[A number of years ago, I wrote an article in which I tried to briefly state the essence of what I learned concerning authority in the Church from the writings of the French Dominican, Fr. Yves Congar, while doing my doctoral dissertation on that topic.I never did much with it.What follows, in parts, is that article.]
History, eschatology, and pneumatology
In order to gain an appreciation for Congar’s notion of the life or community principle of authority, it is necessary to give articulation to the decidedly historical perspective he applied to the theological task which is precisely the source of his profound appreciation for God actively present and engaged in the construction of the Church in the very ebb and flow of the People of God living the faith.The conviction possessed by Congar that history is a true locus theologicus has its bases in his relationship, beginning in his first years at Le Saulchoir, with his mentor and friend Père Marie-Dominique Chenu.Chenu says that, “The theologian, unlike the philosopher, works on history.His ‘given’ [sic] are neither the natures of things nor their eternal forms, but events according to a plan (economie)” (M. D. Chenu, Faith and Theology, trans. Denis Hickey, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1968, 27).In Père Chenu, Congar had encountered “the history of the search for truth” which more and more unfolded as a “drama” before him (Yves Congar, “The Brother I Have Known,” Thomist 49:1985, 495). The return to the biblical and patristic sources of the twentieth century, Congar would insist, also revealed this renewed awareness that “[r]evelation takes place in the framework of history or of an ‘economy’” (Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, Vol. 25, ed. A. Vacant, E. Mangenot, É. Amann, Paris :Librairie Letouzey et Ané, 1946, col. 314-502. English translation, A History of Theology, trans. Hunter Guthrie, Garden City, NY:Doubleday, 1968, 12, page numbering that of the English edition).
This profound sense of the historical task of theology is what, for Congar, opens theology to its true eschatological end and, further, necessitates a certain ‘dialectical’ approach to theology.“Above all, in 1927-28, through the reading of Fr. Allo’s Commentary on the Apocalypse, I made a certain discovery of eschatology.Once I had accepted the eschatological point of view, I had to speak of the church dialectically” (Yves Congar, forward to The Ecclesiology of Yves Congar by Timothy I. MacDonald, New York:University Press of America, 1984, xxii).Christ, for Congar, must be, in light of this eschatological reality, seen not simply as the Alpha, the already established truth of revelation, but equally as the Omega, the “‘not yet said’ side to Christ and to the Word itself which, in order to find expression, requires the variety of history and of peoples which has not yet come about” (Yves Congar, “Church History as a Branch of Theology,” trans. Jonathan Cavanagh,Concilium 57, ed. Roger Aubert, 85-96, New York: Herder & Herder, 1970, 93).There is, because of its eschatological character, a necessity of speaking dialectically about theological truth as that which is given and that which remains as task.
History is imbued with such ‘theological weightiness’ because it has the Holy Spirit as its transcendent agent (Yves Congar, “Pneumatologie et théologie de l’histoire,” in La théologie de l’histoire :Herméneutique et eschatologie, ed. Enrico Castelli, Paris : Editions Montaigne, 1971, 62).Congar’s insists that it is precisely the Holy Spirit that ensures the continuity and substantial identity of the faith throughout the historical course of the Church from its establishment in the saving life, death and resurrection of Christ to its ultimate fulfillment in the eschaton (Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, vol. 3, trans. David Smith, New York: The Seabury Press, 1983, 39).The Holy Spirit does so not simply by insuring the efficacy of hierarchical acts, but also by raising up within the whole People of God charisms, initiatives of renewal, and the active reception of faith which both carries faith forward into the world and enriches the faith as proclaimed by the hierarchy.
The history of the Church—when all the exigencies of the life of faith lived by every Christian is regarded with theological seriousness because it is pneumatologically charged—shows the de facto action of God in the construction of the Church being accomplished from both outside and above itself and from within it, through the charisms and initiatives of the whole People of God.
Ontology of Grace
Finally, for a full appreciation of Congar’s notion of ecclesial authority as God actively building up the Body of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit not simply through its hierarchical structures but through the life of the community as well, his stress on the ontology of grace must be highlighted. In Congar’s estimation, one of the most significant aspects of the teachings found in the documents of the Second Vatican Council was its decision to move the chapter on the People of God, in its document on the Church (Lumen Gentium), before its consideration of the hierarchical structure.By doing so, “the highest value was given to the quality of disciple, the dignity attached to Christian existence as such or the reality of an ontology of grace, and then, to the interior of this reality, a hierarchical structure of social organization (Yves Congar, “The Church:The People of God,” trans. Kathryn Sullivan, in Concilium 1, ed. Karl Rahner and Edward Schillebeeckx, 11-37, New York:Paulist Press, 1965, 13).Indeed, for Congar, one of the great discoveries made in the twentieth century’s return to the patristic sources was the discovery there of the profound sense of this ontology of grace.In the writings of the Fathers one always finds that “ecclesiology included anthropology” (Ibid., 22).
Within this notion of the ontology of grace is found what Congar considers to be the authentic personal principle within Christianity.“[E]very person is a subject who responds freely and who is always a source of free initiative, self-expression and invention…It inevitably goes together with an ecclesiology based on the idea of the Church as a communion of persons” (Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, vol.2, 153-154).Again the ‘ontology of grace’is underlined, granting due regard for the person in the Church and viewing each one as an authentic disciple of Christ, truly capable of and needing to contribute to the building up of the whole Body, the Church.
When Christianity is viewed from the primacy of discipleship based on election and new life gained in baptism, the place of charisms and initiatives, for instance, is amplified.All the Christian faithful must be seen in light of spiritual anthropology; that is, in view of their assimilation to the one Lord, Jesus Christ, in his Body the Church.This assimilation, certainly, depends on the instituted structures of the Church, but specifically as a service to the one work of Christ, in which all share (Eph. 4:11-16), the building of the Temple of God, the gathering of all persons into the fellowship of the divine communion of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.This is forcefully articulated by Elizabeth Teresa Groppe, commenting on Congar’s pneumatological vision of the Church.
This is an ecclesial vision in which all the baptized are indispensable members of the church, each bringing gifts and talents that become part of the plērōma of Christ, a vision in which charisms are not simply a matter of personal enrichment but gifts that contribute to the very constitution of the church…it is a vision of a church governed through conciliarity and reception as it seeks to discern the counsel of the Spirit of Christ, who is active in all its members (Elizabeth Teresa Groppe, Yves Congar’s Theology of the Holy Spirit, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, 171).