The essential Church

Is the Church “essential”? This was a talking point during COVID that I think we do well to revisit. In this guide for Lexham’s Christian Essentials series, Brad East seeks to expose our fundamental need for this profound gift called Church.

East speaks not only about the Church but also with the Church as one in the Church. In the micro-liturgy provided in the opening pages, he invites his readers to think about the Church in prayer with the Church. From there, East engages a theological exploration of the nature and mission of the Church through the whole story of Scripture, benefiting from the insights of Christians across denominational lines and throughout the centuries.

The first thing East notes: The Church is part of the mystery it preaches, as the Apostle Paul teaches us in Ephesians and Colossians. From there, East introduces a barrage of titles, images, and adjectives to offer a taste of what the Church is. The first title is that of “mother”—an ecclesiological moniker near and dear to Cyprian, Augustine, and Calvin, but largely alien to most Protestants today. East presses further by grounding that image in Mary, who is a type of mirror of the Church. The Church is the chosen handmaid of the Lord, a creature of the Word through which the Word works in the world.

The bulk of the remainder of the book traces the centrality of the people of God throughout Scripture. Here East weaves together invigorating reflections on the exodus and the law and how these relate to salvation and the mission of God’s people. He also offers a non-supersessionist but classically Christian interpretation of the relationship between Jesus and Israel. One can see why theologians such as Mark Kinzer and Ephraim Radner wrote glowing endorsements, as they are key figures developing those themes today. Jesus fulfills Israel’s calling and displays God’s faithfulness to Israel. And He renews and restores Israel while reconstituting it in and around Himself. Now there is a new unity of Jew and Gentile, and this unity in duality is fundamental to the witness of the Church.

East’s most creative, challenging, and inspiring offerings surface in the final three chapters, where he explores the theme of community as witness. “No one is a Christian alone,” argues East. “You are a Christian among Christians or not at all. To be a Christian is to belong to the Church.” He goes on: “The Church is our mother because it is in her, by her, and through her that we receive Christ. If you want to know Christ, seek Him in the Church, which is at once His bride and His body.”

Here East, while waxing poetically, presses probably so far as to make most Protestants uneasy. He connects John 14:6 with Ephesians 5: Just as no one comes to the Father except through the Son, so “no one comes to the Son except through His mother,” for “the One who is Himself is found in her alone—but I am speaking of Christ and the Church.” If one thinks this draws too much attention to the Church so as to distract from Christ, East quickly provides another image to frame ecclesiology that, even as it elevates the Church beyond what many Protestants are comfortable with, serves to highlight the Church’s instrumental role in pointing to Christ: the Church as “sacrament.” This is an ecclesiological image that gained traction mostly in 20th-century Roman Catholic theology, but is also a theme I have emphasized in my own scholarship. As East rightly notes, this image helps highlight both the central, irreplaceable importance of the Church, but as an instrument. As a sacrament, the Church is the sign and presence of Christ, but in such a way as to draw attention primarily to Christ, not herself.

East performs a similar balancing act when he elaborates on how the Church proclaims Christ in word and deed. She “is the way,” argues East. “Her very way of life should commend itself to the world as an alternative to the ordinary run of things.” Again, evangelical squirming is likely to commence at this point. But, explains East, key in this “way” is the Church bearing witness to her ongoing need for grace. She manifests this “way” especially in her “confession of sin and petition for mercy”—thereby pointing to her source of life, which is the same for all sinners. That life is found “in God, not in herself.” In the spirit of Luther, East reminds us that the Church is a beggar offering hope to other beggars. And in herself, the Church bears witness to the already-but-not-yet dynamics of the kingdom. Grace is triumphant, yet “sin loiters.” In her ongoing confession and calling out for grace—whose presence she represents—she serves as “the sign that all is well and all is not well.” She is a “microcosm of the new creation,” which though present in her as “foretaste” is not present in full, yet.

My one critique of the book comes at the final of East’s 12 “implications” of the motherhood of the Church in Chapter 11. Here he discusses the theme of the Church’s “catholicity.” It is not because I disagree with any of his arguments here, but because I think he chose an imprudent voice to invoke. East argues that the Church is the presence of the new creation in the midst of the old, and that she encompasses the whole of humanity because her mission excludes none and is directed to all. Every tribe and tongue is meant for her and destined for her. The sole recent theologian East quotes here is John Howard Yoder, whose legacy is a mixed bag to say the least. East would have been served better by invoking an alternative theologian from the 20th century who made very similar arguments without the baggage: Henri de Lubac. In fact, the other endnote from this section is to a famous quote from the Shepherd of Hermas about how the world was made for the Church, which is one of de Lubac’s favorite quotes in his ecclesiological writings.

This is a wonderful little book that should help many contemporary Christians love the Church in all her brokenness but also in her beauty. As the body and bride of Christ and mother of believers, the Church is “essential” to the Christian faith, to salvation itself. East helps us taste and see this reality.