Comparative Ecclesiology: Critical Investigations

This volume will explore issues such as the nature, method and development of comparative ecclesiology; critical assessments as well as appreciations of Roger Haight’s Christian Community in History. The Jesuit, Roger Haight, has written extensively in the fields of systematic theology, liberation theology, Christology and, of course, ecclesiology itself. He champions the need for the church to embrace a dialogical mission. This represents his most extensive work to date in ecclesiology and is a monumental volume study in comparative ecclesiology, volume 3 coming in 2008, building upon the insights developed in recent years in the more general sub-discipline of comparative theology.

In all, Haight’s pioneering work in this emerging field of comparative ecclesiology encourages us to immerse our contemporary explorations in, first, historical consciousness, thereby inculcating the disposition of humility - both in methodological terms and, when one realises how far short we fall of some of our ecclesial forebears, in terms of ecclesial life and practice as well. Second, as indicated, he commends the positive appreciation of pluralism. Third, a whole-part conception of church, neither placing universal over and above local nor vice-versa. Four, we should be attentive to embracing the gifts and human challenges of religious pluralism. And, of course, five, Haight reassures those fearful that such undertaking might entail any loss for the churches: he reminds us how such ecclesiological encounters are and should be undertaken from within a particular confessional or ecclesial identity.

We have assembled a range of noted ecclesiological scholars to discuss not simply Professor Haight’s work, but also to engage with the issues he raises in a wider context, such as the respective methodological debates surrounding ecclesiology ’from above’ and ’from below’, to the nature and promise of comparative ecclesiology in itself, to the prospects for a ’pluralistic ecclesiology’ in the world today, and the challenges such an undertaking presents to the Christian churches. Roger Haight will be invited to offer his own reflections upon the various chapters.

Gerard Mannion is Director of the Centre for Catholic Thought and Culture and Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego, USA.