Friday, October 03, 2008

Ecclesiology

As I worked through some material on and by those who speak of Radical Orthodoxy (as I realized I needed to do) and came upon the conversation between RO and Reformed scholars, especially in Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition, ed. Smith & Olthuis, I began to realize how much the discussion re: participation, analogy, etc. is tied up with ecclesiology. Then I read the pieces by John Webster and Ellen Charry in Community of the Word: Toward an Evangelical Ecclesiology, ed. Husbands & Treier, and more started to click. It's probably just some quirk of my personality, but it seems to me that it should be possible--it may even be necessary--to glean the best from both covenantal and sacramental traditions, to preach from Colossians on both Christ's work of nailing our sins to the cross and being given fullness in Christ--so that's what I'm going to try to do on Sunday.
October: Thanksgiving (in Canada), elections (this year), Reformation Day--what else would I preach on but the church?

1 comment:

D+ said...

I'm sorta surprised that this dialogue hasn't engaged Torrance to a greater degree. Perhaps I'm missing it. It seems to me that Torrance has a take on participation that comes from his reading of Athanasius and that he has tried to integrate into the Barthian-Presbyterian tradition. I'd think it would dialogue well with the conversatioon to which you have alerted us. Have you seen anything along this vein?