The Use of Models in Ecclesiology
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This document discusses the use of models in ecclesiology. It describes how the church has been modeled using images and symbols from scripture like the body of Christ, bride of Christ, flock, and more. It also describes how the church has been modeled institutionally with teaching, sanctifying, and governing functions. While institutional models provided structure, they risked legalism and clericalism. Overall, multiple complementary models are needed to understand the church's mystery since no single model can adequately capture its richness.
The Use of Models in Ecclesiology
- 1. THE USE OF MODELS IN ECCLESIOLOGY
- 2. • Model • a system or thing used as an example to follow or imitate. A systematic description of an object or phenomenon that shares important characteristics with the object or phenomenon.
- 3. • Ecclesiology • 1. The study of churches, especially church building and decoration. • 2. • theology as applied to the nature and structure of the Christian Church.
- 4. “The one true Church is the community of men brought together by the profession of the same Christian faith and conjoined in the communion of the same sacraments, under the government of the legitimate pastors and especially the one vicar of Christ on earth, the roman pontiff”
- 5. Our church is comprises of three elements: 1) profession of true faith 2) communion of sacraments 3) submission to legitimate pastors.
- 6. The term “mystery “has been used in many ways in the biblical and non- biblical religions. example is “unsearchable richness”(Eph. 3:8)
- 7. “Mystery” •Lack of intelligibility •Richness of the Church itself
- 8. So, how are we going to understand the Church if it is defined as mystery?
- 9. Among the positive tools that have been used to illuminate the mysteries of faith we must consider, in the first place, images.
- 10. The Church has been described, in its two thousand years, not so much by verbal definitions as in the light of images. Most of the images are, of course, strictly biblical.
- 11. REVEALING IMAGES OF THE SCRIPTURE • The building raised by Christ • The house of God • The temple and tabernacle of God • His people • His flock • His vine • His field • His city • The pillar of truth • The bride of Christ • His mystical Body
- 12. 8TH CENTURY FINDS THE CHURCH IN: • Eve and Mary • Abraham and sarah • Tamar • Rahab • Mary Magdalene • Women with the flux of blood • Valiant women of proverbs, zacchaeus • Canaanite women • The ark of Noah • Temple • Vine • Paradise • Moon, etc.
- 13. • In these images it is difficult to draw the line between the proper and metaphorical usage. They speak to man existentially and finds an echo in the inarticulate depths of his psyche. Such images communicate through their evocative power
- 14. Symbols transform the horizons of man’s life, integrate his perception of reality, alter his scales of values, reorient his loyalties, attachments, and aspirations in a manner far exceeding the power of abstract conceptual thought.
- 15. Religious images used in the bible and Christian preaching, focus our experience in a new way. They have an aesthetic appeal, and are apprehended not simply by the mind but by the imagination, the heart, or, more properly, the whole man
- 16. • To be fully effective, images must be deeply rooted in the corporate experience of the faithful. • In religious education a constant education must be made to find images that faithfully communicate the Christian experience with God.
- 17. • The question is, does given image is readily available and meaningful to the ordinary Christian in the pews? • For example, lambs, wolves, sheep, vines and grapes, kings and patriarchs.
- 18. Images should be taken in a reflective, discriminative way.
- 19. When image (can be readily imagined) is employed reflectively and critically to deepen one’s theoretical understanding of the reality it becomes what is today called a “model”.
- 20. • Some models are also images. • In architecture, models can be design or plan • In educational institution, models can be instructional materials
- 21. MODELS IN THEOLOGY • Explanatory • Models serves to synthesize what we already know or at are inclined to believe. • Example. The gospel parables of growth such as those of the wheat and tares, the mustard seed, and the leaven, have been valued because they give intelligibility to phenomena encountered in the Christian community since its origin, for example, its capacity for rapid expansion.
- 22. • These images suggest how it is possible for the Church to change its shape and size without losing its individuality.
- 23. EXPLORATORY • Capacity to lead to new theological insight.
- 24. • Theology has an abiding objective in the past that is, in the revelation that was given once and for all in Jesus Christ. • The present experience of grace enters intrinsically into the method of theology. Thanks to the ongoing experiences of the Christian community, theology can discover aspects of the gospel of which Christians were not previously conscious.
- 25. • • Example: Servant Model of the Church, this is a relatively new model, based on the biblical image of Israel, and later of Christ as servant of God.
- 26. • The mystery of the Church is not a mere object of theological knowledge; it is something to be lived, something that the faithful soul can have a kind of connatural experience of, even before arriving at a clear notion of it.
- 27. • Paul in the chapter of Galatians calls the fruits of the Holy Spirit love, joy peace, patience, kindness and a like. • Knowledge, theory, and practice are inseparable united.
- 28. • The models used in theology are not scale reproductions or “analogue models”
- 29. • The correspondence with the mystery of the Church is only partial and functional, models are necessarily inadequate.
- 30. WHAT IS THE BEST IMAGE/MODEL TO DEFINE THE CHURCH? • In order to offset the defects of the individual models, the theologian, like the physicist, employs a combination of irreducibly distinct models.
- 31. • Mystical body of Jesus Christ. “if we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ-which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church”
- 32. OTHER IMAGES/MODELS OF THE CHURCH • People of God • Church as sacrament • Church as servant • Church as healer • In Philippines, Church as Church of the poor
- 33. • Because images are derived from finite realities of experience, they are never adequate to represent the mystery of grace. • Instead of searching for some absolutely best images, it would be advisable to recognize that the manifold images given to us be the scripture and tradition are mutually complementary.
- 34. CHAPTER 2 THE CHURCH AS INSTITUTION
- 35. • Institutionalism- emphasis on organization at the expense of other factor.
- 36. • Some understanding about the Church “the church as institution” • Church is here describe as analogies from political society • Church is essentially a single concrete historical society having “constitution, a set of rules, governing body, and a set of actual members who accept this constitution and these rules as binding on them.
- 37. • Church as society by its very nature tends to highlight the structure of government. • The church defines primarily in terms of its visible a structure, especially rights and powers of its officer.
- 38. • • It has had recognized minister, accepted formulas and prescribe forms of public worship. • Institutionalism we mean a system in which the institutional element is treated as primary • Institutionalism is a deformation of the true nature of the Church.
- 39. INSTITUTIONALIST ECCLESIOLOGY THE POWERS AND FUNCTIONS OF THE CHURCH ARE GENERALLY DIVIDED INTO THREE: • Teaching • Sanctifying • Governing
- 40. TEACHING FUNCTION • Teaching function, it resembles a school in which the master, as sacred teachers, hand down doctrine of Christ.
- 41. SANCTIFYING • The pope and bishops, assisted by priest and deacons, are describe somewhat as if they were engineers opening and shutting the value of grace.
- 42. GOVERNMENT • Hierarchy have ministerial function, transmitting the doctrine and grace of Christ himself.
- 43. • The hierarchal conception of authority. The church is not conceived as a democratic or representative society, but as one in which the fullness of power is concentrated in the hands of ruling class that perpetuated itself by cooption.
- 44. VATICAN II KEYWORDS ABOUT INSTITUTIONALISM • Clericalism Views the clergy, especially the higher clergy, as the source of all power and initiative. • Juridicist For it conceives of authority in the Church rather closely on the pattern of jurisdiction in the secular state, and greatly amplifies the place of law and penalties. • Triumphalistic it dramatizes the Church as an army set in array against satan and the powers of evil.
- 45. • The institutional ecclesiology attaches crucial importance to the action of Christ in establishing the offices and sacraments. • Who is the beneficiaries of the institutional hierarchy • of the church? • -its own members.
- 46. CHURCH IS.. • A school-teaches truth necessary for salvation • Hospital-where they are healed of their illnesses, the shelter they are protected against the assault of satan.
- 47. • From all this it is clear what the church does for its beneficiaries: it gives them eternal life. • Vatican i: “outside the church there is no salvation” • That is why the church pursue strong missionary effort, seeks to save the souls precisely by bringing them into the institution.
- 48. WHAT ARE THE CHIEF ASSETS OF THIS STRONG INSTITUTIONALISM? • Has a strong endorsement in official church documents of the past few centuries. • Provide important links between uncertain present and an esteemed religious past. • Give Roman Catholics a strong sense of corporate identity.
- 49. DANGERS OF INSTITUTIONALISM • Theory of institutionalism is also based on scripture. Example: all clerics are men. • Leads to some unfortunate consequences in Christian life, both personal and corporate. • Difficulty against the institutional model is that it raises obstacle to a creative and fruitful theology.
- 50. • Exaggerated institutionalism leads to many serious theological problem. Ex: outside the church there is no salvation. • Ecclesiology is out of phase with the demands of the times. In an age of dialogue, ecumenism, and interest in world religions, the monopolistic tendencies of this model are unacceptable.