Engaging the Doctrine of the Church
Engaging the Doctrine of the Church
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Engaging the Doctrine of the Church is the seventh volume in Matthew Levering’s acclaimed “Engaging the Doctrine” series. While Levering has examined the marks of the Church as “one” and “holy” elsewhere, this volume on the Church’s nature and mission focuses on several biblical images—Bride, Family, Body, People, and Mother— alongside an ecumenically engaged and Tradition-rich inquiry into the marks “catholic” and “apostolic.”
Levering begins with the Church as Bride, emphasizing the unfathomably intimate union between God and his people in Christ, joined to the ongoing need for repentance and purification. The image of the Church as God’s Family leads him to a rich engagement with African theology regarding how to balance the pressing need for social and political development with the fact that the Church’s primary end is the eschatological kingdom rather than an improved earthly politics.
For Levering, the Cross stands at the center of ecclesiology, as he emphasizes especially in discussing Christ’s Body. Given the cruciform character of Christian discipleship, Levering calls attention to the ever-present threat of Constantinianism, which turns the Church into an instrument of power rather than of radical love. He examines the Church as Mother in light of the need for Christian receptivity, and he explores how the People of God can today be distorted through an “inverse hierarchology” that concentrates on power. The beauty of the Church is found in the radiation of the glory of the Spirit’s love in Christ Jesus.
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What People are Saying
“The seventh volume of Matthew Levering's Catholic dogmatics is a timely intervention in Catholic ecclesiology in the middle of the contemporary contestation and crisis of the Church’s self-understanding. Transcending the accommodating Constantinianisms of the left and of the right and exposing their respective heterodoxies, Levering robustly reintroduces the central theological images that anchor the Church's being and identity in her head and center, the Crucified and Risen Christ, whose life-giving grace and love permeate all aspects of her reality. An urgent theological call to rediscover the sign of contradiction, the balm of Gilead and his Church, this is applied dogmatics at work—discerning, engaging, orienting. I warmly recommend this book.”
—Reinhard Hütter, Professor Emeritus of Fundamental and Dogmatic Theology, The Catholic University of America; Visiting Professor of Catholic Theology, Duke University
“A fearless work of ecclesiological discernment. Levering leaves no conceptual stone unturned in this study of modern ecclesiology and contemporary disputes about the nature and mystery of the Catholic Church. With remarkable erudition, and encyclopedic references, the author provides us with a remarkable doctrinal synthesis, realistic about the human limitations of the Church and deeply sensitive to her mystical dimensions of saintliness and teaching infallibility, sustained by the Holy Spirit. No alternative positions are left unconsidered, and all are treated with charity and respectful intellectual vigor. This is a work of charity in the service of the truth . . . a must read work for those laboring in the theological discipline of the study of the Church.”
—Thomas Joseph White, Rector, Pontifical University of St. Thomas
“Matthew Levering's well-known theological gifts are on full display in Engaging the Doctrine of the Church, the latest installment in his multi-volume dogmatics. The book shows broad familiarity with ecclesiology past and present, offering a truly global survey of trends ranging from Europe to Latin America to Africa. But Levering does not allow this breadth to blunt incisiveness of analysis or distract from the pressing questions of the day. Readers will find between its covers timely theological evaluations of synodality as an ecclesial style and balanced considerations of the possibilities of ‘resistance’ to statements of the ordinary magisterium. Highly recommended.”
—Aaron Pidel, SJ, Associate Lecturer, Pontifical Gregorian University
“Mathew Levering has been on a remarkable and hungering quest to illuminate the vast range of the Christian Gospel. In his many books he has gathered and explored the riches of Christ’s truth unfolded in a range of dogmatic and scriptural forms. Now he comes to the Church, which he approaches with a focus that takes in a sweeping array of witnesses, ancient and modern. The result is a traditional yet sharply focused, in some ways chastened but also deepened, Catholic ecclesiology. Along with many who will read this book, I am persuaded, even as my love for the Church is enlarged.”
—Ephraim Radner, Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology, Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto
