Abstract
While global migration poses a number of challenges in the life of Christian communities, it also provides a fresh opportunity for them to discover anew what the Church is at its very core—a community of believers that is constantly “on the move.” As a community of spiritual migrants, the Church faces the challenges of continual dislocation and transition on its journey towards its full participation in the life of a Triune God, who himself is Deus Migrator. This chapter offers some constructive suggestions for articulating a highly dynamic and theologically rooted vision of a migrant church for migrants. It argues that it is only by reawakening to the Spirit’s movement within, through, and around them that the community of believers can hope to re-discover their own nomadic nature and become open to embracing fellow migrants and committed to reducing their suffering. Through such encounters, the Church does not only serve the ones in need but can also itself be profoundly transformed towards what it is intended to be—ecclesia migrans.
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Notes
- 1.
The term “migrant” is used here as a general sense that includes migrant workers and their families, international students, professionals, or refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons and victims of human trafficking, and other kinds of people that find themselves uprooted from their original place of dwelling. For a more detailed analysis of the multifaceted and ambivalent nature of the present-day migration, see World Council of Churches (WCC), The “Other” Is My Neighbour: Developing an Ecumenical Response to Migration (Geneva: WCC, 2015), 37–49.
- 2.
Ibid., 37; Pew Research Center, Faith on the Move (March 2012), https://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2012/03/Faithonthemove.pdf, accessed 15 January 2020.
- 3.
“‘Who is My Neighbour?’ Migration and the Ecclesial Landscape: An Ecumenical Response to Migration,” WCC Concept Paper (2012), 1, https://urc.org.uk/images/mission/at_home_strange/The_Other_Is_My_Neighbour_WC.pdf, accessed 12 Feb. 2020.
- 4.
WCC, The “Other,” 7–15.
- 5.
Ibid., 7–8.
- 6.
A. T. Lincoln, “Pilgrimage and the New Testament,” in Explorations in a Christian Theology of Pilgrimage, eds. Craig G. Bartholomew and Fred Hughes (Burlington: Ashgate, 2004), 28–49.
- 7.
Peter C. Phan, “Church of Migrants and Migrant Church: Overcoming an Ecclesiology of Indifference,” keynoted address at the conference The Church and Migration: Global (In)difference? Toronto, Canada (June 2018).
- 8.
WCC, The “Other,” 9.
- 9.
Robert Jenson, “The Church as Communio,” in The Catholicity of the Reformation, eds. Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 1.
- 10.
Dennis M. Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology: Vision and Versions (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2000), 12; Lorelei F. Fuchs, Koinonia and the Quest for an Ecumenical Ecclesiology: From Foundations through Dialogue to Symbolic Competence for Communionality (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 25–43.
- 11.
Herwi Rikhof, The Concept of Church: A Methodological Inquiry into the Use of Metaphors in Ecclesiology (London: Sheed and Ward, 1981), 233–35.
- 12.
For instance, Zizioulas defines the church as “a set of relationships making up a mode of being, exactly as is the case of the Trinitarian God.” John D. Zizioulas, “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian Contribution,” in Trinitarian Theology Today: Essays on Divine Being and Act, ed. Christoph Schwobel (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1995), 27. In other words, the church is a “reflection” of God’s relational way of being. See, John D. Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 38 (1994): 7.
- 13.
Scott MacDougall, More Than Communion: Imagining an Eschatological Ecclesiology (London: T. & T. Clark, 2015), 76.
- 14.
John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s, 1985).
- 15.
Joseph Ratzinger, Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1996).
- 16.
Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998).
- 17.
For a more thorough critical and comparative analysis of the concept of koinonia in the writings of these three authors see Tihomir Lazić, “Koinonia: A Critical Analysis and Comparison of Koinonia within Joseph Ratzinger’s, John Zizioulas’ and Miroslav Volf’s Versions of ‘Communion Ecclesiology’” (MA Thesis, University of Wales Lampeter, 2008). The next section of this essay will briefly highlight some of the most important conclusions of my MA thesis. See http://n10308uk.eos-intl.eu/eosuksql01_N10308UK_Documents/Dissertations/Lazic.pdf, 18 Feb. 2020.
- 18.
Ibid., 95–96.
- 19.
For a more detailed analysis of the inadequacies of the Imitatio Trinitatis approach, see ibid., 104–09.
- 20.
Ibid., 122–27.
- 21.
For a more extensive exposition and assessment of the potentials of the participatio Trinitatis approach, see Tihomir Lazić, Towards an Adventist Version of Communio Ecclesiology: Remnant in Koinonia (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
- 22.
Gregory J. Liston, The Anointed Church: Toward a Third Article Ecclesiology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 12–13.
- 23.
Karl Barth, The Humanity of God (Richmond: John Knox, 1972), 24–25.
- 24.
Liston, Anointed Church, 13.
- 25.
These include authors writing from the perspective of Roman Catholicism (Yves Congar, Ralph Del Colle, David Coffey), Protestant denominations (Lyle Dabney, Myk Habets, Gary Badcock, Clark Pinnock) and ecumenical traditions (Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Amos Yong, Miroslav Volf, Steven Studebaker).
- 26.
Liston, Anointed Church, 14.
- 27.
Ibid.
- 28.
For further explanation of these four principles, see Lazić, Towards an Adventist Version of Communio Ecclesiology, 231–233.
- 29.
Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 67–122.
- 30.
Ibid., 129; J. McIntyre, “The Holy Spirit in Greek Patristic Thought,” The Scottish Journal of Theology 7 (1954): 357.
- 31.
Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 126–29; Yves Congar, The Word and the Spirit (London: Chapman, 1986), 1.
- 32.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 57–58; Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen and Amos Yong, Toward a Pneumatological Theology: Pentecostal and Ecumenical Perspectives on Ecclesiology, Soteriology and Theology of Mission (Lanham: University Press of America, 2002); Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 129.
- 33.
Herschel Odell Bryant, Spirit Christology in the Christian Tradition: From the Patristic Period to the Rise of Pentecostalism in the Twentieth Century (Cleveland: CPT, 2014), 512–520. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 129.
- 34.
According to Zizioulas, the church is constituted in and through the action of the Father, Son, and the Spirit, forming an ontological category in ecclesiology. See Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 132. Elizabeth Teresa Groppe, “The Contribution of Yves Congar’s Theology of the Holy Spirit,” Theological Studies 62 (2001): 451–478.
- 35.
This thesis has been convincingly established in: Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 132.
- 36.
Lazić, Towards an Adventist Version of Communio Ecclesiology, 231–233.
- 37.
Cheryl Bridges Johns, “Overcoming Holy Spirit Shyness in the Life of the Church,” Vision (May 2012): 6.
- 38.
Liston, Anointed Church, 12–14.
- 39.
For a more comprehensive account of how the Holy Spirit works within, through, and around us, see Lazić, Towards an Adventist Version of Communio Ecclesiology, 193–201. The following section of this constructive proposal is a summary of the insights reached in this doctoral thesis.
- 40.
The phrase “works of the flesh,” according to Paul, involves: “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.” See Gal. 5:19–21.
- 41.
Gal. 5:22–23.
- 42.
R. Norman Gulley, Systematic Theology: God as Trinity (Berrien Springs: Andrews University, 2011), 74.
- 43.
2 Pet. 1:3–8.
- 44.
“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another,” Jn. 13:35.
- 45.
Richard Rice, “The Trinitarian Basis of Christian Community,” in Biblical and Theological Studies on the Trinity, eds. Paul Petersen and Rob McIver (Adelaide: Avondale Academic, 2014), 101–111.
- 46.
The true knowledge mentioned in 2 Pet. 1:3 refers to the experiential knowledge that involves all the facets of the human being: the mind, heart, and body. It implies the most intimate relationship between two or more persons (Hebrew: yada’; Greek: epignosis).
- 47.
Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology, 13.
- 48.
Volf, After Our Likeness, 228–233.
- 49.
Hans Küng, The Church (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968), 173–191.
- 50.
For a detailed exposition of these five principles, see Lazić, Towards an Adventist Version of Communio Ecclesiology, 249–254.
- 51.
Volf, After Our Likeness, 129.
- 52.
This sentence is a translation of the Latin phrase: ubi Spiritus Dei, illic Ecclesia, et omnis gratia. See Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, 3.24.1.
- 53.
Newbigin, The Open Secret, 18.
- 54.
Moltmann is one of many modern authors who affirm a close connection between the political and economic event of liberation and the experience of the Holy Spirit. See, for instance: Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International and Contextual Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 154; Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992).
- 55.
Michael Welker, God the Spirit (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 16–17; Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991). A Belgian theologian, long resident in Brazil, José Comblin, sees a modern reappearance of the experience of the Spirit manifested in the social realm in the heightened desire to engage in social action, in the experience of freedom, in the growing need to speak out for the poor and marginalized, in the experience of community, and in a new aspiration for life. See José Comblin, The Holy Spirit and Liberation (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1989), xi. Similarly, Moltmann talks about the liberating work of the Spirit in three dimensions, associating them with three classical virtues: (1) liberating faith: freedom as subjectivity; (2) liberating love: freedom as sociality; and (3) liberating hope: freedom as future. For more details, see Moltmann, A Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, 114–120.
- 56.
Nicholas M. Healy, Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2000), 69.
- 57.
Paul S. Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 256.
- 58.
Cf. Jn. 1:18.
- 59.
The Spirit’s indwelling in the church seals it and transforms it into a “first instalment” and “first fruit” of the realized cosmic reign of God. For an explanation of these anticipatory analogies, see David Ewert, The Holy Spirit in the New Testament (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1983), 280–300.
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Lazic´, T. (2021). Ecclesia Semper Migranda: Towards a Vision of a Migrant Church for Migrants. In: Dias, D.J., Skira, J.Z., Attridge, M.S., Mannion, G. (eds) The Church, Migration, and Global (In)Difference. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54226-9_14
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