Lecture - The Church - by William Henn

7 Reageer I. Different Visions of “Church” Have Been a Principal Source of Christian Divisions [5] For this topic, I have found the historical overview by the great Methodist ecumenist Geoffrey Wainwright, in his article “Church” for the Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement to be both concise and insightful. He provides what he calls “A Historical and Systematic Typology of Ecclesiologies.” 3 1. First is the third century view of Cyprian (d. 258), which completely identifies the unique, true Church of Christ with one’s own church, in such a way that the rites celebrated in other communities have no validity whatsoever. 2. Another view would hold, with Calvin, that communities other than one’s own may contain “traces of the church” ( vestigia ecclesiae ), though not the fullness of what God intended for the Christian community. Wainwright signals the recent Catholic teaching that the Church of Christ “subsists” in the Catholic Church as a current example of this view. 3. A further ecclesiology is assigned especially to the Lutheran reform. While not abandoning the view that the Church is a visible institution, emphasis is placed upon the Church as an event, which occurs whenever the gospel is purely preached and the sacraments administered according to the gospel. 4. A fourth ecclesiological type is the branch theory characteristic of some theologians of the Anglican 3 Geoffrey Wainwright, “Church,” in N. Lossky et alii, ed., Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement , Geneva 2002 2 , 176-186. Actually Wainwright gives eight types, but the first and second were similar enough that I have combined them.