Talk:Ecclesiology

Improvement

I realize it's not required, but I thought it would be nice to state my intention to get heavily involved in this article and make it great. I've been a Wikipedia reader for awhile, but I just registered and made my first few minor edits in the past week. When I came across this article and its "needs attention" box, I decided it was a great place to get more involved. For the last few days, I've been reading the various how-to articles about writing, editing, style, etc. I've also gathered research from scholaraly journals and begun writing some missing sections which I'll start posting today. I have just realized in the past hour that it's going to take some time for me to figure out the best method of citation. That's more complicated than I thought it would be. For now, I'm going to try to cite inline and work toward changing those later.DaniU 19:57, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

By all means go ahead. This page is a kludge, put up more or less as a directory; there are plenty of other articles where issues related to ecclesiology are discussed, more or less in a scattershot way, sometimes in great detail and limited scope. This served to point folks in their direction, and as a proposed outline for future work. Smerdis of Tlön 20:07, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Instrument of salvation

The article should maybe explain what the expression instrument of salvation means when talking about the Church. If possible, a stub article could be created. ADM (talk) 18:29, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Ecclesiological relativism

Another thing that would need to be included is the notion of ecclesiological relativism, something which has been denounced by some Churchmen under the guise of branch theory and ecclesiology of communion. [1] ADM (talk) 09:04, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Answering the questions in Ecclesiology

• Who is the Church?

An appreciation of who the church is starts out from the observation of a visible group of people who gather together in a certain place to worship Jesus and extends to see the relationship of this group of people to people elsewhere who also gather together to worship Jesus. The Church is thus an interpersonal community related to the very person of Jesus Christ.

• Must one join a church?

As soon as someone has fellowship with someone else he can be said to be in a Church as the original meaning of Church is derived from assembly.

• What is the authority of the Church?

Jesus Christ is the authority of the Church as he is the head of the Church. Rebellion against Jesus Christ can take the form of rebelling to one's superiors in the natural order.

• What does the Church do?

The Church is a community that worships.

• What are the sacraments, divine ordinances, and liturgies, in the context of the Church, and are they part of the Church's mission to preach the Gospel?

They are means of worship and channels of grace available through the Church and in relationship with the Gospel.

• What is the comparative emphasis and relationship between worship service, spiritual formation, and mission, and is the Church's role to create disciples of Christ or some other function? Is the Eucharist the defining element of the rest of the sacramental system and the Church itself, or is it secondary to the act of preaching? Is the Church to be understood as the vehicle for salvation, or the salvific presence in the world, or as a community of those already "saved?"

The Eucharist is the source and summit of Church life. The Church is to be understood as the salvific presence in the world because salvation is promised by Jesus to the Church. Salvation is an ongoing process where the 'ready but not yet' model of viewing it has to be kept in mind.

• How should the Church be governed? What was the mission and authority of the Apostles, and is this handed down through the sacraments today? What are the proper methods of choosing clergy such as bishops and priests, and what is their role within the context of the Church? Is an ordained clergy necessary? Who are the leaders of a church? Must there be a policy-making board of "leaders" within a church and what are the qualifications for this position, and by what process do these members become official, ordained "leaders"? Must leaders and clergy be "ordained," and is this possible only by those who have been ordained by others?

• What are the roles of 'spiritual gifts' in the life of the church?

Spiritual gifts, or Chraisms so much discussed in Pauline epistles underline the ministerial aspect of the Church.

• How does the Church's New Covenant relate to the covenants expressed in scripture with God's chosen people, the Jewish people?

• What is the ultimate destiny of the Church in Christian eschatology?

The ultimate destiny of the Church is full communion with Christ in the afterlife in heaven.

Alan347 (talk) 09:06, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Chronological Confusion

Can someone clarify for me (and if need be, in the article?)

The introductory statement of the article contains, "However, when the word was coined in England in the late 1830s, it was defined as the science of the building and decoration of church buildings and it is still, though rarely, used in this sense."

Below in the Etymology section: Its first appearance in print, as ecclesialogy, was in the quarterly journal The British Critic in 1837 and then However in volume 4 of the Cambridge Camden Society's journal The Ecclesiologist, published in January 1845 that society (the CCS) claimed that they had invented the word ecclesiology and The Ecclesiologist was first published in October 1841 and dealt with the study of the building and decoration

Alister aside, the article seems to state "Late 1830s - coined - building and decoration", "Late 1830s (1837) - first appearance in print - study of church", then "Jan 1845 and not possibly earlier than Oct 1841 - claims of coining - building and decoration".

How does one resolve that the given timeline points (if comprehensive) don't support the introductory statement? Does the 1841 article claim that they had been using the term internally previous to their first publishing?

Thanks.

Thistledowne (talk) 19:19, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Well spotted. Now fixed.  —SMALLJIM  20:27, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Ecclesiology/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

== History == Considering the lack of progress in the this particular head page, it may be ideal to add a list of historical events in Christianity regarding Ecclesiology, and links to the various Christian history Wikipedia pages where applicable. This would probably assist greatly in at least bringing more function and reliance to this page, as many people do not know how this subject even relates to religion, nor it's historical significance. --RuediiX (talk) 10:16, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Last edited at 10:16, 15 May 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 14:03, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Two uses

@Ashmoo: I still disagree with your removal of content from the lead, and you should have been the one to instigate this discussion if you follow WP:BRD. But setting that aside, in a normal case I'd agree with you: WP is not a dictionary and we usually only deal with one meaning of a word per article. But here, the word has an interesting etymology that needs to be explained and wouldn't fit anywhere else. There's a whole section about it, so we need to mention it in the lead. It's only a few words and could probably be made more concise and have its emphasis reduced, but I don't understand why you insist on removing it altogether.  —SMALLJIM  11:39, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I thought we might be able to resolve it with edits and edit comments, but you are correct that using the talk page is a better way to do it. Sorry if I caused any aggravation. My biggest concern is that the lede switched back and forth between the two meanings and was quite confusing to read when I first came to this page. I firmly believe the opening of an article should explain the scope of the article itself, so I think it should be clear here. How about having the first para explain what this article is about and then having a second paragraph that mentions the curious etymology of the word itself? Ashmoo (talk) 12:26, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds good. Shall we leave your first para and add something like:

The word ecclesiology was defined in the 19th century as the science of the building and decoration of church buildings and at least one publication still uses the word in this sense.

 —SMALLJIM  13:35, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. Ashmoo (talk) 12:25, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

OK, done.  —SMALLJIM  00:03, 25 February 2017 (UTC)