This document discusses the use of models in ecclesiology. It describes how the church has been modeled using images and symbols from scripture like the body of Christ, bride of Christ, flock, and more. It also describes how the church has been modeled institutionally with teaching, sanctifying, and governing functions. While institutional models provided structure, they risked legalism and clericalism. Overall, multiple complementary models are needed to understand the church's mystery since no single model can adequately capture its richness.

1. THE USE OF MODELS IN ECCLESIOLOGY

2. • Model
• a system or thing used as an example to
follow or imitate. A systematic description
of an object or phenomenon that shares
important characteristics with the object or
phenomenon.

3. • Ecclesiology
• 1. The study of churches, especially church
building and decoration.
• 2.
• theology as applied to the nature and structure
of the Christian Church.

4. “The one true Church is the community of
men brought together by the profession of
the same Christian faith and conjoined in
the communion of the same sacraments,
under the government of the legitimate
pastors and especially the one vicar of
Christ on earth, the roman pontiff”

5. Our church is comprises of three
elements: 1) profession of true faith
2) communion of sacraments 3)
submission to legitimate pastors.

6. The term “mystery “has been used in
many ways in the biblical and non-
biblical religions. example is
“unsearchable richness”(Eph. 3:8)

7. “Mystery”
•Lack of intelligibility
•Richness of the Church
itself

8. So, how are we going to
understand the Church if it is
defined as mystery?

9. Among the positive tools that
have been used to illuminate the
mysteries of faith we must
consider, in the first place,
images.

10. The Church has been described, in its
two thousand years, not so much by
verbal definitions as in the light of
images. Most of the images are, of
course, strictly biblical.

11. REVEALING IMAGES OF THE SCRIPTURE
• The building raised by Christ
• The house of God
• The temple and tabernacle of
God
• His people
• His flock
• His vine
• His field
• His city
• The pillar of truth
• The bride of Christ
• His mystical Body

12. 8TH CENTURY FINDS THE CHURCH IN:
• Eve and Mary
• Abraham and sarah
• Tamar
• Rahab
• Mary Magdalene
• Women with the flux of blood
• Valiant women of proverbs,
zacchaeus
• Canaanite women
• The ark of Noah
• Temple
• Vine
• Paradise
• Moon, etc.

13. • In these images it is difficult to draw the line between
the proper and metaphorical usage.
They speak to man existentially and finds an echo in the
inarticulate depths of his psyche. Such images
communicate through their evocative power

14. Symbols transform the horizons of
man’s life, integrate his perception of
reality, alter his scales of values,
reorient his loyalties, attachments,
and aspirations in a manner far
exceeding the power of abstract
conceptual thought.

15. Religious images used in the bible and
Christian preaching, focus our experience in
a new way. They have an aesthetic appeal,
and are apprehended not simply by the mind
but by the imagination, the heart, or, more
properly, the whole man

16. • To be fully effective, images must
be deeply rooted in the corporate
experience of the faithful.
• In religious education a constant
education must be made to find
images that faithfully communicate
the Christian experience with God.

17. • The question is, does given image is
readily available and meaningful to the
ordinary Christian in the pews?
• For example, lambs, wolves, sheep,
vines and grapes, kings and patriarchs.

18. Images should be taken in a
reflective, discriminative way.

19. When image (can be readily imagined) is
employed reflectively and critically to
deepen one’s theoretical understanding
of the reality it becomes what is today
called a “model”.

20. • Some models are also images.
• In architecture, models can be design or plan
• In educational institution, models can be
instructional materials

21. MODELS IN THEOLOGY
• Explanatory
• Models serves to synthesize what we already know or at are inclined to
believe.
• Example. The gospel parables of growth such as those of the wheat and
tares, the mustard seed, and the leaven, have been valued because they
give intelligibility to phenomena encountered in the Christian community
since its origin, for example, its capacity for rapid expansion.

22. • These images suggest how it is
possible for the Church to change
its shape and size without losing its
individuality.

23. EXPLORATORY
• Capacity to lead to new theological insight.

24. • Theology has an abiding objective in the past
that is, in the revelation that was given once and
for all in Jesus Christ.
• The present experience of grace enters
intrinsically into the method of theology. Thanks
to the ongoing experiences of the Christian
community, theology can discover aspects of the
gospel of which Christians were not previously
conscious.

25. •
• Example: Servant Model of the Church, this
is a relatively new model, based on the
biblical image of Israel, and later of Christ
as servant of God.

26. • The mystery of the Church is not a
mere object of theological
knowledge; it is something to be
lived, something that the faithful
soul can have a kind of connatural
experience of, even before arriving
at a clear notion of it.

27. • Paul in the chapter of Galatians calls
the fruits of the Holy Spirit love, joy
peace, patience, kindness and a like.
• Knowledge, theory, and practice are
inseparable united.

28. • The models used in theology
are not scale reproductions
or “analogue models”

29. • The correspondence with the
mystery of the Church is only
partial and functional, models
are necessarily inadequate.

30. WHAT IS THE BEST IMAGE/MODEL TO DEFINE
THE CHURCH?
• In order to offset the defects of the
individual models, the theologian,
like the physicist, employs a
combination of irreducibly distinct
models.

31. • Mystical body of Jesus Christ. “if
we would define and describe this
true Church of Jesus Christ-which
is the One, Holy, Catholic,
Apostolic, Roman Church”

32. OTHER IMAGES/MODELS OF THE CHURCH
• People of God
• Church as sacrament
• Church as servant
• Church as healer
• In Philippines, Church as Church of the poor

33. • Because images are derived from finite realities
of experience, they are never adequate to
represent the mystery of grace.
• Instead of searching for some absolutely best
images, it would be advisable to recognize that
the manifold images given to us be the scripture
and tradition are mutually complementary.

34. CHAPTER 2 THE CHURCH AS
INSTITUTION

35. • Institutionalism- emphasis
on organization at the
expense of other factor.

36. • Some understanding about the Church “the
church as institution”
• Church is here describe as analogies from
political society
• Church is essentially a single concrete historical
society having “constitution, a set of rules,
governing body, and a set of actual members
who accept this constitution and these rules as
binding on them.

37. • Church as society by its very nature
tends to highlight the structure of
government.
• The church defines primarily in terms
of its visible a structure, especially
rights and powers of its officer.

38. •
• It has had recognized minister, accepted formulas and
prescribe forms of public worship.
• Institutionalism we mean a system in which the
institutional element is treated as primary
• Institutionalism is a deformation of the true nature of
the Church.

39. INSTITUTIONALIST ECCLESIOLOGY THE
POWERS AND FUNCTIONS OF THE CHURCH ARE
GENERALLY DIVIDED INTO THREE:
• Teaching
• Sanctifying
• Governing

40. TEACHING FUNCTION
• Teaching function, it resembles a
school in which the master, as sacred
teachers, hand down doctrine of Christ.

41. SANCTIFYING
• The pope and bishops, assisted by
priest and deacons, are describe
somewhat as if they were
engineers opening and shutting the
value of grace.

42. GOVERNMENT
• Hierarchy have ministerial
function, transmitting the
doctrine and grace of Christ
himself.

43. • The hierarchal conception of authority.
The church is not conceived as a
democratic or representative society, but as
one in which the fullness of power is
concentrated in the hands of ruling class
that perpetuated itself by cooption.

44. VATICAN II KEYWORDS ABOUT
INSTITUTIONALISM
• Clericalism
Views the clergy, especially the higher clergy, as the source of all power and
initiative.
• Juridicist
For it conceives of authority in the Church rather closely on the pattern of
jurisdiction in the secular state, and greatly amplifies the place of law and penalties.
• Triumphalistic
it dramatizes the Church as an army set in array against satan and the powers of
evil.

45. • The institutional ecclesiology attaches crucial importance to the action of Christ in
establishing the offices and sacraments.
• Who is the beneficiaries of the institutional hierarchy
• of the church?
• -its own members.

46. CHURCH IS..
• A school-teaches truth necessary
for salvation
• Hospital-where they are healed of
their illnesses, the shelter they are
protected against the assault of
satan.

47. • From all this it is clear what the church does for its
beneficiaries: it gives them eternal life.
• Vatican i: “outside the church there is no salvation”
• That is why the church pursue strong missionary effort,
seeks to save the souls precisely by bringing them into
the institution.

48. WHAT ARE THE CHIEF ASSETS OF THIS STRONG
INSTITUTIONALISM?
• Has a strong endorsement in official church
documents of the past few centuries.
• Provide important links between uncertain
present and an esteemed religious past.
• Give Roman Catholics a strong sense of
corporate identity.

49. DANGERS OF INSTITUTIONALISM
• Theory of institutionalism is also based on
scripture. Example: all clerics are men.
• Leads to some unfortunate consequences in
Christian life, both personal and corporate.
• Difficulty against the institutional model is that it
raises obstacle to a creative and fruitful
theology.

50. • Exaggerated institutionalism leads to many
serious theological problem. Ex: outside the
church there is no salvation.
• Ecclesiology is out of phase with the demands of
the times. In an age of dialogue, ecumenism,
and interest in world religions, the monopolistic
tendencies of this model are unacceptable.