Speaking of post-Enlightenment responses (such as modern cosmopolitanism, liberation theology, and even that new trend that they call reconciliation theology) made me think of Schleiermacher, “the father of modern protestant theology,” whose Ecclesiological a priori principles could be very briefly listed. He strongly advocates a type of Church theory that emphasizes communion to such an extent that some believe him to have been anti-institutional (thus my mental link to liberation theology…):
1. The Church is first and foremost a fellowship or communion with God through Jesus and the Spirit that is shared among Christians.
2. The Church is the corporate life brought about by Jesus; its origins must be grasped historically and dynamically. Its foundation lies in a religious intimacy between Jesus and his followers that grows organically through the spread of like relationships. Schleiermacher identified religious self-consciousness, which is also a consciousness of God, as the basis of religion. This consciousness or piety leads naturally to fellowship or communion which in the case of Christianity is the Church. In On Religion Schleiermacher lingered on the topic of intimacy, discussing how religious consciousness dissolves the artificial boundaries of our personalities and immerses ourselves within the feeling of comradeship. In The Christian Faith he described Christian redemption as arising through fellowship with Jesus, and the emergence of the Church as a necessary extension of such fellowship.
3. The Church is an intrinsic dimension of revelation and not an added extra. Schleiermacher argued that whether in the modern era or in the time of Christ, Christian redemption takes place always and necessarily within the context of a fellowship. It is not enough to say only that individuals first have their own personal transforming experiences and then come together to form a fellowship. Christ's ministry took place within a context in which a collective need for redemption and its expectation already existed. Moreover, each personal Christian experience takes place within and is conditioned by a fellowship that took form with Christ's first public appearance. The resulting organization finds its roots in this initial self-organizing principle.
4. The Lord's Supper is the highest representation of church unity, achieving fellowship with Christ and fellowship among believers. The most apt image for describing the Church is that of the body of Christ. Although he explicitly rejected the Roman Catholic view that stresses transubstantiation, Schleiermacher also rejected views that characterize the Lord's Supper as merely figurative. He saw the Lord's Supper as the primary way of maintaining the living fellowship with Christ, so that all other forms of "enjoyment" of Christ are either an approximation to it or a prolongation of it. I would not necessarily agree with this last point, but I find his acceptance of the Holy Communion as more than simple symbolism refreshing and true.
5. The unity present in Christian fellowship requires certain essential elements. Schleiermacher held that since Christian fellowship must exist alongside the world, it will possess organizational elements such as laws and structures of authority. Most of these elements are historically variable, but there must be certain essential elements that account for continuity in self-identity. Schleiermacher identified these elements as Holy Scripture, ministry of the Word of God, baptism, the Lord's Supper, the power of the keys, and prayer in the name of Jesus. He links these six elements with the threefold ministry of Christ as prophet, priest, and king, and thus considers them to be the continuation of the activities of Christ himself.
6. Historical manifestations of the Church will legitimately be diverse. Church unity is not narrow uniformity but a reality that exists amid the dynamic interplay of many diverse elements; unity and diversity are complementary rather than contradictory. The main purpose of church authority is to counter those who insist on making their own mode of thinking obligatory, as the only expression of the common spirit. Because it exists in the world, the visible Church has many mutable and corruptible elements. It is subject to error and division. Only the invisible Church is infallible and unified. Each part of the visible Church should be aware of its own incompleteness, and open to fellowship with other parts. It could be argued, then that he believed that Protestantism and Roman Catholicism can be viewed as incomplete mediations of Christianity. “Religion is but a human attempt to reach God,” my dad once told me.
7. Church unity requires some normativity in its basic expressions of revelation. Scripture is the most basic norm of revelation; Protestants are bound also by Evangelical confessional documents; dogmas are necessary but provisional. Sources of dogma such as the witness of the patristic writers and the decrees of early church councils can be valuable but are not binding.
8. The Church is trinitarian.
All of this to go back to one main, ever-important argument that Christianity is not an ideology nor a juridical institution, but an event that has individual and communal dimensions and that spreads organically.
I believe it is this basic concept of the organically spiritual structure of the church that I did not have on the surface of my consciousness when I had a troubling discussion with the head of an important alliance that promotes the rights and welfare of immigrants in MA ---a lady whose work I deeply admire, but whose ideology I almost immediately found to be disconcertingly incorrect…
I met her at the Solutions Conference at HDS, where she and a colleague spoke about their work as an umbrella structure for different organizations… I had a word with her about my personal work aspirations, and about my interest in grass-roots activism, a short little spiel which of course she gladly absorbed. It was when I spoke of the possibility of communal work between the churches, of the collaboration between organizations, the government, and the church, that her semblance changed.
“I met a wonderful group of people in Puebla,” she said. (She’s not Mexican, so my mind went directly to the late 1970’s CELAM conference in Puebla, during the height of liberation theology within the Catholic and Orthodox Churches) “That once told me this… La Iglesia y la Politica son tiburones. Con los tiburones, tienes tres opciones: Una, nadar a la par. Dos, nadar contra ellos y atacarlos. Tres, ignorarlos.” She paused for a moment. “Ellos me dieron una gran leccion, la gente de Puebla. Yo estaba intentando nadar en contra de los tiburones. Hay que ignorarlos. Hay que hacer lo que tenemos que hacer, y dar en cuenta que no deben tener el poder que tienen. Si nadamos en contra de ellos, les damos el poder.”
She proceeded to draw a circle and a triangle. “La politica y la iglesia, ambas tienen estructura de piramide” And she went on to explain that what we should structure our society not in a manner that gives the power to one person (the president, the pope) but to all (and she re-traced her circle). It was quite an impressive little homily. The only issue I had was, what do you do about leadership? It will always exist; it will always be needed. That is the problem with liberation theology. They go on and on about the liberation of the poor, and their so called "preferential option for the poor," and they let their socialist tendencies go overboard. This is not a circular, all-encompassing order. As a matter of fact, they do not offer an alternate order. “So if democracy is a pyramid, then what structure can be placed that will resemble the circular graph of power?” I didn’t say it, but God, I was dying to ask, “Socialism? Marxism? Communism??” I did ask, though what she thought would be an alternate way of structuring our society and the Church. No answer. She very gallantly left that up to me to figure out. She advocated the destruction, through the simple “ley del hielo,” as we call the systematic, childish ignoring of people we’re mad at in Northern Mexico, of our present political and religious system. Destruction without any hope for reconstruction.
What I figured out, (lol.. even if entirely too late), is that the Church, as it is structured today, accepts leadership, but is ultimately not a pyramid (nor is it a damned polarized shark), but a communal organization. And perhaps now would my previous statement make more sense: “All of this to go back to one main, ever-important argument that Christianity is not an ideology nor a juridical institution, but an event that has individual and communal dimensions and that spreads organically. I believe it is this basic concept of the organically spiritual structure of the church that I did not have on the surface of my consciousness when I had a troubling discussion with the head of an important alliance that promotes the rights and welfare of immigrants in MA…”
An organic structure. Not a circle, not a pyramid, but a body. A tree. A living organism. A much more realistic, much more complex approach. Christianity as an organic event. Cosmopolitanism, the ideal of global justice according to which, in some fundamental respects, all individual human beings matter, and matter equally. Democracy, which renders power, though not incautiously, to the people, and still allows for the fair structuring of leadership. I cannot believe how much this small triumph excites me. The triumph over the simplistic symbolism behind a circle and a triangle! This lady… she shall remain unnamed, but for all the mental tribulation her simple conversation with me set off, she still needs to take a philosophy course or two. And that, querida familia mia, was my little ideological triumph of the month.
