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Ausgabe: | Januar/2023 |
Spalte: | 134-136 |
Kategorie: | Ökumenik, Konfessionskunde |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Macchia, Frank D. |
Titel/Untertitel: | The Spirit-Baptized Church. A Dogmatic Inquiry. |
Verlag: | London u. a.: Bloomsbury T & T Clark 2021. 240 S. = T & T Clark Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology. Kart. £ 28,99. ISBN 9780567699008. |
Rezensent: | John G. Flett |
Frank D. Macchia, professor of Christian Theology at Vanguard University of Southern California, is one of the key contemporary Pentecostal systematic theologians. This examination of a Pente-costal ecclesiology, M. regards as the logical end to his previous studies on pneumatology, justification by faith and Christology.
The text develops through four parts. Part one posits baptism in the Holy Spirit as the organising core for ecclesiology for it is the »outgoing and incorporating« work of the triune God that underlies all other church practices. This is developed against a twofold problem. First, M. notes a tendency to understand the church as a »salvation machine,« charged with dispensing things like »health, wealth or social influence.« Second, M. sees a tension between ecclesiologies focused on communion or koinonia against those stressing a vocational or missional direction. An approach grounded in Spirit-baptism helps reconcile these two because this church lives from »communion in the life of the triune God and from the mission of this God who overflows to open this communion to others and incorporate them into it« (35). This achieves both the substance and end of communion and vocation. After an exploration of the idea of Spirit baptism through the biblical text, the emphasis falls on communion in the triune life. At base, however, the general approach accords with a »practice ecclesiology« championed by the likes of Miroslav Volf.
After noting that »[e]lection is not a strong topic amongst most Pentecostals« M. begins devotes part two to the »elect church.« It follows Karl Barth’s Christological reading. Election is not a timeless decree; it speaks to the God as self-giving God, and as self-determined to be God for others. Jesus Christ is the elect one of God and the »wellspring of the Spirit.« In terms of human response, election takes the form of service to God’s redemptive purpose in history. As to why election might feature as a key driver of Pentecostal ecclesiology, M. notes that it is »pneumatological in realization« (98).
Part three, the Pilgrim Church, first outlines four models, noting that each is both a gift and a task. First, the church is the »field of God.« Over against forms of leadership which rely on self-promotion or curate tribalisms, the church is owned by God and dependent on God. Leadership helps tend God’s field through seeding, watering, and cultivating. Second, as the »body of Christ,« each member is dependent on Christ and on one another in Christ. This helps negotiate spiritual gifts because communion sets the governing limit of those gifts, and construes human community in the way of Christ’s self-giving love. Third, the church is the »temple of the Spirit.« Every member serves a priestly function, seeking to become an effective sign of the way of Christ. Fourth, the church is the »army of God.« The demonic is the enemy determined to destroy the church. M. grants a demonic reality, but questions whether this is too often construed in personalistic and individualistic terms, where biblical language appears more »cosmic and social.« The church responds through spiritual war-fare, disciplining its own life through church practices.
Alongside these models, M. defines the church using the classical marks of one, holy, catholic, apostolic. Here, M. is heavily dependent on formal ecumenical statements and bilateral discussions. Unity is developed through the models of full communion, corporate union, and conciliar fellowship. Holiness refers first to the forms of personal holiness to have emerged from Wesleyan tradition and which underly much of Pentecostalism. This is set over against an approach which emphasises the external means of grace. Catholicity indicates the fulness of live and virtue in Christ and the Spirit and the church’s diversity and universality through-out the world. Apostolicity refers to the whole life of the church in that all are sent. Apostolic succession finds expression through the practices and gifts given to the church during the time of the apostles. This includes »oversight,« leading M. to affirm the importance of bishops in historic succession – but with one caveat: churches without bishops in apostolic succession do not lack »fulness of unity or apostolicity« (153).
The concluding part, the Witnessing Church, centres on word and sacrament, before a short section on vocation and mission. Despite intending to balance communion and vocation, in other words, as is basic to practice ecclesiologies, communion becomes the baseline and vocation the consequence.
As an ecclesiology, the work is adequate – but it is hard not to feel that it is a missed opportunity. Should one ask what makes the outlined ecclesiology »Pentecostal,« one might point to a range of implicit concerns (transactional forms of religious ends, leadership based in charismatic personality, contest of spiritual gifts), or theological emphases (worship, spiritual warfare). But this Pentecostal undercurrent begs for explicit development. While the complexity of Pentecostalism resists generalisations, it is a tradition of great significance through the global South. M. cites only two authors from that region. His main interlocutors are 20th century German theologians and formal ecumenical statements. In other words, when a characteristic Pentecostal instinct appears, this becomes conditioned by established discourses and not by the questions driving Pentecostalism itself.
The text struggles to impel a systematic account of the church grounded in the theological insights embodied within global Pentecostalism. Nowhere, for example, does M. deal with the contextual and embedded nature of Pentecostalism. Given its daily commerce local spiritual realities, this is a potential point of cre-ative departure. Absent is an engaged interaction with questions of cosmology and so embodied forms. Absent is detailed reference to prophecy or exorcism or healing, and how these indicate a liberative embodiment that results in engaged political action. In terms of questions like »unity,« for example, M. might have fruitfully engaged with Konrad Raiser’s proposal for a »ecumenical intercultural hermeneutic« and in conversation with the concerns often expressed within world Christianity. For a Pentecostal ecclesiology, it is disappointingly sober (Acts 2:13).