Ruins of Coventry Cathedral
What and where is the Church? Is there only an ideal Church off somewhere/somewhen in heaven? Or can we see and experience and participate in the Church here and now?
Metropolitan Ware writes:
The Church is accomplished on earth without losing its essential characteristics. There is not only an ideal Church that is invisible and in heaven. This ideal Church exists visibly on earth as a concrete reality. (The Orthodox Church, 242)
This is an important even essential cornerstone of Orthodox Christian ecclesiology.
I do not know to what extent this is compatible with Baptist Christian theology (however one defines that) concerning the church. But in a delightful article Prof Steven Harmon at Samford University explains why the church still needs Baptists. The heart of his position is this:
I’m convinced that the church cannot make progress toward the visible unity for which Jesus prayed (John 17:20-23) unless it receives the distinctive gifts the Baptist tradition has to offer the rest of the church. (Baptists Today, August 2009: 28)
I find it interesting that Prof Harmon’s argument refers to Christian unity – rather than some other goal or principle. We will come back to this. And it is significant the he refers to the “rest of the church” – which is to say that the church is more than (a) the Baptist tradition or (b) local Baptist congregations.
So what are these distinctive gifts that the Baptist tradition offers? The first gift that Prof Harmon describes caught my attention:
I believe one of the gifts that the rest of the church needs to receive from Baptists is our gut-level aversion to overly-realized eschatologies of the church. (That’s theologian-speak for the refusal of Baptists to equate any expression of church life in this present age with the full realization of the kingdom of God.)
The reason this grabbed my attention is that I wonder what is the relationship between this position (aversion to overly-realized eschatologies of the church) and what Metropolitan Ware writes. To what extent is (this particular) Baptist ecclesiology compatible with its Orthodox counterpart. One could focus on the term “fully”. Perhaps Orthodox ecclesiology would concede “look – we are the visible concerete reality of the Church… but we are not the full realization of the kingdom of God”.
I am not a theologian – although I would like to be more of one. I am not sufficiently versed in Baptist or Orthodox theology or in theological method to figure out how these two positions relate to one another. My guess is that Orthodox theology would indeed say “yes we are the full realization” – and then qualify or explain that somehow. My guess is that there are irreconcilable points-of-difference between Baptist and Orthodox theologies of the church/Church. Although I would rejoice were it possible to synthesize and harmonize them.
Please understand I am not trying to pick an argumment with either or to set one against the other. Not at all. I am trying to understand. And to struggle through my own understanding of the Christian church.
One fine brother in Christ wrote in a forum that “Rick is not comfortable being Baptist”. I suggested there might be some truth to that. But hang on a moment.
Prof Harmon in the same piece also writes:
“Real Baptists” are relentlessly dissatisfied with the present state of the church in their pilgrim journey toward the community that will be fully under the reign of Christ.
That sounds like the journey of my own heart. Relentlessly dissatisfied – hopefully in a good way! Indeed at times I feel like “the earliest Baptists… [who] ended their lives on the periphery of the Baptist churches they helped establish”.
Is there a home – ecclesiologically? Or is God content always to travel in a tent?
