The Church: A Guide for the Perplexed

260 Pages·2010·1.21 MB·English

by  Matt Jenson

THE CHURCH:
A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED
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THE CHURCH:
A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED
MATT JENSON
AND
DAVID E. WILHITE
Published by T&T Clark International
A Continuum Imprint
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX
80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
Copyright © Matt Jenson, David Wilhite, 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Matt Jenson and David Wilhite have asserted their right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the
Authors of this work.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 13: 9780567033369 (Hardback)
9780567033376 (Paperback)
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
Methodology 4
Excursus: Did Jesus Establish the Church? 5
Ascension and Ecclesia 13
1 Models 16
Excursus: Communion Ecclesiology and Vatican II 17
Typology of Models 19
Excursus: Development of the Episcopacy 27
2 Marks 58
The Church In-/visible 58
Excursus: The Case of Donatism 61
Visible Marks: The Confessed Church 65
Excursus: The 1054 Schism, The Avignon Papacy and
The Protestant Reformation 82
Visible Marks: The Practiced Church 90
The Emerging Church 95
Pentecost and Ecclesia 102
3 Mediation 105
Waiting in the Means of Grace 105
Baptism 111
v
CONTENTS
Prayer 118
Scripture 123
The Lord’s Supper 131
Excursus: Women in Ministry 139
Mediation, After All 149
4 Mission 153
A Dirty Word 153
‘We’re on a Mission From God’ 154
Excursus: Constantine and Christendom 157
Kingdom, Church and World 163
The Shape of Mission 167
The Scope of Mission 173
Parousia and Ecclesia 192
Notes 195
Suggested Reading 236
Author Index 241
Scripture Index 245
Subject Index 249
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In the last few years, we each have moved to new cities for new jobs.
We thank God for the churches that ministered to us and formed us
during this transition: Trinity Church of the Nazarene in Kansas
City, Kansas; First Free Methodist Church in Seattle, Washington;
Fountain of Life Covenant Church in Long Beach, California and
University Baptist Church in Waco, Texas. These congregations serve
as cities set on a hill and we dedicate this book to them in gratitude
and hope.
We would also like to credit the people who helped bring this
project together. Thanks to Tom Kraft, utterly professional and
always friendly, an author’s editor, and for the various folks at T&T
Clark who shepherd the publishing process and oversee the Guides
for the Perplexed. Marc Cortez graciously gave of his time in the
nick of time and offered invaluable insights on our first draft. Any
unconvincing item in this book is probably a result of our ignoring
one of his suggestions. Suzanne Holsomback took on the Herculean
task of editing a co-authored project and helping us bring our manu-
script and our ideas into some sort of coherence. Her long hours and
her careful eye deserve much of the credit for the current state of the
project. Any shortcomings remaining in this work are entirely our
own (even though I tried to convince David to change them).
Matt would like to thank the Torrey Honors Institute and Biola
University for affording me time and space for research and writing.
To be graced with such support in research at a teaching school in a
core humanities programme is a unique gift. I love where I work and,
as glad as I’ve been for time to read and write, it is good to be back
with such generous colleagues and students. (Thanks, too, to all those
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
students who have talked church with me in these last few years.)
Thanks to Greg and Kirstin Johnson (in Beckwith, Ontario) and Ron
and Mary Jenson (in San Diego, California) for carving out room
in their lives and homes and affording me much-needed friendship
and nurture while on leave. My parents, sister and a lavish supply of
friends make life good.
David would like to thank the George W. Truett Theological
Seminary of Baylor University for the institutional support given
in resources and sabbaticals which enabled this project to come to
fruition. I would especially like to thank the assistant dean (and for
much of this project the interim dean), Dennis Tucker, who was so
supportive of this work, as well as the rest of my colleagues at Truett
whose encouragement kept me going. Most of all I thank the love
of my life, Amber, for having the patience of Job, the dedication of
Ruth, the wisdom of Solomon and the good looks of Esther. She
sacrificed as much if not more than anyone for this book.
We hope this is more than a book about the church; we pray it is
a service to the church, the people of God, the body of Christ, the
fellowship of the Spirit. Soli Deo Gloria.
viii
INTRODUCTION
We begin with a prayer and a vision. The prayer is Jesus’ last one for
the church:
I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who
will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As
you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so
that the world may believe that you have sent me. (Jn 17.20–21)
The vision is of the church as the heavenly Jerusalem:
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the
seven last plagues came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the
bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And in the spirit he carried me away
to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem
coming down out of heaven from God. It has the glory of God
and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. . . .
The wall is built of jasper, while the city is pure gold, clear as
glass. . . . And the twelve gates are twelve pearls, each of the gates
is a single pearl, and the street of the city is pure gold, transparent
as glass. (Rev. 21.9–11, 18, 21)
Lofty thoughts, these. Jesus envisions a church enfolded in the
life of God, united with the Father and the Son even as they are with
one another. John sees a church of almost unspeakable beauty and
radiance, filled as it is with the glory of God. We begin here not to
assert an ideal vision of the church – an ideal which, when tested by
experience, would quickly deteriorate into an impossibly crushing
moral standard or a blueprint utterly abstracted from the experiences
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