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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 July 2019
This article seeks to articulate the ecclesiology of David Ford as one shaped by wisdom. Although central to Ford’s concerns, the nature of his ecclesiology has not yet been explored. The task is approached first by outlining Ford’s approach to theology found in his book Christian Wisdom and then detailing how his ecclesiology fits within his thinking in regard to wider concerns. I argue that key to understanding Ford’s ecclesiology is to see it within a movement from extensity to intensity and back to extensity. I argue that Ford’s ecclesiology represents a way of renegotiating the place of the church in the wider world. It is a significant contribution for the Anglican Church in Western settings which have seen widespread cultural changes. At the same time, Ford’s ecclesiology is limited by its particular intensive contextual engagements which neglect wider contextual and ecclesiological concerns.
Revd Andy Lord is Rector, Rector of the Benefice of Awsworth, Cossall and Trowell, and Associate Tutor at St John’s College, Nottingham.
2 For example, Ellen T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
3 Nicholas M. Healy, Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
4 David F. Ford, Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
5 David F. Ford, Self and Salvation: Being Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
6 Practical experiences of overwhelming begin Ford’s work on personal spirituality, David F. Ford, The Shape of Living: Spiritual Directions for Everyday Life (London: Fount, 1997), pp. xiii-xxi.
7 Ford, Christian Wisdom, p. 19.
8 David F. Ford, The Drama of Living: Becoming Wise in the Spirit (London: Canterbury Press, 2014), pp. 1–23; Ford, Self and Salvation, pp. 17-29.
9 We might detect here some of the emphasis on ‘realistic narrative’ by Hans Frei with whom Ford met regularly while at Yale (Ford, Drama of Living, p. 53). We might also note Ford’s doctoral research on Barth and God’s Story (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1985) and how he brings some of Barth’s approach into a fuller engagement with history.
10 Here Ford is perhaps developing the work of Frei who explored the importance of lives lived outwardly in history rather than through an inward connection to God (Mike Higton, Christ, Providence and History: Hans W. Frei’s Public Theology [London: T & T Clark, 2004]).
11 See Ford’s appreciation of Levinas in Ford, Drama of Living, pp. 58-61. Also, note Ford’s critique of ‘epic’ approaches in his The Future of Christian Theology (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), pp. 24-27.
12 Ford, Christian Wisdom, p. 33.
13 Ford, Christian Wisdom, pp. 33-34. This approach to the cross resonates with those like Rowan Williams who sees the cross as the critical point of judgement (Open to Judgement: Sermons and Addresses [London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1994]).
14 Ford, Christian Wisdom, p. 41.
15 Ford, Christian Wisdom, p. 50.
16 Ford, Shape of Living, pp. 26-28.
17 Ford, Christian Wisdom, p. 38.
18 This is one of the themes in John’s Gospel that is taken up in Ford, Drama of Living. See also the reflections of Ben Quash, ‘Wonder-Voyaging: The Pneumatological Character of David Ford’s Theology’, in Tom Greggs, Rachel Muers, and Simeon Zahl (eds.), The Vocation of Theology Today: A Festshrift for David Ford (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014), pp. 146-62.
19 Ford, Christian Wisdom, pp. 90-120.
20 Ford, Christian Wisdom, pp. 237-38.
21 Ford, Future, pp. 90-94.
22 Ford, Christian Wisdom, pp. 252-54.
23 Ford, Christian Wisdom, p. 239.
24 Ford, Future, pp. 104-29.
25 Another approach is to pick out particular focus themes, as Iain Torrance does with ‘friendship’ in his summary of the book, ‘Friendship as a Mode of Theological Engagement: David Ford’s Exploration of Christian Wisdom’, Modern Theology 25.1 (2009), pp. 123-31.
26 A point made by Benjamin J. King, Robert MacSwain, and Jason A. Fout, ‘Contemporary Anglican Systematic Theology: Three Examples in David Brown, Sarah Coakley, and David F. Ford’, Anglican Theological Review 94.2 (2012), pp. 319-34.
27 Anglican themes noted by Paul Avis, The Identity of Anglicanism: Essentials of Anglican Ecclesiology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2008), p. 15.
28 Significant in the Anglican approach of Mark Chapman, ‘The Church’, in Ralph McMichael (ed.), The Vocation of Anglican Theology (London: SCM Press, 2014), pp. 201-202.
29 For example, the evangelical approach of Colin Buchanan, Is the Church of England Biblical? An Anglican Ecclesiology (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1998).
30 This can be compared with the Anglican charismatic David Watson, I Believe in the Church (repr.; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2nd edn, 1982 [1978]).
31 Chapter 7 which correlates to aspect (5) above. This represents the culmination of Ford’s presentation prior to three case studies in the following chapters.
32 Worship, for Ford, brings together all the major aspects of theology as noted in the brief study of Owen F. Cummings, Canterbury Cousins: The Eucharist in Contemporary Anglican Theology (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2007), pp. 122-28.
33 Ford, Christian Wisdom, p. 252.
34 See the important article by David F. Ford, ‘Why Church?’ Scottish Journal of Theology 53 (2000), pp. 51-52, which explores this through 2 Corinthians 1.
35 Ford, ‘Why Church?’, p. 55. See also his earlier use of the term ‘economy’ to encompass all life centred on God, David F. Ford, ‘Faith in the Cities’, in Colin E. Gunton and Daniel W. Hardy (eds.), On Being the Church: Essays on the Christian Community (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), pp. 227-30.
36 The emphasis is on praise although the three themes come together in David F. Ford and Daniel W. Hardy, Living in Praise: Worshipping and Knowing God (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2005), pp. 185-87.
37 Ford was a colleague of Hardy’s in Birmingham and became his son-in-law. These themes are present in the conclusion of Ford and Hardy, Living in Praise, pp. 200-203. See also Daniel W. Hardy, Deborah Hardy Ford, Peter Ochs, and David F. Ford, Wording a Radiance: Parting Conversations on God and the Church (London: SCM Press, 2010).
38 Cf. Rom. 8.39. This image is used by Ford in considering the community of the heart that each person carries with them, Ford, Shape of Living, pp. 21-22.
39 Here I am linking intensity and extensity with Ford’s consideration of personal spiritual disciplines in Shape of Living, pp. 78-106.
40 See here the theme of ‘perfecting perfection’ in Ford, Christian Wisdom, pp. 237-38.
41 Ford and Hardy, Living in Praise, p. 186.
42 Ford and Hardy, Living in Praise, pp. 32-40; Ford, Shape of Living, pp. 158-80; Ford, Christian Wisdom, p. 264.
43 On polarities see John McIntyre, The Shape of Pneumatology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1997), p. 211; Amos Yong, Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2002), pp. 106-109. I have explored the use of polarities in the church’s mission in Andy Lord, Spirit-Shaped Mission: A Holistic Charismatic Missiology (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2005).
44 Ford, Christian Wisdom, pp. 371-72.
45 Ford, Drama of Living, p. 38.
46 Ford, Self and Salvation, pp. 7-11.
47 Ford, Self and Salvation, pp. 107-108.
48 Eph. 5.18-21, Ford, Self and Salvation, p. 109.
49 Ford, Self and Salvation, p. 111.
50 David F. Ford, ‘Holy Spirit and Christian Spirituality,’ in Kevin J. Vanhoozer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 269-71.
51 The theme of joy in ecclesiology is developed in Ford, ‘Why Church?’ pp. 56-60.
52 Ford, Self and Salvation, p. 132.
53 Ford, ‘Why Church?’ p. 62.
54 Ford, Self and Salvation, p. 137. The centrality of the Eucharist to all doctrine and aspects of life for Ford is noted by Cummings, Canterbury Cousins, p. 125.
55 Ford, Self and Salvation, p. 144.
56 Ford, Self and Salvation, p. 147.
57 Ford, Self and Salvation, p. 143.
58 Latest statistics for 2015 show that less than one million of the 53 million people in England regularly attend a Church of England church.
59 We need to recognize that Ford was brought up in Dublin where Anglicans were in a 3 per cent minority and does not comment so much on declining numbers than how Christians are to live in public, contested places.
60 Recent cases of abuse have highlighted this and render deep questions about the validity of the church.
61 His reflections on Lambeth have been pertinent and practical, David F. Ford, ‘A Wisdom for Anglican Life: Lambeth 1998 to Lambeth 2008 and Beyond’, Journal of Anglican Studies 4.2 (2006), pp. 137-56. More recently, Ford has been involved in shaping a vision for the Church of England’s involvement in education: Church of England, Church of England Vision for Education: Deeply Christian, Serving the Common Good (London: Church House Publishing, 2016).
62 For a summary of the debate and constructive recent proposal see Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Hope and Community, A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), V, pp. 295-316.
63 A challenge noted by Cummings, Canterbury Cousins, p. 128.
64 Roger Haight, Christian Community in History. I. Historical Ecclesiology (London: Continuum, 2004), p. ix.
65 Now a member of the Episcopal Church, although he has not developed how Anglican ecclesiology fits with his previous thinking.
66 Miroslav Volf, After our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 9-13.
67 On the latter see Miroslav Volf, A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2011).
68 Volf, After our Likeness, pp. 128-29.
69 Volf, After our Likeness, p. 278.
70 For the story in Latin America see Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism (repr.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013 [2004]), pp. 71-91.
71 David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (New York: Orbis, 1991), p. 25 as quoted in the more recent work of Charles Van Engen, Transforming Mission Theology (William Carey Library, 2017), pp. 12-13.
72 Van Engen, Transforming, pp. 14, 16-17.
73 There is a wealth of material that relates to Archbishops Council, Mission-Shaped Church: Church Planting and Fresh Expressions of Church in a Changing Context (London: Church House Publishing, 2004).
74 For example, Van Engen, Transforming, pp. 407-35; George Lings, Reproducing Churches (Abingdon: Bible Reading Fellowship, 2017).
75 Ford, Future, pp. 24-27.
76 David F. Ford, ‘Reading Backwards, Reading Forwards, and Abiding: Reading John in the Spirit Now’, Journal of Theological Interpretation 11.1 (2017), pp. 69-84. See also his examples of the continuing/ongoing drama in Ford, Future.
77 There are many approaches to contextualization and this outline assumes less extreme approaches but is not limited to one type of approach, Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (New York: Orbis, rev. edn, 2002).