Theology
“The Church — the Kingdom of Christ already present in mystery — grows visibly in the world through the power of God” (LG 3).
Our goal: To study and develop the Council’s recovery of the mystery of the Church, intimately intertwined with the mystery of the Incarnation. This twofold mystery provides the only theological framework fully adequate for evangelization and proclamation today.
“Christ, the one Mediator, established and continually sustains here on earth His holy Church, the community of faith, hope and charity, through which He communicates truth and grace to all. But, the society structured with hierarchical organs, and the Mystical Body of Christ, are not to be considered as two realities, nor are the visible assembly and the spiritual community, nor the earthly Church and the Church enriched with heavenly things; rather they form one complex reality which coalesces from a divine and a human element. For this reason, by no weak analogy, it is compared to the mystery of the incarnate Word” (LG 3; 8).
“Wishing in His supreme goodness and wisdom to effect the redemption of the world, when the fullness of time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman…that we might receive the adoption of sons (Gal. 4.4). ‘For us and for our salvation, He came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary.’ This divine mystery of salvation is revealed to us and continued in the Church, which the Lord established as His body. Joined to Christ the Head and in the unity of fellowship with all His saints, the faithful must in the first place reverence the memory ‘of the glorious ever Virgin Mary, Mother of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ … As truly Mother of God and of the Redeemer … she is at the same time ‘the mother of the members of Christ, since she has by her charity joined in bringing about the birth of believers who are members of the [body’s] Head’” (LG 52&53, citing the Creed, the First Eucharistic Prayer, and St. Augustine).
Our mode: To contour our theology to the Marian mystery, which resists abstraction in all its forms: of the divine Person of the Word from the humanity of Christ, of the mystical body from the visible Church, of Mary from Christ, of the Church from Mary, and of the poor away from Christ who, in Mary, emptied Himself into our poverty. Thereby we contour our theology to the beauty of the mysteries of the faith, which like all beauty is always concrete and never an abstraction, especially where it is unexpected, since He had no form or beauty, that would attract us to Him.
“Sacred Scripture is the utterance of God put down in writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit” (DV 9).
“The Church has always regarded and continues to regard the scriptures, taken together with sacred tradition, as the supreme rule of her faith. … Sacred theology relies on the written Word of God, taken together with sacred tradition, as its permanent foundation” (DV 21&24).
A dominant theme: The primacy of biblical imagery and vocabulary in a theology fully adequate for evangelization and proclamation. Taking a cue from the use of biblical imagery in conciliar documents, these Spirit-proposed, Spirit-filled and Tradition-received images, such as “Body of Christ,” “Bride of Christ,” “Temple of the Holy Spirit,” and “People of God,” resist reduction to concepts, preserve the beauty and life-giving force of the mysteries of the faith, and inspire the love of Christ and the Church that motivates continuing conversion.