The failure of evangelical ecclesiology
The personal presence of God in the ecclesia, by virtue of his covenant promises, his Word, sacraments and Spirit, invests the ecclesia with an ontic weight that does not obtain with merely human organizations and assemblies. In practice, it seems that ordinary evangelical Protestant concepts of the church reflect notions that are more sociological than theological, more functional and pragmatic than ‘mystical’ and ontological, more Pelagian that Pauline and pneumatic—that is, an eviscerated ecclesiology in which the church is viewed as a voluntary human organization gathered for certain activities.
John Jefferson Davis, Worship and the Reality of God (IVP, 2010), 63.
Posted on December 7, 2010, in The Church and tagged evangelicalism. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.
scientia et sapientia 
Nice, unfortunately! 😦
I mean, because this seems to be the case, in general.
The question I ask is do we need to have an intentionality as to what Church is about for it to fulfil what Christ intends it to have?
2ndly I ask in what way does he differentiate the out workings of the priesthood of all believers in his critique of the evangelical church and how he sees church should be?
That’s quite a tall order to “seem” to see taking place “in practice.” He might be right, though. And yet, it’s funny that Grenz also got accused of a lot of the same in his ecclesiology. As you might imagine… it didn’t hold.
Craig, that’s a great question. I wrestled with that same issue as I was working through James K. A. Smith’s . Davis’s critique though we be that the practices themselves are either shallow or they are actually more in line with non-Christian “ontologies” (he’s big on the importance of ontology for understanding worship). So, I think his critique would be that both evangelical theology and evangelial practice (inseparable for him) are often inadequate to deep and meaningful worship.
I’m hoping to post my review of his book toward the end of the week. Hopefully I’ll address some of your other questions then.
Jason, thanks for dropping by! My short take on the book so far is that Davis offers some really good food-for-thought, but ultimately isn’t entirely fair to much of evangelicalism. So, I some of the criticisms aren’t going to hold here as well, though they are still worth engaging.
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