Ecclesial Learning and the Limits of Kenosis in the Life of Doctrine

Keywords: ecclesial learning, kenosis, doctrinal theology, magisterium, divine pedagogy

Abstract

In the twentieth century, ecumenical ecclesiology increasingly turned to Christ’s self-emptying or kenosis (Phil. 2:5-11) as a path to ecclesial renewal and unity. Taking the kenotic motif as a normative ecclesiological paradigm, these ecclesiologists urge collective conversion through ecclesial learning, imitating Christ’s humble self-abnegation by adopting a renunciatory posture towards beliefs, status, and identity. However, when applied to the Church’s ad extra teaching ministry, this ad intra kenoticism appears to hamstring magisterial authority, relativise core doctrinal convictions, and destabilise ecclesial identity. And as secular scepticism and other religions’ dogmatic confidence challenge the credibility of Church teaching, these implications for the life of doctrine have generated suspicion towards kenotic ecclesiology and even non-kenotic appeals for ecclesial learning. 

In this thesis, I seek to address such suspicion through a constructive critique of kenotic approaches to the life of doctrine. Rather than its understanding of doctrine, I diagnose kenotic ecclesiology’s primary defect as the Christology implied by that understanding. Kenotic ecclesiology derives its norms from an inherited interpretation of kenosis that implicitly distorts the Christ-event, which is reflected in its conclusions about ecclesial mediation of that Christ-event. Rather than outright rejecting the important motif of kenosis, I suggest a revision of kenotic ecclesiology, beginning from christological principles instead of ecclesiological problems. I hypothesise that such a constructive approach can lead to an account of the life of doctrine which maintains ecclesiological and christological integrity without rejecting the kenotic motif as a normative framework.

Thinking through the works of major contributors to kenotic ecclesiology (Michael Ramsey, Donald MacKinnon, and the Groupe des Dombes), I identify the Christology implicit in each kenotic approach to doctrine, demonstrating how the problematic narrations of the Christ-event undermine the contributors’ broader theological projects. I then engage with Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Barth, and various Patristic sources to develop three criteria for a kenotic ecclesiology which preserves its christological integrity. Finally, I draw on pragmatic-idealist epistemology, Balthasar’s dramatic theory, and his analogical approach to divine revelation, offering methodological tools for constructing kenotic ecclesiology along christological lines and sketching the possible shape of a revised kenotic approach to ecclesial learning and the Church’s teaching ministry.