem, who insisted on catechism in response to mass baptisms within the Roman Empire.814

Such an emphasis upon catechesis, as mentioned in the previous chapter, is also an important

part of Lindbeck’s own Lutheran tradition.

Lindbeck says that Christians cannot boast in their faith, for according to Paul’s emphasis

upon fides ex auditu, “explicit faith is understood, not as expressing or articulating the existential

depths, but rather as producing and forming them.”815 Even for mature Christians, they are just

beginning the process of being conformed to Christ; just beginning to “speak Christian.” And

while Christians are given the Holy Spirit as a pledge, they will not fully participate in the

kingdom, fully love God with their entire being and their neighbors as themselves, until the

eschaton. Lindbeck says, “What distinguishes their love from that of the non-Christian is, not its

present subjective quality, but rather the fact that it is beginning to be shaped by the message of

Jesus’ cross and resurrection.”816 Lindbeck cites Luther who says, “we do not yet have our

goodness in re, but in fide et spe.”817 For this reason, Christians must resist pride, for they have

“by grace just begun to learn of the one in whom alone is salvation, but in moral and religious

quality they are like other human beings, worse than some and better than others.”818

814 Lindbeck, “Church,” 194, 204n18. Lindbeck differentiates this practice of proselytizing from the work of others, like Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley, who sought, in revivalism, to call unfaithful Christians to faithfulness. Lindbeck concludes that while they used some questionable methods, the purpose of their work was “unimpeachable” (204n18). 815 Lindbeck, ND, 46. 816 Ibid. 817 As cited in Ibid. 818 Ibid.

178

While some may criticize this cultural-linguistic understanding of conversion as “merely

fictive or imaginary,” and thus not ontological, Lindbeck resists this charge. Those in Christ have

come to live in the light. He sees the linguistic analogy here as helpful. Toddlers, regardless of

whether they speak a primitive or sophisticated language, speak in much the same way: they

speak of their needs and their reactions in basic ways. He says, however, that the language the

child learns to speak can open up any number of options for them in the future, from isolating

them in a tribe to opening them up to a promising future. Lindbeck says that within this analogy,

all human beings are toddlers, whether Peter, or Paul, or the veriest infant in Christ. The decisive question regarding them is whether the language they have begun to learn ex auditu is that of Jesus Christ, that of true humanity, or something else. Is, for example, the love about which they feebly stutter, and which they are just beginning to understand and hope for, defined by Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, or in some other way?819 This learning of the language of Christian faith involves the learning of cognitive

information, such as memorizing the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, and

learning about the sacraments of the church and the testimony of Scripture. Speaking Christian,

however, also includes training in the practices and life of the church so that Christians can

socially embody the faith. For example, people can only come to know what the term “God”

signifies by being trained in how it is used within Scripture and the church, for as Wittgenstein

argues, “The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects.”820 Therefore

Wittgenstein argues, “the teaching of language is not explaining, but training.”821 Lindbeck

paraphrases this by saying, “Hammers and saws, ordinals and numerals, winks and signs of the

cross, words and sentences are made comprehensible by indicating how they fit into systems of

819 Ibid., 47. 820 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, ed. P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte, 4th edition. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), § 11. 821 Ibid., § 5.

179

communication or purposeful action, not by reference to outside factors.”822 He says that this was

in particular true for early Christians. For them, “Beliefs were integrated into a rich matrix of

powerful communal practices and thus acquired meaning and, in a sense, verification.”823 This

training must, then, take place within the church. As Philip Kenneson argues, “The best way to

‘learn’ the Christian faith is to immerse one’s self into a community of competent practitioners

who are themselves involved in internalizing the grammar of the faith, even if they can articulate

little formal doctrine.”824

While many contemporary Christians think one must come to believe the faith in order to

decide to belong to the church, for many pagan converts in the early church, “the process was

reversed: they first decided and then they understood.”825 For many and diverse reasons, these

converts were attracted to the life and witness of the Christian community, and “submitted

themselves to prolonged catechetical instruction in which they practiced new modes of behavior

and learned the stories of Israel and their fulfillment in Christ. Only after they had acquired

proficiency in the alien language and form of life were they deemed able intelligently and

responsibly to profess the faith, to be baptized.”826 After the Christian faith became the dominant

one in the Empire, delaying baptism until after a time of catechesis ceased, but the emphasis

upon catechesis and maturation in the faith continued “in diluted form.” The church continued to

shape the lives of people, they moved from immaturity to maturity, and her members came to see

and experience the world in the light of the biblical narratives of Israel and Jesus.

822 Lindbeck, ND, 100. 823 George Lindbeck, “Theological Perspectives: The Waxing and Waning of Religious Belief” (CUNY, November 12, 1987), 4. 824 Kenneson, 23. Kenneson goes on to say, “knowledge is best understood as local knowledge, and that acquisition of knowledge cannot be separated from initiation into and formation by a community whose convictions, practices, and narratives grant that knowledge its intelligibility” (24). 825 Lindbeck, ND, 118. 826 Ibid.

180

Lindbeck argues, “Western culture is now at an intermediate stage, however, where

soclialization is ineffective, catechesis impossible, and translation a tempting alternative.”827

People continue to tell pollsters that they are Christians even though they deny central tenets of

the faith. They think that knowing some of the language of faith or a few narratives is equivalent

to knowing the Christian faith. To quote George Castanza in the Seinfeld episode, “The

Conversion,” “I know the basic plot…. Yes you know, the flood, and the lepers, and the

commandments and all that.”828 The church has accommodated itself to the point that it is shaped

by the dominant western culture more than it shapes that culture. Lindbeck says, “This makes it

difficult for them to attract catechumens even from among their own children, and when they do,

they generally prove wholly incapable of providing effective instruction in distinctively Christian

language and practice.”829

Churches have often failed to properly catechize people, and so whole social groups

became nominally Christian. Membership in the church became easy. The emphasis upon

bringing as many into the church as possible was reinforced by the belief, justified or not, that

there is no salvation outside of the church. Such a practice led to disaster when Christendom

faded, for,

The churches now increasingly consist of people who have been culturally and linguistically dechristianized and yet retain a residual attachment to the ancestral faith. Return to stricter standards of membership seems imperative if distinctively Christian identity is to be maintained, but this means abandoning the notion that it is the church’s business to entice as many as possible by catering to whatever is currently popular whether on the conservative right or the progressive left.830

827 Ibid., 119. 828 Tom Cherones, “The Conversion,” DVD, Seinfeld (NBC, December 16, 1993). 829 Lindbeck, ND, 119. 830 Lindbeck, “Church,” 205n18.

181

It is a mistake to respond to the church’s failures at evangelization by concluding that the

church’s primary purpose is to serve humanity or the world at large. Lindbeck argues,

“Christians are responsible first of all for their own communities, not for the wider society. It is

by the quality of their communal life that God wills them to be a light to the Gentiles.”831 This

does not mean the world lacks importance, but rather that the church’s purpose is to witness to

the nations by “being the body of Christ, the communal sign of the promised redemption, in the

time between the times.”832 The church cannot neglect its internal life by focusing on the world,

for if it does it damages its witness to the world. Lindbeck concludes, “Its primary task should be

to build up sisters and brothers in the faith, not to liberate the oppressed everywhere; and it is

only through performing this task that it becomes a liberating force in world history.”833

Lindbeck argues, “This makes mutual responsibility of all for all crucial to the church’s

witness.”834 In both the Old and New Testaments, the people of God are called upon to look out

for the distressed and correct those who have gone astray. Christians must be careful to

distinguish this internal concern for Christ’s body from social concern. He concludes, “Perhaps

the only way out is a people-of-God perspective in which the mutual concern of all the churches

for each other’s worship, faith, fellowship and action becomes of paramount importance

precisely for the sake of missionary witness to the world.”835 If in the future the church becomes

a small minority, it will need to form Christian communities that “cultivate their native tongue

and learn to act accordingly.”836 He argues, however, that until that day comes, the church will

likely not strengthen its drive to properly catechize its members.

831 Ibid., 194. 832 Ibid. 833 Ibid. 834 Lindbeck, “Church,” 194. 835 Ibid., 195. 836 Lindbeck, ND, 120.

182

CULTURAL MISSION?

Alongside the discussion of how the church should catechize its own members, Lindbeck

also argued in the late 1980s that the church has a “cultural mission.” In this discussion,

Lindbeck laments the lack of biblical literacy in contemporary western society. He says,

“Modernity has been deeply prejudiced against treating a classic as a language or lens with many

meanings or uses with which to construe reality and view the world.”837 He notes, however, that

with postmodernity the situation has changed. This can be seen from historians or philosophers

of science like Thomas Kuhn to literary theorists and philosophers like Jacques Derrida. He says,

“The intellectual climate is changing, and the one we are now entering is congenial to the chose

reading of texts,” including Christian ones, “in order to see what the world looks like in and

through them.”838 While he questions whether or not the church can take advantage of this new

situation, he sees this time as an opportunity to promote biblical literacy within broader society.

He sees this as a particularly important calling because of “the lack of effective alternative

modes of public discourse.”839 He says, “With the loss of the Bible, public discourse is

impoverished. We no longer have a language in which, for example, national goals (that is,

questions of meaning, purpose, and destiny) can be articulated.”840 The other possible modes of

discourse that exist within American society, whether of utilitarian, therapeutic, or individualist

variety, are of little help. Though he doubts such a thing will happen, he argues that a Christian

or biblical mode of discourse may help American society have a common mode of public

discourse.

837 Lindbeck, “Church’s Mission,” 50. 838 Ibid., 51. 839 Ibid., 52. 840 Ibid., 47.

183

Lindbeck concludes this discussion of the church’s cultural mission by saying,

“Christianizing culture is both important and dangerous.”841 While no explicit command is given

in the biblical text, no Great Commission for creating Christian societies, “cultural needs may at

times be as urgent as physical ones and, furthermore, in one sense are more basic.”842

Lindbeck’s discussion here comes out of his increased ambivalence with his earlier

emphasis upon the church as a sectarian community. He says that as a child of Chinese

missionaries, he always had a sense of uneasiness about Christendom.843 He says, however, “I

am having uncomfortable second thoughts. The waning of cultural Christianity might be good

for the churches, but what about society? To my chagrin, I find myself thinking that traditionally

Christian lands when stripped of their historic faith are worse than others. They become

unworkable or demonic.”844 He says, “When Christian influence lapses, seven devils worse than

the one originally expelled may well rush into the swept and garnished emptiness.”845 So while

calls for a “Christian America” or Pope John Paul II’s calls for a “Christian Europe” still make

Lindbeck uncomfortable, he says that due to the revolutionary events he has witnessed in the

twentieth century, such as the fall of communism or the reforms with the Roman Catholic

Church, he “cannot rule these out as impossible.”846 He argues, however, that the church should

not seek to have such an influence directly, for “a Christianity faithful to its origins does not seek

cultural and the consequent social power” because such attempts to coopt power are “forbidden

841 Ibid., 53. 842 Ibid. 843 See Lindbeck, “Confession and Community,” 492. Here he says, “I came to think that apostate Christians were much worse than non-Christian Chinese, as the Nazis were proving. Thus China laid the groundwork for a disenchantment with Christendom that led me 30 years later to hope for the end of cultural Christianity as the enabling condition for the development of a diaspora Christianity.” See also Eckerstorfer, 404. 844 Lindbeck, “Confession and Community,” 495. 845 Lindbeck, “Church’s Mission,” 53–54. Here he points to Nazi Germany as an example. 846 Lindbeck, “Confession and Community,” 495.

184

to the servants of a crucified Messiah.”847 He says that the church’s forgetfulness of this

prohibition was “the great sin of the Church during the age of Christendom.”848 He does not,

however, see Christendom as a total aberration, for God used the church to Christianize cultures

in the past. Lindbeck acknowledges, however, that God may not do so again in the future, and

that his previous prognostications for a future diaspora church may indeed be correct.

Regardless, Lindbeck concludes, “Relearning the language of Zion is imperative whatever the

cultural future of the church.”849

Stanley Hauerwas critiques aspects of Lindbeck’s perspective within his book,

Unleashing the Scriptures: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America. He concedes to

Lindbeck that a lack of Bible knowledge within American society may indeed lead to a lack of

common discourse, or to speeches like Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. He disagrees,

however, that more awareness of the Bible within society will lead to better policy. He says, “I

remain quite convinced as few societies have had more people who knew the text of scripture

than Germany. It did not provide much resistance to the Nazis.”850 Lindbeck later acknowledges

in a festschrift essay for Hauerwas that his criticism “seems to me on target. I still think, as I

have argued in that essay, that biblical literacy is culturally important, but I should have

anticipated his counterevidence and added that, apart from the influence of faithful communal

witness, widespread knowledge of Scripture in a society may be the opposite of beneficial.”851

847 Lindbeck, “Church’s Mission,” 54. 848 Ibid. 849 Ibid., 55. See also Lindbeck, “Confession and Community,” 495. There he says, “Renewal depends, I have come to think, on the spread of proficiency in premodern yet postcritical Bible reading, on restructuring the churches into something like pre-Constantinian organizational patterns, and on the development of an Israel-like understanding of the church.” 850 Stanley Hauerwas, Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), 155n7. 851 Lindbeck, “Ecumenisms,” 214n3.

185

He says that through Hauerwas’ influence upon him he sees “no clear disagreement between us

on the question of Christendom and cultural and diaspora Christianity.”852

BAPTISM

Lindbeck not only discusses baptism as a Lutheran and sacramental realist, but in

connection with the church as Israel. He does so by asking why baptism, and not some other

ritual, serves as the rite of initiation into the church. He notes that New Testament authors used

imagery from the Old Testament to discuss baptism. For example, New Testament authors

connect baptism with the Israelites passing through the sea on dry land (1 Cor 10:1–2) or with

Noah’s family being saved in the flood (1 Pet 3:20–21), and call baptism a “spiritual

circumcision” (Col 2:11–12). The church fathers continued to build upon this imagery. Then,

Thomas Aquinas “said that circumcision communicates the same grace as baptism; both rituals

are prefigurations that God uses to create the same reality. Thus what happened to Israel in

Abraham’s call and circumcision and in the Exodus from Egypt happens to the church, and what

happens to the church in Christ happened to Israel.”853

Lindbeck here concludes, “The Old Testament’s contribution to the church’s

understanding of baptism is fundamental; without it, for instance, it is hard to see how the

baptism of infants could have become universal: there are no explicit New Testament

precedents.”854 He notes, however, that as the modern period began and the New Testament

replaced the Christologically interpreted Old as the primary ecclesiological textbook, Christians

in across the various traditions no longer saw themselves as Israel and the universal acceptance

of infant baptism waned. He notes that adult or believers’ baptism accounts for roughly half of

852 Ibid. One area of disagreement that remains between Lindbeck and Hauerwas on war. See Lindbeck, ND, 71. 853 Lindbeck, “Postmodern Hermeneutics,” 109. 854 Ibid.

186

baptisms among contemporary Protestants, and its practice has increased among Catholic and

Orthodox populations as well. He says, “Modernity has changed the way people think of church,

and as a result infant baptism has become a familial or social affair instead of a public,

community-creating event.”855 He sees the decreased emphasis upon the church as Israel as in

part responsible for the lack of a sense that the church is an elect community. He says,

However, retrieving this image cannot, by itself, restore the church’s sense of community. The prevailing ethos of American culture is individualistic, and churches have thus become voluntary societies of like-minded individuals. Such “communities” are too weak to support the adoption of the biblical image of the church as Israel. Nonetheless, the loss of this image has had enormous consequences, ranging from failures to act to utter disasters. Bringing back the image of the church as Israel may repair these failures and block future disasters.856

HOLY SPIRIT

As mentioned in chapter four, Lindbeck does note that the church looks different in this

age then the people of God have in the past. This is in part because the Messiah has come, but is

also because, “The Spirit is now offered and may be poured on all flesh as it was not before

(Acts 2:17ff).”857 Both Cheryl Peterson and Jane Barter Moulaison critique Lindbeck because

other than this brief comment, the Holy Spirit is largely absent from Lindbeck’s ecclesiology.

Peterson appreciates Lindbeck’s emphasis upon a narrative ecclesiology and the

continuity between Israel and the church, but remains surprised that in light of these emphases,

Lindbeck largely neglects the role of the Holy Spirit within the book of Acts and within the

biblical canon as a whole.858 Peterson also notes two other distinctives between the church and

the rest of Israel: 1) the church’s proclamation of Jesus’ life and ministry and 2) the centrality of

855 Ibid. 856 Ibid., 109–110. Lindbeck’s comments here raise questions about the extent to which churches that exclusively practice adult or believers’ baptism can accept his account of the church as Israel. 857 Lindbeck, “Church,” 186. 858 Cheryl M. Peterson, Who Is the Church? An Ecclesiology for the Twenty-First Century (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 105 and 117n35. It is also surprising that given Lindbeck’s emphasis upon a narrative ecclesiology, he does not spend more time expounding upon narrative texts like Acts.

187

the forgiveness of sins to proclaiming that message and forming Christian community. In

addition, Jesus tells his disciples, “that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in

his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47). Peterson summarizes this

critique, saying,

Rather than define the church’s mission by its practices, as Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic method seems to warrant, the narrative of the New Testament defines the church by the movement of the Holy Spirit in its proclamation. This movement not only enables these practices but also a new life in Jesus’ name, lived out in koinonia, at the heart of which is the gift of forgiveness of sins and the breaking down of personal, cultural, and social barriers.859 Barter Moulaison echoes this argument, by saying, “For, without the Spirit’s work, mere

practices are lifeless.”860

Also, both Peterson and Barter Moulaison have concerns about treating the church solely

as Israel. Barter Moulaison says, “Specifically, as I shall argue, the Pentecostal event of the

Church urges the Christian theologian to consider the manner in which the Spirit disrupts the

continuity of Israel, not necessarily in a supersessionist manner but nevertheless in ways that will

fundamentally challenge Israel’s self-understanding as the universal mission to the nations is

inaugurated.”861 Peterson has a similar critique, and it provides a helpful corrective to Lindbeck’s

ecclesiology: “At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit gives the church a distinctive identity and calling

within Israel as a part of God’s people.”862

Peterson says that within Acts, the Holy Spirit plays three roles for the church. First, the

Spirit guides the church’s mission. In Acts 1, Jesus tells his followers, just prior to his ascension,

859 Ibid., 105. 860 Jane Barter Moulaison, Lord, Giver of Life: Toward a Pneumatological Complement to George Lindbeck’s Theory of Doctrine (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2007), 129. Barter Moulaison’s critique of Lindbeck on this front not only involves his ecclesiology, but his entire theological and ecumenical methodology and practice. 861 Ibid., 108. 862 Peterson, 106.

188

to wait in Jerusalem for “the promise of the Father,” for John baptized with water, but you will

be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now” (1:4–5). They will be empowered by

the Holy Spirit and “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the

ends of the earth” (1:8). Peterson notes that Luke’s pneumatology resembles the Old Testament’s

descriptions of a “Spirit of prophecy” (e.g., Gen 41:38; Num 24:2; Judg 3:10; 6:34; 1 Sam 10:10;

Neh 9:30; Is 48:16; Ez 2:2, 3:24; Hos 9:7; Mic 3:8). At the same time, however, Luke does not

neglect the Spirit’s soteriological role, for the restoration of Israel (1:6) plays a key role in Luke-

Acts. This too follows the Old Testament, for, “The Old Testament prophets attributed the

restoration of Israel to the working of the Spirit (Isa. 32:15, 44:3, 59:21; Ezek. 36:27, 37; 39:29;

Hag. 2:5; Zech. 4:6, 6:8, 2:10). During the exilic and postexilic periods, the coming restoration

and renewal were articulated primarily in terms of a transformation and renewal of the people by

the Spirit.”863 In Acts 2, The Spirit is poured out upon the gathered followers of Jesus like

“tongues of fire,” and the people began to speak in the native languages of those gathered in

Jerusalem (2:3–4). Peter cites the prophet Joel, saying,

In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters will prophecy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, In those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophecy (2:17–18).

Peter’s sermon, as well as other passages in Acts, connects this pouring of the Spirit with

forgiveness of sins and the renewal of life (Acts 2:38, 5:31–32; 10:43: 11:18; 10:43).

Peterson also notes that the Spirit empowers the church to proclaim the word, even in the

face of persecution. For example, in chapter 5, when Peter and the apostles are brought before

863 Ibid., 108.

189

the high priest, the council, and the elders of Israel, they are reminded that they were told to

cease proclaiming the name of Jesus. Verses 29–32 then say,

But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.” Peterson notes here that not only does the Spirit empower them, but witnesses alongside them.

Second, the Spirit is the “‘verifying cause’ by which certain groups are incorporated into

God’s eschatological people.”864 This leads to the breaking down of barriers. The story of

Cornelius and his household exemplifies this. Acts 10 says that Cornelius is a “centurion of the

Italian cohort” and a “devout man who feared God with all his household” (vv. 1–2). Cornelius

has a vision telling him to send men to summon the apostle Peter to his house (vv. 4–8). Peter in

turn also has a vision in which he is told to kill unclean food and eat it, to which Peter demurs,

saying, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean” (v. 14).

Then, however, the voice says to him, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane” (v.

15). As Peter puzzled over the meaning of this vision, the Spirit said to him, “Look, three men

are searching for you. Now get up, go down, and go with them without hesitation; for I have sent

them” (vv. 19–20). Shortly after, the men from Cornelius arrived to summon him, and the

following morning, he went with them to see Cornelius. After Cornelius recounted the story of

his vision, Peter responded, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation

anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (vv. 34–35). Peter then began

to recount the message of Jesus to Cornelius’ household (vv. 35–43), but while he was speaking,

“the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with

864 Ibid.

190

Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles”

(vv. 44–45). Peter then said, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who

have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” (v. 47). Peter also says something similar as he

recounts this story to the believers in Jerusalem 11:15–17: “And as I began to speak, the Holy

Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the

Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’

If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ,

who was I that I could hinder God?” Similar events of the Spirit also occur among the

Samaritans in Acts 8 and upon the “disciples” in Acts 19:1–10.

The spread of the gospel to new peoples by is recounted in the Jerusalem Council in Acts

15. While some at the Council argued that Gentiles must accept circumcision in order to follow

Jesus, Peter, Paul, and Barnabas testified to the Council what they had witnessed among the

Gentiles as they have accepted Jesus. James then connects this acceptance of the gospel of Jesus

with Israel’s restoration, as he cites Amos 9:11–12, saying:

After this I will return, and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen; from its ruins I will rebuild it, and I will set it up, so that all other peoples may seek the Lord— even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called (vv. 16–17).

Peter said that they should put no undue burden upon these Gentile believers, and the Council

agreed with him, and they sent a letter to these Gentile believers, which says, “For it has seemed

good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that

you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled

and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well” (vv. 28–29).

191

Third, the Spirit sustains these early Christian communities, and draws them into

communion with God and with one another. As Acts 2:42 says, “They devoted themselves to the

apostles’ teaching and fellowship (koinonia), to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Luke

describes this common life further in verses 43–47:

Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. Peterson notes that in a second description of the church’s communal life, seen in 4:32–37, the

word koinonia is not used, but the church is said to be “of one heart and soul” (v. 32) and that

“the description of their shared common life strongly echoes the description in Acts 2:42–47.”865

This second description also comes immediately after a passage in which it says, “When they all

prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were filled with the

Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness” (4:31). The Spirit also brings judgment

upon those who put their own greed before the community’s life (5:1–11). Peterson says that the

Spirit continues to grow and sustain this community as it expands into new geographical regions,

functioning as “the primary missionary in this movement.”866

Peterson argues not only that the Spirit is the “primary missionary,” but also that the

church “finds its identity in the activity of the Holy Spirit.”867 For this reason, she begins her

ecclesiology here. While some Protestants have been leery of rooting ecclesiology in

pneumatology, Peterson argues that Luther did not demonstrate this reluctance. In the Large

Catechism, Luther discusses the church in the context of the Third Article on the Creed, the

865 Ibid., 110. 866 Ibid., 111. 867 Ibid., 6.

192

article on the Holy Spirit. He says that the Holy Spirit makes a Christian holy, and does so,

“Through the Christian church, the forgiveness of sins, and the life everlasting.”868 The Spirit

enables the preaching of the Word. Apart from the Spirit no one can acknowledge Jesus is Lord,

and there is no church. Luther says, “For where Christ is not preached, there is no Holy Spirit to

create, call, and gather the Christian church, and outside it no one can come to the Lord

Christ.”869 Peterson argues that Luther here “follows a narrative structure, drawing out the story

of salvation in which the Holy Spirit acts as the character who enables the church to live out the

new life given in Christ’s resurrection as ‘the communion of saints’ in the ‘forgiveness of

sins.’”870

DISCIPLESHIP AND MISSIONAL ECCLESIOLOGY

Those from Christian traditions that place a greater emphasis upon evangelism may

struggle with aspects of Lindbeck’s thought; in particular, his claim that, “Christians have as

much reason as Jews to eschew heedless invitations to outsiders (whether rootless or adherents of

other religions) to bear the burdens of election.”871 If damnation is only possible within the

church, why attempt to evangelize others and open them up to the possibility of damnation?

Nevertheless, there is much in Lindbeck’s thought that can benefit them.

Robert Webber notes that the International Consultation on Discipleship, which consisted

of 450 church leaders from fifty-four countries, met in Eastbourne, England. The statement

produced by the Consultation noted that many Christian converts fall from their faith, that the

church has “growth without depth,” and that many within the church do not live lives of holiness.

868 Martin Luther, “The Large Catechism,” in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001), 416. 869 Ibid. 870 Peterson, 121. 871 Lindbeck, “Church,” 193.

193

The Consultation concludes that in the Great Commission, Jesus calls the church not to make

converts, but to make disciples. They define discipleship as “a process that takes place within

accountable relationships over a period of time for the purpose of bringing believers to spiritual

maturity in Christ.”872 To improve in this, they argue the church must reconnect discipleship and

evangelism, reassess their current practices and structures in evangelization, see the local church

as the context in which witness and discipleship occur, affirm the practice of mentorship, see the

Holy Spirit as teacher, and call all Christians to live in submission to God’s kingdom.873 Webber

seeks throughout his volume, Ancient-Future Evangelism, to respond to the Consultation by

calling upon the church to reappropriate the ancient church’s practice of catechesis in order to

have a holistic view of discipleship. While there are obvious differences between the projects of

Webber and Lindbeck, they share this common emphasis upon the need for the church to

catechize disciples rather than simply making converts. They also both understand that while

there does need to be an initial process of catechesis when people decide to follow Christ and

join the church, that discipleship is a lifelong process within the context of the church as a

witnessing and worshiping community.

Lindbeck also shows in his work here that he has certain commonalities with missional

ecclesiology, and thus would be of interest to theologians and ministers associated with the

Gospel and Our Culture Network, Missio Alliance, and other similar organizations. First,

Lindbeck shares the concern of some, like Darrell Guder, that an overemphasis has been placed

by some within the Christian tradition upon salvation as primarily in the future and in heaven.

Second, both focus upon the church as a witnessing community. Third, Lindbeck agrees that

872 Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Evangelism: Making Your Church a Faith-Forming Community (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2003), 13. 873 Ibid., 14.

194

Christian witness is embodied communally and not only by individuals. Fourth, while Lindbeck

does, as a Lutheran, place an emphasis upon preaching, he also does not limit witness to

preaching, but sees it as a part of the church’s communal life and worship. Fifth, Lindbeck also

attempts to describe the witness and mission of the church holistically, rather than limiting it to

forgiveness or some other similar feature.874

CONCLUSION

In his project on the church as Israel, Lindbeck emphasizes Israel’s and the church’s

communal role as witness to the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus, the triune God

revealed in Scripture, and to the salvation that God brings. God calls upon his people to be “a

light to the nations” (Is 42:6; cf. Matt 5:14), to witness to the true light (Jn 1:9). Israel and the

church witness to God through service to God, God’s people, and the world (in that order). This

witness and service may lead to an increase in numbers, but it may also lead to persecution.

Christians should not seek to convert people in mass, but instead to retrieve the ancient practice

of extended catechesis; to train people to “speak Christian.” He also calls upon the church to

recapture baptism as a “community-creating event.”875

While Lindbeck does argue that the church is Israel in the new age, he does not spend

significant time discussing the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church. For this reason

Cheryl Peterson and Jane Barter Moulaison have sought to augment Lindbeck’s project through

an increased focus on the Holy Spirit. This chapter engages their constructive critiques in

connection with the book of Acts. Lindbeck’s project on the church as Israel would not only be

useful for those focused upon ecumenism, but for those more fully engaged in issues related to

Christian discipleship and missional ecclesiology.

874 For a brief description of Guder’s work, see Peterson, 88–90. 875 Lindbeck, “Postmodern Hermeneutics,” 109.

195

CHAPTER SEVEN

FURTHER ECUMENICAL IMPLICATIONS

“The word of the Lord came to me: Mortal, take a stick and write on it, ‘For Judah, and the Israelites associated with it’; then take another stick and write on it, ‘For Joseph (the stick of Ephraim) and all the house of Israel associated with it’; and join them together into one stick, so that they may become one in your hand. And when your people say to you, ‘Will you not show us what you mean by these?’ say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am about to take the stick of Joseph (which is in the hand of Ephraim) and the tribes of Israel associated with it; and I will put the stick of Judah upon it, and make them one stick, in order that they may be one in my hand.” – Ezekiel 37:15–19 “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” – John 17:20–24 “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” – Ephesians 4:1–6

Previous chapters have discussed ecclesiological and ecumenical aspects of Lindbeck’s

Israelology. For instance, Lindbeck argues that the church needs to retrieve and appropriate the

identity of Israel in order to build consensus. In order to do so, they must look to the Old

Testament as an ecclesiological textbook, thereby taking account of the entire canon of Christian

Scripture. They must also come to see Jesus as the embodiment of Israel, supplementing creedal

orthodoxy with an emphasis upon Jesus’ messiahship. The church is then called to socially

embody and witness to God’s saving work in Christ, baptizing, catechizing, and making

disciples. While the church is called to witness to the triune God’s saving work, a problem exists

196

that obscures that witness: the division of the church. This chapter will discuss some further

ecumenical implications of Lindbeck’s project by putting his emphasis upon the church as Israel

in dialogue with his contribution to the Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity, a statement

sponsored by the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology.876 It will then discuss three

ecumenical consequences that Lindbeck argues stem from his project on the church as Israel:

peoplehood, communal repentance, and the role of individuals and individual communities in

ecumenism. The chapter will then close with a discussion of ecclesial structures, the Eucharist in

the divided church, and the relationship of the church as Israel to communion ecclesiology.

PRINCETON PROPOSAL

In a 2005 essay, “Ecumenisms in Conflict,” Lindbeck gives a brief sketch of the history

of the ecumenical movement from 1950 onward, giving particular emphasis to convergence

ecumenism as represented in New Delhi (1961), Vatican II’s Unitatis Redintegratio (1964),

Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (1982), and the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of

Justification (1999). Lindbeck notes, however, that as time has gone on, both convergence and

noncovergence (Life and Work) forms of ecumenism have weakened. Lindbeck argues, “The

renewal of unitive ecumenism will have to come from within Christian communities without the

support of external pressure.”877

Lindbeck then asks what type of unitive ecumenism should predominate. He gives as

options two recent proposals for the future of ecumenism. One—the proposal of Michael

Kinnamon—represents the current “ecumenical establishment,” while the other—that of the

876 Lindbeck said in 2004, “Among the other ecumenical activities in which I have been engaged in the last dozen years, the most important is the so-called Princeton Proposal.” “Paris,” 406n40.

877 Lindbeck, “Ecumenisms,” 224. An abbreviated version of this discussion can be found in George Lindbeck, “The Unity We Seek: Setting the Agenda for Ecumenism,” The Christian Century 122, no. 16 (August 9, 2005): 28–31.

197

“Princeton Proposal” (PP)—represents some “outsiders” to ecumenism. Lindbeck was a

participant in the writing of PP, and favors the ecumenical approach given therein.878

Lindbeck notes three particular hypotheses that the two proposals have in common. They

both lament the neglect of unitive ecumenism and the reduced emphasis of a theological basis for

Christian unity. They also both argue that while the church’s disunity damages the church’s

witness, “the church’s unity is an end in itself,” and not simply a means to world evangelism or

social work.879 Lindbeck argues, however, “Unanimity [between the two proposals] disappears,

however, when one turns to the relation between this unitive part of the ecumenical task and its

other aspects.”880 For Lindbeck, the most important disagreement between Kinnamon and PP

deals with the relationship of Faith and Order to Life and Work.

Kinnamon sees three principle problems with PP. First, he thinks PP does not sufficiently

celebrate diversity within the church. Second, Kinnamon argues that PP does not properly

question the credibility of the apostolic tradition, particular due to its “oppressive” history. Third,

Kinnamon believes that PP neglects the church’s ministry of justice, and therefore downplays

Life and Work ecumenism. Kinnamon says,

The Princeton Proposal operates out of a God-church-world paradigm: the church must get its act together in order to carry the message of wholeness and reconciliation in the world. Many contemporary Christians who care about things ecumenical think more in terms of God-world-church: the church participates in God’s reconciling mission in the

878 Lindbeck, “Ecumenisms,” 224. In addition to Lindbeck, the signatories of PP, sponsored by the Center

for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, were Methodists William Abraham and Geoffrey Wainwright, Presbyterians Mark Achtemeier and Bruce McCormack, Roman Catholics Brian Daley and Susan K. Wood, Orthodox John H. Erikson and Vigen Guroian, Lutherans Lois Malcolm, Michael Root, William G. Rusch, and David Yeago, Episcopalians R.R. Reno and J. Robert Wright, and Evangelical Telford Work. (Root and Reno later became Roman Catholics.) The statement is included in, Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds., In One Body Through the Cross: The Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003). Kinnamon’s proposal was published in The Vision of the Ecumenical Movement and How It Has Been Impoverished by Its Friends (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2003).

879 Lindbeck, “Ecumenisms,” 225. 880 Ibid.

198

world and thereby discovers something of its own unity. The movement has got to insist that these are not either-or.881

Lindbeck summarizes Kinnamon’s position as saying, “Faith and Order (the cooperative search

for unity) and Life and Work (the cooperative service of, e.g., justice) are coequal ends in

themselves, for they issue from distinct paradigms,” but are also “inseparable because they

reciprocally reinforce each other.”882

PP, on the other hand, argues that the God-church-world paradigm that Kinnamon

criticizes is the only proper paradigm, and, “Faith and Order therefore takes precedence over Life

and Work in somewhat the same way that faith takes precedence over works in Reformation

teaching.”883 PP calls for a renewal of the biblical ecumenical vision expressed in the 1961 “New

Delhi Statement on Unity.” Paragraph two of the New Delhi statement has particular importance

in this call:

We believe that the unity which is both God’s will and his gift to his Church is being made visible as all in each place who are baptized into Jesus Christ and confess him as Lord and Saviour are brought by the Holy Spirit into one fully committed fellowship, holding the one apostolic faith preaching the one Gospel, breaking the one bread, joining in common prayer, and having a corporate life reaching out in witness and service to all and who at the same time are united with the whole Christian fellowship in all places and all ages in such wise that ministry and members are accepted by all, and that all can act and speak together as occasion requires for the tasks to which God calls his people.

It is for such unity that we believe we must pray and work.884

The New Delhi statement here spells out three fundamental areas in which the church

should be united. First, the church should have unity in faith and doctrine by “holding the one

apostolic faith preaching the one Gospel.” PP says, “When truth and unity are played against one

881 Michael Kinnamon, “Can These Bones Live?,” Christian Century 120, no. 18 (September 6, 2003): 38. 882 Lindbeck, “Ecumenisms,” 226. 883 Ibid. 884 “New Delhi Statement on Unity,” § 2.

https://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/assembly/1961-new-delhi/new-delhi-statement-on-unity. Accessed December 17, 2015. See Braaten and Jenson, In One Body, §§ 15, 46–56.

199

another, both are represented.”885 A lack of doctrinal discipline has often brought about disunity,

but conversely some denominational renewal movements create division in relation to structural

unity. An emphasis must be placed upon both. Second, the church should have a common life of

service: “a corporate life reaching out in service and witness to all.” In this, PP encourages

shared service and missionary efforts between different traditions and discourages the practice of

“sheep stealing.” All of this should be centered upon common prayer.886 Third, the church should

have reciprocity in membership and ministry by being “united with the whole Christian

fellowship in all places and all ages in such wise that ministry and members are accepted by all.”

It notes, however, that mutual recognition of ordination or full communion agreements across are

not in and of themselves sufficient, for these arrangements can often prevent concrete and visible

unity within local churches. PP says, “Until leaders of local churches see their members as

baptized into the whole people of God, there will be no visible unity of all in each place.”887

PP also argues that there are proper steps that can be taken to bring about unity, and

recognizes that the achievements the ecumenical movement has already made are great and

important.

The gospel has indeed been taken to every corner of the world. Separated churches have made genuine progress toward doctrinal agreement. From being divided in their prayers, Christian communities have discovered greater mutuality in worship of God, and have come to draw widely on the liturgical and devotional resources of each other’s traditions. Churches have begun to consult together in matters that effect their common life; their ministers have begun to give pastoral care across institutional boundaries. In these and other ways, the “unity which is both God’s will and his gift to his Church” is indeed “being made visible.”888

885 Ibid., § 47. 886 Ibid., § 52. PP also calls for caution and discernment in this shared service, for service “can disintegrate into mere ideological commonality rather than genuine Christian cooperation.” The church should take care not to allow “secular principles and expertise” to “supersede Christian principles of discernment as the basis for cooperation…. The result is a party mentality founded in political ideology rather than unity grounded in the Christian imperative of justice and charity” (§ 51). 887 Ibid., § 53. 888 Ibid., § 18.

200

PP also notes, however, that the ecumenical movement still has a long way to go, and that these

achievements “must be sustained and enhanced.”889 PP says, “The way of obedience will require

of our churches disciplines of self-sacrifice which we pray the Spirit may inspire, for we are

redeemed only as the Spirit reconciles us ‘in one body through the cross’ (Ephesians 2:16).”890

PP thus does not see diversity as a good in and of itself, and understands Christian unity

as “a gift of God” given “through the Holy Spirit,” a vocation of the church, a “permanent and

central aspect of Christian life,” “an acknowledgment of God’s present authority and activity,”

and “a promise for the future.”891 There are, therefore, two poles of Christian unity: 1) the

current “bond of faith and communion in Christ” that already exists among believers and 2)

God’s continuing calling to “draw us toward a deeper common life of reconciliation, mutual

love, and shared labor, in which Christ’s prayer might fully be answered: ‘that they may become

completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me, and have loved them even as

you have loved me’ (John 17:23).”892 The second type depends upon the first for its existence.

The New Testament makes a deep connection between unity and mission. PP says, “The

Epistle to the Ephesians presents the whole Christian mystery as the mystery of God’s

unification of all things in Christ (1:10), which takes form most concretely in the reconciliation

of Jew and Gentile ‘in one body through the cross’ (2:16).”893 God has already brought about this

reconciliation, and he has called his church to conform its life to and take up the ministry of

reconciliation (Eph 1:20–23; 2:4 –7, 13–16, 21–22; cf. 2 Cor 5:11–21). PP argues that the cosmic

889 Ibid. 890 Ibid., § 1.

891 Ibid., §§ 2–7. 892 Ibid., § 8. PP does not approach Christian unity with a sentimental naivety, but notes various obstacles,

particularly structural and institutional ones, that currently prevent full visible unity. See §§ 9–10, 24–25, 28–29. 893 Ibid., § 27.

201

vision sketched out within Ephesians is displayed in the union of Jew and Gentile within the

church.

PP also points to Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17, which it calls “the charter-text of

modern ecumenism.” It notes three things about this text. First, the church’s unity must be visible

in order that it can be seen by the world. Second, Jesus’ prayer shows that “salvation, unity, and

witness are intertwined.”894 To receive the gift of salvation is to be brought into unity with God

and the church, and through that to be a witness to the world. Third, PP connects Jesus’ prayer in

John 17 with Jesus’ commandment in John 15:12: “This is my commandment, that you love one

another as I have loved you.” Also, just as John 17 roots the unity of believers in the unity of the

Father and the Son, Jesus’ command that his followers love one another is rooted in the love of

the Father and Son: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love” (15:9).

Jesus also gives this new commandment in John 13:34–35. There, it also says that this love must

be visible: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one

another.”

Christian unity, however, is not only connected to the church’s mission and witness, but

is a good in and of itself. PP says, “Unity is not merely a means to mission, but rather a

constituent goal: God gathers his people precisely in order to bring unity to a divided humanity.”

Therefore, the church should not accept disunity as “normal,” for to do so would cause the

church to “turn away from the mission God has given to us.”895 While greater willingness to

accept those in separated communities as fully Christian is in many ways a positive

894 Ibid., § 28.

895 Ibid., § 19.

202

development, PP reiterates “friendly division is still division.”896 The church’s disunity is still “a

counter-testimony to the gospel.”897

The New Testament not only encourages Christians to maintain unity, but warns against

the dangers of disunity. For example, in 1 Corinthians 1, Paul calls upon the Christians in

Corinth to “be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in

the same mind and the same purpose” (1:10). He does so because of a report from Chloe’s

people that “there are quarrels among you” (1:11). They are divided into different parties that

claim Paul, Apollos, Cephas, or Christ as their leader. While Paul is committed to knowing

“nothing … except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (2:2) and the wisdom of God (2:7), they are

committed to human wisdom. PP says of Paul’s discussion of the Corinthians’ disunity,

“Alongside the preaching of Christ there is inevitably now ‘boasting’ (1:31) in the special virtues

of the group, and the cross of Christ is ‘emptied of its power’ (1:17).”898 PP argues that the

contemporary church should heed Paul’s warnings, for, “The spiritual failure of Christianity in

the modern era stems in many ways from ongoing division.”899

PP then notes three ways in which the church’s disunity, and its complacency about that

disunity, threatens the church’s mission. First, various Christian communities often emphasize

what differentiates their group from other Christian groups rather than emphasizing what they

hold in common. This leads them to identify as “Roman Catholics or Lutherans or Methodists, or

a ‘family-oriented’ congregation or an ‘inclusive’ or ‘traditional’ congregation first, and

Christians only second.”900 This has led to a kind of “tribalization” of different Christian

896 Ibid., § 44. 897 Ibid., § 12. 898 Ibid., § 30. 899 Ibid., § 31. 900 Ibid., § 32.

203

communities, with each group treated as a kind of ethnic community.901 Second, churches in

various locales often uncritically participate in the power and class struggles of that region that

divide people from one another. So rather than overcoming these divisions and bringing about

unity between divided peoples, “churches may reinforce their divisions.”902 In the United States,

the most visible example of this is the division between white and black churches, but other less

visible divisions based upon class or other cultural differences also exist. Third, attempts to

maintain unity within a given tradition may lead to further divisions from Christians in other

traditions. It may lead people to emphasize loyalty to a given tradition over loyalty to the

gospel.903 PP says it does not make these observations in order to criticize current forms of

Christian unity. It says, “Nonetheless, the pervasive and debilitating consequences of division

must not be ignored.”904

Division impedes the church’s ability to authoritatively teach the faith because of its

inability to agree on what constitutes the apostolic witness. The church, therefore, cannot agree

on how to order its common life. This leads to distortions of the gospel message, and it creates

confusion for those inside and outside of the church. This is exacerbated by the phenomena of

“church shopping” within North America and other similar contexts. Different church traditions,

styles of worship, and forms of communal life are treated as consumer options.905 PP concludes,

“The instability and confusion which Christian division introduces into normative teaching and

the ordering of practice in our churches can be overcome only if we commit ourselves to the

cause of visible unity.”906

901 Ibid., § 42. 902 Ibid., § 33. 903 Ibid., § 34. 904 Ibid., § 36. 905 Ibid., §§ 37–40. 906 Ibid., § 43.

204

Disunity wounds the church, undermines the church’s mission, and negatively impacts

the church’s ability to teach the faith.907 Unity, however, does not entail uniformity. Rather, “The

unity of the church is rather the paschal unity of those who have been assigned to one another by

a common Lord and summoned to a shared task.”908 Since Christian unity is paschal unity, it

must not be abstracted from the message of the gospel. Christian unity must thus have a doctrinal

basis, and also include witness, service, worship, and prayer.909

Lindbeck concludes his discussion of the two proposals saying, “Without Life and Work,

Faith and Order is dead, but without the primacy of Faith and Order, Life and Work is deadly; it

becomes a countersign of the church, ‘simply another arena for pursing political agendas,’ to use

Kinnamon’s own words.”910 Lindbeck perceives Kinnamon’s proposal as saying that “disaster

threatens only when Faith and Order is forgotten,” but as PP emphasizes, “the marginalization of

Faith and Order that has occurred in the ecumenical movement is inescapable once Life and

Work is legitimated by the world-sets-the-agenda-for-the-church paradigm.”911 Therefore,

Lindbeck argues that PP is the preferable option if one must choose one or the other.912

CONSEQUENCE 1: PEOPLEHOOD

Lindbeck argues that his proposal of the church as Israel brings with it “three

ecumenically important consequences.” Each of these consequences connects with PP. He says,

“First, as in Judaism, individuals are called to be part of the community, not primarily for their

907 Ibid., §§ 31–43, 57. 908 Ibid., § 23. See also §§ 30–31. 909 Ibid., §§ 46–51. 910 Lindbeck, “Ecumenisms,” 226. 911 Ibid. 912 Lindbeck does not completely dismiss Kinnamon, however. He notes, “Even if one does not think his

synthesis is viable, one can respect his motives. He is trying, it may be suggested, to make room in the ecumenical tent for the weaker brothers and sisters of whom Scripture tells us we should take special care. Moreover, it is not only these sisters and brothers but also the ecumenical cause that would suffer if JPIC concerns were simply excised” (227).

205

own personal salvation (though rejection of the call can be damning), but in order to contribute

to the world’s redemption by their membership in the body of Christ, the enlarged Israel, which

God has unconditionally chosen to be his light to the nations for the redemption of the world.”913

Therefore, both election and salvation apply to the community first and to the individual

second.914 In making this claim, Lindbeck reacts against the tendency within theological

liberalism to reject the notion of a chosen people as a form of “primitive tribalism.”915 He

reaffirms Israel as an elect people and the church as the continuation of Israel. Early Christians

developed a sense of peoplehood analogous to the way that Israel had, and Lindbeck calls upon

the church to retrieve and reappropriate it. He sees this sense of peoplehood as important to

bringing about unity among God’s people.

PP argues that God has formed a people “in order to bring unity to a divided

humanity.”916 Because of the church’s role in bringing unity to divided people, the church cannot

accept disunity as normal. PP calls the church’s division “sin, which is visited upon the churches

in their own internal weakness and unfaithfulness.”917 And again later, “Sin divides us against

ourselves (Romans 7:15–22).”918 Fortunately, however, the gospel does not only pertain to

individuals, but to communities. PP says,

The gospel is a public proclamation through which the Holy Spirit summons men and women from their locations within the human world to gather around a common center, the crucified and risen Jesus Christ. This movement takes concrete social form in the gathering of the Christian assembly. In turn, the church becomes the corporate agent of the gospel’s continuing proclamation of unity.919

913 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 93. 914 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel Lecture One,” 23–24. 915 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 79–80. 916 Braaten and Jenson, In One Body, § 19. 917 Ibid., § 1. 918 Ibid., § 19. 919 Ibid., § 20.

206

PP draws this insight from 1 Peter 2:9, in which the church is called “a chosen race, a royal

priesthood, God’s own people,” and they are called to “proclaim the mighty acts of him who

called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” The prophets of the Old Testament

anticipated this movement of people (Isa 2, 66; Joel 3; Zeph 3; Zech 8) and the New Testament

reflected further upon the unity between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female,

Barbarian and Scythian, rich and poor around Jesus Christ (Gal 3:28; Col 3:11; Jam 2:1–5).

There is thus a sense in which the church should celebrate its diversity and the

differences of gender, class, ethnicity, and giftedness within the church. At the same time, PP

rightly cautions that an emphasis upon diversity can be “easily conscripted to sinful purposes.”920

PP then says, “The apostolic message does not affirm diversity for its own sake. It calls men and

women of every human origin into a holy community and confers on them a new, shared identity

in confession of the crucified and risen Lord.”921 Christians, as members of the body of Christ,

must continue to analyze and discern what unites and differentiates them from one another in

order to promote growth (Eph 4:15–17). They must eschew both sectarianism and indifference

and affirm a common life of agape, which is “more than sentiment or inward attitude. It is a

common life into which we must enter.”922 And this new common life that Christians share is

“sanctified by the Holy Spirit, with apostolic form and content.”923

CONSEQUENCE 2: COMMUNAL REPENTANCE

Lindbeck then says, “Second, it follows from unconditional election and the world

historical mission the church shares with Israel that communal repentance for the disunity of

920 Ibid., § 22. 921 Ibid., § 23. 922 Ibid., § 24. 923 Ibid., § 25.

207

Christians with the Jews is both possible and imperative.”924 As previously noted, Lindbeck sees

1 Corinthians 10 as a paradigmatic text in understanding the church as Israel. He notes that while

Paul sees the church in the mirror of Israel, that later Christians came to see only the favorable

language in this passage as pertaining to the church, while ignoring the warnings of punishment.

They not only did this in reading 1 Corinthians 10, but the Old Testament’s warnings of

punishment as well. Lindbeck argues, “The Christian reluctance to be as communally self-critical

and penitent as Old Testament Israel (and much contemporary Judaism) remains alive and is a

major barrier to non-supersessionist retrieval.”925

He says further, “The difficulty of communal repentance was increased by the

supersessionist conviction that the covenant with Israel has been revoked.”926 The church came

to believe that just as God cast off Israel, God would cast aside unfaithful churches. In this view

individuals can repent and ask for God’s mercy, but communities cannot. This view of

conditional election led to an increase in divisiveness: groups in error cannot continue to be a

part of God’s people. Also, Lindbeck warns that rooting God’s election in the church’s

faithfulness can lead to triumphalism. So this problematic way of interpreting Scripture,

combined with a supersessionist triumphalism, inverted election, and a lack of a sense of the

church’s peoplehood led to a neglect of repentance as a communal practice.

One can see within the Scriptures numerous cases of prophets calling upon Israel, as a

people, to repent. For example, in Deuteronomy 30:1–10, Moses reminds the people to keep in

mind the blessings and curses given in the preceding chapters. Moses tells the people to repent

and obey God. He says that if they do so, even if the people are scattered and in exile, God will

924 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 93. 925 Ibid., 92. 926 Ibid.

208

have compassion and gather the people if they repent. He says, echoing the Shema, “Moreover,

the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, so that you will

love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live” (v.

6).

Isaiah 1:2–20 focuses upon the need for Israel to repent of its sin, or what Brevard Childs

calls “God’s demands for a radical reversal.”927 There is, as seen in verses 18–20, both a

reassurance of God’s willingness to forgive and provide, but also a warning that “if you refuse

and rebel, / you shall be devoured by the sword” (v. 20). Then 1:21–31 says that Israel will be

refined by God through discipline. Other sections of Isaiah focus on repentance. For example,

much of Isaiah 28–33 deals with Israel placing their trust in other things, like other gods (28:15,

18), oppression (30:12–14), or alliances with other nations or military strength (30:15–16; 31:1),

and calls upon them to repent and place their trust in God. They are told, “In returning and rest

you shall be saved” (30:15), and again, “Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you; /

therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you. / For the Lord is a God of justice; / blessed are all

those who wait for him (30:18).” They are also reminded, in passages like Isaiah 58:1–8, that

simply going through a repentance ritual is not sufficient. These rituals must be accompanied by

a change in behavior. One can find similar discussions and calls in the other biblical prophets of

the Old Testament, and these calls continue in the ministries of John the Baptist, Jesus, and the

early church in the Gospels and Acts (e.g., Matt 3:2, 4:17; Acts 2:38).

We not only see calls to repentance, but also depictions of Israel corporately repenting.

For example, in Nehemiah 8, Ezra assembled the people together and “brought the law before

the assembly, both men and women and all could hear with understanding…. He read it facing

927 Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 20.

209

the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of men and

the women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the

law” (8:2–3). Ezra was joined by other men who helped give the law of God “with interpretation.

They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading” (8:8). They instructed the people

not to mourn, “For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law” (8:9). They instead

instructed them to eat and drink and send portions to the poor. They then celebrated the festival

of booths (8:13–18). After the celebration, however, the people “were assembled with fasting

and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads. Then those of Israelite descent separated

themselves from all foreigners, and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their

ancestors” (9:1–2).928

PP says, “We all suffer from the wounds of division.”929 These wounds damage various

aspects of the church’s life. PP therefore says, “Therefore we must examine our collective

conscience and repent of actions, habits, and sentiments that glory in division.”930 PP says

further, “The disciplines of unity are penitential,” and that the process of bringing about unity

will be “ascetical; it will necessarily involve the sacrifice of real but limited goods for the sake of

greater good.”931 Just as the apostle Paul was willing to suspend his freedom in the gospel for the

sake of others, PP calls upon the churches to do the same. To further the cause of Christian unity,

churches will need to “renounce the selfishness and insularity that we all dislike and easily see as

sinful. It will also require our churches to embrace a spiritual poverty that has the courage to

928 For more on repentance in the Old Testament, see Joel R. Soza, “Repentance,” in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, ed. T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 684–687; Mark J. Boda, “Repentance,” in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Prophets, ed. Mark J. Boda and McConville, Gordon J. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 664–670. 929 Braaten and Jenson, In One Body, § 70. 930 Ibid. 931 Ibid., § 71.

210

forego genuine riches of a tradition for the sake of a more comprehensive unity in the truth of the

gospel.”932

Though Lindbeck insists that his project primarily concerns intra-Christian relations, he

notes that it also has implications for Jewish-Christian dialogue. Indeed, in a sense, he says,

“Jewish-Christian relations can be understood as ecumenical rather than interreligious.”933

Lindbeck is not alone in making this claim. While Barth’s work has its supersessionist remains,

he also says, “Even the modern ecumenical movement suffers more seriously from the absence

of Israel than of Rome or Moscow.”934 In addition, Joseph Ratzinger says, “I am convinced that

the question of when the final union of all Christians will come about remains, in fact,

unanswerable. One must not forget that this question also includes the question of the union

between Israel and the Church.”935 Lindbeck reaffirms throughout his later work that God has

not revoked his covenant with Israel, and calls the traditional supersessionist view “scripturally

indefensible.”936

He is also not alone in calling for the church’s repentance for the church’s treatment of

the Jews. In a letter written to Cardinal Cassidy, Pope John Paul II says, “Therefore she

encourages her sons and daughters to purify their hearts, through repentance of past errors and

infidelities. She calls them to place themselves humbly before the Lord and examine themselves

932 Ibid. 933 Lindbeck, “Paris,” 405n38. See Peter Ochs, Another Reformation: Postliberal Christianity and the Jews (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 39. 934 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.3.2 (London: T & T Clark, 2004), 878. 935 Joseph Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, & Politics: New Endeavors in Ecclesiology, trans. Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 119. Lindbeck cites J.-M. R. Tillard as saying, “The first schism, and the most weighted with consequences, is without any doubt the rupture between Israel and the Church, a rupture in the Church of God.” As cited in Lindbeck, “Paris,” 405-406n38. 936 Lindbeck, “Paris,” 408.

211

on the responsibility which they too have for the evils of our time,” which includes the Shoah.937

The Roman Catholic Church’s Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews also says,

At the end of this Millennium the Catholic Church desires to express her deep sorrow for the failures of her sons and daughters in every age. This is an act of repentance (teshuva), since, as members of the Church, we are linked to the sins as well as the merits of all her children. The Church approaches with deep respect and great compassion the experience of extermination, the Shoah, suffered by the Jewish people during World War II. It is not a matter of mere words, but indeed of binding commitment.938

The Commission then quotes from an address given by Pope John Paul II: “We would risk

causing the victims of the most atrocious deaths to die again if we do not have an ardent desire

for justice, if we do not commit ourselves to ensure that evil does not prevail over good as it did

for millions of the children of the Jewish people ... Humanity cannot permit all that to happen

again.”939

Lindbeck says that those who have not heard the gospel “live theologically in the time

before Christ, incapable of either acceptance or rejection.”940 He extends this further by saying,

“Furthermore, post-biblical Judaism which has not heard the gospel (and how can it hear in view

of Christian persecution?) lives theologically before Christ and cannot be equated with the

unbelieving Jewry of which Paul speaks. Nothing in [Paul’s] account prevents us from saying

that the synagogue, like remnants in ancient Israel, is at times more faithful to God’s will and

purposes than are unfaithful churches.”941 He also points to Paul’s words in Romans 11:29: “The

gifts and calling of God irrevocable.” God has not cast the Jews aside, and they continue to

remain a part of the overarching narrative of God’s people. Acknowledging the church as Israel

937 Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews, We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, 1998, accessed January 29, 2018, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_16031998_shoah_en.html. 938 Ibid. 939 Ibid.

940 Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 168. 941 Lindbeck, “Church,” 185. See also Lindbeck, “Story-Shaped Church,” 168.

212

does not necessitate denying Israelhood to the Jews.942 He includes himself among those

Christians who “have finally realized they do not want a world without Jews.”943 Lindbeck

concludes, “Unbelieving Jewry will ultimately be restored.”944 Or again, “Ultimately … in what

for Judaism will be the First Coming and for Christianity, the Second, the church and Israel will

in extension coincide. All things, and climactically death, as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians, will be

subject to Christ, and Christ to God, so that God may be all in all (15:24–28).”945

Lindbeck also argues that appropriating the identity of Israel “frees [Christians] to hear

God speak not only through Old Testament Israelites, but through postbibical Jews.”946 While

Christians claim the Old Testament as Christian Scripture, this does not necessitate that they

deny the legitimacy of Jewish interpretation of their shared text, the Tanach, even when Christian

and Jewish interpretation cannot be easily reconciled. Christians can turn to Jews for aid in how

to read Scripture, and also on how to survive as a diaspora community in a post-Christendom

world. This does not mean that Christians should mimic rabbinic Judaism, but that some of their

strategies can instruct the church in its reading of Scripture. There is some precedent for allowing

contradictory interpretations to stand alongside each other, rather than forcing harmony between

them, in rabbinic interpretation. Lindbeck sees this practice as important not only for recognizing

the legitimacy of Jewish interpretation of Scripture, but for resolving issues that divide Christian

communities from one another. Also, as Christians maintain a repentant stance in their

willingness to learn from Jews, Christian anti-Judaism will wane.947

942 Lindbeck, “What,” 359–360. 943 Lindbeck, “Response to Wyschogrod,” 206. In this same piece, he says further, “You will further observe that on this view of the chosen people, the whole of Israel, includes non-Christian Jews as well as gentile and Jewish Christians.” 944 Lindbeck, “Church,” 185. 945 Lindbeck, “Response to Wyschogrod,” 206–207. 946 Lindbeck, “What,” 364. 947 Ibid., 365; Lindbeck, “Messiahship,” 81–82.

213

Lindbeck also briefly addresses the place of Jews in the church. While he refers to Jews

for Jesus as a “dubious phenomena,” he argues that as long as the church remains almost

exclusively Gentile, it will be difficult for the church to retrieve an understanding of the church

as Israel.948 While Jews and Gentiles are reconciled by Christ in the “enlarged commonwealth of

Israel” (see Eph 2:12), they are united “without … losing their respective identities.” He makes

this case by arguing, “It is precisely because they remain distinct that they can be the

paradigmatic instance and portent of the unification without homogenization of humankind in

God’s coming kingdom.”949 The church, made up of Jews and Gentiles,

exists as a transforming and serving movement within the messianically enlarged Israel in this time between the times. It is as “a servant to the circumcised” that Christ enabled the gentiles to “glorify God for his mercy” (Rom. 15:8–9). One might say that the church, contrary to historic Christian suppositions, exists for Israel, not Israel for the church. Israel subsumes the church, not vice versa. Or, to the use the technical language in which the tradition discussed these matters, the church is not the antitype, the fulfillment, and Israel the type, but Christian and Jew together are the (at the present grossly marred) type of the antitype which is the coming kingdom.950 Lindbeck has no interest in attempting to proselytize Jews. He in fact tells Michael

Wyschogrod, “It is as unecumenical for me to try and make you a Christian as to attempt to

convert a Roman Catholic to Lutheranism.”951 He notes that Wyschogrod is also disinterested in

attempting to convert gentiles to Judaism. At the same time, Lindbeck notes that just as

Wyschogrod would not refuse to allow a Gentile to convert to Judaism, so Lindbeck would

welcome into the church those Jews who have “come to know Israel’s God through Jesus.”952 He

notes, however, that doing so may create some strain between Christians and Jews.953

948 Lindbeck, “Church,” 191. 949 Lindbeck, “Response to Wyschogrod,” 206. 950 Ibid., 207. 951 Ibid., 208. 952 Ibid. He also sees Torah-observance as an option for these converts, but not, as Wyschogrod argues, an obligation (207–208). 953 John Wright, ed., “Israel, Judgment, and the Future of the Church Catholic: A Dialogue Among Friends,” in Postliberal Theology and the Church Catholic (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012), 120.

214

Lindbeck says it is not for him, but for Jews to decide whether or not they welcome his

non-supersessionist understanding of the church as Israel. He points to the words of Jacob

Neusner, who says, “The Church long ago identified itself as Israel and, through the shared

Scriptures, with Israel. In our day, all the more so, the Church joins suffering Israel.”954 Lindbeck

then concludes, “To this I would add only the obvious comment that the church can do this only

by learning to see itself once again in the mirror of Israel while, in contrast to the past, fully

acknowledging that the covenant with the Jews has not been revoked.”955 Some other Jewish

scholars, like Peter Ochs, see some promise in Lindbeck’s project. Ochs refers to the

nonsupersessionist Christian theology that Lindbeck and others advocate as indicative of

“another reformation.”956

CONSEQUENCE 3: THE ROLE OF INDIVIDUALS AND INDIVIDUAL COMMUNITIES

His next point then deals with individuals within the community: “Third, and finally, the

biblically mandated role of individuals in helping the church to become penitent is that of

suffering and rejoicing on behalf of the church.”957 As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:26, “If one

member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with

it.” The PP agrees with Lindbeck on this point, arguing that “the burdens of disunity are shared

by all,”958 and in addition that “all churches and Christians are called to be agents of unity.”959

Individual Christians and churches, however, have different roles responsibilities, and “Each

must do that which is within its competence.”960 Each Christian and each Christian community

954 Jacob Neusner, Christian Faith and the Bible of Judaism: The Judaic Encounter with Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), xiv. 955 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 94. 956 Ochs. See especially his treatment of Lindbeck on pp. 35–62. 957 Lindbeck, “Church as Israel,” 94. 958 Braaten and Jenson, In One Body, 36. 959 Ibid., § 57. 960 Ibid.

215

has been affected by division in different ways. The contributors of PP note that because they

speak from but not for their churches, they have more freedom to speak, while others who are

official representatives of their churches have certain restraints.961

PP also notes that local churches, either in the form of congregations, diocese, or

presbyteries, also have a particular role to play. They must see themselves as agents of unity, and

should be concerned for other churches in their areas. PP also argues, “Local churches should

find structured ways to be responsible to one another in mission.”962 In addition, various

denominational structures can play a key role in ecumenism through bilateral dialogues and

service. They must, however, be aware of the ways in which they can maintain division through

a “will-to-survival that consistently limits ecumenical action.”963

PP then turns its attention to ecumenical bodies like the National Council of Churches of

Christ in the U.S. and the World Council of Churches. While these councils have in the past

played key roles in ecumenical circles, PP says, “they have become increasingly irrelevant to the

pursuit of unity, as political and social agendas have pushed aside concern for unity in the

confession of the faith and the sacraments.”964 This has occurred as Faith and Order concerns

have been pushed to the side. PP calls upon these councils to reembrace the centrality of visible

unity as seen in the New Delhi statement. PP then addresses worldwide organizations like the

Lutheran World Federation or Methodist World Council. It notes the ways in which they have

served as ecumenical agents in the past, especially through participation in bilateral dialogues

with the Roman Catholic Church. PP raises a concern, however, that these bodies may, like

denominational structures, become too concerned with insular concerns and not see themselves

961 Ibid., § 58. 962 Ibid., § 59. 963 Ibid., § 60. 964 Ibid., § 61.

216

as being in service to the entire church. PP says, “These bodies must see themselves as agents of

unity among those who share their common tradition, but also on behalf of the wider church.

They must recognize their provisional status.”965

PP then points to a few Christian traditions and notes the particular roles they may play

within the ecumenical movement. First, they point to the Roman Catholic Church, the largest

Christian body, and therefore an important player in these discussions. While some Christians

are troubled by its papal claims, PP says, “the bishop of Rome is also the only historically

plausible candidate to exercise an effective worldwide ministry of unity.”966 It then calls upon

the pope and the magisterium to teach the faith in such a way that it is capable of reaching and

shaping Christians in other communions. PP provides three suggestions for how the Roman

Catholic Church can accomplish this. First, it must not return to a pre-Vatican II, anti-Protestant,

polemical posture. Second, the pope should live up his title as servus servorum Dei (“servant of

the servants of God”) by self-sacrificially serving what Unitatis Redintegratio calls “separated

brothers and sisters.” Third, Roman Catholic magisterial discussions should regularly include

non-Catholic consultants and “receive reliable counsel regarding the faith and life of the entire

Christian community.”967

Second, PP points to the role of Evangelicals and Pentecostals. It notes first that other

churches may “benefit from their vitality, their zeal for evangelism, and their commitment to

Scripture.”968 These Christians and churches, through their interdenominational participation,

often break down old barriers, form new alliances, and bring a different vision of Christian unity

to the table. PP sees five interconnected ways that Evangelicals could contribute to and receive

965 Ibid., § 62. 966 Ibid., § 65. 967 Ibid., §§ 65–66. 968 Ibid., § 67.

217

from increased ecumenical participation. First, they should not refuse invitations to participate in

ecumenical dialogue. Second, they should not assume other Christians have a dead faith, and

should instead discern and celebrate Christian faith within other traditions. Third, they should not

practice sectarianism, but should instead “practice hospitality and pursue catholicity.”969 Fourth,

they should further embrace a fuller apostolic tradition and “recognize the historical legitimacy,

charismatic authority, and spiritual vitality of other forms of Christian language and practice.”970

Fifth, they should not see their resources and gifts as only benefiting themselves or their own

congregations and denominations, but should instead use them to benefit all Christians.971

Third, PP acknowledges the role of Orthodox churches in the ecumenical movement. The

Orthodox have emphasized the church’s indivisibility and the problematic nature of

denominationalism. PP says, “This witness has been vital to the beginning and authenticity of

modern ecumenism.”972 Their continuity with the ancient tradition and emphasis upon prayer and

liturgy have also benefited the ecumenical movement. PP also notes, however, that the Orthodox

churches have their own “divisive and nationalistic proclivities,” and that these “should be

abandoned.”973 Doing so will not only benefit the Orthodox, but will benefit all Christians.

In his work, Lindbeck notes the particular role of the Reformational (Lutheran and

Reformed) churches in bringing about Christian unity. Lindbeck argues that in the aftermath of

Vatican II, anti-Catholicism has waned among Protestants. In this context, Protestants have less

and less in common with each, and so the identifier “Protestant” has come to mean less and less.

Some type of qualifier, such as “Reformation,” “liberal,” or “fundamentalist” is needed to define

969 Ibid., § 68. 970 Ibid. 971 Ibid. PP actually states that it lists four ways, but it uses the word “rather” to introduce each of them, and uses it five times. 972 Ibid., § 69. 973 Ibid.

218

what is meant by Protestant. He says, also, that this context calls “Reformation Protestants” like

himself to be “more catholic,” and drawing upon imagery from the Old Testament, to “think of

themselves as Catholic exiles who now should be welcomed back into the Catholic communion,

not despite but because of their Reformation heritage.”974

He argues that the Reformation, even as late as Calvin, did not see itself as anti-catholic,

but rather opposed what they saw as medieval corruptions of the older catholic tradition. They

saw themselves as “simply a reform movement within the Catholic Church of the West. They

argued that they were good catholics who taught nothing contrary to the tradition of the fathers

or even, as the Augsburg Confession of 1530 taught it, to ‘the Church of Rome in so far as its

teaching can be gathered from its older and better writers.’”975 The Reformers did not see

themselves as having created a new church, but as people “temporarily” and “unjustly expelled”

from the Roman church. They even delayed in ordaining new ministers for a time until a

shortage of clergy forced them to a couple decades after the Reformation began.976 In particular,

he calls his Lutheran tradition to be a “movement of confessional renewal within the Catholic

Church of the West” or “an agent of evangelical renewal within rather than outside the ancient

churches of the West (and also East) which comprise the great majority of Christians.”977 He

does so even though he believes his own denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in

974 George Lindbeck, “Vatican II and Protestant Self-Understanding,” in Vatican II: Open Questions and New Horizons, ed. Gerald Fagin, Theology and Life Series 8 (Wilmington, DE: Micahel Glazier, Inc., 1984), 60. See also Lindbeck, “Reformation Heritage,” 496. In this, Lindbeck continues to maintain his earlier distinction between a “corrective” and “constitutive” view of the Reformation, affirming the former. See, for example, “An Assessment Reassessed: Paul Tillich on the Reformation,” The Journal of Religion 63, no. 4 (October 1983): 380; “Confessional Faithfulness and the Ecumenical Future: The J.L. Neve Memorial Lecture,” Trinity Seminary Review 12 (1990): 63–65; “Lutheranism as Church and Movement: Trends in America since 1980,” Lutheran Theological Seminary Bulletin 71, no. 1 (1991): 47; “The Meaning of Satis Est, or ... Tilting in the Ecumenical Wars,” Lutheran Forum 26, no. 4 (1992): 22–23. 975 Lindbeck, “Vatican II,” 62. 976 Lindbeck, “Vatican II,” 62–63; Lindbeck, “Meaning of Satis Est,” 22. 977 George Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Directions,” 120.

219

America, “appears to be capitulating to the Zeitgeist and losing the struggle for confessionional

integrity for the foreseeable future.”978

He notes that the Reformers made a significant contribution to scriptural exegesis, that

this was to retrieve “the pre-Reformation conviction that Scripture is primary and is to be

christologically interpreted.”979 He says that in this, they did not try and read Scripture apart

from tradition, but rather read Scripture by critically engaging voices from the past. He notes

some parallels between the Reformers and Verbum Dei, Vatican II’s Constitution on Divine

Revelation. He says, “There also the appeal is fundamentally to Scripture christologically

interpreted, and tradition is viewed primarily as the Church’s understanding down through the

ages of the scriptural witness to revelation.”980 He argues that Christian unity is not possible

apart from this stance toward Scripture, for, “There must be some measure of agreement on the

way to seek together for what is authentically Christian.”981 Simply trying to derive some kind of

“lowest common denominator” is not a sufficient basis for unity. Yet he also says, “It is only

when the Bible is studied assiduously and communally within ecumenical rather than divisive

interpretive frameworks that we can expect ecumenism to acquire the force of the Word of

God.”982 He calls upon Reformation Protestants to retrieve these emphases, and to share them

with Christians of other backgrounds.

ECCLESIAL STRUCTURES

Lindbeck says,

The church consists of those, whether atheists or believers, reprobate or regenerate, who are stamped with the marks of membership in elect communities. Baptism may be easier

978 Lindbeck, “Meaning of Satis Est,” 19. See also Lindbeck, “Confessional Faithfulness”; Lindbeck, “Lutheranism as Church”; George Lindbeck, “Confessional Subscription: What Does It Mean for Lutherans Today?,” Word & World 11, no. 3 (Summer 1991): 317, 319–320. 979 Lindbeck, “Reformation Heritage,” 499–500. 980 Ibid., 500. 981 Ibid. 982 Ibid., 501.

220

to ignore than circumcision (though secular Israelis are adept at doing so), but God remembers. Nor does communal degeneracy erase election. The Amhara and the Falasha in Ethiopia may resemble the animist tribes which surround them, but if one admits they are Christian and Jewish respectively, one is obligated to accept them fully as parts, even if defective parts, of the elect people. Similarly, the apartheid churches of South Africa are no less churches than the black ones they oppress, just as 16th-century Catholics and Protestants were part of the same elect people as the Anabaptists whom they jointly slaughtered, and just as the Gush Emmunim and Peace Now advocates, not to mention the warring sects of whom Josephus tells, are and were fully Jewish. To put this point in the terminology of the social sciences, the people of God consists of cultural-linguistic groupings that can be meaningfully identified by ordinary sociological and historical criteria as Christian or Jewish (even though their chosenness, needless to say, is known only to faith). This is what is meant biblically, and in the present perspective, theologically by a people.983

Some groups that have quite unbiblical ecclesiologies, such as Quakers and other sects, are “in

generally scripturally justified, but they are also deeply problematic.” Despite this, they have “at

times been faithful remnants amid the faithless masses.”984 While Lindbeck allows for the church

to consist of this big tent, he is not indifferent to church structures.

PP also argues that for the church to “realize the unity for which Jesus prayed, they need

structures, institutions, and regular practices by which their communion in faith is expressed and

formed—structures by which their communion in faith is expressed and formed—structures by

which they are gathered together as one people of faith and have access to one another for the

sake of mutual care, joint mission, and common service to the world’s needs.”985 PP notes this

aware that Christian traditions differ on the importance of church structures. For while Orthodox,

Catholics, and some Protestants see certain historic institutional structures as necessary for

church unity, Evangelicals and some other Protestants do not. The various members who

contributed to the proposal come from each of these groups, and have different opinions on what


984 Ibid., 188. 985 Braaten and Jenson, In One Body, § 9.

221

the church’s structures and visible unity should look like.986 Lindbeck provides his own view of

church structures in his work on the church as Israel.

In one sense, Lindbeck argues that institutional structures of unity and care within the

church are “not fundamental.” By this he means, “Mutual care can be exercised in some

circumstances without institutionalized ministries of unity (as, e.g., by the collection for the

church in Jerusalem which Paul so energetically promoted).”987 In addition he argues that a local

ministry of word and sacrament is “basic,”988 and has not led to the same kind of division that

has been seen over issues of the episcopacy and the papacy, so he focuses primarily on these.

Lindbeck seeks to use Israel’s story to address the impasse over church leadership structures.

He notes that within the Old Testament, structures of leadership changed when Israel

faced new circumstances. The leadership of Moses’ leadership in Exodus–Deuteronomy was

followed by that of Joshua and the judges in Joshua–1 Samuel 8. At that point, the people were

led by the kings until the exile, at which point the rabbinate developed. He says, “Further, when

the kingdom was divided between north and south, both monarchies were for the most part

treated in the canonically edited text (even though the final redaction was southern) as legitimate,

and worship at Shiloh as well as Jerusalem was acknowledged.”989 He notes that the persisting

986 Ibid., §§ 9, 45, 54, 63. 987 Lindbeck, “Church,” 195. 988 Ibid. Lindbeck argues, “The Reformers shared the early Catholic consensus that the ministry of word and sacrament is divinely instituted, and they also understood ordination as sacramental, i.e., as a rite whereby God in response to the prayers and actions of the community empowers for service. Their objection to calling ordination a sacrament were directed against late medieval views that it conferred a special personal sanctity and made priests members of a privileged caste rather than servants of the gospel…. In any case, the medieval distortions and the later Protestant disregard of the early Catholic consensus are now being overcome among both Roman Catholics (Vatican II) and non-Catholics. In church-oriented ecumenical circles, even if not on popular and ecclesiastical levels, the understanding of the ordained ministry articulated in the Faith and Order Lima document, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, is now widespread. Further, it has been generally agreed both in the sixteenth century and in the contemporary ecumenical movement that the wider unity of the church should be given synodal and conciliar expression. It is the question of whether it should also be papally and/or episcopally structured which has been the divisive issue” (205–206n20). Lindbeck’s comment here raises questions about how churches should be viewed that do not accept or put into practice the ecumenical consensus of BEM. 989 Ibid.

222

form of leadership “establishes legitimacy,” and that this has “scriptural precedents.”990 He

argues that what Christians have to learn from Israel’s story, in this respect, is that debates over

church institutions among Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Protestants are, in one sense,

misplaced.

He notes, however, that the story of Israel has aspects that support the Roman Catholic

position and oppose a kind of Protestant pragmatism that sees issues of church leadership as

adiaphora. Lindbeck says, “Israel’s history, like that of any other sizable and enduring people,

makes clear that continuity and tradition are functionally important.”991 The institutional aspects

of Israel are not only functional, but theological: “It is God who guides his people and orders

their common life.”992 This is the case even when God grants the wishes of Israel reluctantly (see

1 Sam 8). Other than during the divided kingdom, God provided leaders and structures for the

people to center their lives around, and shifts in leadership structure tended not to happen due to

internal revolt. Even when the prophets criticized their rulers, they acknowledged their office as

divinely appointed. Lindbeck concludes, “In summary, then, leadership structures are treated in

the biblical texts as de iure divino, as Catholics would say, and yet as changeable human law, ius

humanum, to bring in the Protestant note.”993

Lindbeck argues this narrative understanding of church leadership and structures is, in a

sense, open to both Catholics and Protestants. Within it, “The starting point is the conviction that

God’s providential guidance of his continuously existing people did not stop with biblical

990 Ibid., 196. 991 Ibid. 992 Ibid. 993 Ibid., 197. Lindbeck previously used a similar argument in U.S. Lutheran-Catholic dialogue on the papacy. See George Lindbeck, “Papacy and Ius Divinum: A Lutheran View,” in Papal Primacy and the Universal Church, ed. Paul C. Empire and T. Austin Murphy, Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue V (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1974), 193–208.

223

times.”994 This perspective is only possible if one assumes the Spirit has guided the church in the

past and will continue to do so in the future. Because of tradition’s importance, the church should

not lightly discard leadership structures that God has used in the past: “Ruptures in continuity are

to be avoided except when absolutely necessary, and even then the search for precedents is

important.”995

For this reason, Lindbeck argues that the church should privilege efforts to reform church

structures over attempts to jettison them in favor of new ones. Therefore, “The burden of proof is

on those who, for example, reject the historic three-fold ministry as this ministry is

recommended in the Lima text, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry.”996 To support this structure,

Lindbeck argues that one does not need to demonstrate the superiority of the three-fold structure

to all other possibilities, “but simply that it can be congruent with the christological center of the

faith (which anyone who believes God did not desert his church from the time of the first

centuries is bound to admit), and that it is not irrational or impractical (which in view of its

present use by some three-fourths of all Christians seems incontestable).”997 He thus argues that

out of respect for the Christian tradition, churches that do not currently have a three-fold ministry

should “adopt (and adapt) the historic polity for the sake of unity whenever this is practically

feasible (which in periods of transition such as the present it often is).”998 He argues that this turn

to episcopacy is necessary for all within the church who have a concern for ecclesial unity and

mutual responsibility.999

994 Lindbeck, “Church,” 197. 995 Ibid. 996 Ibid. 997 Ibid. 998 Ibid., 198. 999 Ibid., 200.

224

At the same time, however, Lindbeck argues that Catholics have made exaggerated

claims about their church structures. They have done so by claiming that Jesus Christ and his

apostles founded the historic episcopate, and that its existence “guarantees the apostolicity of the

church’s faith, and is irreversibly indispensable to the bene esse, or plene esse, or even the esse

of the church.”1000 An understanding of “providentially guided development” must recognize that

“the apostolic faith may sometimes be more fully present in nonepiscopal churches,” and that the

bishops are not necessary to the church’s esse, while still recognizing the “irreversibility and …

necessity” of the historic episcopate “for the well-being or the fullness of being of the

church.”1001

The episcopate developed early, by the end of the first century, and Lindbeck contends it

was “the most successful institutional expression and support in Christian history of that mutual

responsibility which we have seen to be at the heart of the church’s mission.”1002 The New

Testament tells of times in which Christians, like Paul, called for mutual responsibility among

the churches and gathered collections to provide for needy saints in other places (e.g., 1 Cor

16:1–4; 2 Cor 8:1–9:15; Rom 15:14–32). After the apostles died, the church needed a new

structure to maintain these connections. He says, “Then the device of requiring each new bishop

to be approved and consecrated by neighboring bishops was hit upon, and this developed into an

interlocking network covering the Mediterranean world which was both flexible and tenacious

enough to contain in a single communion orientations as antithetical as those of Tertullian’s

Carthage and Origen’s Alexandria.”1003 He sees this structure that maintained connections across

1000 Ibid., 198. 1001 Ibid. 1002 Ibid. 1003 Ibid., 198–199. He clarifies further, “It is misleading to call this a monarchial or monoepiscopal system, for without the requirement of validation from neighboring churches, one bishop in one place does not unify” (199).

225

congregations as instrumental in bringing the Catholic minority into being a catholic majority. It

brought about the church’s creeds and liturgies, as well as the canon of Scripture itself.

Lindbeck asks if the church sees the authoritative teaching and the scriptural canon as

central, then why not also the episcopate? He expresses an understanding and appreciation of the

Catholic position in this matter. He says, “Yet, on the other hand, the reader of Israel’s story

cannot but observe that the leadership structure in the comparably decisive period of Jewish

history did not survive. The question of irreversibility cannot be settled by appeals to Israel’s

story. The story provides the framework for reflection, not a formula for automatically settling

disputes.”1004

Lindbeck argues that the same can be said for the papacy, which divides Catholics from

the Eastern Orthodox and other episcopally ordered churches, such as the Anglican Communion.

He says, “Many of these, as well as a not inconsiderable number of Protestants, see no difficulty

in admitting the providential origins (and, in that sense, divine institution) of the papacy, and

they agree that it has greater potentialities for ministering to the church universal than any other

existing institution, and yet they resist the contention that Rome must be the center, and that this

is irreversibly true.”1005 Lindbeck notes that in Israel’s existence that the center of Israel’s life

and worship shifted from Shiloh to Jerusalem, and after Jerusalem’s destruction, also existed

elsewhere.1006 He asks why this could not be the case for the church. This question is particularly

poignant as the center of the church’s gravity shifts to the global south.1007 This perspective also

1004 Ibid., 199. 1005 Ibid. He argues further, “Although they believe it important for the sake of unity to have at the very least a primus inter pares among the bishops, and take it as self-evident that both the weight of tradition and contemporary standing point to the Bishop of Rome, yet it seems to them worse than pretentious to affirm as a matter of faith that God will always will it so.” 1006 Ibid. He does not deny that Jerusalem continued even in exile and diaspora existence to play a central and unifying role. 1007 Lindbeck briefly addresses this shift in, “Ecumenical Imperatives,” 362–363.

226

parallels New Delhi, which says, “the achievement of unity will involve nothing less than a death

and rebirth of many forms of church life as we have known them. We believe that nothing less

costly can finally suffice.”1008 PP makes a similar point as well, saying that churches with

episcopal structures should come to distinguish between their ministries of oversight and their

bureaucratic institutions, which should be seen as “provisional and subject to change.”1009

Lindbeck’s defense of the episcopacy is not a call for maintaining the status quo within

churches that have bishops, but a call for renewal. He argues that the unifying power of the

historic episcopate came from its ability to bring about the unity and mutual responsibility of

various local churches. While the episcopate involved a “vertical” element, the historic

continuity of the church over time, Lindbeck argues, “It was, rather, the horizontal mutual

responsibility for leadership which was the genius of the arrangement, the chief element in its

apostolicity.” Despite this strength, “Only traces of this pattern still remain.”1010 He argues, “If

something approximating this early Catholic episcopate were restored, the resultant worldwide

network of tenaciously interconnected yet organizationally self-reliant churches might well have

competitive advantages similar to those of the early Catholics.”1011 This does not necessarily lead

to dismissal of the papacy. Rather, the papacy might be necessary to bring about such an

arrangement. Lindbeck says, “To the degree that Rome became the nurturer of a worldwide

communion of mutually accountable yet largely autonomous churches, it would prove itself even

to some of its sternest critics the God-chosen center of the whole.”1012 Lindbeck argues that

1008 “New Delhi,” § 3. See also Braaten and Jenson, In One Body, § 15. 1009 Ibid., § 63. 1010 Lindbeck, “Church,” 200. 1011 Ibid., 201. 1012 Ibid. Lindbeck argues, “Decentralization of the type envisioned here would make possible great variations in Jewish-Chrsitain relations (which, as Karl Barth among others has noted, may well be crucial to the future of the church), in ecumenical developments, and in canon law between different localities and regions. Christians in one area might well be in a position to move much faster on some matters than those in other areas, and this would, of course, be reflected in the candidates they propose to lead them (for initiation of episcopal candidacies

227

churches of the Reformation would welcome this development, for it would fulfill their initial

desire to be a reform movement within the church catholic, rather than a separate

communion.1013

THE EUCHARIST

In 1998, Lindbeck was asked to participate in a Town Meeting on Intercommunion held

at Yale Divinity School. The student organizers named the Town Meeting “Tasting the Eucharist

in the Divided Church” after a chapter in Ephraim Radner’s recently published book, The End of

the Church: A Pneumatology of Christian Division in the West. Lindbeck says of his

presentation, later published in Spectrum, “My remarks were also influenced by that book, not in

their details but in their basic claim that the eucharist cannot help but taste bitter in an

ecumenical situation such as the contemporary one.”1014 He says further, “Christian disunity

disfigures all celebrations of the Lord’s Supper no matter how restricted or unrestricted they may

be.”1015

Lindbeck reflects upon intercommunion and the divided church by reflecting on his years

at Yale Divinity School (YDS). He says that when he arrived in the 1940s, most of the YDS

community came from Protestant denominations who had practiced open communion since at

least the late nineteenth century. Chapel at YDS only included communion a time or two a

would be a local matter as in the early church). If the proposed candidates in a given region were consistently in favor of, e.g., communion with the local Anglicans and/or the ordination of women, and these candidates were acceptable to neighboring churches, Rome would have difficulty in persistently refusing its consent. If it were to do so, to mention one difficulty, some sees might be left vacant indefinitely. The papal role in such a situation could be to mediate between regions of the church that disagreed on such issues so that different local practices could develop without schism. Nothing similar to this, needless to say, is likely to occur in the next generation or two apart from world-historical or ecclesiastical events of the magnitude of World War II or Vatican II. But, on the other hand, there is no reason to suppose that the possibilities of upheaval and change in the next half century will be any less than in the last fifty years” (207–208n29). 1013 Lindbeck, “Reformation Heritage,” 496. 1014 George Lindbeck, “The Eucharist Tastes Bitter in the Divided Church,” Spectrum 19, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 1. 1015 Ibid.

228

semester, and the order of worship resembled nineteenth century Congregationalism. He says,

“The situation, in short, was one in which the Lord’s Supper was for the most part treated as if it

were neither bitter nor sweet but rather a bland-tasting anachronism.”1016 He does not blame this

on intercommunion per se, but in the minimization of the sacraments in much of the

Protestantism of the day that made intercommunion easy and possible. As one of the few high

church Protestants in the YDS community at the time, Lindbeck says, “It was this down-grading

which made much Protestant intercommunion both easy and, if the truth be told, rather bitter for

those from more sacramental traditions.”1017

He says that this situation changed somewhat by the time he joined the YDS faculty in

the 1950s. Some faculty members participated in the early formation of the World Council of

Churches and many students likewise participated in the Student Christian Movement. In

addition, “the liturgical renewal of that day had as its goal the retrieval of the liturgical heritage

of the ancient church.”1018 The YDS faculty during this time also adopted the eucharistic rite of

the Church of South India in Marquand Chapel. While Lindbeck refers to this rite a “non-

controversially ecumenical,” its adoption still upset some within the YDS community. He relates

an anecdote about a fellow faculty member who disagreed with the use of “This is my body” and

“This is my blood” during the distribution of the bread and cup, and assumed that Lindbeck

agreed with his concerns. Lindbeck says, “I had misled him about my belief in the real presence

by joining in the old quasi-Zwinglian service just as he felt he had misled others in the opposite

direction by eating and drinking in accordance with the new South Indian liturgy. Both of us had

1016 Ibid. 1017 Ibid. 1018 Ibid.

229

in our respective ways borne false witness to our faith and were guilty of mendacity—some

would say, blasphemy—by signifying fraudulently with sacred things.”1019

Lindbeck says, however, that the fear of bearing false witness to one’s faith diminished in

the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council. For example, he notes that while YDS students in

the early 1960s “would have reacted to transubstantiation as both superstitious and cannibalistic

were, by the decade, intrigued and attracted by starkly realistic sacramental language.”1020 In the

decades since, ecumenical statements on the Eucharist have produced a consensus previously

unimaginable. This has led to the perception that open communion in a community like YDS

does not require one to bear false witness about their own beliefs. Some thus see

intercommunion as “not simply permissible, but obligatory.”1021

Lindbeck says that disagreements about intercommunion have been the most painful in

his years of ecumenical involvement. He notes his participation in annual dialogues between the

Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation that includes theologians and church leaders from

around the globe. Warm and close friendships, respect, and theological accord on a number of

issues have developed between members on both sides through those dialogues. Lindbeck says,

We prayed together daily, but celebrated separately—that is, we attended each others’s eucharists but did not commune. This separation became more troubling year by year as we deepened our agreements on basic issues, not least the eucharist. By the time we reached the specific topic of intercommunion, the pain was agonizing—I use the term advisedly. It was agony not to join at the table of our Lord with those who were among our dearest friends in Christ—closer by far than the vast majority of our fellow Lutherans or Catholics.1022 Some in the group wanted to recommend eucharistic hospitality in special circumstances like

those dialogues to their communions, while others did not. Some thought such intercommunion

1019 Ibid. 1020 Ibid. 1021 Ibid., 4. 1022 Ibid.

230

would promote unity and heal division between their two communions, while others thought

such thinking unrealistically optimistic. These “pessimists” may agree that the eucharist can

promote unity in some cases, but in the case of those Protestants who minimize the eucharist’s

importance, or see it as a peripheral practice, “it cheapens the eucharist and smothers its unifying

power.”1023 The optimists argue that some of these concerns with intercommunion are no longer

as problematic as they were in the past.

Lindbeck notes that these debates not only involve theology, but pastoral considerations

that are always in flux. He says, however, that a general rule can be made: “Whatever the policy,

whether that of open or closed communion, the eucharist should be tasted as both bitter and

sweet in the divided church.”1024 He says there are objective or ontological reasons for this rule:

Because the eucharistic body and the ecclesial body of Christ are inseparable, the divisions which torment the latter are there to be perceived by those who partake of the former. Unhealthy palates may delight in the noxious or be repelled by the wholesome with the result that they triumphalistically and mistakenly sense that the eucharist of their choice, whether open or closed, are unmarred by the church’s disunity. Only the Holy Spirit’s healing of our palates enables us to perceive bivalently in accordance with the truth.1025

Lindbeck calls upon the divided church to taste both the sweetness and bitterness present

within the Eucahrist, and says that whether or not a communion service is opened or closed is a

secondary matter. His own experiences of sitting through closed or separated communion

services, such as the times Lutherans and Roman Catholics have celebrated communion

separately, have spurred his zeal for Christian unity. He says, though, “if I had not yearned for

the sweetness that was also there in the divided eucharist, I would not have tasted the

1023 Ibid. Lindbeck also says, “Moreover, to the extent that intercommunion becomes the practice of a transconfessional avant garde but not of the denominationally divided ordinary membership, it tends to promote an elitist separatism and alienation from church structures rather than unity.” 1024 Ibid. 1025 Ibid.

231

bitterness.”1026 He also notes that his experiences of open communion, especially when gathered

with Christians from diverse backgrounds, can lead to a greater desire for Christian unity. At the

same time, however, there is a danger of missing the bitterness still present in these gatherings.

Lindbeck says, “The conclusion, then, is that every decision for or against intercommunion by

churches, groups, or individuals may, in God’s good pleasure, be ecumenically fruitful in so far

as partaking is both bitter and sweet, but if we taste only the sweetness (perhaps even more than

we taste the bitterness) we run the risk of that eating and drinking to our own condemnation of

which St. Paul speaks.”1027

Lindbeck then comments upon the Roman Catholic guidelines for receiving communion

in the light of these reflections. He notes, first, that not even all Catholics are inviting to partake

of communion in an unrestricted manner. Those who have an awareness of unconfessed or

unforgiven sin are called upon to refrain, for communion is first of all communion with God, and

only secondarily or derivatively with other humans. Lindbeck argues that Protestants and

Catholics have historically agreed on this point. Second, Non-Catholics are generally not

admitted to communion, while Protestants generally admit all baptized Christians to partake.

Lindbeck notes that “Protestants are pained by their exclusion, not because they think they are

being treated discourteously, but for fear their Catholic friends are dishonoring the Lord’s table,

are claiming it as their own, not Christ’s.”1028 The Guidelines, however, also include a prayer

that because of the common baptism of all Christians, the Holy Spirit may draw divided

Christians closer together. Third, while the Guidelines permit some non-Catholics, like the

Eastern Orthodox, to partake of communion, the Guidelines also call upon these Christians “to

1026 Ibid. 1027 Ibid. 1028 Ibid., 5.

232

respect the discipline of their own Churches.” Lindbeck sees this call as exemplary. Fourth, the

guidelines also address non-Christians, saying that while they are not admitted to communion,

they are welcome to the celebration, and also, “we ask them to offer their prayers for the peace

and unity of the human family.” Lindbeck too sees this as an exemplary call. While he approves

of the open communion practiced by the ELCA, he wishes their guidelines were “equally

ecumenical when measured by the taste test.” He says that differences in practice will continue.

He concludes, “Pluralism is inevitable, but both those who intercommune and those who do not

need to learn to weep together—or at least come as close to doing so as our inhibitions

allow.”1029

CHURCH AS ISRAEL AND OTHER ECUMENICAL PROPOSALS

Lindbeck understands that no one proposal is a magic bullet that can solve the problem of

church disunity. He says, “the recovery of a non-supersessionist practice and understanding of

the church as Israel is an indispensable though not sufficient condition for ecumenical

advance.”1030 He acknowledges that his own ecumenical experience was mostly limited to

Lutheran/Roman Catholic relations,1031 and he knows that his proposal alone will not bring about

the church’s unity and sees ways in which his proposal is compatible with others.

Lindbeck does not see his proposal as exclusive to other models of church unity. He sees

it as having, to different degrees, a kind of compatibility with the Faith and Order document In

Each Place: Towards a Fellowship of Local Churches Truly United, a communion of

communions model as seen in some ARCIC dialogues, Karl Rahner’s and Heinrich Fries’

1029 Ibid. 1030 Ibid., 93. Emphasis added. 1031 Lindbeck says, “Moreover, my ecumenical experience is relatively limited. It has been so heavily focused on Lutheran/Roman Catholic relations that even when I was officially active, I was ill-informed about other dimensions of the global search for unity.” “Ecclesiology and Ecumenism: A Reflection on a Projected Study” (St. Paul, MN, June 5, 1999), 1.

233

proposal in Unity of the Churches: An Actual Possibility, or in the international Lutheran-

Catholic document Facing Unity.1032 He concludes:

There are yet other possible descriptions of the unity for which to strive. The church’s story is incomplete, and how God will lead cannot be known beforehand. Yet however the goal is described, it must take into account both Catholic and evangelical concerns. The messianic pilgrim people which is the body of Christ in history needs unifying institutional structures. These structures are to be assessed and reformed functionally by the evangelical touchstone of whether they help the churches witness faithfully by all they are, say, and do to Christ, in the power of the Spirit, and to the glory of God the Father. These structures, however, as Catholics stress, are also gifts of God to be gratefully received and obediently used to his glory…. God will lead.1033

Lindbeck also provides a sketch of a Lutheran version of “communio ecclesiology” that

he believes is compatible with his own discussion of the church as Israel. He says, “One can

think of confession of faith, sacrament and service – the three dimensions included in the

[Lutheran World Federation’s] description of itself as a communion – as condition, center and

consequence respectively.”1034 He likens this to the way Lumen Gentium refers to the liturgy as

“both summit and source.” He says,

It is summit because unity in confession and service contributes to and reaches its climax in the full exercise of unity in worship, and it is source because it is chiefly from this gathering together in the proclamation and hearing of God’s word and sacramental participation in his unifying self-offering in Jesus Christ that all other unity in the church’s life is derived. The summit and source is, one might say, an end in itself: the church is primarily the liturgical assembly and exists to laud and magnify the triune name. The service of humanity (i.e., the work of love and justice) is an indispensable consequence, but as an overflow or by-product of the eucharistically and baptismally structured union of believers with God in Christ through faith.1035

The church’s witness and service to the world stem from its faith. God in one sense uses the

church as an instrument in this service, but in another and primary sense the church exists to

1032 Lindbeck was the co-chair of Facing Unity, and he sees it as most compatible with his church as Israel proposal. 1033 Lindbeck, “Church,” 201. 1034 Lindbeck, “Structure,” 33. 1035 Ibid.

234

“praise, love and obey God for his own sake.”1036 He notes, then, that the relation between praise

and service is analogous to the relation of faith and works in Lutheran thought. In this, Lindbeck

seeks to provide a corrective to a distortion that crept into the Lutheran tradition that made the

Confessions “the center rather than the condition of communio.”1037

Lindbeck contrasts his version of communio ecclesiology with the service-centered or

instrumental versions of communio that have become more common in ecumenical circles.1038

While Lindbeck says that the focus upon service is understandable within the contemporary

context, but to make service the “summit and source” is a theological mistake. He says,

“Christians must be Christians through faith and the means of grace before they can act together

as Christians.”1039 It is only through uniting in common faith and worship that churches avoid

division in the face of ethical issues. He does not deny that service can strengthen communion,

but he says that the “motivation pattern” is different in worship-centered than in service-centered

understandings of communio. He says, “A diakonia-centered understanding makes service of

humanity the goal, and communio the instrument,” while a worship-centered approach says that

“communion in faith, sacraments and service” should be sought “for its own sake as an

intrinsically blessed gift (and also command) of God.”1040

Lindbeck notes that while service-centered models now predominate, the situation could

easily change. He notes the pattern in the United States of connecting social ills with the

1036 Ibid. 1037 Ibid. Lindbeck notes that other traditions face other issues. For example, he says, “The Anglican bias has been the reverse of the Lutheran confessionalistic one: consensus in the faith has been neglected though the centrality of common worship through the mutual recognition of sacraments and of ministries has been maintained. In much of neo-Protestantism, in contrast, both consensus in faith and the sacraments lost communal importance” (34n10). 1038 Lindbeck says, “the second or instrumental view of communio holds the field by default (or at least it seemed to do so at Curitiba and Canberra according to some of the reports from these LWF and WCC assemblies)” (Ibid., 36.) 1039 Ibid., 35. 1040 Ibid.

235

“widespread collapse of personal morality and the dissolution of the family.” He argues that in

light of this recognition, “it becomes persuasive to argue that the church’s greatest contribution

to human welfare is in building close-knit interpersonal communities in which God is

worshipped and obeyed for his own sake, not because of social (or individual) utility.”1041 He

argues that the early church did this, as have various monastic communities and even groups like

the Quakers, and that the contemporary church can do so again. He says, “Perhaps new contexts

will favor a renewal of the conviction that it is precisely by not making communio instrumental

that humanity is best served.”1042

He further comments on the compatibility of his conception of the church as Israel with

communion ecclesiology by saying,

The church as Body of Christ emphasized in koinonia theologies is grammatically adjectival to the church as Israel, but it is causally or ontologically primary: it is by being incorporated into the body of Israel’s Messiah that gentiles become members of the Messiah’s people. Such a conceptualization is one way of meeting the Protestant objections of Pannenberg and the Catholic cautionary qualifications of Kasper to the usual forms of the koinonia approach. They risk overlooking that in the analogy between the church and the inner-trinitarian life, as in all theological analogies, similarity is combined with infinite difference.1043

CONCLUSION

This final chapter discusses some further ecumenical implications of Lindbeck’s project

on the church as Israel by putting it into dialogue with Lindbeck’s contributions to the Princeton

Proposal for Christian Unity. It begins by discussing Lindbeck’s defense of PP and the work of

unitive ecumenism exemplified by New Delhi. The chapter then discusses three further

consequences of Lindbeck’s discussion of the church as Israel, each of which can be seen within

1041 Ibid., 38. 1042 Ibid. Lindbeck says, however, “breaking the ecumenical ranks because of the theological instrumentalism (perhaps often more apparent than real) of much of the movement would be wrong” (40n19). 1043 Lindbeck, “Ecclesiology and Ecumenism,” 10–11.

236

PP. First, Lindbeck argues the church needs to develop a sense of peoplehood. Second, the

church needs to repent for its own disunity, as well as its lack of unity with Jews. Third, each

Christian and each Christian community has a role to play in bringing about church unity. The

chapter then discusses Lindbeck’s treatment of ecclesial structures. While he does not treat them

as adiaphora, he argues based on the narrative of leadership changes among the people of Israel

for a kind of fixed flexibility. Next, the chapter discusses Lindbeck’s understanding that the

Eucharist is both sweet and bitter in a divided church. Last, the chapter says that Lindbeck’s

proposal is not a magic bullet that can solve the issue of church unity, but that it has

compatibility with other proposals, such as certain forms of communion ecclesiology.

237

CONCLUSION

This dissertation has sought to demonstrate the centrality of ecclesiological and

ecumenical concerns to Lindbeck’s corpus through a focus upon his description of the church as

Israel. The first chapter provides a brief genealogical sketch of how Christians have understood

the church’s relationship to Israel. Within his genealogy, Lindbeck argues that there have been a

few basic stances that Christians have had toward this issue: appropriation, expropriation,

rejection, and neglect. Lindbeck argues that in some way, shape, or form, the church largely

identified itself with Israel from the first century until modernity. At that point, due to various

political and theological conflicts in Europe, Christians ceased to identify the church with Israel.

While some post-Holocaust Christian thinkers have critiqued this identification of the church

with Israel and have seen it as contributing factor to Christian anti-Semitism and the Holocaust,

Lindbeck notes that the church’s rejection of an identification with Israel did not eliminate

supersessionism. He sees the church’s reappropriation of Israelhood as having, within certain

constraints, ecumenical benefits.

Lindbeck’s work on the church’s relationship with Israel can be divided into two phases.

The first phase stems from his work as a Lutheran observer at the Second Vatican Council. The

second chapter discusses the first phase. In this phase, Lindbeck seeks to discern to what extent

Protestants can accept the Roman Catholic Church’s claims for itself and remain Protestant. He

does so by drawing a parallel between the church and Israel. In this, Lindbeck asserts that just as

Israel remained the elect people of God despite their lack of faithfulness, so does the church.

Chapter three begins the discussion of Lindbeck’s second phase. This chapter discusses

Lindbeck’s view of Scripture, which he discusses in connection with the history of the modern

ecumenical movement. He argues that as the emphasis upon ressourcement has waned, so has

238

the emphasis upon unitive ecumenism. He rejects the rise of an aggiornomento disconnected

from ressourcement, and calls upon the church to retrieve a classical, narrative-typological

approach to reading Scripture. He argues that apart from this retrieval, the church will be unable

to identify itself with Israel in a non-supersessionist way, socially embody Christian Scripture, or

build ecumenical consensus.

Chapter four further introduces Lindbeck’s ecclesiology by discussing the Old Testament

as ecclesiological textbook and the church as Israel in the new age. Lindbeck argues, “Whatever

is true of Israel is true of the Church except where the differences are explicit.”1044 He roots his

ecclesiology in the narrative of Scripture and emphasizes that the church is a concrete and

empirical people. While Christians later ceased applying all of Israel’s story to the church,

Lindbeck calls upon the church to reappropriate this narrative. Lindbeck also argues that the

church should not root its identity in its faithfulness, but in God’s free election of a people.

Chapter five discusses Lindbeck’s christological focus within his theology and in

connection with his ecclesiology and understanding of ecumenism. He emphasizes the need for

Christians to develop their Christology in connection with the entire canon of Scripture, and sees

Jesus as both Israel’s Messiah and the Son of God (Matt 16:16). While Christians have generally

seen the church as the fulfillment of Israel, Lindbeck argues that Jesus is the only fulfillment of

Israel. Jesus is, in addition to being Messiah and Son of God, both savior and exemplar. In

connection with these emphases, he draws closer connections between the atonement and

justification. He argues that Christians must come to socially embody the message of the gospel

in order to be Christ’s witnesses and to further unite with one another.


239

Chapter six explores the implications for Christian mission that stem from Lindbeck’s

Israelology. He emphasizes that the church, like Israel, is called to communally and faithfully

witness to God. It primarily witnesses to God through its worship and secondarily through its

service to God, the church, and the world. While this witness may lead to an increase in

numbers, it may also lead to persecution and suffering. Lindbeck calls upon the church, despite

the challenges in western culture and the contemporary church, to reappropriate the early

Christian practice of extended catechesis. This is needed in order to train people in Christian

speech, in the Scriptures concerning Israel, Jesus, and the church, and practices. Lindbeck also

emphasizes baptism as a “community-creating event.”1045 The chapter then closes with a

pneumatological corrective to Lindbeck’s ecclesiology through engagement with Acts.

Chapter seven then discusses some further implications of Lindbeck’s project by putting

his work on the church as Israel into dialogue with his contributions to the Princeton Proposal for

Christian Unity. He laments the waning of interest in ecumenism and emphasizes the type of

ecumenism advanced by New Delhi. He argues that church unity is not simply a means to an

end, either social or evangelistic ones, but an end in itself. There are three ecumenical

consequences of his project. First, Lindbeck argues that a sense of peoplehood is important to

bringing about Christian unity. Second, he argues that the church must repent for intra-Christian

disunity as well as its disunity with Jews. Third, Lindbeck addresses the role that individual

Christians and churches can have in bringing about Christian unity. Through engagement with

the leadership changes in Israel, he addresses Christian difference over church leadership

structures. Then, the chapter discusses Lindbeck’s understanding that eucharist is both bitter and

sweet within the divided church. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the compatibility of

1045 Lindbeck, “Postmodern Hermeneutics,” 109.

240

Lindbeck’s church as Israel proposals with other current ones, most notably that of communion

ecclesiology.

HOW TO READ THE NATURE OF DOCTRINE

The argument of this dissertation has meant that I have spent relatively little time on

Lindbeck’s famous work, The Nature of Doctrine. As I mentioned in the introduction, I believe

that it must be understood within the context of his overall career rather than used as a key to

understading his other writings. Having established the primarily ecumenical and ecclesial thrust

of Lindbeck’s project, however, I will now attempt to show briefly how these concerns might

inform a more helpful and balanced reading of The Nature of Doctrine.

It is important to read the book in relation both to what came before and what came after.

This means, first, that it must be understood in the background of Lindbeck’s work as an

ecumenist, and in particular with regard to “doctrinal reconciliation without doctrinal change” or

“doctrinal reconciliation without capitulation.”1046 While some find such a possibility illogical or

unlikely, Lindbeck builds upon his previous work and experience to explain the perspectives of

ecumenists who say “they have been compelled by the evidence, sometimes against their earlier

inclinations, to conclude that positions that were once really opposed are now really reconcilable,

even though these positions remain in a significant sense identical to what they were before” (1).

So while Lindbeck argues that his approach to the theory of religion and doctrine may be useful

for those engaged involved in nontheological study of religion, he argues, “the focus of this book

is on intra-Christian theological and ecumenical issues” (xxxiii).

1046 Lindbeck, ND, 1–2. Such an emphasis can be seen in Lindbeck’s work in the 1970s. For example, in Infallibility, he says, “The unity of the churches is not properly attained by surrender, capitulation, or loss of identity on any side” (7). ND will subsequently be cited parenthetically in the body of the dissertation.

241

In his Pere Marquette lectures, Infallibility, Lindbeck explains how doctrinal

reconciliation is possible by drawing upon a few sources: Thomas Aquinas’ and Wittgenstein’s

discussions of language, cultural anthropologists like Geertz, and Lonergan’s understanding of

consciousness. He says,

The conclusion to be drawn is that when Catholics affirm and Protestants deny magisterial and dogmatic infallibility, they are almost certainly not speaking of the same thing and consequently are not contradicting each other in any precisely specifiable sense. Consequently, although their positions are obviously very different, it is not absurd to ask whether they might be reconcilable within a new hermeneutical setting constituted by changes in theology, piety, institutional forms, and the church’s situation in the world.1047

Lindbeck carries on this perspective not only in his discussions of infallibility, but also in his

discussion of various other issues. He develops his cultural-linguistic theory of religion and

doctrine and emphasizes doctrines as rules not to deny the cognitive or experiential aspects of

religion and doctrine, but to sublate them into a theory that can, among other things, make sense

of doctrinal reconciliation.1048 He also argues a regulative view can help make sense of issues

related to doctrinal permanence and change.

Lindbeck does not make these claims naively. For example, in ND Lindbeck revisits the

issue of infallibility. There he notes that Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants may be able to

come to an agreement that infallibility is “immunity from ultimately serious error, an error that

divides the church definitively from Jesus Christ” (84). At the same time, Lindbeck

1047 Lindbeck, Infallibility, 13–14. In ND, he says something similar: “[T]o return to the eucharistic

example, both transubstantiation and at least some of the doctrines that appear to contradict it can be interpreted as embodying rules of sacramental thought and practice that may have been in unavoidable and perhaps irresolvable collision in certain historical contexts, but that can in other circumstances be harmonized by appropriate specifications of their respective domains, uses, and priorities” (4). 1048 He says that “part of the strength of a cultural-linguistic outlook is that it can accommodate and combine the distinctive and often competing emphases of the other two approaches” (ND, 20; see 21–23). He says that within cognitive-propositional, experiential-expressivist, and hybrid approaches, “it is difficult to envision the possibility of doctrinal reconciliation without capitulation. Indeed, in the first two the possibility is simply denied: either doctrinal reconciliation or constancy must be rejected” (2; see 3–4).

242

acknowledges that given current disagreements on papal infallibility and sola scriptura, it would

be difficult to fully reconcile the churches’ perspectives on the issue at hand. He makes the

modest claim that the regulative view of doctrine “provides a framework within which

ecumenical agreements and disagreements can be meaningfully discussed” (90).

Second, ND can be understood as a prologue to Lindbeck’s work on the church as Israel.

As mentioned in the Introduction, Lindbeck originally wrote ND as a prolegomena to an

ecumenical or comparative dogmatics. In the years after the publication of ND his understanding

of comparative dogmatics shifted, and he concluded it must begin with ecclesiology, and in

particular, an Israelology. His ecclesiology “makes use of” the cultural-linguistic framework.1049

As he says in ND: “To become a Christian involves learning the story of Israel and Jesus well

enough to interpret and experience oneself and one’s world in its terms” (20).

His discussion of what a postliberal theology would look like in chapter 6 is especially

important. There Lindbeck relates faithfulness, applicability, and intelligibility to dogmatic,

practical, and foundational theology (98). He shows how his project accounts for each of these

types of theology, and one can see echoes of this discussion in his later work on the church as

Israel. First, he discusses dogmatic theology, which he says gives “a normative explication of the

meaning a religion has for its adherents” (99). To discuss the role of dogmatic theology,

Lindbeck focuses upon faithfulness as coming from an intratextual—as opposed to an

extratextual—model of biblical exegesis (99–110). This can be seen in his argument that that the

biblical narrative defines what is meant by the church as the people of God or the body of Christ

rather predetermining what those terms mean and then reading them into the church.1050

1049 As he says in the “Forward to the German Edition,” “[Israelology] makes use of analyses such are found in the present work, but is not based on them” (xxxii). 1050 Lindbeck, “The Church,” 183.

243

Next, Lindbeck discusses applicability. He says, “[Theologies] are judged by how

relevant or practical they are to concrete situations as well as by how well they fit the cultural-

linguistic systems whose religious uses they seek to describe” (110). This involves futurology, or

the attempt to theologically discern how the church should anticipate the coming kingdom of

God, but also the attempt to develop forms of life faithful to an intratextual reading of Christian

Scripture. This can be seen in Lindbeck’s emphasis upon Christian worship and sacraments.

Third, he discusses the intelligibility of a postliberal approach by emphasizing the

possibility of ad hoc apologetics and the development of skill, rather than the translation of the

Christian faith into a foreign idiom. While some may raise concerns that such an understanding

of intelligibility would lead to a “ghettoizing” of Christian theology, Lindbeck denies this charge

and argues that such an approach can “free [theology] for closer contact with other disciplines”

(115). This can be seen in Lindbeck’s use of social science (Geertz, Berger) or philosophy of

language (Wittgenstein) and science (Kuhn, Polanyi), as well as his emphasis upon catechesis

and the church as witness to the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus. In each of these three

areas, Lindbeck is not only concerned with developing a theology or theological method that is

faithful to the past and intelligible in the present, but with the church’s unity. He says, “The

reader will recall that the stimulus for this book comes from the conviction that the doctrinal

results of the ecumenical discussions of the last decades make better sense in the context of a

cultural-linguistic view of religion and a rule theory of doctrine than in any other framework”

(121). Then, in the decade after the publication of ND, Lindbeck came to conclude that

comparative dogmatics must begin with an understanding of the church and Israel as an elect

people

244

AREAS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

One could, of course, raise several critical questions concerning Lindbeck’s proposal.

While he provides a helpful corrective in emphasizing the continuity between Israel and the

church, does he sufficiently emphasize the discontinuity that arises in the new age? Does his

emphasis upon faith ex auditu conflict with his big tent that includes atheists in the church? Can

those in traditions that exclusively practice believers’ baptism accept his account without

modification? These questions, and others, can lead to some interesting further areas of study.

For example, while Lindbeck references Old Testament motifs and stories like the

election of Abraham, the exodus, the division of Israel into the northern and southern kingdoms,

the exile, and Israel as an adulterous spouse, his work on the church as Israel spends little time

exegeting texts from the Old Testament. He instead focuses primarily on a few New Testament

texts (e.g., 1 Cor 10, Eph 2, Rom 9–11) and how these texts draw upon the Old Testament. While

I have sought in the pages of this dissertation to supplement his work by exegeting some other

passages from the Old Testament, additional work can and should be done on how the

contemporary church should read the Old Testament as an ecclesiolgical textbook.

Second, Lindbeck emphasizes, both in his first and second phases, the church as

something empirical. So instead of compartmentalizing theological and sociological discussions

of the church, Lindbeck’s project argues that theologians must deal with the empirical reality of

the divided church theologically. So in addition to the possibility of exploring the relationship of

Lindbeck to missional ecclesiology as mentioned in chapter six, another interesting area of

research would be seeing what areas of convergence exist between Lindbeck and those, like

Christian Scharen, who bring together ecclesiology and ethnography.1051 One of Lindbeck’s

1051 See Christian Scharen, Fieldwork in Theology: Exploring the Social Context of God’s Work in the World, The Church and Postmodern Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015); Christian Scharen, ed.,

245

students, Nicholas M. Healy, discusses the need for an ecclesiological ethnography in his

writing, and his work could potentially be used as a way to draw Lindbeck into these

discussions.1052

Third, to what extent can other Christians accept Lindbeck’s discussion of the church as

Israel, and with it his application of simul justus et peccator to not only individual Christians, but

to the church? This may be particularly difficult for Roman Catholics to receive, for while

Catholics are willing to ascribe sinfulness to the church’s members, theologians like Charles

Journet and Pope John Paul II tend to resist the idea of saying that the church itself is sinful, for

the church includes the head of the body—Jesus Christ. Two American Catholic theologians,

Healy and William Cavanaugh, have approaches to ecclesiology that are reconcilable to

Lindbeck’s description to the church as Israel. Healy critiques John Paul II’s apology for the sins

of individual Christians in the Holocaust, rather than the corporate failures of the church.1053

Healy goes on to conclude, “It is thus reasonable to hold that acknowledgment of ecclesial

sinfulness is an essential part of Christian witness to the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

Christ.”1054 He affirms, “The eschatological ‘not yet’ reminds us that until the end of the

church’s time it remains imperfect and sinful, always ecclesia semper reformanda or semper

purificanda.”1055

Explorations in Ecclesiology and Ethnography, Studies in Ecclesiology and Ethnography (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012). 1052 See Nicholas M. Healy, Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology, Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Healy also contributed an essay, “Ecclesiology, Ethnography, and God: An Interplay of Reality Descriptions,” to Perspectives on Ecclesiology and Ethnography, Studies in Ecclesiology and Ethnography, ed. Pete Ward (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 182–199. 1053 Healy, Church, 5–8. 1054 Ibid., 9. 1055 Ibid., 10.

246

Cavanaugh similarly contends, “The holiness and sinfulness in and of the church should

not be neatly divided between visibility and invisibility, the pure and the apostate. As I have

argued elsewhere, what we see when we look at the church is not the pure Christ but the Christ

who ‘became sin’ for our sakes (II Cor. 5:21).”1056 Cavanaugh refers to this as a “pedagogical

reading of salvation history,” and notes that others in Christian history have read “difficult

passages” in the Old Testament in this way.1057 He notes that this pedagogical approach to both

the Old Testament and Christian history can be found in church fathers like Irenaeus and in

modern theologians like Oliver O’Donovan. While Cavanaugh grants that church history is not

Scripture, he also argues that one cannot see church history as discontinuous with the narrative of

God’s people communicated in Scripture. He argues that Christians should read and understand

church history analogously to the way that they read the Old Testament.1058

Fourth, Lindbeck says that in developing his Israelology, he makes use of the theory of

religion and doctrine that he proposed in ND. He says, however, “They are dispensable when the

situation changes or when better intellectual tools are devised for thinking ecumenically in the

present post-Christendom and postliberal state of the Church” (xxxii). For example, in Theories

of Culture, Kathryn Tanner argues that the cultural anthropology upon which Lindbeck draws, as

seen in someone like Geertz, has come under criticism for assuming “that cultures are self-

contained and clearly bounded units, internally consistent and unified wholes of beliefs and

values simply transmitted to every member of their respective groups as principles of social

1056 William T. Cavanaugh, Field Hospital: The Church’s Engagement with a Wounded World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), 160. 1057 Ibid., 160–161. 1058 Ibid., 165. He says, “In both cases sin permeates in abundance and variety; how could it be otherwise when telling a history that is human? In both cases, however, it makes a difference if we do not give priority to the moral reading, but rather see the story as telling how God is acting now to lead humanity to salvation from itself.”

247

order.”1059 She draws upon later postmodern anthropological models to argue that cultural

boundaries are more porous than such treatments suppose, and offers a critique of postliberal

theology on this basis.1060 Can Lindbeck’s project indeed stand with a different set of

sociological and anthropological tools, and if so, what would such an Israelology look like?

CONCLUSION

Lindbeck’s first and second phases in discussing the relation of the church and Israel

have a number of similarities. In both attempts he uses the church/Israel relation to address issues

of ecclesial division. He argues that the Protestant Reformation should not be seen as the creation

of a new church or churches, a constituitive view, but rather as a reform movement within the

church catholic, a corrective view. He articulates an ecclesiology that takes seriously both God’s

role in calling and forming a people, as well as the church’s socio-historical existence through

time. He discusses the role of the episcopate as an office of unity and allows for the possibility of

a reformed papacy as both a divine and human institution. He engages many of the same

passages of Scripture (e.g., Rom 9–11), and reaffirms that the Jews remain God’s people even

when unfaithful. He describes, though in slightly different ways, the church as a diaspora people.

Despite these similarities, differences remain. Many of the differences are in tone and

language use. For example, he utilizes sacramental analogies (res sacramenti and sacramentum

tantum) or discusses the difference between Platonic and Aristotelian ecclesiolgies in the first

phase, while he drops this terminology in the later phase. He draws more from figures like Karl

Rahner and Hans Küng in the early phase, while expressing more concern about their thought in

his later work. He is more enthusiastic about the work of aggiornomento in his earlier work,

1059 Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology, Guides to Theological Inquiry (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 38. 1060 Ibid., passim, but especially 138–159.

248

while in his later work he expresses concern about aggiornomento detached from ressourcement.

While he was initially cautiously optimistic about the Second Vatican Council, he later came to

express concern about the cacophonous ways in which the Council was received. Also, he refers

to the church as Israel’s “fulfillment” or describes Jews and Christians as the “Old” and “New

People of God” in the first phase, while in the second he argues that Jesus Christ is Israel’s only

fulfillment.

Most significantly, within both phases Lindbeck maintains his commitment to church

unity, to his vocation as an ecumenist. His work on the church as Israel, within the context of his

corpus as a whole, proves that he is an important and creative voice in Christian theology. It

demonstrates that Lindbeck did not relegate himself to issues of method, but instead sought to do

constructive theological work in dialogue with Scripture, tradition, the church’s worship and

practices, and sociological, literary, and philosophical tools helpful to the theological task. He

did not relegate his project to the church, but to engage with the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,

and Jesus; the Triune God who elected a people to be his witnesses in the world. These aspects

of his work should determine his legacy.

249

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PUBLISHED PRIMARY SOURCES “Article IV and Lutheran/Roman Catholic Dialogue: The Limits of Diversity in the

Understanding of Justification.” Lutheran Theological Seminary Bulletin 61, no. 1 (1981): 3–16.

“An Assessment Reassessed: Paul Tillich on the Reformation.” The Journal of Religion 63, no. 4 (October 1983): 376–393.

“Atonement & The Hermeneutics of Intratextual Social Embodiment.” In The Nature of Confession: Evangelicals & Postliberals in Conversation, edited by Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm, 221–240. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996.

“Atonement and the Hermeneutics of Social Embodiment.” Pro Ecclesia 5, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 144–160.

“Barth and Textuality.” Theology Today 43, no. 3 (October 1986): 361–376. “A Battle for Theology: Hartford in Historical Perspective.” In Against the World For the World:

The Hartford Appeal and the Future of American Religion, edited by Peter L. Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, 20–43. New York: Seabury Press, 1976.

“The Bible as Realistic Narrative.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 17, no. 1 (Winter 1980): 81–85.

“The Church.” In Keeping the Faith: Essays to Mark the Centenary of Lux Mundi, edited by Geoffrey Wainwright, 179–208. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988.

“The Church as Israel: Ecclesiology and Ecumenism.” In Jews and Christians: People of God, edited by Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, 78–94. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003.

“Church Faithful and Apostate: Reflections from Kansas City.” Lutheran Forum 28, no. 1 (Lent 1994): 12–19.

“The Church’s Mission to Postmodern Culture.” In Postmodern Theology: Christian Faith in a Pluralist World, edited by Frederic B. Burnham, 37–55. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989.

“Confession and Community: An Israel-like View of the Church.” Christian Century 107, no. 16 (May 9, 1990): 492–496.

“Confessional Faithfulness and the Ecumenical Future: The J.L. Neve Memorial Lecture.” Trinity Seminary Review 12 (1990): 59–66.

———. “Confessional Subscription: What Does It Mean for Lutherans Today?” Word & World 11, no. 3 (Summer 1991): 317, 319–320.

“Church and World: Schema 13.” In Dialogue on the Way: Protestant Report From Rome on the Vatican Council, edited by George Lindbeck, 231–252. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1965.

250

“The Confessions of Ideology and Witness in the History of Lutheranism.” Lutheran World 7 (1961): 388–401.

“The Crisis in American Catholicism.” In Our Common History as Christians: Essays in Honor of Albert C. Outler, edited by John Deschner, Leroy T. Howe, and Klaus Penzel, 47–66. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.

“A Definitive Look at Vatican II.” Christianity and Crisis 25, no. 23 (January 10, 1966): 291–295.

“Dulles on Method.” Pro Ecclesia 1, no. 1 (Fall 1992): 53–60.

“Ecclesiology and Roman Catholic Renewal.” Religion in Life 33 (1964): 383–394.

“Ecumenical Directions and Confessional Construals.” Dialog 30 (1991): 118–123.

“Ecumenical Imperatives for the 21st Century.” Currents in Theology and Mission 20 (1993): 360–366.

“Ecumenical Theology.” In The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century, edited by David F. Ford, II:255–273. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989.

“Ecumenism and Liturgical Renewal.” Una Sancta (1964): 7–11. “Ecumenism and the Future of Belief.” Una Sancta 25, no. 3 (1968): 3–17. “Ecumenism, Cosmic Redemption, and the Council.” In Ecumenism, the Spirit, and Worship,

edited by Leonard Swidler, 62–76. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1967. “Ecumenisms in Conflict: Where Does Hauerwas Stand?” In God, Truth, and Witness: Engaging

Stanley Hauerwas, edited by L. Gregory Jones, Reinhard Hütter, and C. Rosalee Velloso Ewell, 212–228. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2005.

“The Eucharist Tastes Bitter in the Divided Church.” Spectrum 19, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 1, 4–5. “The Evangelical Possibilities of Roman Catholic Theology.” Lutheran World 7 (1960): 142–

152. “Fides Ex Auditu and the Salvation of Non-Christians: Contemporary Catholic and Protestant

Positions.” In The Gospel and the Ambiguity of the Church, edited by Vilmos Vajta, 92–123. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974.

“Forward to the German Edition of The Nature of Doctrine.” In The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, xxix–xxxii. 25th Anniversary Edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

“A Framework of Catholic-Protestant Disagreement.” In The Word in History: The St. Xavior Symposium, edited by T. Patrick Burke, 102–119. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1966.

“The Future of Dialogue: Pluralism or Eventual Synthesis of Doctrine?” In Christian Action and Openness to the World, edited by Joseph Papin, 37–51. Villanova, PA: Villanova University Press, 1970.

The Future of Roman Catholic Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970.

251

“The Future of Roman Catholic Theology in the Light of the First Session of the Second Vatican Council.” Dialog 2 (1963): 245–253.

“A Framework of Catholic-Protestant Disagreement.” In The Word in History: The St. Xavior Symposium, edited by T. Patrick Burke, 102–119. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1966.

“George Lindbeck Replies to Avery Cardinal Dulles.” First Things 139 (January 2004): 13–15. “The Gospel’s Uniqueness: Election and Untranslatability.” Modern Theology 13, no. 4 (October

1997): 423–450. Infallibility. Pere Marquette Theology Lecture. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press,

1972. “The Jews, Renewal and Ecumenism.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 2, no. 3 (Fall 1965): 471–

473.

“Justification and Atonement: An Ecumenical Trajectory.” In By Faith Alone: Essays on Justification in Honor of Gerhard O. Forde, edited by Joseph A. Burgess and Marc Kolden, 183–219. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004.

“Liturgical Reform in the Second Vatican Council” (1963): 161–171.

“Luther on Law in Ecumenical Context.” Dialog 22 (1983): 270–274.

“Lutheranism as Church and Movement: Trends in America since 1980.” Lutheran Theological Seminary Bulletin 71, no. 1 (1991): 43–59.

“Martin Luther and the Rabbinic Mind.” In Understanding the Rabbinic Mind: Essays on the Hermeneutic of Max Kadushin, edited by Peter Ochs, 141–164. South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 14. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990.

“The Meaning of Satis Est, or ... Tilting in the Ecumenical Wars.” Lutheran Forum 26, no. 4 (1992): 19–27.

“Messiahship and Incarnation: Particularity and Universality Are Reconciled.” In Who Do You Say That I Am? Confessing the Mystery of Christ, edited by John C. Cavadini and Laura Holt, 63–86. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004.

“Modernity and Luther’s Understanding of the Freedom of the Christian.” In Martin Luther and the Modern Mind: Freedom, Conscience, Toleration, Rights, edited by Manfred Hoffman, 1–22. Toronto Studies in Theology 22. New York/Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985.

The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. 25th Anniversary Edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

“A New Phase in the Protestant-Roman Catholic Encounter?” The Ecumenical Review 11, no. 3 (April 1959): 334–340.

“The New Vision of the World and the Ecumenical Revolution.” Religious Education 62, no. 2 (April 1967): 83–90.

“Papacy and Ius Divinum: A Lutheran View.” In Papal Primacy and the Universal Church, edited by Paul C. Empire and T. Austin Murphy, 193–208. Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue V. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1974.

252

“Paris, Rome, Jerusalem: An Ecumenical Journey.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 41, no. 3–4 (Summer-Fall 2004): 389–408.

“Pope John’s Council: First Session.” In Dialogue on the Way: Protestant Reports From Rome on the Vatican Council, edited by George Lindbeck, 18–46. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1965.

“Postcritical Canonical Interpretation: Three Modes of Retrieval.” In Theological Exegesis: Essays in Honor of Brevard S. Childs, 26–51. Grand Rapids. MI: Eerdmans, 1999.

“Postmodern Hermeneutics and Jewish-Christian Dialogue: A Case Study.” In Christianity in Jewish Terms, edited by Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel, and Michael A. Signer, 106–113. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000.

“Problems on the Road to Unity: Infallibility.” In Unitatis Redintegratio: 1964-1974-Eine Bilanz Der Auswirkungen Des Ökumenismusdekrets, edited by Gerard Békés and Vilmos Vajta, 98–109. Studia Anselmiana 71. Frankfurt: Lembeck/Knecht, 1977.

“A Protestant Point of View.” In Vatican II: An Interfaith Appraisal, edited by John H. Miller, 219–230. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966.

“A Protestant View of the Ecclesiological Status of the Roman Catholic Church.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 1, no. 2 (Spring 1964): 243–270.

“Reform and Infallibility.” Cross Currents 11, no. 4 (September 1961): 345–356.

“Reform and the Council.” Lutheran World (1962): 304–317. “Reform, Slow but Cautious.” Concordia Theological Monthly 35, no. 5 (May 1964): 284–286. “The Reformation Heritage and Christian Unity.” Lutheran Quarterly 2, no. 4 (Winter 1988):

477–502. “Reminiscences of Vatican II.” In The Church in a Postliberal Age, edited by James J. Buckley,

10–18. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002.

“Response to Bruce Marshall.” The Thomist 53, no. 3 (July 1989): 403–406.

“Response to Michael Wyschogrod’s ‘Letter to a Friend.’” Modern Theology 11, no. 2 (April 1995): 205–210.

“Reunion for Mission.” Una Sancta 23, no. 3 (1966): 21–23. “Roman Catholicism on the Eve of the Council.” In The Papal Council and the Gospel:

Protestant Theologians Evaluate the Coming Council, edited by Kristen E. Skydsgaard, 61–92. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1961.

“Scripture, Consensus, and Community.” In Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, edited by Richard John Neuhaus, 74–101. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989.

“The Search for Habitable Texts.” Daedalus 117, no. 2 (Spring 1988): 153–156. “The Second Vatican Council: II.” Christianity and Crisis 22, no. 16 (October 1, 1962): 164–

168.

253

“The Sectarian Future of the Church.” In The God Experience: Essays in Hope, edited by Joseph Whelan, 226–242. New York: Newman, 1971.

“Spiritual Formation and Theological Education.” Theological Education 24 (Supplement 1) (1988): 10–32.

“The Story-Shaped Church: Critical Exegesis and Theological Interpretation.” In Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation, edited by Garrett Green, 161–178. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987.

“The Structure of the Communio.” In Communio and Dialogue, edited by Eugene L. Brand, 28–40. Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1992.

“Theologians, Theological Faculties, and the ELCA Study of Ministry” (1989): 198–205. “Theological Revolutions and the Present Crisis (The Twentieth Annual Robert Bellarmine

Lecture, St. Louis University)” 23 (1975): 307–319. “There Is No Protestant Church.” Una Sancta 23, no. 1 (1966): 91–100. “The Thought of Karl Rahner, S.J.” Christianity and Crisis 25, no. 17 (October 18, 1965): 211–

215. “Two Kinds of Ecumenism: Unitive and Interdenominational.” Gregorianum 70, no. 4 (1989):

647–660. “Two Types of Ecumenism.” In Wisdom and Knowledge: Essays in Honor of Joseph Patin. Vol.

2, 371–375. Villanova, PA: Villanova University Press, 1976. “Unbaptized God: The Basic Flaw in Ecumenical Theology, by Robert W. Jenson, 1992; Review

Essay.” Pro Ecclesia 3, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 232–238. “Unbelievers and the ‘Sola Christi.’” Dialog 12 (1973): 182–189. “The Unity We Seek: Setting the Agenda for Ecumenism.” The Christian Century 122, no. 16

(August 9, 2005): 28–31. University Divinity Schools: A Report on Ecclesiastically Independent Theological Education.

New York: The Rockefeller Foundation, 1976. “Vatican II and Protestant Self-Understanding.” In Vatican II: Open Questions and New

Horizons, edited by Gerald Fagin, 58–74. Theology and Life Series 8. Wilmington, DE: Micahel Glazier, Inc., 1984.

“What of the Future? A Christian Response.” In Christianity in Jewish Terms, edited by Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel, and Michael A. Signer, 357–366. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000.

With Warren A. Quanbeck. “Paul VI Becomes Pope: Second Session.” In Dialogue on the Way: Protestant Report from Rome on the Vatican Council, edited by George Lindbeck, 47–71. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1965.

PRIMARY SOURCES: INTERVIEWS AND PANEL DISCUSSIONS

Granfield, Patrick. “George Lindbeck.” In Theologians at Work, 151–164. New York: MacMillan Company, 1967.

254

“Performing the Faith: An Interview with George Lindbeck.” Christian Century (November 28, 2006): 28–35.

Phillips, Timothy R., and Dennis L. Okholm, eds. “A Panel Discussion: Lindbeck, Hunsinger, McGrath & Fackre.” In The Nature of Confession: Evangelicals & Postliberals in Conversation, 246–253. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996.

Wright, John, ed. “Israel, Judgment, and the Future of the Church Catholic: A Dialogue Among Friends.” In Postliberal Theology and the Church Catholic, 113–132. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012.

PRIMARY SOURCES: ARCHIVAL MATERIAL

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, YALE DIVINITY SCHOOL LIBRARY GEORGE LINDBECK PAPERS, RECORD GROUP NO. 172

“An Israel-like Church (or The Language of Community and Unity): Scripture, Ecclesiology and Ecumenism in a Postmodern Age.”

“Are There Limits to Religious Pluralism? If so, Why?” presented at the IJCIC-WCC Consultation, Harvard University, November 25, 1984.

“The Church as Israel and the Future of Ecumenism: Lecture One: Israel-Likeness Unites and Disunites,” Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada, October 23, 2001.

“The Church as Israel and the Ecumenism of the Future: Lecture Two: Israel, Non-Christian Religions and Dominus Iesus,” Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada, October 23, 2001.

“Comparative Doctrine: Ecumenism and Narrative Ecclesiology: The Prospects for an Israel-like Church,” 1990.

“Dominus Iesus: A Lutheran Perspective” presented at the One Path to God?, Andover Newton Theological School, May 16, 2001.

“Doctrine in Christianity: A Comparison with Judaism” presented at the American Theological Society Meeting, Princeton, NJ, April 25, 1987.

“Ecclesiology and Ecumenism: A Reflection on a Projected Study,” St. Paul, MN, June 5, 1999.

“Election, Christian Apostasy, and the Holocaust,” 1971.

“Hans Frei and Biblical Narrative: The Prospects for a Postmodern Anselmianism.” unpublished, November 22, 1989.

“Hans W. Frei and the Future of Theology in America.” unpublished, December 2, 1988.

“Letter to Robert M. Adams.”

“Theological Perspectives: The Waxing and Waning of Religious Belief,” CUNY, November 12, 1987.

255

SECONDARY LITERATURE: LINDBECK AND POSTLIBERALISM Barrett, Lee C. “Theology as Grammar: Regulative Principles or Paradigms and Practices.”

Modern Theology 4, no. 2 (January 1988): 155–172. Barter Moulaison, Jane. Lord, Giver of Life: Toward a Pneumatological Complement to George

Lindbeck’s Theory of Doctrine. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2007.

Buckley, James J. “Doctrine in the Diaspora.” The Thomist 49, no. 3 (July 1, 1985): 443–459. Eckerstorfer, Bernhard A. “The One Church in the Postmodern World: Reflections on the Life

and Thought of George Lindbeck.” Pro Ecclesia 13, no. 4 (Fall 2004): 399–423. Frei, Hans W. The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century

Hermeneutics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974. _______. The Identity of Jesus Christ: The Hermeneutical Bases of Dogmatic Theology. Updated

and Expanded Edition. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013. _______. “Letter to Gary Comstock, November 5, 1984.” In Reading Faithfully Volume 1:

Writings From the Archives: Theology & Hermeneutics, edited by Mike Higton and Mark Alan Bowald, 36–41. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015.

_______. “Letter to John Woolverton, April 26, 1978.” In Reading Faithfully Volume 1: Writings From the Archives. Theology & Hermeneutics, edited by Mike Higton and Mark Alan Bowald. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 30-31.

_______. “The ‘Literal Reading’ of Biblical Narrative in the Christian Tradition: Does It Stretch or Will It Break?” In The Bible and the Narrative Tradition, edited by Frank McConnell, 36–77. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

_______. “‘Narrative’ in Christian and Modern Reading.” In Theology and Dialogue: Essays in Conversation with George Lindbeck, edited by Bruce D. Marshall, 149–163. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990.

_______. “On Interpreting the Christian Story.” In Reading Faithfully Volume 1: Writings From the Archives: Theology & Hermeneutics, edited by Mike Higton and Mark Alan Bowald, 68–93. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015.

_______. “The Specificity of Reference.” In Reading Faithfully Volume 1: Writings From the Archives: Theology & Hermeneutics, edited by Mike Higton and Mark Alan Bowald, 102–107. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015.

Greer, Robert Charles. “Lindbeck on the Catholicity of the Church: The Problem of Foundationalism and Antirealism in George A. Lindbeck’s Ecumenical Methodology.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Marquette University, 2000.

Higton, Mike. “Forward.” In The Identity of Jesus Christ: The Hermeneutical Bases of Dogmatic Theology, by Hans W. Frei, xi–xix. Updated and Expanded Edition. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013.

_______. “Frei’s Christology and Lindbeck’s Cultural-Linguistic Theory.” Scottish Journal of Theology 50, no. 1 (1997): 83–95.

256

_______. “Reconstructing the Nature of Doctrine.” Modern Theology 30, no. 1 (January 2014): 1–31.

Marshall, Bruce D. “Absorbing the World: Christianity and the Universe of Truths.” In Theology and Dialogue: Essays in Conversation with George Lindbeck, edited by Bruce D. Marshall, 69–102. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990.

_______. “Aquinas as Postliberal Theologian.” The Thomist 53, no. 3 (July 1989): 353–402. _______. “Introduction: The Nature of Doctrine after 25 Years.” In The Nature of Doctrine:

Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, by George Lindbeck, vii–xxvii. 25th Anniversary Edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

_______. Trinity and Truth. Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Michalson, Gordon E. “The Response to Lindbeck.” Modern Theology 4, no. 2 (January 1988): 107–120.

Michener, Ronald T. Postliberal Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013.

O’Neill, Colman. “The Rule Theory of Doctrine and Propositional Truth.” The Thomist 49, no. 3 (July 1, 1985): 417–442.

Phillips, D.Z. “Lindbeck’s Audience.” Modern Theology 4, no. 2 (January 1988): 133–154. Placher, William C. “Revisionist and Postliberal Theologies and the Public Character of

Theology.” The Thomist 49, no. 3 (July 1, 1985): 392–416. Surin, Kenneth. “‘Many Religions and the One True Faith’: An Examination of Lindbeck’s

Chapter Three.” Modern Theology 4, no. 2 (January 1988): 187–209. Tracy, David. “Lindbeck’s New Program for Theology.” The Thomist 49, no. 3 (July 1, 1985):

460–472. Wainwright, Geoffrey. “Ecumenical Dimensions of Lindbeck’s ‘Nature of Doctrine.’” Modern

Theology 4, no. 2 (January 1988): 121–132. Williams, Stephen N. “Lindbeck’s Regulative Christology.” Modern Theology 4, no. 2 (January

1988): 173–186.

SECONDARY LITERATURE: ECCLESIOLOGY Cavanaugh, William T. Field Hospital: The Church’s Engagement with a Wounded World.

Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016.

Dahl, Nils Alstrup. “The People of God.” Ecumenical Review 9, no. 2 (January 1957): 154–161.

Healy, Nicholas M. Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology. Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

_______. “Ecclesiology, Ethnography, and God: An Interplay of Reality Descriptions.” In Perspectives on Ecclesiology and Ethnography, Studies in Ecclesiology and Ethnography, edited by Pete Ward, 182–199. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012.

257

Jenson, Robert W. “Christ as Culture 1: Christ as Polity.” In Theology as Revolutionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation, edited by Stephen John Wright. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014.

Kenneson, Philip D. Beyond Sectarianism: Re-Imagining Church and World. Christian Mission and Modern Culture. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999.

Minear, Paul S. Images of the Church in the New Testament. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960.

Peterson, Cheryl M. Who Is the Church? An Ecclesiology for the Twenty-First Century. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013.

Pope Pius XII. Mystici Corporis Christi [Encyclical on the Mystical Body of Christ], 1943. Accessed January 24, 2017. http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_29061943_mystici-corporis-christi.pdf.

Radner, Ephraim. The End of the Church: A Pneumatology of Christian Division in the West. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998.

Rahner, Karl. The Christian of the Future. Quaestiones Disputatae 18. New York: Herder and Herder, 1967.

———. The Church After the Council. Translated by D.C. Herron and R. Albrecht. New York: Herder and Herder, 1966.

———. The Church and the Sacraments. Quaestiones Disputatae 9. Herder and Herder, 1963. Scharen, Christian, ed. Explorations in Ecclesiology and Ethnography. Studies in Ecclesiology

and Ethnography. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012. _______. Fieldwork in Theology: Exploring the Social Context of God’s Work in the World, The

Church and Postmodern Culture. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015. Webber, Robert E. Ancient-Future Evangelism: Making Your Church a Faith-Forming

Community. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2003.

SECONDARY LITERATURE: ECUMENICS AND JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE Bader-Saye, Scott. Church and Israel After Christendom: The Politics Of Election. Radical

Traditions: Theology in a Postcritical Key. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999. Braaten, Carl E., and Robert W. Jenson, eds. In One Body Through the Cross: The Princeton

Proposal for Christian Unity. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003. Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews. We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah,

1998. Accessed January 29, 2018. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_16031998_shoah_en.html.

Congar, Yves. Divided Christendom: A Catholic Study of the Problem of Reunion. Translated by M.A. Bousfield. London: The Centenary Press, 1939.

258

“The First Assembly of the World Council of Churches.” In The Theology of the Churches and the Jewish People: Statements by the World Council of Churches and Its Member Churches, 5–9. Geneva: WCC Publications, 1988.

Kaufman, Thomas. Luther’s Jews: A Journey into Anti-Semitism. Translated by Lesley Sharpe and Jeremy Noakes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Kinnamon, Michael. “Can These Bones Live?” Christian Century 120, no. 18 (September 6, 2003): 36–39.

_______. The Vision of the Ecumenical Movement and How It Has Been Impoverished by Its Friends. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2003.

Neusner, Jacob. Christian Faith and the Bible of Judaism: The Judaic Encounter with Scripture. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987.

“New Delhi Statement on Unity.” Accessed April 12, 2018. https://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/assembly/1961-new-delhi/new-delhi-statement-on-unity.

Novak, David. The Election of Israel: The Idea of the Chosen People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Ochs, Peter. Another Reformation: Postliberal Christianity and the Jews. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011.

Ratzinger, Joseph. Church, Ecumenism, & Politics: New Endeavors in Ecclesiology. Translated by Michael J. Miller. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008.

Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism. New York: Seabury Press, 1974.

Soulen, R. Kendall. The God of Israel and Christian Theology. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996.

Wyschogrod, Michael. Abraham’s Promise: Judaism and Jewish Christian Relations. Edited by R. Kendall Soulen. Radical Traditions: Theology in a Postcritical Key. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004.

_______. The Body of Faith: God in the People Israel. First Jason Aronson Inc. Edition. Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson, 1996.

SECONDARY LITERATURE: SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

Flannery, Austin, ed. “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions: Nostra Aetate.” In The Basic Sixteen Documents Vatican Council II: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations: A Completely Revised Translation in Inclusive Language, 569–574. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014.

_______, ed. “Decree On Ecumenism: Unitatis Redintegratio.” In Vatican Council II: The Basic Sixteen Documents: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations: A Completely Revised Translation in Inclusive Language, 499–523. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014.

259

_______, ed. “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen Gentium.” In Vatican Council II: The Basic Sixteen Documents: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations: A Completely Revised Translation in Inclusive Language, 1–95. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014.

_______, ed. “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World: Gaudium et Spes.” In Vatican Council II: The Basic Sixteen Documents: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations: A Completely Revised Translation in Inclusive Language, 163–282. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014.

O’Malley, John W. “Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?” In Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?, edited by David G. Schultenover, 52–91. New York/London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2007.

SECONDARY LITERATURE: HERMENEUTICS AND INTERPRETATION OF

SCRIPTURE

Behr, John. “The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching.” In On the Apostolic Preaching, by Irenaeus, 7–26. Popular Patristics Series 17. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997.

Boda, Mark J. “Repentance.” In Dictionary of the Old Testament: Prophets, edited by Mark J. Boda and McConville, Gordon J., 664–670. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Ecumenical, Academic, and Pastoral Work: 1931-1932. Edited by Victoria Barnett, Mark S. Brocker, and Michael B. Lukens. Translated by Anne Schmidt-Lange, Isabel Best, Nicolas Humphrey, and Marion Pauck. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 11. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012.

Boring, M. Eugene, and Fred B. Craddock. The People’s New Testament Commentary. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004.

Byassee, Jason. Praise Seeking Understanding: Reading the Psalms with Augustine. Radical Traditions: Theology in a Postcritical Key. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007.

Childs, Brevard S. Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992.

_______. Isaiah: A Commentary. The Old Testament Library. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.

Craddock, Fred B. Luke. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, 1990. Croatto, J. Severino. Exodus: A Hermeneutics of Freedom. Translated by Salvator Attanasio.

Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981. Frye, Northrop. The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. Toronto: Academic Press Canada,

1982.

Goldingay, John. “Servants of Yahweh.” In Dictionary of the Old Testament: Prophets, edited by Mark J. Boda and J. Gordon McConville, 700–707. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2012.

260

Hauerwas, Stanley. Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993.

Hays, Richard B. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation, A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics. San Francisco: HarperOne, 1996.

_______. Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness. London: SPCK, 2014.

Kelsey, David H. Proving Doctrine: The Uses of Scripture in Modern Theology. Trinity Press Edition. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999.

Meeks, Wayne A. “A Hermeneutics of Social Embodiment.” Harvard Theological Review 79, no. 1–3 (July 1986): 176–186.

Soza, Joel R. “Repentance.” In Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, edited by T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker, 684–687. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003.

Strawn, Brent A. The Old Testament Is Dying: A Diagnosis and Recommended Treatment. Theological Explorations for the Church Catholic. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017.

SECONDARY LITERATURE: HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, AND SOCIOLOGY

Austin, J.L. How to Do Things With Words. Edited by J.O. Ormson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.

_______. Philosophical Papers. Edited by J.O. Ormson and G.J. Warnock. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.

Bellah, Robert N., Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. New York: Perennial Library, 1985.

Cherry, Conrad, ed. God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny. Revised and Expanded Edition. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Cherry, Conrad. “Introduction.” In God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny, edited by Conrad Cherry, 1–21. Revised and Expanded Edition. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Eusebius. “The Life of the Blessed Emperor Constantine.” In A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Vol. I. Second Series. New York: Christian Literature Company, 1890.

Greer, Rowan A. Broken Lights and Mended Lives: Theology and Common Life in the Early Church. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986.

Harnack, Adolf von. The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries. Translated by James Moffatt. Second, Enlarged and Revised Edition. Vol. I. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908.

Mead, Sidney E. The Nation with the Soul of a Church. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.

261

Meeks, Wayne A. The Moral World of the First Christians. Library of Early Christianity. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986.

Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.

Salenson, Christian. Christian de Chergé: A Theology of Hope. Translated by Nada Conic. Trappist, KY: Cistercian Publications, 2012.

Tanner, Kathryn. Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology. Guides to Theological Inquiry. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997.

Walls, Andrew F. The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Edited by P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte. 4th edition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

SECONDARY LITERATURE: THEOLOGY AND THEOLOGICAL METHOD

Braaten, Carl E., and Robert W. Jenson, eds. Christian Dogmatics: Volume Two. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1984.

Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. 2 vols. The Library of Christian Classics. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960.

Holmes, Michael W. “The Epistle of Barnabas.” In The Apostolic Fathers: English Translations, 270–327. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1992.

Kilby, Karen. A Brief Introduction to Karl Rahner. New York: Crossroad, 2007. Lonergan, Bernard. “The Transition From a Classicist World-View to Historical Mindedness.” In

A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., edited by William F.J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrell, 1–9. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974.

Luther, Martin. “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church.” In Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, edited by Timothy F. Lull and William R. Russell, 196–223. Third Edition. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012.

_______. “A Brief Instruction on What to Look For and Expect in the Gospels.” In Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, edited by Timothy F. Lull and William R. Russell, 71–75. Third Edition. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012.

_______. “The Freedom of a Christian.” In Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, edited by Timothy F. Lull and William R. Russell, 403–427. Third Edition. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012.

_______. “The Large Catechism.” In The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, 377–480. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001.

262

_______. “A Meditation on Christ’s Passion.” In Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, edited by Timothy F. Lull and William R. Russell, 126–131. Third Edition. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012.

_______. “On the Church and the Councils.” In The Annotated Luther, Volume 3: Church and Sacraments, edited by Paul W. Robinson, 317–444. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016.

_______. “A Practical Way to Pray.” In Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, edited by Timothy F. Lull and William R. Russell, 33–38. Third Edition. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012.

Yeago, David S. “The Apostolic Faith Part II.” unpublished, n.d.

SECONDARY SOURCES: MEDIA

Cherones, Tom. “The Conversion.” DVD. Seinfeld. NBC, December 16, 1993.

The Israel of God: Scripture, Ecclesiology, and Ecumenism ...€¦ · “Israel-ology.” ND, as...

Documents

Transcript of The Israel of God: Scripture, Ecclesiology, and Ecumenism ...€¦ · “Israel-ology.” ND, as...