The previous chapter discussed some of the issues that arise when we focus ecclesiological attention upon the church as a concrete, apostolic agent. The church presently faces significant difficulties in performing its central tasks of witnessing to its Lord and helping its members in their task of discipleship. The church's witness and its pastoral care are compromised when it fails adequately to acknowledge and respond to its sinfulness. The church also needs to respond to the pervasive relativism of contemporary society by constructing and embodying arguments that show the reasonableness of devoting oneself wholeheartedly to the way of life that it makes possible. Ecclesiology can aid the church's efforts by reflecting theologically upon its concrete identity and by supporting what may appear to be somewhat contrary claims: that the church is prone to breaking Paul's rule yet, even as a concrete body, the church can be in some significant way superior to all other religious bodies.

These issues have not, of course, gone unnoticed by theologians, and they have made a variety of proposals as to how to deal with them, some of which we will look at below. The present chapter begins to make the case that the ways in which theologians usually go about developing their ecclesiological proposals make it considerably harder for them than it need be to make an effective response to such challenges. Contemporary ecclesiology comes in many forms, of course, but there are enough common elements and trends amid the diversity to justify the general label, “modern ecclesiology.”