233 04 AFTER OUR LIKENESS THE CHURCH AS THE IMAGE OF THE TRINITY MIROSLAV WOLF

SACRA DOCTRINA Christian Theology for a Postmodern Age GENERAL EDITOR Alan G Padgett, Azusa Pacific University EDITORIAL BOARD Sally Bruyneel, University of Durham Young Ho Chun, St Paul School of Theology AFTER OUR L I K E N E S S The Church as the Image of the Trinity Gabriel Fackre, Andover Newton Theological School Justo Gonzales, Interdenominational Theological Center S Mark Heim, Andover Newton Theological School Patrick Keifert, Luther Seminary Anne King-Lenzmeier, University of St Thomas Miroslav Volf Anselm Min, Claremont School of Theology Michel Najim, St Nicholas Orthodox Christian Church William Placher, Wabash College J Randy Sachs, Weston Jesuit School of Theology Robert J Schreiter, Catholic Theological Union John Stackhouse, University of Manitoba Anthony Ugolnik, Franklin and Marshall College W I L L I A M B E E R D M A N S P U B L I S H I N G C O M P A N Y G R A N D R A P I D S , M I C H I G A N / C A M B R I D G E , U.K Contents © 1998 Wm B Eerdmans Publishing Co 255 Jefferson Ave S.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503 / P.O Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K All rights reserved Preface ix Introduction to the American Edition Printed in the United States of America 03 02 01 00 99 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Volf, Miroslav After our likeness: The church as the image of the trinity/ Miroslav Volf p cm Introduction A Cry of Protest and Its Fate Free Churches: The Churches of the Future? An Ecumenical Study 9 11 19 PARTI Includes bibliographical references ISBN 0-8028-4440-5 (pbk.: alk paper) Christian communities Religions — Relations Church — History of doctrines Trinity Catholic Church — Relations — Orthodox Eastern Church Orthodox Eastern Church — Relations — Catholic Church I Title BV4405.V65 1998 i62,— dc21 97-39593 CIP Ratzinger: Communion and the Whole Faith, Sacrament, and Communion 1.1 Faith and Communion 1.2 Sacrament and Communion Eucharist and Communion The Word of God and Communion Office and Communion Communio Fidelium Trinitarian and Ecclesial Communion v 29 32 33 39 42 48 53 62 67 Contents CONTENTS II Zizioulas: Communion, One, and Many The Ontology of Person 1.1 Trinitarian Personhood 1.2 Human Personhood Ecclesial Personhood 2.1 Christ: Person and Community 2.2 Baptism 2.3 Truth Ecclesial Communion J Eucharist and Communion 3.2 Community and Communities The Structure of the Communion 4.1 Institution and Event 4.2 Bishop 4.3 Laity 4.4 Apostolicity and Conciliarity 73 75 76 81 83 84 88 91 97 97 103 107 108 109 113 117 PART II III The Ecclesiality of the Church Identity and Identification of the Church 1.1 What Is the Church? 1.2 Where Is the Church? We Are the Church! 2.1 The Church as Assembly 2.2 The Church and the Confession of Church and Churches Faith IV Faith, Person, and Church Faith and the Church 1.1 Ecclesial Mediation of Faith 1.2 Individualism of Faith? The Ecclesial Character of Salvation 2.1 The Ecclesiality of Salvation 2.2 The Genesis of a Concrete Church vi 127 128 128 130 135 137 145 154 159 160 160 168 172 172 175 Personhood in the Ecclesial Community 3.1 Personhood and Christian Being 3.2 Person in the Communion of the Spirit V Trinity and Church Correspondences and Their Limits 1.1 Correspondences 1.2 The Limits of Analogy Trinity, Universal Church, and Local Church Trinitarian Persons and the Church 3.1 Relational Personhood 3.2 Perichoretic Personhood The Structure of Trinitarian and Ecclesial Relations 181 181 185 191 191 192 198 200 204 204 208 214 VI Structures of the Church 221 Charismata and Participation 222 1.1 Bishop or Everyone? 223 1.2 The Charismatic Church 228 The Trinity and Ecclesial Institutions 234 2.1 The Trinity as Model 234 2.2 Spirit, Institutions, and the Mediation of Salvation 239 Ordination 245 3.1 Office and Ordination 246 3.2 Ordination and Election 252 VII The Catholicity of the Church The Question of Catholicity Catholicity and New Creation The Catholicity of the Local Church 3.1 Catholicity and Grace 3.2 Catholicity and Creation The Catholicity of Person 259 259 264 270 270 276 278 Bibliography 283 Index 307 To my parents, Dragutin and Mira Preface All the attempts to trace the origins of this book take me back into the foggy regions of my earliest childhood memories I was born while my father was a student of theology, and I grew up in a parsonage in the city of Novi Sad (Yugoslavia) at the time when Marshall Tito and his communists exercised their uncontested rule It would not be quite accurate to say that my parents worked for the church; they lived for that small community of believers entrusted to their care As children, my sister and I were, so to speak, sucked into the orbit of that community's life Our home was in the church, and the church had insinuated itself into our home We were part of it because it had become part of us As a child, I resented both the expectations of sainthood placed on me by the church folk (for whom I was the pastor's mischievous son who ought to know better) and the blatant discrimination I encountered in school (where I was a gifted but despised son of "the enemy of the people") Though such resentments were at one time so real that I vowed never to follow in my father's footsteps, I have since cheerfully broken that vow and the resentments have faded away What remains indelibly inscribed not so much in my memory as in my very soul is the deep and unwavering commitment — love, I think, is the right word — that my parents had for that community It was a strange group of people living in difficult times So many bizarre characters, whose petty battles had much more to with their own personal frustrations than with the Gospel of Jesus Christ! And then the repeated visits to our home by apparatchiks who, I suppose, wanted to underline in person what the inconspicuous presence of informers in the church communicated clearly enough, namely, that the state had drawn lines that could not be transgressed with impunity Yet despite the petty conflicts within and persistent pressures from without, for IX AFTER OUR LIKENESS Preface over thirty years my parents kept giving that community much of their time and energy and a good deal of their very selves Now as I look back from a distance I see what I failed to recognize clearly at the time but what nevertheless shaped me profoundly: their commitments mirrored the commitment of Christ, who "loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Eph 5:25) Without that love — a love which was both Christ's and theirs — I would never have become a Christian and never gone to be a student of theology And I would certainly never have written a book in which I join the chorus of the tradition that in all seriousness claims that in some real sense these fragile and frustrating communities called churches are images of the triune God It is therefore appropriate that I dedicate this book to them Life in the small Christian community in Novi Sad taught me two basic ecclesiological lessons even before I possessed theological language to express them The first lesson: no church without the reign of God The church lives from something and toward something that is greater than the church itself When the windows facing toward the reign of God get closed, darkness descends upon the churches and the air becomes heavy When the windows facing toward the reign of God are opened, the life-giving breath and light of God give the churches fresh hope The second lesson: no reign of God without the church Just as the life of the churches depends on the reign of God, so also does the vitality of the hope for the reign of God depend on the communities of faith We come to recognize the fresh breath of God and the light of God that renew the creation only because there are communities called churches — communities that keep alive the memory of the crucified Messiah and the hope for the Coming One Without communities born and sustained by the Spirit, the hope for the reign of God would die out Would the Christian community in Novi Sad have survived let alone thrived if it had not directed its gaze beyond itself to that city whose architect and builder is God? Would the hope for that city have survived in a hostile and indifferent environment without this community and many other communities who witnessed to it in word and deed? The same holds true for the churches in Berlin and Los Angeles, in Madras and Nairobi, and for the hope in the reign of God in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Europe These two lessons about the relation between the reign of God and the church form the theological framework of the book My interest in the topic and the theological framework of the book stem from my early ecclesial experiences The content of the book — its themes, accents, perspectives, and arguments — stem mainly from my ecumenical engagement When I entered the world of ecumenism in the mid eighties, communio was just emerging as the central ecumenical idea From the outset, and above all under the influence of Catholic and Orthodox theologians, the ecclesiological use of communio was placed in the larger framework of trinitarian communio The present volume, whose theme is the relation between the Trinity and community, is both the fruit of ecumenical dialogues and my own contribution to them In the most general way, I am trying to show that the typically Protestant — above all "Free Church" — form of ecclesial individualism and the classical Catholic and Orthodox forms of ecclesiological holism are not the only adequate ecclesiological alternatives, but that an appropriate understanding of the Trinity suggests a more nuanced and promising model of the relationship between person and community in the church The goal of my efforts is an ecumenical ecclesiology — not in the sense of a construct that draws on all traditions but is rooted in none, but in the sense that all the great themes of this unmistakably Protestant ecclesiological melody are enriched by Catholic and Orthodox voices In the process of writing the book, I have incurred many debts, most of them so large that I can repay them only with a word of sincere thanks Originally, the manuscript was submitted as a Habilitationsschrift — a dissertation required for a postdoctoral degree — at the Evangelical Theological Faculty of the University of Tubingen I have revised it for publication and made it a bit more user friendly Professor Jurgen Moltmann, who served as the supervisor, not only was a ready source of theological wisdom but gave me as much space as I needed in my research Professor Oswald Bayer was a careful second reader In the context of official ecumenical dialogues and in private conversations Professor Herve-Marie Legrand of the Institut Catholique, Paris, made extraordinarily informed and nuanced comments He was also my host during the memorable month and a half that my wife and I spent in Paris — researching, writing, and enjoying a Parisian spring The library Saulchoir provided the workspace, and Marie-Therese Denzer kindly let us use her apartment My colleague at Fuller Theological Seminary, Professor Robert Banks, read a good deal of the manuscript with the competent eye of both a New Testament scholar and a practical theologian My students at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California, and at Evangelical Theological Faculty, Osijek, Croatia, heard most of the material as lectures; their frowns, yawns, wide-open eyes, and smiles, and not just their many good comments, shaped its contents An earlier version of the last chapter was delivered as a lecture at the University of Salamanca (Spain) in April 1991 at a conference on the catholicity of the local church and then published in Spanish and English.1 Portions of an earlier version of the third chapter were delivered as a lecture at the Institute Y XI "Aportaciones ecumenicas al tema del coloquio: causa nostra agitur? Iglesias liberes," in Iglesias Locales y Catolicidad: Actas del Coloquio International celebrado en Salamanca, 2-7 de abril de 1991, ed H Legrand et al., 701-731 (Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, 1992); "Catholicity of 'Two and Three': A Free Church Reflection on the Catholicity of the Local Church," The Jurist 52 (1992): 525-546 AFTER OUR LIKENESS for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg (France) Discussions at both institutions sharpened my understanding of the issues and contributed to the clarity of my thinking Most of the book was written during a year and a half that I was a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (1989-1991), which also supported its publication with a generous grant Fuller Theological Seminary awarded me a sabbatical to work on the project Bruno Kern of Matthias Grunewald Press showed enough interest in the manuscript to help make a book out of it Neiikirchener Press agreed to function as a copublisher, thereby making the book more accessible to a Protestant public Marianne Brockel, who does such a marvelous job of being my German mother, spent many hours pondering difficult sentences in order to help me, a nonnative speaker, express my thoughts in proper German She also did the tedious work of correcting the proofs and making the indexes Finally, Judy, my wife, knows best how grateful I am for all she does and, above all, for the wonderful human being that she is She also knows that without her advice and support I would never even have started, let alone finished, the book Tubingen, May 1996 Intro^jj A book is always written for ^ at a particular time and pla.c^lv^ practices.1 From an author's ^ w