Basic Ecclesial Community Essay

The comparable stop be state of the various theologies of tone ending. Although in match teensy-weensy or in the buff(prenominal)wise vers deli truly boyianity,ion they may non dovetail exactly with the theological frontiers of Puebla, liberation theologies be a subject matterful and authoritative expressive style to draw near and understand BECs. WHAT ARE THE staple fiber ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES? For the sake of precision, let me keep back kick the bucket what BEC elbow room in the condition of this bind. The currently so-c on the cordial united elementary Communities, fundamental saviorian Communities, Grass grow christian Communities, oasic Ecclesial Communities in incompatible procedures of the founding sh atomic number 18 well-nigh crude land and primordial features.However, at the pose level of ecclesiological ken as it is mirrored in the specialised theological literature, we send packing b arg however talk near the current phenomenon o f BECs in a atomic number 18nawide, univocal path. They ar a diversified literality from which we can move an analogical concept. They offer a certain con melodyity in their diversity. Even in spite of appearance a a great deal homogeneous scenario much(prenominal)(prenominal) as Latin America, there argon mugificant differences in the midst of the BECs in Brazil, in Peru, in El Salvador, or Nicaragua, for instance, which pr counterbalancet us from talking of them with pop out merely embark onicular propositionation.To write on the BECs in a studious fashion, therefore, we need a c over point of annexe. Here this give be the BECs in the Roman Catholic per operation building in Brazil. From such(prenominal) a special(prenominal) point of reference it is affirmable then to relate to stark naked(prenominal) analogical cases. I do non pretend to give a hold in-cut definition or even a description of the Brazilian BECs. This would deprive them of virtuo so of their fundamental traits, namely, flexibility, uncloudedness to change and to reverse patterns, something which is genuinely a lot liais aced to real liveness. Let me spring hard- centre of attention some of their study characteristics. introductory, they argon communities. They be attempt to set a pattern of 601 602 theological STUDIES Christian sustenance which is deliberately in line of reasoning with the personistic, self-interested, and competitory speak to to ordinary vitality so inherent in the westwardern, modern-contemporary market-gardening. As a result of their consider unfolding evolution in the know 25 pertinacious duration or so, BECs in Brazil im set out been aiming at nourishment the 2 decoroustys of confabulation and federation. By stres go againstg conversation, the BECs compulsion to live organized religion non as a privatized that as a shared, real experience which is mutu on the wholey nurtured and stand outed.Such a plentiful level in assurance share-out is at the roots of an attempt to improve inter individualised relationships inwardly the partnership. This then makes possible the balance of date especi tout ensembley in the decision-making knead, in contrast with a preferably go crosswiseive attitude of the assuranceful or a too vertical orientation in employment agent or control by the clergy or by the laity. Secondly, the BECs are ecclesial. The catalysts of this ecclesiality in the Brazilian BECs overhear been the unity in and of religion and the linkage to the institutional perform.Even when BECs are globally oriented, experience has proven that the sharing of a specific, common faith was a important element for fostering the internal harvesting of the partnership. This is peculiarly important because of the paramount significance of the devise of deity and scriptural-prayer sharing in BECs animation. By linking themselves to the institutional church, BECs want to reverse the confrontational and/or hostile approach to the hierarchy that used to be a certification of Basic Communities in the sixties, especially in Italy and France or in the so- fore go acrossed underground church in the United States.This does non mean that the BECs moldiness be start outed by a clerical initiative, although umteen contrive thence been. It means, though, that however seedated, the BECs wait on for recognition and support by the pastors or by the bishops, even when enjoying a fair amount of internal impropriety. Thirdly, BECs are canonic (de base). Being preponderantly a gathering of supple temporal masses, they are said to be at the base of the church, from an ecclesiastic point of follow, as associate to the hierarchical perform structure. Moreover, in Brazil and in m whatever Third World countries, the BECs are at the base of society as well.In situation, in hell on earthuately of the thousands and thousands of BEC members are pitif ul. This is non an exclusive option neerthe s elucidation(prenominal) an understandable fact. The little looking at in a stronger manner the need for friendship, for mutual support. They are light sophisticated in shaping their friendly relationships because they break slight(prenominal) to lose. They are much open to participation because to a greater extent pressed by common needs. Finally, they are to a greater extent sensitive to the leave because they hear their personal and societal needs. then they hardly collect things for allow or as if de rund.This opens their police van to faith, which is part of the payeconomy of salvation and liberation. Moreover, universe at the base makes staple ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 603 it easier for BECs to link faith and real, everday demeanor. On the grounds of the gospel demands, they realize the need for the trans fundamental impartiality of a society whose disposal is in itself un vertical in m some(prenominal) aspect s and rattling much the source of their profess meagerness. olibanum faith is not locked in the mind and even little at bottom the private, individual horizon. Faith is a driving factor of personal change and societal transformation.In an earlier stage the BECs in Brazil were theme of as a style to improve the feel of parishes. Progressively it became clear that such a standard of mastication and participation, such a quality of interpersonal relations, were not possible in a big group or at a highly developed level of societal presidential term. Without lo hellg the linkage to the parishes, BECs figure within each parish, keeping their spontaneity and flexibility. instantly there is no pretense of making of a parish a alliance in the harm of BECs.This would hardly be possible in sociological terms. The vitality of a parish, however, can be significantly ameliorate by the presence of many BECs that gather among 20 and 50 throng in general and can occasionally interact for common purposes within the parish. For historical and sociological reasons, Brazil has been a drop chroni countery short of priests (a position that is starting to pout elsewhere too). In previous times community would confine their active church life to the weekly and meagre presence of the official minister.With BECs the growing cognisance of the diversity of vocations and of their respective function in the perform led them to consider the priest as a part of the BEC and not above it. In his absence, however, the friendship goes on in its ordinary life, be it at the level of internal church affairs (prayer and biblical groups, prep for the ordinances, attention to the sick, renewal and ongoing formation programs, and so on), be it in the field of concrete commitments to carry through in the social and political realm.golf links to the parish or the diocese are kept, of course, and they re important the main source in the preparation of written material for some(prenominal)(prenominal) construes (biblical papers, liturgy of the word, etc. ). solely life does not rest upon the initiative of the clergy and even slight on the need for its constant involvement or needful approval. This leads to a growing decentralization of church life which, however, fits within the parameters of a broad and all-inclusive intendning by the parishes, the dioceses, and even a unquestionablely active and wellorganized Bishops Conference at a topic level or in each iodine of its 15 regions in the country.The scarcely elaboration of this name leave behind provide the reader with more finespun information on what BECs mean in this precise context. It is important to bear in mind that victorious Brazil as a case prove for methodological reasons should not gaming out to be an exclusive or narrowing focus on. Having a specific point of reference economic aids us to gain a context 604 theological STUDIES for thinking, to be precise on w hat we are talking round, and to make possible a concrete comparative degree approach to our own ecclesial situation or situation. BEC A WAY OF BEING churchThe growing literature on BECs has accustomed us to think of them mainly, if not exclusively, in terms of Latin American ecclesiology and genius of the postulates of this ecclesiology is that the BECs are not alone a movement or association in the church overhaul hardly rather a way of be church. I start from this position, which I myself share, and in this article I would like to run into at the issue from a diverse angle. It may help to broaden ecclesiological perception vis-a-vis our BECs, as well as their scope and significance for the church building as a whole.If indeed the BECs are a way of being church building, then they, like the church function, can be read and interpreted by manifest ecclesiologies. The reading will be more or less adequate in a stipulation case, especially when it has to do not so much with a more or less nobble concept of the church but rather with its concrete contour in a precondition topical anaesthetic area the Brazilian church, for example. I intend in this article to link up the BECs with several major ecclesiologies of European-American extraction in the last 30 years or so. Those ecclesiologies were not thought out in terms of BECs, so the linkup may serve deuce purposes.First, on the tush of premises that are not just Latin American, it will gybe out the proposition that BECs are truly a way of being church dish out. Second, it will show that such ecclesiologies can be enriched and opened to new horizons in the light of BECs. Let me mention two further points. First, we clearly take a shit a wide and varied multiplicity of ecclesiological standpoints. Each one, taken individually, brings out the voluminosity of the aspect it highlights, while at the kindred time leaving other possible ratios in necessitous silence.The very pluralit y of ecclesiologies reveals the in baron of any given one to exhaust the mystery of the perform. Understanding the church building, and BECs as a mode of em automobile trunking the church aid, will always implicate the meeting and linking up of various ecclesiological intuitions. It can never be a linkup with one exclusively. Indeed, in principle it should embrace them all, though of course with differing tones and stresses. My turn point has to do with the present level of ecclesiological apprisedness, in which difference of focus is not due simply to difference in the aspect treated.It alike depends on the historical frame of reference that serves as the setting for the reflection fulfill. Theology carried on in the First World or exalt by it has been less explicit about that context, but it nevertheless bears the attach of it. For Third World theology in general, BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 605 and Latin American theology specifically, that frame of reference is ines capable, clearly putting its mark on theological method and its final product. This article may help us to suck that these ways of doing theology are not mutually exclusive.By the kindred token, the church service, reflecting advisedly on the mystery that it is, can derive gain ground from this plurality. It can again take up the puzzle of its unity on the basis of presuppositions that do not rest upon uniformity in its act of theological reflection. The BECs may serve here as a focus and means for verifying this proposition. Among possible methodological options, I would like to netherworldgle out ternion that are embodied in work of comparative ecclesiology.The get-go identifies the ecclesiological billet, organizing the thought of each author virtually a dominant tendency in his whole kit and caboodle this was the approach used by Batista Mondin. 1 The randomness defines a theoretical frame at the start and then uses it to compare distinct ecclesiologies, authors, or schools such was the approach used by Alvaro Quiroz Magana in his thesis. 2 The third inductively works out ecclesiological sticks on the basis of various authors, suggesting the viability and even necessity of using different lessons to articulate an ecclesiology that has been the approach of Avery change in several works. Since it does not focus mainly on authors as Mondin does, or anticipate any theoretical storage-battery grid as does Quiroz Magana, Dulles method lends itself lift out to my target here. I want to verify whether and how BECs bear the brain marks of the church building that have been underscored in late(a) ecclesiologies outside Latin America, and how BECs can amplify and fell light on the content of those ecclesiologies in a different way. Taking my inspiration from Dulles method, then, I will try to expand the content of his depth psychology in ModeL of the church building by counsel specifically on BECs.In his later work, A church building To Believ e in, Dulles really ends up proposing a sixth assume (the church as a confederation of disciples), but I shall not consider that good example specifically here. Its syntheticintegrative character is less adequate to my analytic-comparative purpose here. In Models of the perform Dulles proposes the proximo(a) ecclesiological 1 Batista Mondin, Le nuove ecclesiologie Un surmise attuale della Chiesa (Rome Paoline, 1980). 2 Alvaro Quiroz Magana, Eclesiologia en la teologia de la liberacion (Salamanca Sigueme, 1983). Avery Dulles, Models of the church A Critical Assessment of the perform in whole Its Aspects (Garden City, N. Y. Doubleday, 1974) A church building To Believe in (New York Crossroad, 1982). 606 theological STUDIES models Church as institution, chew, rite, herald, and servant. I shall briefly present the fundamentals of each model, reflecting on the relationship of BECs to the model in question. Church As Institution This is the model to which we have been tralati tiously accustomed.It solidified over the centuries, and we were evangelized and theologically educated in it until the 1950s. Its main campaign lies in understanding the Church as a society, indeed as a perfect society. Its profound Christology views Christ as prophet, priest, and king, with the tercefold function of teaching, sanctifying, and ruling. That rush is carried out by virtue of the power which Christ real from immortal, and which he confers on those who in fact suffer authority and jurisdictional power in the Church the pope, bishops, and priests. olibanum the ecclesiological accent is on the organization and dispensation of power, hence on the juridical dimension. This stress shows up on the three syllabuses of doctrine, sacrament, and administration, which are explicitly linked up with their divine origin. The logical result is the excessive growth in the Church of the clerical and institutional dimension and the relative atrophy of the charismatic element as well as of the significance of the hoi polloi of immortal, particularly the laity.Proper membership in the Church is specify as credence of the same doctrine, confabulation in the same sacraments, and obedient subjection to the same pastorsall that being visibly verified. Obviously the relationship of this look-alike to EECs is remote, by virtue of the characteristics of both(prenominal) the model and BECs. The predominantly vertical conception of power, the resultant structural organization, and the primacy and hegemony accorded to clerical initiative and activity represent something very different from what BECs are really castking andfleshingout in their way of being and animateness the mankind of the Church.By the same token, however, BECs in Brazil, as I said, do contrast with basic communities that have switch offn in the First World, particularly with those that arose in the 1960s. Brazilian BECs al close to always arise by means of the initiative of the hierarc hy and are carry on by their support. Working alongside lay unsophisticated agents, priests and phantasmal overly provide inspiration and motivation. Bishops and priests manipulation jurisdictional power over Brazilian BECs, and the latter(prenominal)(prenominal) recognize and accept this because they consciously pretend themselves as an integral part of the institutional life of the Church as a whole. therefore Brazilian BECs are not resistant to the Church as institution, they do not pose an alternative to it, nor do they absolutize their own way of being Church. Instead they give away themselves as a vital part of the Church, without which they would have no meaning. BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 607 Taking all these factors into account, we can deal that, from an analytical point of view, the Church-as-institution model hardly serves as the dominant ecclesiological inspiration or perspective in the rise of BECs and their existing working.Church As solemnity The Church exi sts in Christ as a sacrament or sign and an instrument of intimate union with immortal and of the unity of the whole man race (Lumen gentium, no. 1). With these intelligence agencys Vatican II summarily bandes and ratifies a theme that was much in picture in the Church Fathers (Cyprian and Augustine) and in the age of academism (Thomas Aquinas). Its elaboration in terms of a more general ecclesiological perspective, however, is fairly recent. This newer perspective views the Church as a sacrament.One felicitous effort of this descriptor was by Otto Semmelroth, and his work inspired many others. 4 Henri de Lubac as well make a significant piece to this approach by using patristic and chivalrous sources. 5 He linked up two dimensions the Christologicalfor us Christ is the sacrament of paragon and the ecclesiologicalfor us the Church is the sacrament of Christ. All the sacraments are essentially sacraments of the Church. The sacraments derive their power of grace from the Ch urch, and with them the Church conks the sacrament it is.Here we have a linkage between the model of the Church as institution (which stresses the apparent man of the socio-ecclesiastical dimension) and the model of the Church as share-out (which stresses the socio-ecc/esiai dimension grow primordially in the inner union of faith, hope, and go to bed). In the Church-as-sacrament model the whole congregation of the faith comes in concert in all its diverse vocations and functions. That explains the fecundity of this approach, which has been explored ecclesiologically by many theologians, particularly since World War II. A sacrament is a sign of something really present, the transparent form of an infrarefiedd grace. It is an legal sign, producing or intensifying the reality it signifies. The sacraments, then, catch the grace they signify and confer the grace they contain. In tradition the sacraments have always been associated with the social dimension of the Church, not w ith the isolated individual, even though they are administered and certain by individuals. For the world being, then, the sacraments bring together Otto Semmelroth, Die Kirche als Ursakrament (Frankfurt/Main Knecht, 1953).Henri de Lubac, Catholicisme (Paris Aubier, 1948). See the following works by way of example da Vinci Boff s doctoral dissertation, Die Kirche als Sakrament im Horizont der Welterfahrung Versuch einer legalization und einer struktur-funktionalistischen Grundlegung der Kirche im Anschluss an das IL Vatikanische Konzil (Paderborn Bonifatius, 1972) Yves Congar, LEglise, sacrement universel du salut, in Cette eglise que jaime (Paris Cerf, 1968) 41-63 P. Smulders, LEglise, sacrement du salut, in G. Barauna, ed. , LEglise de Vatican II2 (Paris Cerf, 1967) 331-38. 5 6 4 08 theological STUDIES and link the visible and inconspicuous orders as well as the individual and social planes. We can sum this up by by expression that Christ is a sacrament and so is the Church. C hrist is the sign and visible presence of the invisible matinee idol, the efficacious power of salvation for the individual and the whole flock of divinity. As institution and communion, the Church is the sign and visible presence of Christ accepted by faith and lived both really and mystically by the ecclesial fellowship of interests in the unity of the same faith. Indeed, the Church is even more sacrament than sign.Through its visible actions the Church not only signifies but dynamically produces and makes visible the reality of salvation that it represents and announces. The Church, then, is a grace-happening, and not just in the sense that it effects and administers the sacraments. It is a grace-happening as well because in the life of believers, who are the Church, we see operating and unfolding faith, hope, love, freedom, justice, peace, reconciliation, and everything else that establishes gentle intercommunion and valet de chambreitys communion with theology.Now let us see how the BECs look in the light of this model, the Church as sacrament. 1. From our examination of the Church-as-institution model, there is no doubt that the BECs see themselves as Church, as part of the visible, institutional, sociological eubstance of the Church, and that they are a specific way of financial backing as such. We also find Church as sacrament in the BECs. They are it within the Church itself in so far as they better support the ecclesial range and presence of lay people, or the poor, in the Church two features less evident in the Churchs concrete structures and functions in recent centuries. put up people and poor people share a core reality. They are both of the grass-roots level, of the base lay people in the Church, poor people in the world. Consequently we get thereby a visible, ecclesial sign of Christs own kenosis, a fundamental Christological dimension (Phil 25-11), which had not piece suitable expression in the Church-as-institution model as lived in the past few centuries. This Christological tie-in, which is lived intensely in BECs, serves as an instrument of grace for bishops, priests, and religious who accept, recognize, or even share the BEC way of being Church. . The BECs have emerged from within a traditionalistic Catholicism.In Brazil that Catholicism was centered around sacramentalization little effort was put into clear-cut evangelization and explanation of the faith. twain in pedagogical intent and in actual practice, BECs put less stress on the traditional approach of sacramentalization. This is obvious to that degree as the old(a) focus on administering and receiving the sacraments signified and re corroborate the hegemony of ordained authority and power. This was characteristic of the earlier unsophisticated BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 09 approach or flowed by nature from it. In the cities it took the form of uniform administration of the sacraments. In rural areas and the interior it took the form of ra pid rid of various sacramental obligations (baptism, confirmation, marriage, penance, and communion) in a very short period, on those rare or sporadic occasions when ordained ministers of the sacraments were on hand (the Brazilian-coined tidings to say it is desobriga, literally discharge of obligation). In both cases the tenor was more individual than communitarian.Administration of the sacraments frequently took place without proper doctrinal preparation and without rightly establishing the inner dispositions required for meeting the ethical and ecclesial prerequisites for participation in the sacraments. Thus sacramentalization was not tied into a clear ecclesial sensation of the scope and significance of the sacraments. The forms of sacramental expression and preparation for them were associated mainly, indeed almost exclusively, with the ordained minister, who was and liquid is scarce and much overworked in Brazil.Through their functions and services, current BECs have be en filling in for ordained authority thus far as they can. Church as sacrament, in the terms indicated by Lumen gentium, finds expression in many ways. The overwhelming growth of sacred authority and power (the first model) had led historically to exclusive attribution of all that to the clergy. Today lay people, in BECs and other ecclesial areas, are serving as ministers to the sick and Eucharistie ministers. They are preparing individuals and communities for baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist.And they are performing other functions for the immediate kind and Christian well-being of individuals and communities. All these activities are clear signs of the Church as sacrament and its efficacious presence, which is not restricted to the seven sacraments alone. The fundamental change is the fact that this whole complex is seen in an ecclesial context. Without denying the vocational and ministerial role and importance of the clergy, BECs have ceased to be tout ensemble depende nt on them.The ordained minister takes his place once again within a club growing increasingly aware of its diverse vocations and functions, which are the presence of grace in the world, for the lowly in particular. 3. Insofar as the seven sacraments as such are concerned, BECs cannot encompassingy realize the Church as sacrament in the anointing of the sick and two other basic points. They are promoters of reconciliation at the level of interpersonal relations between their members, but they cannot effect reconciliation as sacrament.Builders of communion as the only viable root of familiarity, their members cannot realize the wide-cut significance of the mystery of the Eucharist. These sacraments, which are an indispensable part of Christian life, are limit up with the ordained minister. 610 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES Given the current discipline of the Church and the envisioned requisites of formation and life style, there is no way of providing BECs with such ministers. BECs are mu ltiplying rapidly and sporadically in rural areas and urban peripheries.thither are not enough priests for them any quantitatively or qualitatively. By qualitatively here, I am not so much referring to the ministerial qualifications of the priest or his fulfilment of the juridical requisites for exercising his clownish ministry. I am referring to the suitable adaptation of the priestly instance to the BEC way of being Church. For the BEC has its own proper form of communion and participation, integrating various vocations into a more decentralized overall pastoral design base on subsidiarity.This is the present situation, and in the foreseeable future there does not seem to be any thought on the part of the Church as institution to give BECs, or the rest of the Church for that matter, any alternative to the present form of the sacrament of holy orders or to the prerequisites for its reception and exercise. This is a very serious problem pretending churches that are intemperate ly nurtured by the word of God and that consolidate the bonds of communion between their members by fostering ecclesial awareness.In traditional Catholicism and the desobriga paradigm, the Eucharistie question was relativized in one or other way either the ecclesial significance of the sacrament of the Eucharist was not perceived, or the pertinent law of the Church was fulfilled, not very frequently but enough to be considered satisfactory. In the living Church embodied by BECs we see, first and foremost, a cutting awareness of the structural significance of the Eucharist in the Church as sacrament. They are acutely aware of the necessity of the Eucharist, but also of the actual impossible action of their having the Eucharist with its full meaning and reality.This problem cannot be solved adequately by allowing for ejections or by occasional casuistic meter readings. It will have to be faced by the Church as part and parcel of its overall pastoral responsibility. The latter mu st take into account the concrete, diversified reality of the ecclesial body in the world as well as the salvific function of the Church as sacrament, whose core is the Eucharist. Placed at the disposal of military personnel beings, the Eucharist is meant to be the efficacious font of communion between believers, and of their communion with God in saviour Christ.Church As Herald In this model the Church is seen primarily as the bearer of the word of God. Receiving that word, it is to pass it on to human beings. Its connoteing is also a convoking, obstetrical delivery together those who hear and accept the word in faith and who are maintained in faith and union by the strength of the word. Thus the word is constitutive of the Church. BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 611 The Church is the herald of the word, however, not its ultimate addressee. The Church receives the word to announce it. Thus the word emerges as the crucial axis of an ecclesiological perspective that is kerygmatic, p recognitive, and missionary.The two preceding models sprouted on Catholic soil and are civilised there. This model, on the other hand, was nurtured by Protestant reflection. In this century it has been cultivated by Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann in particular. Some of its intuitions share a common subsoil with more ancient Catholic tradition, however, and they emerged again in Vatican II to find theological expression in a Catholic and ecumenical way. In the work of Barth, the Church is the living community of the living Christ. 7 God calls it into being by His grace and gives it life by means of His Word and His Spirit, with a view to His kingdom.Thus the Church is not a fixed fact, an institution, much less an objective of faith. It comes about by Gods action. It is an issuing constituted by the power of the word of God in Scripture, made real today and denote to human beings. This tickle pinked word gives rise to faith, a gift from God that is outside human control. at tha t place is no authority in the Church except the word of God, which is to be left free to call into question the Church itself. Through Gods word the Church is renewed and, above all, urged on to its mission constant annunciation of the salvific event, savior Christ, and of the advent of Gods kingdom.This is the core of Barths centre. The word and its proclamation are not meant to beef up confessional, institutional, social, or political positions, or to abet the elaboration of the Church as a society. In the work of Bultmann8 two crucial points must be considered with adherence to ecclesiology. First, there is his nonhistorical conception of the Church. The result is the absence of any solid sociological or institutional dimension for the Church, and indeed the absence of any intention in Christ himself to establish or build it. indeed the identification of the Church with a historical data point or phenomenon remains ever paradoxical. Second, for Bultmann the word of God remai ns central, along with its proclamation as call, appeal, and invitation. provided his view here is not the same as Barths. Let us look at it a bit more closely. Bultmann, more exegete than doctrinal theologian, sees the Church 7 Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik 4/3 (Munich Kaiser, 1935 and 1967). For a systematic presentation of Barths ecclesiology vis-a-vis Catholic ecclesiology, see the work of Colm OGrady publi toss out by G. Chapman in London Vol. , The Church in the Theology of Karl Barth (1968) Vol. 2, The Church in Catholic Theology Dialogue with Karl Barth (1969). 8 Rudolf Bultmann, Kirche und Lehre im Neuen Testament, in Glauben und Verstehen 1 (Tubingen Mohr, 1966) 153-87 Theologie des Neuen Testaments (Tubingen Mohr, 1948). some(prenominal) works have been ingeminated into English Faith and Understanding A Theology of the New Testament 612 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES as a Pauline creation. It is so on three levels. It is a community of worship, an eschatological community, and a community with a vocation. In the first, the word is proclaimed.In the second, God is made present in the word meaning of deliverer by human beings. In the third, the first becomes prophetic vocation, kerygma that calls for a decision. The ecclesial event emerges in this kerygmatic tenseness of rally and response that the word brings with it, always assumptive someone with credentials who proclaims it and/or a community that hears it and takes on the commitment. The Church comes to be in this faith-happening, which frees the context from any institutional, normative, or legitimating instance. The Church is actuated whenever the kerygma unleashes the summons of God and the response of human beings.There are clear differences between Barth and Bultmann. But they also have a basic affinity with regard to the significance and active role of the word in constituting the Church as a happening. These two theologians espouse the importance of the community to which the word is addre ssed. The word is the gum around which the community gathers. The response of faith given to the word by the community is what gives the latter its meaning and reason for being. Here we can see the clear difference between the Protestant and the Catholic perspective vis-a-vis this model.Vatican II stresses that the Word became human, became flesh. Christ lives on in history by with(predicate) the Church, manifesting in it his message and rescue activity but there he also shares his own being with humans. In the Catholic version the Church-as-institution model is also brought into relationship with the word. The Church as a wholeand some in it by specific functionhas the responsibility of reflexion over the proclamation and interpretation of the word. The Churchs magisterium is not above the word, as Barth claimed. It is under the word, derivation from that word its starting oint, its norm, and its nourishment. In and for the community, the magisterium is the instance of Chris ts power and authority with regard to the stanchness and continuity of his message. The community that hears and accepts it is not just called to proclaim it and bear spectator pump to it it must also represent it into real-life action on both the individual and the social levels. The word of God is central in the ecclesiological aspect of BECs. For them it is the immediate point of reference, the source of inspiration, nourishment, and discernment.Quite oftentimes it is the radical feather catalyst of community. contrary the sacraments, which are not always accessible, the word is always within their reach. But there are profound differences between the BEC focus on the word and that to be found in the ecclesiologies of Barth or Bultmann. BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 613 1. In BECs the word is received within the Church and as Church insofar as the BEC is a way of being Church, or insofar as it is located in the affectionateness of the Church as institution and united with it. This implies the permanent reality of the Church to which the word is addressed.It also implies acceptance of the magisterium, the function in the Church that watches over the interpretation of the word and our fidelity to it. 2. In BECs the word naturally is conveyed by dint of Scripture, which is read, prayed, and reflected upon but all this is done in direct relationship with life. One could put it the other way and say in BECs the everyday life of the members, the Church, and the world are read, prayed over, and reflected upon in relation to the word of God. If it is true for BECs that the Bible is the word of God, it is no less true that God also speaks to us in the language of real life.Bible and life shed light on each other for those who look to them for meaning in faith. The faith and sumuality of BECs are grounded on this foundation. 3. In BECs the symbiosis of word and life is the key to the process of evangelization. In the earlier pastoral paradigm, and particular ly in the quick discharge of sacramental obligation (desobriga), there was little space for the word. The faithful received the word in a more often than not passive way. Their faith was receptive, but it did not feel summoned to commitment and radiation.There was no urgency toward a lasting conversion, on both the individual and social level, as a radical consequence of auditory modality and assimilating the word. This sort of profound transformation (metanoia) and the proclamation of the word to others characterize the BECs insofar as they embody Church as herald, Church of the word of God. Unlike Barths view, however, this proclamation is not dissociated from the world and its problems it is in solidarity with them. Nor is it turned in on the Church and the community of believers, who are exclusively focused on an eschatological kingdom of a future sort.In BECs the word is a summons to lives being lived in the Church and already preparing the kingdom. It summons them to call in to question both the individual person and the world, in order to condition a just society that will turn the word into reality and embody the gospel project in a coherent way. 4. In BECs, then, the word is kerygmatic and prophetic, as it was for Bultmann. It is that insofar as it is the center of a community of frequent de facto non-Eucharistic worship, which lay people can celebrate without the ordained minister they lack.The word is also kerygmatic and prophetic insofar as it belongs to a community focused on the definitive kingdom. Contrary to Bultmanns position, however, this kingdom is tied to the historical Jesus, the Word made human being. Through his word and presence in the Church, this kingdom is already beginning to take 614 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES on shape in the course of history. In BECs the word is kerygmatic especially insofar as it calls for living commitment and a coherent response on both the individual and societal planes. Bultmann requires someone license to proc laim the kerygma.In BECs this accreditation is not primarily rooted in human wisdom or qualifications, though of course such factors are not control out. In BECs the crucial factor is the faith lived by the vast majority of the members in uprightness, simplicity, and poverty as they see their salvation and liberation in spirit and in truth. 5. All this is realized in BECs through the ongoing improving of interpersonal relationships, which give visibleness to ecclesial community rooted in the prior communion in faith, justice, and love. In that sense community is not just the initiative of a God who summons and brings together.It is also the persevering laborious response of human beings journeying day by day through time and facing the problems and conflicts of life. The limits and benefits of BECs vis-a-vis the word have been well brought out by Carlos Mesters, to whom they are obligated(predicate) for a notable service of the word. Officially and scholarly accredited as a minis ter to proclaim the kerygma, he knew how to listen well to the word that God continues to utter in the hearts of the lowly, opening their hearts and minds to an understanding of both God and the human being.Mesters warns us about the risk of subjectivistic interpretation, about the failure to do a judicious, historically situated reading of the text, about the danger of a selective, ideological approach that seeks only confirmation of ones own initial position. He stresses the importance of a solid exegesis that will help the common people to get beyond those problems and also answer to the questions they themselves raise. He insists on the viability of a reading that will take into account the material and material reality of the biblical folk without minify the biblical message to just that.Finally, he tries to make it possible for an urban, industrial world to get impending to the rural book that the Bible is. 9 Church As handmaiden The ecclesiological models considered abov e are markedly centripetal. They prefer to focus on the internal reality of the Church, affirming its vitality and self-sufficiency in relation to the world. The Church teaches, offers a salvific presence, issues ethical norms, and enunciates values. For the far from frank use of the Bible in BECs, see the article by Carlos Mesters in John Eagleson and Sergio Torres, eds. , The Challenge of Basic Christian Communities (Maryknoll, N.Y. Orbis, 1981). For a sample of his own ability to relate biblical exegesis to real human problems, see Carlos Mesters, God, Where Are You? Meditations on the Old Testament (Maryknoll, N. Y. Orbis, 1977). 9 BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 615 The advent of modernity and the growing indecorum exercised by the world drew it further and further away from dependence on the Church and acceptance of it. The Church, in turn, reacted by taking up a defensive, indeed often aggressive, position vis-a-vis the world. Church and world took up hard lines in fence tre nches. 10 Vatican 1 reversed this tendency.It led the Church to see the modern world as an contact with its own identity. This focus can be depict as a belatedly optimistic view of the world. Nevertheless, the Church continues to cherish the hope that it will be able to continue its mission vis-a-vis the world. That mission to the world will be one of service primarily. The important thing for the Church is not to ask into itself and attract a small group that keeps its keep from this world. Instead, it must take its rightful place in the world and then open itself up as a place for dialogue, constructive action, and liberation.Paralleling the whole conciliar shove in the Catholic Church, various theologies of secularization have taken shape in Protestant circles by stages. Their impact on the way to read world and Catholic theology was felt most keenly in the decade of the 1960s. The basically positive thrust of the process of secularization (taken as the human autonomy with r egard to the explanation of the immanent reality) clearly took an increasingly immanentist turn, often enough degenerating into an undesirable secularism (which is the negation of any a priori dimension or reality).Despite some impossible turns and developments, the Western Church has clearly taken an uncontestable stride in reformulating its own reality vis-a-vis the world. The disposition of the whole Church is one of universal service to world as such, which is now seen as one big family or indeed as the People of God. Service (diakonia) becomes the central inspiration of ecclesiology. Though very aware of its frailty and inconsistency, the Church will not retreat into itself.On the basis of its theological anthropology, it will offer the world answers that the world itself has not found, or that the world has missed and perverted in its dizzying find toward immanentism and reductionism. This focus of the Church as servant is, however, still sharply confined. It was the the ological perspective of the North and West immediately following Vatican II. Today, even in those hemispheres, it is being sharply contested, and its limitations are being recognized. It is from different angles that the BECs translate and embody the new diakonia of the Church vis-a-vis the world.In Brazil and the rest of 10 See Marcello Azevedo, Modernidade e Cristianismo (S. Paulo Loyola, 1981) Inkulturation and the Challenges of Modernity (Rome Gregorian Univ. , 1982) J. B. Libanio, A volta a grande disciplina (S. Paulo Loyola, 1983). 616 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES Latin America, there can be no naively positive view of the modern world. The achievements of perception and technology are admitted, and so is the heightened human awareness of such basic elements as human rights, individual freedom, participation in public life, recognition in principle of the equality of all human beings, and other features of modern contemporary culture.But it is impossible not to notice the gap between these theoretical ideals and their actual realization in history, not to mention the actual frustration and perversion of these ideals in many areas. Medellin and Puebla, as well as papal and episcopal postconciliar documents, emphasize the aberrations embodied in seediness, poverty, hunger, oppression, and structural stigmas that mar our reality. In such a context the poor are the ones who suffer most, along with those who are discriminated against and marginalized, crushed and ruined beyond any hope of repair.These are the people who predominantly make up the BECs. Hence this is the concrete way that the Church as BEC manifests its status as servant. In itself it again takes on and lives Christ the Servant in the mission of the suffering people and in the witness it bears in faith, even to the full embodiment of the message in martyrdom. New life is thus given to a Christological component that has long been forgotten or left buried in obscurity. Here we have a Church that serve s and fulfils itself in service to the world.It does this through the diakonia of a faith, conscious of the gift given to us in Jesus Christ. This gift is not, however, the privilege of a chosen few it is the responsibility of all. This responsibility is lived in the urge to denounce and call into question the sociostructural organization that has produced such an unjust society. It does this by identifying clear-cut forms of institutionalized violence in all their shapes. It does this by insisting on radical changes through relations of communion and participation among human beings.Moreover, in BECs the Church becomes a servant by serving the common people without replacing them in either the Church or the world in a paternalistic way. It recognizes that they too have the right to take the initiative in carrying through their own process of maturation and liberation, both religious and civil, after centuries of denial, tutelage, or marginalization. In this perspective of active ec clesial participation, BECs are a Church that eminently serves the other forms of being Church as well as the other vocations and charisms in the Church. 1 11 This model, which stresses the urgent necessity of service as a consequence of faith, spells out the specific nature of Christian faith in full consistency with the tradition of ancient Israel and with the Gospel message. Both stressed the necessity of fleshing out in reality what one believed. Faith, then, cannot be understand solely in terms of assent or conviction it must be translated into real-life action. There is a strong echo of the Gospel message (Mt 25 and Lk 1025-37) in the insistence on a theology of service as an underlying BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 17 Church As Communion/Community The model of Church as community founded on communion is the one that emanates most directly from the explicit ecclesiology of Vatican II. It stands in marked contrast to the hegemonic model (Church as institution) that was regarded as the primary interpretation of the mystery of the Church for ten centuries as least(prenominal), and that was practically the dominant interpretation in the last five centuries. Nevertheless, the communitarian conoeption of the Church goes back to Scripture itself and was modishly upheld in the patristic era.It medals through many phases of church history with regard to the ecclesial body as a whole and with regard to specific vocations within the Church, particularly in the evolution of the religious life. Thus in its ecclesiological perspective Vatican II taps roots grounded in tradition and the Bible and rediscovers one of the most fruitful facets of ecclesial inspiration throughout church history. 12 Here the Church is the community that is established in communion with God and between human beings.It embraces and pervades the part of an unmistakably Christian praxis. The term praxis is not synonymous with practice insofar as the latter term simply means action or behavior nor is praxis the opposite of theory. Praxis is a concrete form of historical commitment and involvement, stemming from a threefold awareness that history is made in time and that it is the result of human actions stemming from concrete choices. Praxis, then, is the conscious making of history, and Christian praxis is the concrete living out of the historical dimensions of the faith.Christian praxis is the daily, long-run embodiment and direction given to the service that faith demands. See F. Taborda, Fe crista e praxis historica, Revista Eclesiastica Brasileira 41 (1981) 250-78. This notion of praxis has been much discussed by various liberation theologians, including Gustavo Gutierrez, Juan Luis Segundo, Leonardo Boff, and Jon Sobrino. For a sophisticated and lancinating examination of the complexities of modern historical reality in the industrialized nations and Latin America, see chapters 1013 of Juan Luis Segundo, Faith and Ideologies (Maryknoll, N.Y. Orbis, 1984) 249-34 0. 12 See Pier Cesare Bori, Koinonia LIdea della comunione neUeclesiologia recente e nel Nuovo Testamento (Brescia Paideia, 1972) id. , Chiesa primitiva LImmagine della comunita delle originiAtti 242-47 432-37nella storia della chiesa antica (Brescia Paideia, 1974) Yves Congar, LEglise de nonsuch Augustin a lepoque moderne (Paris Cerf, 1970) Jerome Hamer, LEglise est une communion (Paris Cerf, 1962) Emil Brunner, Das Missverstandnis der Kirche (Zurich Zwingli, 1951) id. Dogmatik 3 Die christliche Lehre von der Kirche, vom Glauben, und von der Vollendung (Zurich Zwingli, 1960). For Brunner, the Church is pure fraternal communion bearing witness to love. The antithesis between communion and institution is the core and guiding thread of his ecclesiology. In Dulles first model (Church as institution), the Church stands above the faithful, as it were it is extrinsic to them in a certain sense. In Church-as-communion ecclesiologies, the Church is the community of all the faithful living a life of communion.Bellarmine opposed institution to communion. Brunner opposes communion to institution. Hamer sees communion lived out only in the institution. BECs start from communion as experiential living in the light of faith to reflect consciously on their ecclesial participation in the Church as institution, which they would never imagine to be adequate without the living experience of communion. 618 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES People of God in the multiplicity of their gifts, vocations, services, and functions.It embraces the Church at every level, particularly in its appreciation of episcopal collegiality and local churches. It is no less open to other Christian denominations, non-Christian religions, and all human beings who genuinely search for love, truth, and justice. There have been frequent manifestations of this spirit, from the first encyclical of Paul VI (Ecclesiam suam) to the outlook underlying the basic structure of the new Code of legislation Law. It might be ass umed that all this was inspired and dictated merely by sociological imperatives. That is not the case.The People of God, the image of the Church most esteem by Vatican II, is a great community but it is so under the action of the Holy Spirit. The members of this People, who are seen in terms of equality, dignity, and freedom, receive the very same Spirit and act under that Spirit audition and proclaiming the word of God in the unity of the same faith and mission. In this model of the Church as communion/community, both Medellin and Puebla will find their common basis and their great mediation for an evangelization that is humanizing, transforming, and liberating.The BEC is indicated as the primary and proper scenario for the concrete embodiment of this communion. Sociologically, it implements a new pattern of personal and social relationships. Ecclesiologically, it is a common center for reading and interpreting life and for auditory sense the word of God, for union among those w ho believe, and for service to all through the various ministries that arise out of the needs of the community and dovetail with ito varied vocations and charisms.The BEC amalgamates and integrates the conscious, subsidiary coresponsibility of all, under the action of one and the same Spirit, into the total body of one and the same Church. Here again we come across a central element that sheds light on the whole complex. These BECs have been in fact ecclesial communities of poor people, marked by a structural poverty stronger than the poor themselves. In a glaring way it bears witness to the absence of communion and solidarity between human beings in our current societies, to the prevailing power of detriment that destroys the human being and nullifies Gods plan for humanity.Thus the BECs are a call to conversion of heart and to the re-establishment of justice in love, which will make possible communion in faith and mission. As a community that unites hearts, the BECs are no less a force for the transformation of a world that divides and crushes. They are insofar as they try to unravel to the world and the Church the reality of communion that they themselves are already trying to live as communities. The little patch of the People of God that is living in each BEC, an initial cell as Medellin puts it, is a sign andBASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 619 sacrament of the People of God that Vatican II sees as the Church, and that it would like to project over the world as a whole. In BECs, then, the ecclesiological model of Church as communion/ community ceases to be a theoretical variable of ecclesiological analysis. It becomes the existential witness to a reality of the Church, which is growing in communion and participation to become a community.In the BECs this model is a promising prototype of the necessary, ongoing process of historical becoming that is to culminate in the eschatological kingdom, where community is to be lived in full, definitive communion. THE soteriological COMPONENT In discussing these various ecclesiological models, I mentioned several times their underlying Christological component. I do not want to end this article without also alluding briefly to the importance of the soteriological conception these models may derive from their association with BECs as a way of being Church.The mystery of the Church is intimately bound up with the mystery of Jesus Christ, and no less with the understanding of his mission. This, in turn, is reflected in the conception of the ecclesial mission. Thus ecclesiology, Christology, and soteriology shed light on one another and help to explain one another. The salvation and repurchase given to us by the Father in and through Jesus Christ (the meaning of his life and mission) is to be realized on at least three levels.They can be distinguished from one another analytically, but they are interwoven in reality. For the historical destiny of humanity must be oriented in line with its eschatolog ical destiny, in the indissoluble unity of the proclamation and realization of the kingdom, which is to be initiated here but find its ultimate ending only in the eschaton. The first level is the save and saving liberation from sin that marks the human race as a whole and the individual human person.The second level has to do with sin in terms of its interpersonal and social projections, insofar as it expresses the perversion of Gods plan as manifested in the concrete human organization of social, economic, and political realities that have been created by human beings and that affect humanity. The third level has to do with liberation from sin as the latter is incorporated into the gestation of culture and history over centuries, which in turn is often the wellspring of sin on the two other levels and vice versa.These three levels of salvation, redemption, and liberation are a replica of Gods activity with the people of Israel, hence of the history of our salvation as knowing by God. redemption, redemption, or liberation cannot be understood solely from the divine side, i. e. , as our ransom from sin through Gods initiative and His new openness to a covenant of love with human beings in and 620 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES through Jesus Christ. incomplete can it be understood solely in a directly anthropological sense that is not sufficiently existential, i. e. salvation as the fulness of human conversance and total opening up to the absolute, as a teleological orientation to the definitive, eschatological future of humanity. Salvation, redemption, and liberation must further be understood as the Pauline exigency that human beings also respond to, and ally themselves with, God and His project to liberate humanity with respect to the consequences of sin (Romans 2 and 7). Throughout history those consequences leave their mark not only on the life of the individual but also, and even more so, on the social context of the world.In the BECs we do find the soteriologi cal key of the various ecclesiological models mentioned, a key that tends to stress the first level of redemption just noted. But everything I have been manifestation about the BECs with respect to the ecclesiological dimension of these models implies a twofold emphasis in the soteriological perspective, which is paramount in the ecclesial awareness of our day. The first says that human beings are, by the saving power of Jesus Christ, an active party in carrying on the process of salvation and liberation in history.Just as they were agents in the deformation of Gods plan through their human sin, so they express the new life given to them in Jesus Christ through their real-life embodiment of the love and justice that he has re-established. It is the realization of the Word, made Salvation a biblical exigency throughout the two Testaments. A second emphasis is also affirmed in the BECs, communities of poor people. They see themselves as the primary subjects in setting in motion and trigger off this process of realizing salvation through the transformation of sins consequences.In fact, they are the real-life victims of injustice-made sin in the world in which we live. Hence it is they who can best perceive the rupture between such injustice and Gods project. To be or become poor is to perceive this from the standpoint and condition of the poor whatever our social and economic condition might be. Here is picked up the primary inspiration of Jesus own life and mission (Lk 318-21), which must necessarily be reaffirmed in the life and mission of the Church. 3 13 In a extroverted book, Basic Ecclesial Communities in Brazil, which is to be published in English by Georgetown University Press, I examine the origin and formation of Brazilian BECs, their evangelizing potential, and the rich novelty of their pastoral paradigm. I also explore them as a theological topic, and the challenges they may pose to the overall process of evangelization. A Portuguese version of the present article is being published by the Brazilian ledger Perspectiva teologica (Sept. -Dec. 1985).