The House Where God Lives: Renewing the Doctrine of the Church

In a culture dominated by the individualistic values of political and social liberalism, Gary Badcock says that we seldom hear of the church as the “creature of the Word of God.” The church has been entrusted to us by God and belongs to the structure of the Christian faith itself. Ecclesiology is first of all theology because it is primarily about the presence of God, Badcock maintains, and is thus biblical and creedal (“one, holy, catholic, and apostolic”) — something that “we believe” — which is what undergirds its empirical, sociological, and even pastoral function. Rather than a hollow shell where humans dream moral dreams and do good deeds, the church is the “house where God lives.”