Introduction
In the contemporary world, there is a profound need to understand the church’s essential nature from the perspective of Scripture’s teachings and how scholars interpret them. It is essential to define the church in terms of its interrelationship with the world and the ensuing variations it experiences.
To gain insight into the nature of the church, it is essential to begin with the word of God. From this perspective, it will then be possible to understand the types of tasks in which the church should be involved. This is where ecclesiology comes in: the application of theology to the structure and nature of the Christian church. This research paper explores the dialogues and views of various theologians, including Schmitt and Erik Peterson, Karl Barth, and Joseph Ratzinger, on ecclesiology. By presenting their diverse and, at times, opposing views, the nature, role, and organization of the church and the holy Spirit in the contemporary world are explored.
Ekklesia is used principally throughout the New Testament to denote the church. A glimpse into its use in classical Greek helps to better understand the term, but even more important is its utilization in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament. In classical Greece, the term most often represented an assembly habitually held for political purposes, including voting on issues affecting the society in which they lived. Ekklessia in the Septuagint is usually utilized to interpret lh^q: a Hebrew term that denotes civil affairs meetings, for war, as used in Numbers 22:4, for nations as used in Genesis 35:11 and for civil affairs as used in 1st king 2:3. Including several other gatherings and most notably, gathering for religious purposes as used in Deuteronomy 9:10, Joel 2:16, and 2 Chronicles 20:5.
It is also used to denote the church of God that meets in a region, a city, and a home, as used in Acts 9:32, Thessalonians 1:1, and Romans 16:5. By taking all these readings together, it can be deduced that the church is a collective body that is made up of genuine believers through which are unified to Christ by the Spirit. There are also certain geographical expressions of the church throughout history. Therefore, though there may be multiple local churches, there is only one church in actual existence. This understanding is key to the various and puzzling opinions of the church and the holy Spirit in this paper’s bid to understand their nature, role, organization, and importance in today’s world.
Christian Political Theology and the Concept of the Church
In today’s world, the concept of the church and the holy Spirit are key in forming the basis of Christian political theology. In particular, politics and theology are closely intertwined today, and examining the historical origins of this interrelation is crucial to understanding the concept in contemporary times. Christian political theology is organized into three foundational elements: the work of Augustine of Hippo, De Civitate Dei, the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, and the emergence of political theology as a distinct, detailed discipline in the 20th century. One can distinguish between two types of political theology.
The first type of theology is a pragmatic political theology, whose objective is to establish some political and ethical relationships, for instance, how the church will participate in public affairs. If Christians are to be permitted to utilize violence to change their political sphere, then to whom will they be indebted in their quest for a better world? Particularly if contemporary liberalism aligns with a Christian worldview, in which the church is at the center. These questions can be viewed as a religious perspective on secularism, which problematizes the interrelationship between the church and community, and the meaning they give to the secular world.
The second type of theology is a theoretical political theology, whose objective is to highlight all communication between theology and politics. Here, the principal question is not how the church will guide a Christian to behave in their context as both a Christian and a citizen. Nor does the manner in which the political program ought to address the needs of the opposing religious community in the public sphere. Instead, the principal question concerns the concept of the ground and structure of the present political discourse, as well as how political players are also engaging with theological concepts.
Schmitt’s essay Political Theology is a foundational work in 20th-century theoretical political theology. In the essay, Schmitt argues that nearly every political concept in contemporary nation theory is merely a secularized theological notion. The central notion is witnessing the change in meaning from one discourse to another, as seen in Schmitt’s essay, where the individual is considered sovereign.
The political logician who understands himself as the theologian of jurisprudence. Or a political theologian meeting with a theologian who likewise considers the political and theological discourses intertwined. Nonetheless, a protestant theologian, Erick Peterson, who later converted to Catholicism, rejected how his friend Schmitt understood the theological and political interconnect. In his essay “Monotheism as a Political Problem,” he emphasized the liquidation of all political theology by disengaging any probable communication or analogy between the politics of men and God.
Peterson reinforces his argument from an eschatological and trinitarian viewpoint. Instead, it is impossible to reflect the Christian God as an emperor or a King, as he is not one; instead, he is a triune God. However, the existing theological disagreements regarding the Trinity have failed to conclude, despite the continual utilization of the divine monarchy expression, which allows for analogies between human sovereigns and divine rulers. The Trinity’s orthodox dogma distorted it, and in Peterson’s assessment, the divine monarch expression misplaced its politico-theological appeal.
In contrast, the Kingdom of God should not be in history, and a political state cannot ratify it. As proposed by Eusebius of Caesarea, Augustin of Hippo distanced himself from any potential connection between Christians and the emperor, as well as between world empires and the Kingdom of God. He postulated that pax Christi (Christian Peace) could not be linked with pax romana (Roman peace), for eventual peace will only be achieved with the eschatological Christ’s second coming.
In his liquidation of political theology, it would be a misconception to contemplate that Erick Peterson contended for an epistemological separation between the theological centering in the church and the political. Instead, differing from that viewpoint, he was committed to articulating and fostering a robust connection between the two discourses from the outset of his academic career. Nonetheless, his political theology failed to emphasize how state politics reflect theological concepts mainly driven by the church, but in how church concepts are themselves political.
Opposing Schmitt, Peterson contended that political theology is not part of theology but a product of political thought. Nonetheless, this bond between the theological and political is substantial theologically. An important point to note is that in today’s church, nature and organization, the bond plays a vital role in how the church conveys theological knowledge to the world. Thus, ecclesiology is vital while tracing this theo-political bond and determining the church’s role.
Thus, it is correct to refer to Peterson’s perspectives as ecclesiological political theology, one with practical repercussions in thinking about the real relations between the church and the modern state’s public sphere. Peterson emphasized political meanings in ecclesiological concepts, and his contribution to monotheism as a political challenge profoundly influenced the succeeding years. Principally in opposition to Schmitt’s sovereignty doctrine, Peterson advocates for a political stance that favors an independent and free church, exercising its power indirectly. Recently, other theologians have sought to explore Peterson’s work and work independently. It also aims to demonstrate the function, structure, and significance of the Church and the Holy Spirit in contemporary society. Some examples include Joseph Ratzinger and Karl Barth, whose views on ecclesiology are explored later in this chapter.
The Real Church
Church dogmatics are essential to understanding the church’s significance in the modern world. The title “the real church” designates a judgment, referring to the Catholic and Protestant standpoints on what constitutes a real church, or perhaps what the real church is founded upon. What model, creed, location, or history can a group of persons follow, claim, profess, or mark that can make a church eligible to be real? In construing the nature, role, and organization of the real church, John Calvin proposes that, since time immemorial, preaching of the Scripture, bodily sealed and represented by administration of the sacrament, is one of the chief indicators of the real church.
However, Barth is of a contrary view and faults this view as one that offers instructions that will condemn particular churches. Instead, what concerns Barth is the ontology of the church, including its growth and its inception. In his view, it is impossible to identify the real church as the sole body on earth.
Furthermore, a specific community of Christians cannot be qualified as the real church or its adherents as the true church devotees solely by the use of a modest principle, such as making a statement of faith that is ironclad, faithful sacrament administration, or devotion to the Bible’s values. While these factors are imperative to a church’s life and its importance, they cannot be used to attest to the realness of a community. According to Barth, the importance of the church can only be realized by following a sole criterion to categorize the real church.
The real church, the Christian community, ascends and is only as the holy spirit functions. Barth’s view is not a rubric for judging communities, but an ontological elucidation of the real church. The church is the labor of the Holy Spirit, from which it deduces its role and nature. Although the men perform the work of the church, the work is accomplished by men under the influence of the Holy Spirit’s quickening power. Here, the church locates its role of sanctifying specific Christians and their work. In this manner, Jesus Christ helps Christianity flourish in the modern world. The subordination of human action to the divine control, support, and inauguration of human action transpires among Christians.
Barth’s stress on the church’s source of divine authority cannot be understated or overlooked. If not approved divinely, the church loses its importance, and even men’s good work damages this body’s qualification as the real church. Indeed, it is pretty unbearable for such a body to be taken as an actual church by its strength. A distinct community can be made up of persons that uphold the creeds, take the sacraments, and proclaim Jesus’ name and still fall short of being eligible as the actual church, but only be a church’s impression.
In today’s world, the church manifests its importance by capitalizing on human and wicked acts. Through the Holy Spirit’s quickening, any church can be fit to be the actual church. All need men’s actions and thus are all laden with men’s sinful actions. It is not just distinct human sanctification in the church that meets the eligibility of the real church. However, it is the message these individuals proclaim and the message they live through, through which the role of nature and organization of the church is vested.
It comprises consecrated sinners but counts as the real church as it goes beyond itself, demonstrating the divine work of sanctification—the holy Spirit’s upholding of the community through which it is determined, characterized, and inaugurated. To further find the basis through which the modern church’s nature, role, organization, and importance express themselves. The configuration by Barth can be compared and contrasted with Joseph Ratzinger’s assertions on the fact that God institutes the church.
God Institutes the Church: The Work of the Holy Spirit
An initial question by Barth that may not find an easy answer is who is responsible for effecting the church’s work. A large part of Barth’s theology revolves around the tension between the actions of God and man’s actions. The question emphasizes which actor is responsible for which task for the church.
In seeking answers, Barth swiftly asks who the initial actor was. Obviously, God comes before man; however, in the story of salvation, was God responsive to man’s distress, or was man receptive to God’s grace? These are Ecclesiology’s perpetual questions and have also been postulated here. Addressing the present tautness in agency between God and humans in the church, Barth briefly recognizes the existing tension in ecclesiology.
However, here the church is taken to be made up of believing Christians who possess much liberty that humans seem to be devoid of. This means that Barth is not posing whether unregenerate humans can reach God. The answer to that question was presented many years before. Instead, here Barth is interested in the role of nature, organization, and the importance of the church. From the perspective of whether Christians possess the capability of acting for themselves, or should they also wait for the beckoning of God.
Christians are granted by God the capacity to accomplish his service. People accomplish or decide to accomplish God’s work, which is possible because God planted this quality inside them. God acts by directing his people and offering them suitable qualities. Thus, God makes the impossible conceivable so that the race of men obtains and possesses the freedom to serve him. Though characteristically, humans are inept, they are perpetually made competent. This is the existing contradiction in the church’s building in today’s world: humans who are characteristically sinners are nonetheless made capable.
In contrast, for Ratzinger, the church is heavily involved in the work of God. Creatively, ultimately, and initially, it is God’s action that supports and establishes the church. However, Ratzinger is immensely sensitive to human existence in the structure, just as Bart does have some pain while trying to sufficiently express a finite human’s peculiar union with an infinite God.
From his viewpoint, Barth’s view is somehow intricate as a quest to understand the church’s importance, nature, role, and organization leaves it difficult to establish the responsibility of humans in the church. There is some freedom to act in worship and service, making up most of church life. However, there exists a particular communion with God; thus, the human deeds are not precisely their industry’s consequence but are still founded on their passivity.
The church has three developmental stages, which are problematic to separate and find the holy Spirit central. In the initial stage, the church’s founding purportedly is in every generation, as is the holy Spirit’s duty. The second is yet to come, which is the church’s completion, and will be Jesus Christ’s duty, in accordance with the holy Spirit. The last is the church’s goal; its members’ sanctification is also a goal the church should fulfill. This will entail the human participant’s cooperating with the holy Spirit.
Ratzinger recommends the extrinsic and intrinsic views of the church in unison. He suggests that for the suitable realization of the church’s role, a church’s definition ought to be based on the church itself in its contemporary form. Obviously, Ratzinger is among some of the best historians of the church, and thus, his suggestion does not differ dramatically from Bart’s. He insists that a church’s meaning should be based on the church itself.
Clearly, Barth was not neglectful of the present-day external churches’ nature. However, his CD IV second work is definitely abstruse, likened to Ratzinger’s view. Ratzinger answers the nature, role, organization, and importance of the church and the holy Spirit by stressing the question of by whom the existence of the church is present and who the church is for. While it is certain that he upholds that it is God’s church, his emphasis on the community’s physical nature varies from the more spiritual definition by Bart.
Conclusion
From an ecclesiology viewpoint, this research paper has presented the various and, at times, opposing positions mainly by theologians Erik Peterson, Karl Barth, and Joseph Ratzinger. The significance, function, structure, and role of the Church and the Holy Spirit in the modern world have been clarified. In Peterson’s view, it can be deduced that the holy Spirit plays a substantial role in the scholar’s ecclesiological political theology. The juridical antipolitical dimensions of the sacrament involve treating the holy Spirit’s performance theologically, and each sacrament relies on his agency. It is worth noting that the ekklesia concept bases each of the church’s cultic works on the Holy Spirit’s actions.
On the other hand, as far as Barth and Ratzinger are concerned, Barth finds the church’s role to be one that ascends and is only the work of the holy Spirit. The input of humans in this work is in their work and their acceptance of the spirit-sanctifying work. These sanctified persons and their consecrated works are built up in the real church. These activities’ setting is the interval between Jesus’s resurrection and return. On the other hand, in Ratzinger’s view of the topic, he stresses the question of by whom the church exists and for whom it is.
It can be deduced that he believes God builds the church by himself. God can offer the necessary provision, grace, and power in the church building. Summarizing all, it is thus correct to say that God and the holy Spirit guide the church’s nature. From where the real church emanates and assumes its role of shaping incompetent humans into competent beings, both in an individual’s context and as a society, including politically. From this, the importance of the church in shaping the community is evident.
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