Free Churches and the Body of Christ: Authority, Unity, and Truthfulness

By Jeffrey W. Cary

Those within the free church tradition have often appealed to the notion of the invisible church to account for the unity of the Body of Christ. A growing number of free church theologians, however, are giving increased attention to the importance of visible ecclesial unity, which immediately raises the perennial problem of the authorities by which unity is maintained. There is also a growing recognition among free church theologians of the need to recognize the authority of tradition in tandem with the authority of Scripture. In this book, Cary affirms these recent developments but then inquires whether a turn toward visible unity, together with an embrace of the authority of tradition, can eventually be coherent without also embracing the authority of an extra-congregational teaching office.

To guide his study, Cary engages the work of two theologians from outside the free church tradition: Robert Jenson and Rowan Williams. He then brings them into contact with the prominent free church theologian James McClendon in order to supplement some of the deficiencies Cary perceives in McClendon's groundbreaking work. Once these deficiencies are addressed, however, the question intensifies whether the free church tradition, as such, can remain a coherent ecclesial option over time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Nov 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781621894834

Jeffrey W. Cary

Jeff Cary is Assistant Professor of Theology at Lubbock Christian University in Lubbock, Texas.

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Free Churches and the Body of Christ

Authority, Unity, and Truthfulness

Jeffrey W. Cary

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FREE CHURCHES AND THE BODY OF CHRIST

Authority, Unity, and Truthfulness

Free Church, Catholic Tradition 1

Copyright © 2012 Jeffrey W. Cary. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Cascade Books

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isbn 13: 978-1-61097-637-4

eisbn 13: 978-1-62189-483-4

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Cary, Jeffrey W.

Free churches and the body of Christ : authority, unity, and truthfulness / Jeffrey W. Cary.

xiv + 214 p.; 23 cm—Includes bibliographical references.

Free Church, Catholic Tradition 1

isbn 13: 978-1-61097-637-4

1. Church—Catholicity. 2. Baptists—Doctrines. I. Title. II. Series.

bv601.3 .c35 2012

Manufactured in the USA.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Series Preface

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Recent Developments within the Free Church Tradition

Chapter 3: Robert W. Jenson on Unity and Authority

Chapter 4: Rowan Williams on Unity and Authority

Chapter 5: James Wm. McClendon Jr.: Assessment and Critique

Chapter 6: Conclusion

Bibliography

FCCT | Free Church, Catholic Tradition

Barry Harvey and Bryan C. Hollon, editors

forthcoming volumes:

Scott W. Bullard, Re-membering the Body: The Lord’s Supper and Ecclesial Unity in the Free Church Traditions

To Amy and the kids

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling,

one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all,

who is above all and through all and in all.

Ephesians 4:4–6

Series Preface

Barry Harvey and Bryan C. Hollon, editors

Why a book series entitled Free Church, Catholic Tradition? As he does on so many other occasions, Augustine eloquently articulates the benefits of engaging in the kinds of conversations that we hope it promotes. Dear reader, he writes near the outset of De Trinitate, whenever you are as certain about something as I am go forward with me; whenever you hesitate, seek with me; whenever you discover that you have gone wrong come back to me; or if I have gone wrong, call me back to you. In this way we will travel the street of love together as we make our way toward him of whom it is said, ‘Seek his face always’. Though Augustine’s words here are addressed to individuals, the wisdom of what he says extends to the ecumenical spirit of our times. When set in this ecclesial context, his admonition provides both the content and the spirit that we hope will characterize this series.

The immediate context for this series is the growing number of scholars in Free Church communions who are interested in drawing upon the great tradition of the church catholic to deepen and enrich their own denominational heritage with its wisdom. We hope in particular that it will offer an effective means for getting the work of scholars from these church bodies into the wider theological conversation and that it will encourage others to join this conversation. The larger context is the modern ecumenical movement, which was given birth early in the twentieth century, developed in a variety of ways over the next several decades, and now in the twenty-first century has taken on new and diverse forms.

While ecumenism has many facets to it—ecclesiological, political, cultural—Jürgen Moltmann has helpfully identified its theological significance in his book, The Church in the Power of the Spirit. The ecumenical movement, writes Moltmann, has moved the churches away from the anathemas of the past, and ushered them down a path marked by dialogue and co-operation, culminating in toleration and the arguing out of differences within the one church. The ecumenical path, says Moltmann, leads theologically to living in council. He concedes that though the hope of an ecumenical all-Christian council, where Christianity would speak with one voice, is not at all likely in the foreseeable future, that hope nevertheless already sheds light on the present wherever the divided churches are beginning to live in council with one another.

Living in council entails, on the one hand, consulting other churches and searching other traditions when asking questions affecting one’s own communion. The days of returning always to the same dry wells to resolve internal problems and answer pressing questions are over. In particular, Free Churches that have entered into council with other churches are discovering new insights and fresh reservoirs of meaning. The Free Church, Catholic Tradition series has its first and most pressing raison d’être here, as more and more believers in these churches find ways of life and thought in the great tradition of the church that in their opinion are desperately needed in their own communions.

In addition, says Moltmann, living in council means intervening in the questions of other churches in an effort to cut through old provincial divisions. Though the idea of intervention may sound overly-intrusive (one thinks of reality television shows in which friends and family members perform interventions on loved ones who are addicted or otherwise caught up in ways of life that are not healthy), if it is in fact the case that the whole church is present in every individual church, what one body finds problematic or troublesome has important implications for the others: it is then impossible to say that the controversy about papal infallibility is ‘an internal problem for Catholics’ or that the dispute about infant baptism is ‘an internal problem for Protestants’. Of course, if such interventions are not done prudently, carefully, humbly, and above all charitably, they will be of no avail.

The volumes in this series thus seek to cut across some of these well-established, though theologically problematic, divisions that have kept Free Church communions in particular from the riches of the Catholic intellectual, moral, and liturgical tradition, and to reconnect believers in these churches with the insights and wisdom of the church catholic. We also hope that Catholic theologians, together with Protestants from the magisterial traditions, would also find in the series a forum for shared inquiry with their separated brethren, that together we might seek the face of God in the midst of our fragmented context.

Preface

This book is fundamentally about Christian unity, and I wrote it primarily for those within the free church tradition. Although I raise some pointed questions concerning this tradition, I want to state clearly that I honor this capacious tradition, not least because of my own home within the fellowship of churches known as the Churches of Christ. It is where I first learned about Jesus. Its people have consistently tutored me in the language of faith and worship. In its warm communion, I am regularly instructed in the love of God and neighbor. I have spent a number of years in its educational institutions, all of which I owe a debt of gratitude: Lubbock Christian University (where I now happily teach theology); Abilene Christian University; and Harding Graduate School of Religion. It is within the vibrant life of this heritage that I met my wife, Amy. It is within this loving context that we are nurturing our own children, their own lives already having been powerfully shaped by countless parents and grandparents, Bible class teachers, ministers, and friends.

Churches of Christ represent one of the branches of a larger movement known as the Restoration (or Stone-Campbell) Movement, which arose as a unity movement in frontier America near the beginning of the nineteenth century. Recent historians of the movement have observed that its earliest hopes for broad Christian unity were ultimately overwhelmed by other concerns, particularly concern for uniformity of certain practices. Lamentably, this shift may have contributed to the very kinds of divisions, even within the movement, its initial leaders sought to overcome. In recent years, notable scholars and ministers within the Restoration Movement have given sustained historical and theological attention to the fractured state of Restoration churches in order to move the divided wings of this movement back toward their historical roots and thus back toward each other.

I gladly lay claim to these unitive roots as an heir within this tradition. This particular study, however, is not directed specifically at concerns within the Restoration Movement. My considerations here are directed more toward the free church ecclesial arrangement in general, especially as it relates to Christian unity. While my focus is broader than my own specific tradition, this broader engagement has introduced me to a host of conversation partners whose gifts I hope to bring to those within my own heritage, gifts I pray will bring further healing of divisions.

My initial academic considerations about unity grew out of questions about authority with which I was wrestling during seminary training. The Restoration heritage has expressed itself historically as a kind of Bible only tradition on matters of authority. Through both academic training and observing debates internal to my own heritage, I encountered what countless others have noticed—namely, that there is inevitably the pesky issue of interpretation that opens a host of further issues. I wondered how the Bible and its interpretation could be separated from historical contingency. The further I followed this trail, the more convinced I became of the necessity of a communally oriented engagement with Scripture; and the more I moved in that direction, the more I became aware of its implications for church unity.

As a result, when I entered my doctoral studies at Baylor University, the questions most alive to me were questions relating to authority. During my first semester there, I encountered the patristic tradition in a way that reframed for me certain questions concerning authority. During that same semester I had my first real encounter with John Henry Newman, the celebrated nineteenth-century theologian who migrated from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism precisely over questions of authority. I recall going to Dr. Barry Harvey, who later became my dissertation advisor, and asking him, What if Newman is right? I suppose I expected him to rescue me from my disorientation over Newman because Dr. Harvey is, after all, a Baptist (at the time I had no idea what kind of Baptist I was dealing with). To my surprise, Dr. Harvey responded with something along the lines of, Well, you should make that the question of your graduate studies, and don’t be afraid to pursue it wherever it may lead.

This book is one of the fruits of that counsel; it is my doctoral dissertation with minor additions and revisions. I hope that it raises key questions and that it presses the conversation forward a bit. I do not pretend to provide much in the way of satisfactory answers to these questions, partly because it is a work in progress and partly because I do not think we can say prior to particular historical situations how any of this might find specific application.

I offer this work with the prayer that God may somehow use it to stir up within its readers a greater desire for what Jesus himself desires: that they may all be one.

Acknowledgments

It truly took a village for this project to reach its fruition, and I regret that I can mention only a few of the villagers here. There are some, however, whom I must name.

First, I must thank those who generously served on my dissertation committee: Barry Harvey, Ralph Wood, Scott Moore, Paul Martens, and Jonathan Tran. I extend special gratitude to Barry Harvey. He has been a wise and encouraging mentor along the way. I am very thankful for his commitment to this project and, more broadly, for his centrally formative role in my theological development. Special thanks go also to Ralph Wood and Dan Williams. Each, in his own way, has been crucially important in deepening my appreciation for the richness of the Christian tradition. I must also thank Chad Pecknold, whose acquaintance I did not make until after the defense of this project. Not only did he recommend it to the great people at Cascade Books, but he has also served as a very helpful conversation partner as I have prepared this work for publication.

Most of the daily encouragement I received during the course of this study came from friends in Lubbock, Texas. My colleagues in the Bible department at Lubbock Christian University made every accommodation to help me complete this project. Their encouragement and friendship have meant very much to me along the way. I am also grateful beyond words for the Panthers of the Broadway Church of Christ. Their undying commitment to praying for me and their support for my family during the dissertation phase regularly mediated the peace of Christ to me.

I am profoundly grateful to my parents, Wayne and Debbie Cary, for introducing me to Jesus and to his church. I am also thankful for their prayers on my behalf, which began long before this project and faithfully continued through it.

Further, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my parents-in-law, Steve and Emily Lemley, to whom no parent-in-law joke has ever applied. Their support and encouragement have been unwavering, and their regular hospitality in California provided crucial time and space for completing this study.

I cannot imagine having undertaken or completed this project without the daily encouragement I received from my children: Anna, Tyler, and Olivia. Their laughter and vibrancy for life very often kept me from taking myself too seriously. Their nightly prayers included, Help daddy to finish his dissertation. I am sure it is to their prayers above all that God graciously responded. While that prayer was a constant encouragement, I must confess that I will be glad never to hear it again.

There are simply no words to adequately express how much I owe my beautiful wife, Amy. I am certain that without her perennial patience, sacrifice, encouragement, prayer, and, yes, prodding, I would never have completed this project. She, more than any other person, helped me believe I could do it, often during those most ominous hours between night and day. I am blessed beyond measure to be married to the best person I know.

Finally, I thank my God (Father, Son, and Spirit), who enabled me to see this project to its end. I pray that whatever is of value in this work will bring him glory and will contribute to the health of his people. Soli Deo Gloria.

1

Introduction

Theologians from free church

¹

traditions have long struggled to articulate from within their ecclesial contexts the importance of the unity of Christ’s body. This is not to suggest that free church traditions have been unconcerned about Christian unity. It is only to say that an ecclesiological outlook that is fundamentally free in character poses certain problems with respect to speaking coherently about ecclesial unity.

The state of the church in the wake of the Reformation has fixed ecclesial unity as a perennial topic of theological concern. The solution to the problem of apparent disunity has sometimes been sought in the notion of the invisible church. For example, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli followed Augustine in distinguishing between the visible and invisible church. This move allowed them to contest the Roman Catholic equation of the true church with the visible Roman institution centralized in the Roman pontiff. There followed, then, a tendency to associate the true church with the invisible church in the theology of the early Reformers, yet without downplaying the importance of its visible marks such as the preaching of the Word and the proper administration of the sacraments. These visible marks created a crucial link between the visible and invisible church.²

Modern Protestant heirs have often made heavy use of the concept of the invisible church to address the obvious fact of ecclesial division. Paul Tillich criticized the way many Protestant theologians had tended to draw so freely upon the distinction between the visible and invisible church.³ Nonetheless, this distinction remained central to his own ecclesiology. He argued that Protestants understand that unity, when predicated of the church, has a paradoxical character. The predicate of unity applies not to actual churches but to the unity of their foundation, the New Being which is effective in them. Sociologically speaking, the church cannot avoid divisions. No matter how much ecumenical efforts may accomplish in reuniting actual churches, new divisions will always arise because of the ambiguities of religion. Thus, the church’s essential unity is not to be sought in the existence of actual churches. Rather:

The predicate [of unity] is independent of these empirical realities and possibilities. It is identical with the dependence of any actual church on the Spiritual Community as its essence in power and structure. This is true of every particular local denomination and confessional church which is related to the event of the Christ as its foundation. The unity of the church is real in each of them in spite of the fact that all of them are separated from each other.⁴

Or to highlight more clearly Tillich’s point about the paradoxical character of the church’s unity, It is the divided church which is the united church.⁵ Within this kind of essentialistic ecclesiology, there is no pressing theological need for visible unity, as desirable as it may be, because the visible is merely a sociological reality. It is the invisible, essential quality of unity that is real and that is given by God.

A heavy dependence upon the idea of the invisible church is not limited to mainline Protestants. Stan Grenz contends that the distinction between the visible and invisible church has been the operative principle of evangelical ecclesiology.⁶ For example, in his discussion of the nature of the church, Wayne Grudem, a self-described conservative evangelical, states, In its true spiritual reality as the fellowship of all genuine believers, the church is invisible. He then proceeds to define the invisible church as the church as God sees it. Grudem acknowledges the visibility of the church but only as an aspect of the true church, which is invisible. The visible church is the church as Christians on earth see it and that will always include unbelievers.⁷ Similarly, Millard Erickson, a significant voice among Baptist and other free church theologians, maintains the distinction between the visible and invisible church, the latter of which is the true church and contains only true believers. He asserts that Scripture gives priority to the individual believer’s spiritual condition and in doing so gives precedence to the invisible church over the visible.⁸

Visible Unity and Authority: Emerging Free Church Voices

In recent years, especially in the light of twentieth-century ecumenical efforts focused on visible unity, a growing number of theologians from within the free church tradition have become decreasingly satisfied with discussing Christian unity primarily with reference to the invisible church. Yet, there is a certain tension that presents itself for those theologians within the free church tradition who are increasingly highlighting the importance of the visible church. How is one to speak intelligibly about the visible unity of the body of Christ from within a free church perspective?

The struggle over the visible unity of the church continues to revolve largely around the vexed issue of authority. Those from within the free church tradition have (in theory) typically located authority primarily, if not solely, in Scripture. Whereas much of the Christian tradition has recognized that authority is manifested through a constellation of distinct but not mutually exclusive loci (especially Scripture, tradition, and a teaching office), the free church tradition has been notable for transforming the Protestant sola scriptura principle into a radical biblical reductionism funded by rapidly eroding modern modes of thought, modes of thought that were eventually capable of buttressing visible ecclesial fragmentation.

In the wake these collapsing modes of thought, there is an emerging cadre of scholars within the free church tradition, especially Baptists, who are now pressing for a deeper engagement with the church’s wider theological and liturgical tradition as an important source of authority in the life of the church. Such calls for free church Christians to recognize tradition as authoritative to one degree or another are often designed to unmask the myth of the sola scriptura doctrine as it has come to be understood by many within the free church tradition. These free church scholars are arguing in various ways that Scripture must be read consciously within the context of the church’s tradition.

To argue that the church should read Scripture in the light of the church’s theological tradition opens the door for some serious questions for those within the free church tradition, especially regarding their relationship to the broader Christian tradition. These fresh voices from within the free church tradition are now saying that they are participants in and inheritors of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church and that this catholic tradition belongs to all Christian traditions (including the free church tradition) that make up the one living body of Christ that spans time and place. While there is much here that is ecumenically promising, there also remain difficult questions to consider with regard to visible unity for these free church scholars who are heavily emphasizing the visible church while also turning to the resources of the catholic tradition. Most pressingly, how is unity with this one church to be visibly demonstrated within a free church context and its traditional construals of authority?

Why This Book?

The primary purpose of this study is to build on the recent turn to tradition among free church theologians primarily by pressing the question of visible ecclesial unity and its relationship to the issue of authority. In his foreword to Steven Harmon’s book that urges Baptists to account more fully for their relationship to the larger Christian tradition, Paul Avis congratulates Harmon on his Baptist Catholicity but then offers this observation:

The threefold ministry is a topic related to tradition that is not addressed in this book. I am aware that some earlier Baptist pastors were titled bishop and that local self-governing congregation [sic] can be seen as a diocese in miniature. But I do not think that those factors entirely answer to the concern for unity of particular churches one with another, for teaching authority, for the pastoring of pastors and for the thickly textured fabric of visible unity—in all of which the bishop has traditionally had a pivotal role.⁹

My aim is to naturally extend the recent discussion among these free church theologians partly by attending to Avis’s concern. Namely, can the contemporary pursuit of tradition as an authority be undertaken coherently apart from a demonstrative pursuit of visible unity beyond the local congregation, especially in the form of an authoritative extra-congregational teaching office of some kind? I shall argue that the one leads naturally to the other and that a rejection of a simplistic sola scriptura doctrine along with the affirmation of visible unity of the church substantiates and recommends the classic recognition of the triple loci of authority: Scripture, tradition, and some form of episcopal teaching office. There are some indications that free church theologians are beginning to acknowledge the resulting complexities of engaging the church’s tradition within the context of a free church setting, but not nearly enough attention has yet been given to these issues, especially issues of visible unity and authority.

After a century of ecumenical debate, it is still not certain what a workable solution toward visible unity among differing Christian traditions would look like, if even possible. It is important, nonetheless, for those in the free church tradition to join ecumenical conversations even more deeply and consider further the implications of embracing the authority of the church’s tradition. Are Scripture and tradition alone sufficient, or is there also a need for a personal ecclesial authority that, among other things, serves as a living sign of the unity among churches and, as such, witnesses to the one body of Christ? Stephen Harmon suggests that since free churches have not typically given attention to the role of tradition in the theological enterprise, they need to listen to those who have already been engaged in discussions about the nature of tradition.¹⁰ Likewise, those within the free church tradition can benefit from guides outside their own tradition to help facilitate reflection concerning the proper relationships between distinct yet related loci of authority and how the nature of these relationships must find expression in a postmodern context.

To help facilitate precisely this kind of reflection, I will take as my primary interlocutors for this study Robert W. Jenson and Rowan Williams, both of whom are located outside the free church tradition. Robert Jenson is a Lutheran theologian who has been at the center of Christian ecumenical dialogue during the latter half of the twentieth century.¹¹ Rowan Williams is currently serving as the archbishop of Canterbury within the Anglican Communion. Williams too has been a significant contemporary voice in the pursuit of visible Christian unity. I will be particularly interested to examine how each develops and draws upon the classical triumvirate of authority (Scripture, tradition, and episcopal authority) and then show how their conceptions of authority shape their particular conceptions of visible unity. For all the challenges their theologies put to those within the free church tradition, I believe they can be heard by those within the free church tradition because of their fundamental commitments, especially their commitments to the centrality of Scripture and the importance of the local church.

Method

Robert Jenson asserts that prolegomena of an epistemologically pretentious sort are a distinctively modern phenomena.¹² Thus, Jenson claims at the outset of his two-volume Systematic Theology a much more chastened role for theological methodology: The most prolegomena to theology can appropriately do is provide readers an advance description of the enterprise.¹³ Also reflecting this now widely accepted suspicion of an overly ambitious hope for what methodology can actually deliver, Dan Stiver suggests that methodology serves best in a clarifying role rather than a foundational role. It sketches the basic framework for doing theology.¹⁴ Following this lead, what I offer here is a brief and modest description of the style of theology within which this study will operate, a style I will broadly categorize as tradition-based inquiry.

As the epigraph to his influential book Arius: Heresy and Tradition, Rowan Williams reproduces the following statement by the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre: Traditions, when vital, embody continuities of conflict.¹⁵ MacIntyre has been an important voice advancing what he calls tradition-constituted and tradition-constitutive enquiry.¹⁶ MacIntyre argues that rational inquiry is essentially historical and communal in nature. His thesis is in direct contrast to Enlightenment accounts of rationality which sought to find liberation from authority and tradition so that truth could be pursued on the sure foundation of indubitable rational principles accessible to rational beings whatever their context. MacIntyre demonstrates that no such sure foundation has ever been found.¹⁷

In contrast to Enlightenment foundationalism, MacIntyre argues for the inherently traditioned character of rational inquiry. In one instance, he defines a tradition as

an argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined in terms of two kinds of conflict: those with critics and enemies external to the tradition who reject all or at least parts of those fundamental agreements, and those internal, interpretive debates through which the meaning and rationale of the fundamental agreements come to be expressed and by whose progress a tradition is constituted.¹⁸

So to begin thinking is already to find oneself in the midst of an ongoing and traditioned argument, the future of which is not determined. Thus, the character of a tradition’s future inescapably derives from its past.¹⁹

A tradition-oriented approach to rational inquiry has received several forms of theological expression in the twentieth century.²⁰ Two notable examples are the twentieth-century Catholic ressourcement movement and what has come to be known generally as postliberal theology. The first, led by such distinguished scholars as Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, and Jean Daniélou, advocated that the most promising way into the future was the way back to the Christian sources (ad fontes). These scholars revitalized interest in patristic and medieval voices within the Christian tradition. The second, postliberal theology, is usually associated with a theological style that emerged from Yale University under the leadership of theologians such as George Lindbeck and Hans Frei. Lindbeck coined the term postliberal theology as an alternative to what he called cognitive-propositionalist and experiential-expressive approaches to theological discourse. He argued for a cultural-linguistic approach according to which meaning is constituted by the uses of a specific language rather than being distinguishable from it.²¹ According to Lindbeck, religion functions much like a culture which "shapes