Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 31:1 (Nov 1968)
Article: Toward a Biblical Doctrine of the Church
Author: Edmund P. Clowney

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WTJ 31:1 (Nov 68) p. 22

Toward a Biblical Doctrine of
the Church

Edmund P. Clowney

AN INVITATION to ecclesiology sounds rather less appealing than a guided tour of a cathedral crypt. It is the more astonishing that there are so many tour guides. Fascination with the doctrine of the church has marked the span of the last forty years. Oddly enough, the church has been a concern to itself in just the period that it has ceased being a concern to anyone else. J. C. Hoekendijk has been glad to draw a moral: “In history a keen ecclesiological interest his, almost without exception, been a sign of spiritual decadence…….”1 In periods of revival, reformation, or missionary advance, says Hoekendijk, the church is absorbed in Christology and eschatology; it then takes ecclesiology lightly—Luther thanked God that a child of seven knows what the church is.

Hoekendijk’s protest commands the sympathy of everyone who, like him, has gasped for “unchurchified” air in ecumenical conference prose. His remedy is another matter; as the professor turns the church “inside out”2 to give it a secular form, one wonders if a simpler solution might not have occurred to a child of seven.

In any case, ecclesiology can be neither ignored nor abandoned; silence will not correct abuse. The overwhelming concentration on the structure of the church in the reports of the ecumencial movement requires consideration and response, particularly on the part of those who find the World Council of Churches’ structure itself questionable on ecclesiological grounds.

The recent development of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the church is marked by the Lumen Gentium of Vatican II3

WTJ 31:1 (Nov 68) p. 23

and by the writings of many individual theologians: Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx, Yves Congar, Rudolf Schnackenburg. Hans KÜng’s The Church4 shows the importance for ecclesiology of the fruits of biblical studies and also the effects of higher criticism in Roman Catholic thought. Trends in contemporary ecclesiology link Rome with the ecumenical movement.

The world-wide discussion of ecclesiology may make study of the subject desirable; more critical needs make it necessary. Confusion about the form of the church can cripple Christian service. It is not only fellowship that suffers when the church is “out of shape.” The charge that there are “heretical structures” as well as heretical doctrines is one to be pondered. Evangelism, edification, worship—...

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