Ecclesiology by epiphanies. A prospect
In our paper of 2012, Helen Cameron and I spoke out of the ARCS research about “epiphanic sacramentality”.1 The intention in using this language was to be faithful to our theological action research experience as one in which theological insights were gained through reflection, and real person-to-person conversation, in which ‘light-bulb’ moments occurred. In these moments of ‘epiphany’, something was recognised by those in the conversation which was a new way of seeing - an event of revelation-in-miniature. Often, such epiphanies took place through initial disagreements or diverse interpretations of data; other times, they were brought about by the relating of current practices to the longer tradition. In any case, they were - and continue to be in theological action research work - experiences of interruption rather than deduction. They come upon the conversation and its participants rather than our being in control of them.
To say this is not to make any spurious claim either for the lack of real intellectual and personal agency on the part of those taking part in these conversations, or for some paranormal experience! It is simply to draw attention once again to the inductive nature of the theology practised and ecclesiology disclosed in this research, and to the faith-fullness of the researchers regarding the presence of the Spirit in the work and its Practices. What has been learnt has been so not through the setting of a predetermined agenda about the theology of church (although to be sure these existed in our formation and training and will have shaped our understanding to some extent), but rather learning has been discovered, and so ecclesiology disclosed.
One of the characteristics of such an ecclesiology disclosed through epiphanies is that it bears the marks of its necessary incompleteness, its particularity and limited claim to be universal in an especially visible way. However, as the preceding two chapters have argued, this is understood as a part of the distinctive integrity of this disclosed or ‘epiphanal’ ecclesiology, as it seeks to be shaped by an account of theology as necessarily incomplete, ‘doubly negative’, and of ecclesiology as concerned with edgeless church of the Spirit’s activity in the world. In the end, despite all its limitations, frustrations and openness to expert corrections from all sides, this
Ecclesiology by epiphanies. A prospect 251 is a way of doing theology, and ecclesiology in particular, to which I remain more committed than ever having composed the argument of this book.
That I am not alone in this commitment is not only humanly reassuring but also adds strength to the project by enabling just the kind of open, trusting conversation about its prospects as is proper to the overall methodology and its practices. Researchers continue to seek out training in theological action research methods and adapt them for their own work,2 and growing numbers of doctoral and post-doctoral projects are using the thinking that has been elaborated in this book. As well as the post-ARCS projects outlined in chapter 2, I am currently working with others on two large-scale theological action research projects, on learning within British Methodism and looking at practices of social action involving Roman Catholics and Methodists. All this suggests an on-going future for theological action research and its practices and insights.
This is all very encouraging and suggests that there is something being described in this book which has found a real connection with many researchers in practical theology, and in ecclesiology in particular. However, any future work based on these approaches needs to ask probing questions about the theological epistemology and significance of them, more and more informed by a wider reading of theology of all types; I am especially hopeful for more engagement from biblical studies perspectives. If theological action research and its four voices of theology approach is to be more than simply a method or way of navigating the well-recognised problems of practice-engaged theology, then this more methodological and whole-or fundamental theological questioning must also be continued. For, in the end, as this final section of the book has demonstrated, there is something more being embodied in and claimed by theological action research than a contribution to practical theological method; theological action research presents, I would argue, both a challenge and a hope to theology in the academy. Appropriately enough, the nature and limitations of this ‘something more’, whilst glimpsed in these later chapters, remains to be discovered through further conversation; but the possibilities of a faith-full, tra-ditioned, and practical whole-theology, which can claim a proper place epistemologically and empirically among the Humanities and Social Sciences are there to be explored.
Above all, as I try to look out over the prospect presented at the end of this exercise of writing up the disclosed ecclesiology of the ARCS project, I found myself drawn to the possibilities for how such accounts of church and of theology as offered here might enable the development of truer and more effective ways of living church today. Not only has this work indicated the disclosed nature of church as edgeless and dependent on the Spirit, it has also argued for a living of church which is primarily conversational in its work of speaking God’s hope and love in the world for its healing. As the kind of project described in this book is carried out in more and more locations and by different theologians and practitioners, it is to be hoped that this vision of church can be ‘caught’ not only by the diverse lay-lived church (which often already instinctively and mutely knows this way of being church), but also, and more problematically, by those at the institutional centre of church. It is only when we are all able to be participant in trusting, prayer-full, person-full and Spirit-full conversation of the kind described in this book and enacted (at best) in its research, that the world will be able to receive church as disclosed to us in epiphanies.
These hopes are not unrealistic, for all their grandiose scope. I can entertain them precisely because of the realities of church I have been privileged to glimpse in the places of the ‘ordinary’, the edges, the faith-full practices of lay people, in the world today, such as those described in this book. Church is happening. God is with us.
Notes
- 1 Clare Watkins and Helen Cameron, “Epiphanie Sacramentality: An Example of Practical Ecclesiology Revisioning Theological Understanding.” Christian B. Scharen ed. Explorations in Ecclesiology and Ethnography (Eerdmans, 2012): 71-89.
- 2 Periodic training days are offered by TARN: www.theologyandactionresearch. net.
