Abstract
Ecclesiology is an especially concrete field of theological inquiry. Because of the nature of the subject matter, ecclesiologists are uniquely forced to attend to how things actually are rather than how their theories might suggest they ought to be. For instance, while the idea of the Church or churches repenting for past sins may be largely unprecedented in Church history, and one that may not, for example, fit easily alongside earlier understandings of the Church’s holiness, the primary task for ecclesiology is to rethink the theories in light of the data, not the data in light of the theories. The meaning and practicability of acts of so called “ecclesial repentance” may be open to debate theologically, but the reality is that they are in fact already happening, and indeed happening in a particular way. Such is the basis for Jeremy Bergen’s attempt at an ecclesiological analysis of these phenomena, found in the 2010 offering Ecclesial Repentance: The Churches Confront Their Sinful Past.
Part I of the study is concerned with what Bergen calls the “historically particular,” more or less simply narrating a number of representative examples of ecclesial repentance that have taken place in recent decades from various churches and ecclesial communities. Chapter 1 discusses various instances of public confession for sins committed by churches against communities of fellow Christians, and towards the Jewish people. Chapter 2 highlights examples of repentance for the Church’s complicity with Western colonialism. Chapter 3 presents a wide range of public apologies for evils like the crusades, war, sexual abuse, the oppression of women, the mistreatment of homosexuals, hostility towards science and scientists, and the destruction of the environment. Finally, Bergen’s fourth chapter deals with Pope John Paul II’s Day of Pardon ceremony in connection with the opening of the Third Millennium. In this section of the text Bergen is essentially laying the phenomenological groundwork for the creative interpretation that will come later.
In Part II of the text, Bergen begins drawing out some ecclesiological implications which he believes emerge from the concrete data of the previous section, providing the reader with three different “layers” of reflection. In Chapter 5, Bergen argues that when the Church or churches of the present repent on behalf of the Church or churches of the past, ecclesiologists can therefore conclude that there is something about the Church’s nature that allows it to be uniquely capable of a simultaneous continuity and discontinuity with every other point in its history. In an effort to pinpoint what that something is, Bergen, with the help of the thought of the systematic theologian Robert Jenson, unfolds the traditional doctrine of the communion of the saints in a way that is grounded in a notion of history as the anticipation of the end rather than a progression from the beginning. Chapter 6 discusses the contemporary debate surrounding the Church’s creedal mark of holiness, arguing that the concrete fact of ecclesial repentance suggests that the Church’s holiness lies not in being free from sin but in a supernatural inclination to confess even when it does not fully apprehend its own guilt. Chapter 7 extends the discussion of ecclesial repentance in an interdisciplinary direction by contributing a theological voice into some of the wider conversations on the subjects of collective guilt, collective apology, and social reconciliation.
Bergen himself identifies two potential criticisms of his project: The first he calls a “conservative” objection, and the second “liberal” or “progressive.” On the one hand he admits he could be charged with viewing the Church solely from a secular perspective, robbing it of its Divine foundation. On the other, he acknowledges that he might be accused of downplaying the severity of the Church’s failures by forging a new line of apologetic defense. In my opinion, Bergen does a tremendous job of being sober and critical, even as he is pastorally sensitive and doctrinally faithful. While the project does walk a fine line between two pitfalls, it successfully manages to avoid either extreme. Although Bergen acknowledges a bias in the form of attention to examples from Roman Catholic and Mainline Protestant churches, he is to be commended for his concerted effort to include a wide range of ecclesial traditions in his examination. Bergen also does an excellent job of insisting that words alone are not sufficient for complete reconciliation, even as he convincingly demonstrates that words spoken by churches are already a form of action. All in all, Ecclesial Repentance serves as an excellent treatment of a timely issue, and is sure to become required reading on the subject.