The Church Event: Call and Challenge of a Church Protestant

by Vitor Westhelle

Overview

Often nowadays one hears affirmations of spirituality and even religious life but rarely of institutional religion. Is the church dying?

Noted theologian Vtor Westhelle urges an emphatic no and traces the church crisis to an "ecclesiological deficit," a lack of serious reflection on the real role of church as an ideal community and an institutional reality. He finds real consensus among the Reformers on what church should mean, and he traces the competing historical notions of church, their relations to the sources of Protestant religious conviction, and the gradual erosion of a sense for what it is the church actually "represents."

Westhelle advances a new model of church, grounded in Trinitarian thought, social anthropology, and biblical reflection. He then shows how this notion of church well positions Christian communities to deal with the public sphere, religious pluralism, globalization, and communal prayer. In doing so, Westhelle claims a space for Protestant Christianity in today's world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780800663322
Publisher:	1517 Media
Publication date:	10/09/2009
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Until his untimely death in 2018, Vitor Westhelle was professor of systematic theology at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. A prolific writer and teacher, he was author of several books, including The Scandalous God: The Use and Abuse of the Cross (Fortress, 2006), and co-editor of several others.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations ix

Introduction 1

1 Church Profiles and the So-Called Ecclesiological Deficit of Protestantism 11

On the Church Ecumenical 11

The New Challenges to the Church in World Christianity 17

Profiles of Church and Ministry 20

In Defense of a Church Protestant 27

2 The Representative: an Unexamined Question 31

The Church between Economics and Politics 36

The Church's Tempting Vicinities 41

3 Meanings of Tradition: Give and Take 47

Whose Tradition? Whose Treason? 47

The Open Canon and the Enclosed Silence 49

Irenaeus and Apostolic Succession 52

The Reaction of the Reformers 53

Give and Take 54

Functions That Divide the Church 56

4 On the Authority of the Scriptures: More Than Enough 59

Sola Scriptura: The Negative Principle 62

Scripture as Interpreter Itself: The Positive Principle 63

More than Enough: Rhetoric and Dialectics 65

The Universal Word Speaks Dialect 66

The Rule of Grammar 68

The Proper Uses of the Law 70

Antinomianism? 73

5 Church and Trinity: the Promise and Limits of an Analogical Reasoning 75

A Western Reading 79

Trinity: A Contextual Second-Order Discourse 80

Luther and the Material Criterion 84

Tying Ends Together 87

6 KoinŌnia: Between the Idol of the House and the Demons of the Street 89

The House and the Street 89

Captivities: The Idol and the Demons 94

The Idol 95

The Demon 98

Criteria for Discerning 103

7 Ecclesial Ends: on the Relation of Church and Society 107

Church and Society 107

Crises in the Church and Society 112

The Theological Loss of the Saeculum 113

The Ends of the World 116

In Crisis, There the Church Is 118

ACopernican Revolution 120

8 At Ease: Ecclesial Adjacencies 125

The Church and the Kingdom 125

Adjacency 129

Zacchaeus: A Meditation on Adjacency 129

At Ease: Peace Be with You 132

Chrysostom 134

9 The Place of the Church 137

Tapestry: A Metaphor 137

Metabolism: Space as Gift and Task 139

The Spectrum of Spatial Experiences: Banquet Rooms and Deserts 140

Types of Space: Locales and Places 141

Hybrid Spaces: Thin and Thick 143

The Church as Epiphanic Space 147

Envisioning 152

10 Church Happening: Speaking the Truth and Liberation 155

Speaking the Truth 155

Freeing the Captives 163

Event 165

In the Offing 168

Acknowledgments 169

Index 171