Once the church had gained the official recognition of the state (as happened first under Emperor Theodosius (347-395CE)), the simple formula ‘Outside the Church, no salvation’ took on a new and harsher meaning. As Christendom took hold the church occupied a supremely powerful position. Within a view of salvation as a successful migration from one essentially static and contemporaneous realm to another, that is from earth to heaven, the Church could conceive of itself as the one storehouse and mediator of grace required to make the transition. It was the sole broker of salvation. It was the Reformation, of course, that first called this view powerfully into question. Martin Luther and others recognised that this understanding was in danger of putting the church in the place of God, more precisely in place of the mediating work of Christ. But this prior conception of the church has also been shown to be suspect from another perspective. That is through the reawakening of interest in eschatology begun around the turn of the twentieth century with Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer, and brought to fruition in the theology of Wolhart Pannenberg and Jürgen Moltmann.
In eschatological perspective the church is seen to be but an epiphenomenon caused by the interrelationship between the ‘advancing’ Kingdom of God and the world. The Church is that part of the world that explicitly anticipates the coming Kingdom, accepting the lordship of Christ and so being called into active witness on Christ’s behalf. But the activity and anticipated presence of the Kingdom is not limited to the church, for the Holy Spirit is active in all creation. Moreover, when the Kingdom finally comes in all its fullness – when the new creation arrives – the church becomes redundant because anticipation gives way to realised presence. In the vision of the new creation offered in Revelation 21 there is no longer any need of the temple (v.22); God’s presence permeates all as light (21:23, 22:5). The church then is a transient phenomenon; it does not exist for its own sake, but for the sake of what will come to take its place.
Appreciating the relationship between church, world and kingdom in this way can help place the university chapel and its work in perspective. It both gives enormous value to the proleptic significance of worship, yet provides the impetus to look for God’s presence and action beyond its walls. It thus lends legitimacy and encouragement to the business of looking for ‘signs of the Kingdom’ wherever they may be found.
Given the process of the de-centring the church described above, there may be some merit in giving greater attention to the notion of ‘the communion of saints’. For this is:
- A fellowship that transcends space and time, leaking across institutionally maintained borders: it is thus universal (catholic) in scope and shares the dimensions of the Kingdom
- It is one fellowship grounded in Christ and the company of the apostles (apostolic)
- It exists via the gracious initiative and initiative of God; it is God’s creation and thus holy
- It is a fellowship (glimpsed in Rev 19) that does not become redundant because it lies at the heart of what salvation is about: creation flourishing according to, and via inclusion in, the pattern of God’s own trinitarian life of fellowship.
- It may also be a more encompassing group than we imagine (which has important implications for interfaith dialogue)
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