Aaron James on language, Eucharistic identity, and the Baptist vision

Aaron James

Continuing a series of occasional posts calling attention to recent doctoral dissertations by Baptists and others in the broader free church tradition working at the intersection of ecclesiology and ecumenical theology:

Aaron James is Assistant Professor of Theology at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. His dissertation on "Analogous Uses of Language, Eucharistic Identity, and the Baptist Vision" (University of Dayton, 2010) was supervised by Brad J. Kallenberg.

Abstract

I argue that attention to analogous uses of language, uses that constitute Eucharistic identity claims and James Wm. McClendon's articulation of the 'baptist' vision, shows there to be an intrinsic relation between the two, such that the 'baptist' vision and the identity claim of Jesus' body in the bread and in the church share an internal logic that is mutually illuminating of their real (i.e., not merely figural or symbolic) identity. Furthermore, it is the baptist vision itself that baptists ought fruitfully to offer as a constructive contribution to broadly catholic reflection on Eucharistic identity. After setting the context of my claim by a survey of recent Baptist engagements with broadly catholic tradition, I consider the work of Garth L. Hallett on identity claims, and David B. Burrell's work on analogous uses of language. I bring their insights to bear on the Eucharistic theology of Thomas Aquinas and the sixteenth Anabaptist theologian Balthasar Hubmaier, showing how attention to analogous uses of language provides constructive pathways to engage their claims. I then bring analogous uses of language in identity claims to bear on the baptist vision itself. There, I argue that attention to analogous uses of language in McClendon's theology of the Lord's Supper in light of the narrative reading strategy of Scripture by baptists sheds light on Eucharistic identity and the baptist vision itself.

Posts in this series:

Jeffrey Cary on Jenson, Williams, McClendon, and free church ecclesiology

Aaron James on language, Eucharistic identity, and the Baptist vision

Scott Bullard on Eucharist, Unity, and Baptists

Derek Hatch on Mullins, Truett, and de Lubac

Jonathan Malone on Baptists, Ordination, and Catholic "Sacramental Consciousness"

Cameron Jorgenson on "Bapto-Catholicism"

Ecumenical dialogue texts--Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (WCC)

Continuing a series of posts calling attention to selected resources featured in Appendix 1, "Resources for Ecumenical Engagement," in my book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010):

Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Faith and Order Paper no. 111; Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982; also available online) is the product of a fifty-year process of ecumenical study and consultation sponsored by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches addressing the three most significant ecclesiological barriers to full communion between the churches. The text was recommended unanimously by over 100 theologians representing virtually all major church traditions at a plenary meeting of the WCC Faith and Order Commission in Lima, Peru in 1982. Along with the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (Roman Catholic Church, Lutheran World Federation, and World Methodist Council), BEM is one of the two most significant advances attained in ecumenical dialogue thus far and is easily the most widely distributed and studied of all ecumenical documents. It has served as the basis for several “mutual recognition” agreements between communions.

Interested in Ecumenism Means You, Too? Order the book directly from Cascade Books or via Amazon.

Jeffrey Cary on Jenson, Williams, McClendon, and free church ecclesiology

Jeffrey W. Cary

This is the first in a series of occasional posts calling attention to recent doctoral dissertations by Baptists and others in the broader free church tradition working at the intersection of ecclesiology and ecumenical theology. These posts will include the dissertation abstract and, where available, links to the text of the dissertation on the internet site of the degree-granting institution.

Jeffrey W. Cary is Assistant Professor of Theology at Lubbock Christian University in Lubbock, Texas. His dissertation "Authority, Unity and Truthfulness : The Body of Christ in the Theologies of Robert Jenson and Rowan Williams with a View toward Implications for Free Church Ecclesiology" (Baylor University, 2010) was supervised by Barry Harvey.

Abstract

Those within the free church tradition have often appealed to the notion of the invisible church to account for the unity of Christ‘s Body. A growing number of free church theologians, however, are arguing for the necessity of visible ecclesial unity, which immediately raises the perennial problem of the authorities by which unity is maintained. There is also a growing recognition among free church theologians of the need to recognize the authority of tradition alongside the authority of Scripture. Chapter two charts and affirms these recent developments but then inquires whether a turn toward visible unity together with an embrace of the authority of tradition can eventually be coherent without also embracing the authority of an extra-congregational teaching office.

Chapters three and four engage two theologians from outside the free church tradition. Robert Jenson and Rowan Williams both argue that authority is located in the classic loci of Scripture, tradition and an episcopal teaching office. These chapters will observe what vision of visible ecclesial unity emerges from the ways in which each of these theologians construes the relationships among these three loci. While there are significant differences between their visions of visible unity, together they present serious challenges to those within the free church tradition concerning authority, unity and truthfulness.

Chapter five will engage free church theologian James McClendon, a pioneer of these newer free church developments. While McClendon has made invaluable contributions within the free church tradition, this chapter will argue that McClendon‘s account of ecclesial unity and his defense of a free church polity arise out of certain theological deficiencies which can be supplemented by the work of Jenson and Williams.

The conclusion will argue that more recent free church theologians have advanced beyond McClendon, especially in his areas of deficiency. Yet it is precisely these advances that make a free church polity even more problematic, especially as a long term project. This study concludes that a move toward visible unity along with a retrieval of the authority of tradition leads naturally toward the usefulness of, if not the need for, some form of global teaching office.

Posts in this series:

Jeffrey Cary on Jenson, Williams, McClendon, and free church ecclesiology

Aaron James on language, Eucharistic identity, and the Baptist vision

Scott Bullard on Eucharist, Unity, and Baptists

Derek Hatch on Mullins, Truett, and de Lubac

Jonathan Malone on Baptists, Ordination, and Catholic "Sacramental Consciousness"

Cameron Jorgenson on "Bapto-Catholicism"

Ecumenical dialogue texts--A Documentary History of the Faith and Order Movement 1927-1963 (ed. Vischer)

Continuing a series of posts calling attention to selected resources featured in Appendix 1, "Resources for Ecumenical Engagement," in my book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010):

Lukas Vischer (ed.), A Documentary History of the Faith and Order Movement 1927-1963 (St. Louis: Bethany Press, 1963) is a collection of key texts that document the rise of the Faith and Order stream of the modern ecumenical movement from the initial international conference on Faith and Order to the early years of the movement’s coming of age in the 1960s. (Photo top left is of Vischer's address at the Lausanna celebration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Conference on Faith and Order.)

Interested in Ecumenism Means You, Too? Order the book directly from Cascade Books or via Amazon.

Jesus, discipleship, and ecumenism

As a Baptist, I belong to a tradition that has historically understood the church as a committed fellowship of disciples who are seeking to follow Jesus together. As a Baptist ecumenical theologian, I'm therefore supportive of other ecclesiological proposals that place following Jesus at the center of what it means to be church. In that connection I'm delighted that the theme of this year's Pro Ecclesia Annual Conference for Clergy and Laity sponsored by the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology is "'Who Do You Say That I Am?' Proclaiming and Following Jesus Today." The conference will be held at Loyola University in Baltimore, Maryland, June 14-June 16, 2011. Substantial registration discounts are available for students; information regarding conference registration is available on the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology web site. (For those of you on Facebook, there's also a Facebook event page for the conference.)

Here's the conference description and list of presenters from the CCET conference page:

In times of conflict in society and in the churches, maintaining our bearings is ever more important. The North Star for the churches is always Jesus, and so this year’s Pro Ecclesia conference of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology will focus on basic questions of what it means to confess, proclaim, and follow Jesus today. Who do we say Jesus is, both in our words and in our deeds? What is the significance of the biblical and theological work of the last century for how we understand Jesus today? What does it mean to "preach Jesus"? What is the significance of Jesus for our prayer lives, for our ethical commitments? After two hundred years of various quests for the historical Jesus, what picture has emerged? How do recent emphases on ‘theological exegesis’ affect how we read the biblical accounts of Jesus?

These and other questions will be addressed at the conference to be held at Loyola University, June 14-16, 2011. As always, the speakers will come from a range of theological and church traditions. Presentations will be followed by a significant amount of time for discussion. We hope that participants will leave with a clearer sense of the identity and significance of Christ for the world, the church, and their lives and ministries.

Presenters

Dale Alison, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

Daniel Bell, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary

Joseph Bottum, Catholic essayist

Carl E. Braaten, Director Emeritus, Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology

Kathryn Greene-McCreight, St. John’s Episcopal Church, New Haven, CT

Fleming Rutledge, Episcopal priest and author

Katherine Sonderegger, Virginia Theological Seminary

Banquet Address: Michael Root

Ecumenical dialogue texts--Growing Consensus II (ed. Veliko and Gros)

Continuing a series of posts calling attention to selected resources featured in Appendix 1, "Resources for Ecumenical Engagement," in Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010):

Growing Consensus II, ed. Lydia Veliko and Jeffrey Gros (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 2004) is a comprehensive collection of the major American ecumenical documents issued between 1992 and 2004. Among the traditions included are Catholic, historic Protestant, Orthodox, Anabaptist, and Evangelical.

Interested in Ecumenism Means You, Too? Order the book directly from Cascade Books or via Amazon.

What Methodist reception of Baptist ecclesial gifts might look like

Readers of this blog have seen several references to a paradigm for ecumenical convergence that has come to be called "receptive ecumenism." In a glossary that appears in an appendix to my book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010), I offered this definition of receptive ecumenism:

Receptive ecumenism—An approach to ecumenical dialogue according to which the communions in conversation with one another seek to identify the distinctive gifts that each tradition has to offer the other and which each could receive from the other; given expression by Pope John Paul II in his 1995 encyclical on ecumenism Ut Unum Sint (“That They May Be One”): “Dialogue is not simply an exchange of ideas. In some ways it is always an ‘exchange of gifts’” (§ 28). Some interconfessional dialogues, such as that between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Methodist Council, have worked toward concrete proposals for the exchange of ecclesial gifts.

Much of my own work as a Baptist ecumenical theologian has emphasized ways in which Baptists might benefit by receiving into Baptist faith and practice some of the gifts that other Christian traditions have to offer the rest of the body of Christ (e.g., in my book Towards Baptist Catholicity: Essays on Tradition and the Baptist Vision [Paternoster, 2006]). Yet it's gratifying to hear now and then from non-Baptist admirers of the Baptist tradition who discern in it some distinctive ecclesial gifts that they believe their own non-Baptist tradition might benefit from receiving. A recent blog post by Ted Campbell, Associate Professor of Church History at Southern Methodist University's Perkins School of Theology (photo top left), does just that. Here's a portion of the beginning of his post on "Why the Baptists Were Right After All":

This is difficult for a Methodist. In Beaumont, Texas, Baptist was the default religion. If you weren’t anything else, you were just presumed to be Baptist, or “Babdist,” as we were inclined to say. Whatever else Methodists were, we were not Baptist. The truth is that Baptist piety and practices deeply influenced popular Methodist religion, but Methodist leaders worked hard to distinguish Methodism from Baptist culture. A lot of Methodist “New Member Classes” taught very little about Jesus and God and salvation and stuff like that but were really just extended polemics against Baptist views and practices. So why would I think the Baptists may have been right after all? Well, let's see…

1. Infant baptism isn’t the swooftest idea anyone ever came up with. Methodists have so vehemently defended infant baptism that you would think our Article of Religion would say something like this:

Those damnable heretics who do confound the catholicity of the holy Church of God and contradict the inclusiveness of the community by denying unto young children their rightful place in the Kingdom of God which our Saviour hath promised unto them through the holy sacrament of baptism are to be decried in all places and in all times as enemies of the common grace which God hath ordained unto all of God’s people and as disgusting pisser-offers of the saints.

But that’s not what our Article says. What our Article actually says is the following truly lukewarm nod in the direction of infant baptism:

The baptism of young children is to be retained in the Church.

Ho hum. So let’s face it: the New Testament doesn’t mention infant baptism. It doesn’t explicitly deny it, and it does mention family baptisms (“When she and her household were baptized…” Acts 16:15; and cf. Acts 16:33) without any explicit cut-off age (so it doesn’t add, “excluding of course those kids who were below the Age of Accountability”). Moreover, the United Methodist Church and many other churches that baptize infants have “received” an important ecumenical document, the WCC Faith and Order text on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (1984), which states that, “baptism upon personal profession of faith is the most clearly attested pattern in the New Testament documents” (BEM, section on baptism, p. 4). That’s correct. In fact, the Catholic Church and some other churches have begun to emphasize that adult baptism should be seen as the theologically normative form of baptism, since it involves all elements of Christian formation together, even though infant baptism continues to be practiced. So in the 1988 United Methodist Hymnal, for the first time the service of adult baptism with profession of faith comes first and the ritual for infant baptism and baptism for others unable to answer for themselves comes second.

Those of us who practice infant baptism – and the baptism of other people who are unable to answer for themselves – do so because we believe that baptism is the means by which we incorporate people into the Christian community, whether they are below the “age of accountability” or not and whether they’ve professed a conversion experience or not. I’m not opposed to infant baptism, but infant baptism leads terribly easily to the idea that incorporation into a Christian community can somehow substitute for personal commitment. It can’t. See number three below. But meanwhile… (read more)

Ted, this Baptist is honored and humbled by your admiration for some of the things that have distinguished the Baptist tradition. We'll do our best to be good stewards of these gifts.

Ecumenical dialogue texts--Deepening Communion (ed. Rusch and Gros)

Continuing a series of posts calling attention to selected resources featured in Appendix 1, "Resources for Ecumenical Engagement," in Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010):

William G. Rusch and Jeffrey Gros (eds.), Deepening Communion: International Ecumenical Documents with Roman Catholic Participation (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1998) is a collection of twenty agreed texts that represent the fruit of international ecumenical dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the World Methodist Council, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Baptist World Alliance, representatives of the worldwide Pentecostal movement, representatives of the worldwide Evangelical movement, and the Joint Working Group of the World Council of Churches during the period 1972 to 1996.

Interested in Ecumenism Means You, Too? Order the book directly from Cascade Books or via Amazon.