1 Möhler on the Holy Spirit and the Unity of the Church – Peter Dobbing – 11.10.

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CTC401: Catholic Identity and Its Main Themes

Assessment Task 1 (Portfolio)

Möhler on the Holy Spirit and the Unity of the Church

Ideas find expression in particular historical and cultural contexts. They are
developed in order to encapsulate, synthesise, critique, relativise and break
new ground, with reference to a particular intellectual focus or concern. An
idea, together with the network of concepts to which it is related, is a dialogue
with a different network with which it will overlap to some extent. Ultimately, if
it is to be fruitful, it will suggest a richer context that will provide greater
explanatory power coupled with a broader vision.

As with ideas, so with ecclesiology. The thinking of the 19th century Catholic
theologian Johann Adam Möhler (1796 – 1838) was a considered reaction to
a deeply rooted scholastic idea of the church that was formulated essentially
as a juridical societas standing over against a societas civilis. That the
dominant tone of ecclesiology for several centuries was apologetic and
defensive is not surprising, given the history of secular and civil
encroachments on the Church since the 13th century – not to mention the anti-
institutional and ‘spiritual’ yearnings of figures such as Occam, Wyclif and
Huss. Added to this, the intellectual climate of the 18th century (the time of
‘mankind’s coming of age’ according to the philosopher Immanuel Kant), with
its distrust of external authority considered as a source of knowledge and
enlightenment, helped only to consolidate a (reactionary) definition of the
Church that emphasised its sovereign and self-sufficient character. Möhler’s
response was shaped and tempered by the milieu of Romanticism, itself a
reaction against the arid intellectualism of the Enlightenment.
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While studying under the learned and theologically pioneering professors

Drey and Hirscher at Tübingen in 1823, Möhler underwent an experience that
was to exercise a profound influence on his thinking during the next few
years. It seems that the group of thinkers with whom Möhler was associated
became captivated by the notion of Geist, that is, of ‘organism’ that is both
living and continuous. The group’s cerebral engagement with Geist became
transmuted for Möhler into an encounter with Holy Spirit experienced as the
dynamic and abiding life force of love who constitutes and guides the Church.
In his book, Unity in the Church (1825), Möhler effectively stands the order of
salvation – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – on its head. It is the Holy Spirit who
is associated with the first stirrings of new life in the human heart. Once
moved in this way, the believer is soon brought to a realisation that she or he
belongs in an intimate way to a community of love that is the embodiment on
earth of the Spirit of Jesus. The Spirit, then, and not any juridical conventions
linked to particular epochs or circumstances, is the first and most profound
source of life of the ecclesial community. Established in this way, this
communal life goes on to express its identity in liturgy (especially Eucharistic
communion), in the shared memory of tradition, in scripture, doctrine and
Episcopal leadership.

The Church exists through a life directly and continually moved by the divine Spirit,
and is maintained and continued by the loving mutual exchange of believers. (93)

There are a number of interesting implications associated with the Spirit-

centred emphasis found in Möhler’s Unity. First, revelation is conceived as
‘the living speech’ and ‘the living gospel’ as opposed to any notion of it being
located in scriptura sola, or even jointly in scriptures and tradition. The letter is
preceded by the Spirit – Möhler reiterates the observation in Unity that the
gospel and preaching were in place before the adoption on any canon of
scripture. Second, Christian belief, far from being a set of static concepts, is a
God-given and living experience that is capable of maturation and
development. Third, Möhler sees in the consensus of faith found among the
members of the Christian community a criterion for judging the authenticity or
otherwise of any developments of doctrine. Heresy is thus deemed to spring
from an alien spirit that is either egotistical or sectarian in character. Finally,
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Möhler’s approach favours a communion ecclesiology in which the Spirit can

be seen to be at work between all the individual parts of the organic body of
Christ. The hierarchy, as well as every member of the laity, exists to serve the
Spirit at work in the entire community.

By way of a brief critique of Möhler’s position as set out in Unity I would like to
make the following observations:

 I have already pointed out that Möhler’s approach yields a

developmental understanding of doctrine. However, there seems at the
very least to be some tension between his point that ‘We do not know
of an unmediated activity of divine spirit’ (200 and his earlier remark
that ‘The divine power, active and forming itself in the church from the
church’s beginning, is the same throughout all time …’ (109 - my
emphasis). Möhler needs to be more explicit about how identity is
maintained in the midst of change. If Spirit is always mediated, can we
speak of an (unmediated) deposit that allows us to regard various
manifestations of the Spirit as the same?
 There is a danger that Möhler, in his wish to make Spirit the main basis
of ecclesiogenesis, is displacing other elements in the makeup of the
Church (both human and divine) to such an extent that he succumbs to
a form of deism in which the Spirit operates on the Church from without
in a controlling and mechanical way. Geiselmann in his La Definition de
l’eglise chez J A Möhler observed that ‘It would seem that the Holy
Spirit runs the Church in the same way that a charioteer leads his
horses.’ (p. 153).
 Closely related to the last point, Möhler, by emphasising the primordial
nature of the interior, spiritual element of the visible Church, is tilting
towards a kind of ecclesiological monophysitism (a charge that has
also been directed towards his more mature position as set out in his
book Symbolism).
 The Church’s hierarchical structure, and thus the authority associated
with the episcopacy and even the Petrine office, could, instead of being
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seen as an element that was intrinsic to the Christian community, be

regarded as an accidental feature that happened to be engendered by
the body of the faithful in the course of the Church’s historical
development.

After the publication of Unity, Möhler embarked on a series of studies that

enabled him to formulate an ecclesiology that achieved a more balanced
view of the exact nature of the Spirit in the total structure of the Church.
According to his Symbolik (Symbolism 1832), the Church, once
characterised by him as the family of believers who have the fullness of
the Spirit, is now described as the visible community of believers that is
the extension in space and time of the body of Jesus. To put it in a different
way, the Church is the continuation of the Incarnation of the Word of God.
There appear to be two principle motives behind Möhler’s adoption of this
new position. The first was possibly generated following his study of the
Chalcedonian formula (451AD) that attempted to delineate the relationship
between the divinity and humanity of Christ. Möhler saw a parallel
between the ‘two natures without confusion, without change … the
differences of the natures being by no means removed because of the
union’ (referring to Christ’s nature) and the union of the visible and the
invisible elements of the Church. In addition to this he wished to distance
himself from a position – associated with the dogmatics of Schleiermacher
– in which there was a danger of losing the transcendence of the Holy
Spirit by speaking of ‘the Spirit of the community’. The second motive is
connected with Möhler’s desire to engage critically with the Lutheran
notion of scriptura sola. He believed that this view rested on a solus
Spiritus Sanctus doctrine and that Luther simply failed to recognise the
role of human cooperation with the Spirit and incarnational character of the
Catholic church.

I will conclude with further observations this time relating to Möhler’s more
mature position as set out in Symbolism.
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 Ironically both Möhler’s evolving (Unity) and later (Symbolism)

theology has attracted the same charge of ecclesiological
monophysitism. In the case of Symbolism it is his emphatic and
unequivocal identification of the hierarchically constituted Church
with the body of Christ that has created disquiet among some
commentators who share Möhler’s apparent concern for productive
ecumenical relations.
 The question of the balance between (non-visible) Spirit and
(visible) continuation of the Incarnation does not seem to have been
settled. In its place there is an implied bifurcation of Word and Spirit
in which the Spirit enables the believer to receive the message
engendered by a hierarchy whose position is a necessary corollary
of the Incarnation.

(1488 words)

References and bibliography

J.A. Möhler, Unity in the Church or the Principle of Catholicism

(Catholic University of America Press, 1996)
D.J. Didn and M.J.Hines (eds) The Legacy of the Tübingen School
(Crossroad, 1997, pp 75-94)
J.A. Möhler, Symbolism (Symbolik) (1832)
Kallistos Ware, Tradition and Traditions (from Dictionary of the
Ecumenical Movement, ed. Lossky, Bonino, Stransky, Wainright and
Webb (Geneva, 2003)

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