This book considers the problem of how to negotiate diversities in identity and practice within the unity of ecclesial relationship. As it has arisen in ecumenical and intra-church contexts, this problem often presents itself as a problem of "recognition." This project gives theological grounding to the concept of ecclesial recognition by supplementing it with insights from Continental philosophy (particularly Hegelian intersubjective recognition), literary theory (particularly the poetic concept of anagnôrisis as it operates in biblical texts), and Pneumatology (particularly in the Augustinian tradition.) While self-consciously situating itself in contrast to trinitarian ecclesiologies, this book follows the work of Eberhard Ju]ngel to propose a correspondence between the existence of the church and the existence of the triune God, in that both exist as "a communion of mutual otherness."
This ecclesiological proposal is possible because of a constructive Pneumatology, based in the principles of Augustine's doctrine of the Holy Spirit and carried through the writings of Ju]ngel. Ultimately the book argues that, both ecumenically and intra-ecclesially, it is the "person" of the Holy Spirit who effects the unity of the churches within diversity through recognition. This argument is an explicit attempt to conceive of ecclesial unity in a manner transcending strategies that negotiate differences by means of polity and structures of "visible" unity, which can function to flatten diversity, vilify difference, and catastrophize conflict, and which may ultimately prove ecclesiologically idolatrous. This work seeks to articulate an overarching ecclesial Pneumatology, which can provide a framework for containing issues of conflict and difference.
