Given the events that have transpired in the past several decades amongst the churches of the Anglican Communion, ecclesiology – particularly communion ecclesiology – has become something of a preoccupation for modern Anglican Theology. Scott MacDougall’s work, More than Communion, offers what is perhaps the most innovative consideration of communion ecclesiology in recent memory. To be clear, MacDougall’s text is not so much a deep dive into Anglican ecclesiology as it is a comprehensive account of communion ecclesiologies in their ecumenical fullness. In considering how communion ecclesiology has functioned not only in Anglican contexts, but also in the contexts of the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox churches, and the World Council of Churches, MacDougall offers one of the most insightful accounts of systematic doctrinal interconnection produced in any recent ecclesial exploration.
MacDougall focuses his account on the ‘ecclesial imagination’ and specifically the ways in which the imaginative patterns described by communion ecclesiologies, in their present articulations, are insufficiently eschatologically robust. This is MacDougall’s key systematic insight, that within Christian theology ‘[t]he eschatological imagination and the ecclesial imagination are inextricably linked’ (p. 3). Methodologically, MacDougall is particularly concerned to emphasize ‘the embodied, the practical, the lived, the aspiration, and the affective dimensions of what it means to be church’ (p. 3). MacDougall’s argument is that communion ecclesiology, in its present ecumenical articulation, is ill-equipped to address the embodied, practical issues facing churches today precisely because of ‘the eschatological viewpoint that ecclesiologies of communion commonly espouse’ (p. 33).
MacDougall notes that a definitive definition of communion ecclesiology can be elusive since ‘[n]o two ecclesiologies of communion offer exactly the same perspective’ (p. 13). Nonetheless, MacDougall’s opening chapters offer a clear and comprehensive account of the ecclesiological ‘lay of the land’. Despite the absence of one common definition of communion ecclesiology, in his detailed consideration of the ecclesiologies of the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox churches, Anglican churches, and the World Council of Churches, MacDougall makes a compelling case that communion ecclesiology functions as the controlling ecclesial paradigm for a majority of Christendom. Although MacDougall’s ultimate conclusion is ‘that communion ecclesiology will remain the dominant mode of conceptualizing church’ (p. 261), MacDougall uses the opening chapters of his text to diagnose a problem inherent to this shared ecclesial conception. Ecclesiologies of communion generally emphasize overly realized eschatologies. MacDougall notes that such ecclesiologies ‘tend to understand the world as the place where everything meaningful has already happened’ (p. 162). The realized eschatology of communion ecclesiologies thus both abstracts and removes actual church communities from the practical, historical and experiential context of the world. MacDougall points out that the realized eschatologies inherent in contemporary articulations of communion ecclesiology are often ‘too beholden to a Neoplatonic ontology that dissolves the concreteness of churches in favor of an institutional, overly hierarchical abstraction’ (p. 40).
MacDougall’s diagnosis of the eschatological problem common to communion ecclesiologies is well supported by his research. Specifically, he devotes a chapter each to the theologies of John Zizioulas and John Milbank, two very different thinkers who are nonetheless exemplars of theologians whose ecclesiologies are deeply concerned with the ‘social and theological effects of Western modernity on the Christian church’ and who articulate a vision of church ‘funded by a multidimensional notion of communion’ (p. 7). While Zizioulas and Milbank prove substantive interlocutors for MacDougall’s account of the ecclesial issues inherent to our contemporary moment, in the latter half of his text MacDougall relies heavily on the work of Jürgen Moltmann, and to a lesser extent Wolfhart Pannenberg and Johannes Baptist Metz, to support his own constructive project. In contrast to the over-realized eschatologies of Zizioulas and Milbank, MacDougall identifies ‘the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ’ as ‘[t]he foundational basis for the eschatological analogy’ since Christian theology recognizes this as ‘the eschatological event par excellence’ (p. 146). Using Christ’s bodily resurrection as his benchmark, MacDougall offers guidelines for a revised and revivified eschatological imagination, one designed to ‘engage with churches as they are, not in the abstract’ (p. 60). MacDougall’s constructive proposal is clear and straightforward. Ultimately, he describes ‘five qualitative “marks”: tensiveness, openness, risk, trust and hope’ as the pillars around which a practically fruitful eschatological ecclesiology might be built (p. 186).
MacDougall is refreshingly clear in both his diagnosis and constructive solution. In other words, the strength of MacDougall’s work is that he doesn’t limit himself to doctrinal description. His deep, informed and well-researched account of communion ecclesiologies exposes a constituent weakness in the ways these descriptions of church are articulated in our current moment. Beyond this, MacDougall’s constructive work is robust and well supported. He offers concrete guidelines for constructing a more open eschatological imagination, designed to support practical and historical churchly concerns (pp. 147-49). Even when identifying the broad theological principles that govern his reimagined eschatological ecclesiology, MacDougall gracefully walks the fine line between the necessarily universal scope of such rules and an attentive view to the inevitably limited needs of actual, particular, contextual communities.
While MacDougall’s proposal succeeds in the way he clearly defines his terms and offers concrete criteria for future theological discernment and development, in approaching this ambitious work one can definitely lose the forest for the trees. For all its clarity, MacDougall’s argument can become repetitive and the text is quite long. His final chapter offers an extended consideration of, and apology for, practical theology as inseparable from the fundamental concerns of systematic theology, particularly when considering ecclesiology. MacDougall’s point is well taken, and the commitments of practical theology clearly undergird his own work. But in a text that devotes the majority of the preceding pages to a compelling yet sophisticated account of systematic doctrinal interconnection (albeit one with a consistent view toward the practical and embodied) this transition to an epistemology focused on practice feels more like a coda, or the beginnings of a second project, rather than the integrated completion of the overarching argument of the preceding text. In other words, MacDougall’s cohesive and clearly stated methodology makes his commitment to practice (and its constitutive importance to the systematic concerns of ecclesiology) plain in the earlier pages, rendering this very detailed apology in the final section somewhat unnecessary.
Yet, despite this relatively minor critique, MacDougall’s remains an ambitious work, and an exciting achievement in the field, not only in terms of recent ecclesiological considerations, but also as an example of clear, fresh and exciting systematic doctrinal interconnection. The text is decidedly written for professionals, particularly those familiar both with systematic theology and contemporary ecclesiology – especially as theologies of church have changed and developed in dialogue with the documents and discussions of the ecumenical movement embodied by the World Council of Churches. Anglican theologians, and anyone interested in contemporary ecclesiology specifically and systematic theology more broadly, will find in this text a wealth of compelling, supported and well-argued material for rich theological reflection. MacDougall is undoubtedly right that an impoverished theological imagination leads to impoverished, conflicted and stalled communities as theology is lived in the world in actual, historical contexts (p. 3). In this text, MacDougall offers Anglican theologians, and anyone else committed to a vibrant, robust and practical theology of the Christian church, a deep well of resources for imagining and enacting a revivified life together.
