Why You Should Care About "Ecclesiology"

...even though you aren't a nerd.

Why are there so many different Christian churches? Is there a "right one"?

Ecclesiology (the study of the Church) is my favorite sub-discipline of Christian theology. For me, it's not so much a series of questions about congregational government or who as proper sacraments, or even if I'm in the "right" church, but about exploring what it means to be God's people together, and to learn what it looks like for us to live with God together and participate in his ongoing transformation of real human lives. I'm excited about ecclesiology because of a strong conviction that the way we live together can really hurt or really help us move forward with God.

I also realize that it's a topic attractive to religion "nerds." It has taken me a few years to realize that the question, "Is there a 'one true church'?" is an intrinsically meticulous (read: nerdy) question that doesn't occur to a lot of people. I think it really should occur to people who take their religion seriously, but I suspect many folks just want to be part of a church where they like the people and understand themselves to be helped along in their relationship with God as they understand it.

If you're not a religion nerd, but you are a Christian, here's why you should care: Jesus made a lot of promises to his apostles: to lead them into the fullness of truth, to give them authority and power to help people towards God, and to make of us a battalion that can crash the gates of Hell John 16:13; Matthew 16:13-19). I suggest that the more our individual and corporate lives line up with his purposes - the more faithful we are in our common lives - the more we will benefit from those promises.

Over the next several posts, I'll introduce some of the basic discussions Christians have about what makes a church, as opposed to a group of people hanging out and being religious.

Question: Are you a nerd like me? Did you ever wonder about whether there's a "one, true Church" and if you're part of it? Do you wonder still?

Teaching Undergraduate Theology

“Which theology are you going to teach them?”

“The right one, obviously.”

It’s not obvious to everyone just what “Christian theology” means as an academic discipline. Is it the perspective of a particular church or denomination? Would it be a set of lectures on my own religious idiosyncrasies? Are we going to learn how to re-arrange the Bible into something more thematic and user-friendly?

There are two basic definitions that I share with my students. “Theology” is simply words about God. When we speak of God, we are “doing theology.” When we even talk about how we ought to live, and assume that God exists, we are in some sense speaking theologically. For a Christian, of course, a theologian is “one who prays,” and conversely, one who prays is a theologian (I did not make this up, just to be clear). When we learn Christian theology, then, we study the Christian revelation and draw out connections between different ideas. We consider the set of stories that the Christian revelation tells about God and the world.

The college catalog mandates that the course offer a thematic examination of all the major subtopics in theology. I consider it my job to offer a responsible introduction to the conversations Christians have had about these subtopics over the last 2,000 years. I don’t care what they think about the Bible, for example, but I want them to know what the Catholic Church teaches about the Bible, what some evangelical Protestants understand the doctrine of “Biblical Inerrancy” to mean, and how some different Christian churches articulate their understanding of “Tradition.” The students have a responsibility to make (or even unmake!) faith commitments in the context of their own lives and churches, and it’s my responsibility to help them accept or reject “the real thing,” not popular caricatures of various doctrines. Do Catholics “pray to Mary?” Is the doctrine of substitutionary atonement a kind of “divine child abuse?” Is “ritual” another way of saying “dead formulae”? Do biblical inerrantists worship the Bible? Students are welcome to make any of these judgments for themselves, but I’ll be working to make sure we have a well-rounded conversation, and move past stereotypes.

I am less concerned that my students will know the characters (i.e. theologians) involved in the historical conversations, but that they will grasp the fundamental issues, and have the kind of entry points that liberally educated people should have.

Have you taken a formal theology course? What do you consider to be the biggest “burning issue” that you would like to learn about in a class?

Have you taught anything like this before at a church or a school? What topics proved the most challenging to discuss?

We worked very hard on the syllabus.