Hein-Fry Lectures, 1996---Concise Summary of the Whole Project
Timothy F. Lull

Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and Graduate Theological Union

 Summer 1996

I. No Consensus About the Church

The church has been a central theme of 20th Century Theology, from Neo-Orthodoxy through Vatican II and the ecumenical theology that followed it. Yet at the century's end we have no consensus about the church. There are at least four reasons:

• critical theologies and personal disappointments have led to a loss of confidence.
• the end of Christendom in the developed world has led to discouragement and a mission crisis.
• the "ecumenical chill" has led to wide-spread doubt that we are headed toward unity soon.
• the public has become skeptical about salvation and whether the church has a monopoly on it..

There is no quick answer to such a broad challenge. But the aim of these lectures is to review some major questions of ecclesiology, asking in each case what our Lutheran heritage has to contribute as one form understanding the church today. The whole tradition has things to offer, but it is especially Luther's thinking, even more than the Augsburg Confession, which may offer fresh insights and recover forgotten emphases. In his "inventing" of the Reformation, we find case studies and theological principles which can still shape our work. We are free to be post-ecumenical (not anti-ecumenical) as we continue on a long road to unity than expected.

II. Rediscovering the Life of the Community

Our disappointment with the church is part of a larger cultural pattern of disappointment with family, work, and civil life. To overcome it we must first rediscover how the gospel serves as the heart of the church's life.

Lutheran Contributions:

1. The Church is God's gift, formed by God's action, as surprising as creation or the incarnation, into which human beings have mysterious been invited to play a supporting role.
2. The gospel forms the church but God presents the gospel to us in more than one way. The church must take full advantage of word, sacrament, and mutual consolation to bring the good news home.
3. The gospel not only reconciles with God, but also with neighbor, and thereby creates community--the church--not as an optional extra but as an essential aspect of life in Christ. The community is most concrete in the local assembly where both prayers and specific burdens are shared.
4. While only the Holy Spirit can lead to faith, the Christian needs and should receive life-long support through the church's teaching ministry--counter-cultural reinforcement of what to believe and how to live.

Is the church necessary for salvation? Under this heading we must say YES, but as a confessional or personal rather than absolute or theoretical answer. To know Christ is to be drawn into the church's life.

III. Shaping the Witness of the Community

While all mainstream churches are struggling today, Lutherans have a special missional hole in our heritage. We also have only recently come to recover the need for the church to made a public, social witness on behalf of the hope that it holds. Lutheran Contributions:

1. The basis for witness is justification by faith, understood as the radicality of God's love for all, which undercuts all human principles of hierarchy and exclusion and turns persons (quite unnaturally) out of themselves toward mission and service to neighbors who may be quite unlike them.
2. The flexibility for witness is the doctrine of the two kingdoms which finds positive things to value in each culture which are already there as gifts of the creator, and which also provide the basis for Christian alliances with non-Christians in caring for the pains of the world.
3. The other-directedness of witness is our freedom as the justified to be open to serving the needs of our neighbor rather than having to distort our relationships through agendas set in advance by our religious anxieties or our political, social, and economic schemes. This requires a church able to listen to others.
4. The criterion for witness--both in times of success and apparent adversity--comes from the theology of the cross, understood as the hiddenness of the ways that God works in the world and the impossibility of measuring success by numbers, power, or any of the standards this world values. Neither evangelism efforts nor social witness can expect overwhelming positive success, but seed is planted and God gives the growth.

Is the church necessary for salvation? Here we must give a mixed answer: Yes, in terms of the motivation for mission, but decidedly No, in terms of openness to God's final results (now hidden) and in understanding that the church has no privileged position in the world as dispenser of grace. Yet there is urgency for mission in our time and great danger in our culture of keeping religion a purely private, personal matter.

IV. Reforming the Structure of the Community

These are anxious times for the churches. We become preoccupied with ourselves and how we are doing. Then even less mission takes place! One temptation is to turn to control and hierarchy as comforting models of leadership; but then we often become quickly disgusted with our leaders when they do not do just what we want. And such over-control leads many ex-Christians to see the churches as the enemy of human freedom, self-esteem, and happiness. So a second, equally impossible temptation, is to try to live without larger structures at all--to see the congregation as the church. Lutheran contributions:

1. The church needs connectional structures. While the church is most basically the local community, this can never live unto itself but needs to give and receive support and correction for integrity in its life and completeness in its mission.
2. The church must be reformed in every generation. While it is normal to be disappointed, our historical sense should cheer us and set us to the task. Reformation is not the return to some golden age--1st, 4th, 13th or 16th century, or the 1950s, but the courage to ask what form the Spirit wills for the people of God in our time.
3. The ministry of all God's people is our unfilled dream, not only since the Reformation, but since Pentecost itself. The ministry of bishops and clergy is an important sub-theme in ecclesiology, but its rightful role is equipping the whole community for its life and witness in the world. We need to explore not apostolic centrism, but new forms of friendship and mutual respect among all the baptized.
4. If we could find new forms of structure that did not suppress the Spirit, did not lead from fearfulness of which might be lost, we could recapture another Luther theme that has almost never had a hearing in the church--Christian liberty or freedom. The rejection of romantic notions of hierarchy and the development of new, open, dialogical forms of leadership, peer accountability, and shrewd decision making could even be a beacon of hope outside the church, where people are discouraged about the same issues in political leadership. But the church must also practice self-restraint and not bind the conscience of Christians on all matters.

Is the church necessary for salvation? It is especially here when we discuss structure and order that we must be clear to say a strong NO, given the many excesses and failures of the church in the past and the present that we justified by what was necessary to do to people or for people for their own good. Whenever the church understands itself in largely juridical terms, the gospel is at risk. Sola ecclesia is not a reformation theme!

Conclusion: Three Ecclesial Virtues

Late in his life the great Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner wrote of the need to find--against all our frustrations--the courage for an ecclesial Christianity. Paul spoke movingly in Philippians 4 about having learned in all circumstances to be content and therefore of the joy or cheerfulness of the Christian life. Part of our task as Lutheran Christians in this generation is to learn these three virtues--and they are learned, rather than coming naturally. We need cheerfulness as a sign that we are growing into Christian maturity, overcoming the disappointments that so trouble us. At the same time we need contentment so as not to be discouraged by the particular problems of the situation that God has given us, but to take up our discipleship in good hope and courage, less daunted by the skepticism of the world, less nostalgic for a past that was not so glorious as we selectively remember it. And finally we need the courage for bold new ventures in building community, in public witness, in reforming our own connectional structures. With these virtues might come the ability to set aside dreams that our struggles could be overcome if we could dress in clothing borrowed from some other tradition. This is an exciting time to be a Christian, but also a good time to be Lutheran, open to what the Spirit may be doing even now through us.