God and the Church (Paperback)

Over the years, Christians have continued to reflect on the nature of the church. These reflections have produced various ideas as to how each succeeding generation of Christians and theologians think the church should be understood. In this book, the author reviews the various views that have been advanced on the church and observes a missing link in the popular understanding of the nature of the church. He observes that the various ecclesiologies that have been written have not emphasized adequately God's presence and participation in the church. He argues that an adequate understanding of the church entails locating God within the church as a member and the head who runs the church from within rather than from without. He used the metaphor of clan to try to simplify this important theological truth. The author therefore maintains that to understand the church today, it is important to go beyond the views which tend to present God as an outsider whose relationship to the church is distant and who runs the church from without. Essentially this book is about God and therefore brings ecclesiology into the mainstream of theological discourse.