Systematic Theology VII: Ecclesiology

The doctrine of the church, following directly on pneumatology (ST6) and presupposing the doctrine of salvation (ST5) - the church is the community the Spirit forms out of those salvation has already reached.

The course opens with the church's nature and origin: the biblical images and definitions of ekklesia, the church's Old Testament roots and New Testament founding at Pentecost, the visible/invisible distinction, the classical marks and attributes of the church, and the boundaries of church membership. It then takes up church government: why polity is a theological question and not merely an administrative one, the episcopal, presbyterian, and congregational systems each argued on their own biblical and historical grounds, and the offices of elder and deacon, including the complementarian/egalitarian debate over women in ordained office. The third chapter covers the sacraments or ordinances: how to frame the sacrament/ordinance question itself, the credobaptist/paedobaptist debate over baptism's meaning and mode, the four major views of the Lord's Supper, who may be admitted to the table, and how the sacraments function pastorally as means of grace. The fourth turns to worship: a biblical theology of the gathered church, the regulative and normative principles of worship, the centrality of preaching, the elements of corporate worship including the church's ongoing disputes over music and liturgy, and worship across cultures. The fifth chapter takes up the church's mission in the world: the historic and continuing debate over evangelism and social action, models of the church's relationship to culture and to the state, the church and social justice, and the church's global sending task in an era when Christianity's demographic center has moved to the Global South. The course closes with contemporary issues: the church growth and megachurch movement, church discipline and accountability in an age of institutional scandal, ecumenism and the tension between unity and truth, the digital church and technology, and the global shift shaping the church's future.

Six chapters plus an introduction, thirty-one lectures. Scripture is quoted from the World English Bible. Episcopal, Presbyterian, congregational, Reformed, Baptist, Catholic, Orthodox, and Pentecostal/charismatic positions are each named with their strongest advocates wherever they genuinely differ, because this course's readers belong to nearly all of these polities and sacramental traditions at once.