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Law and Liberty, Church and Gospel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
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The Problem
It is not difficult to show from the New Testament that dialogue is built into the structures of the Christian community. Ep. 4:11-16, for example, ‘proves that in the New Testament there is no opposition between ministerial authority and an emancipated laity. Rather the relation between the two is the fact that the first gives rise to the second.’ Other texts (for example, Rm. 1 :12; 2 Co. 1 :24; 1 Pt. 5 :3) show that the apostles’ authority over the local communities was not all one way: the latter had something to give the apostles. The same conclusion follows, too, from the fact that the Word of God has been committed to the whole community. As Augustine once said, God speaks to every member of the Church ‘from the bishops right down to the last of the faithful’. There is thus a pooling of experience, a fruitful interchange of opinion.
Now there is a sense in which this dialogue in the Church between ministers and laity takes the form of preaching on one side and obedience on the other. The official proclamation of the Gospel in the community provokes a response which Paul calls ‘the obedience of faith’ (Rm. 1 :5; 16:26) and Peter ‘the obedience of truth’ (1 Pt. 1 :22), so that to genuine exposition of the Gospel message the people respond by accepting the Word in faith. However, no human dialogue can be totally active on one side and totally passive on the other. Every form of communication involves a giving and a receiving on both sides if it is not to degenerate into monologue and silence.
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- Copyright © 1975 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
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33 Philip Nobile gives a diverting account of many more in his Catholic Nonsense, Doubleday, New York, 1970.Google Scholar
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