This book is the final part of my Confessions of a Heretic. Though this volume
is based on and presupposes volumes 1 and 2 (v. 1: Philosophical considerations;
v. 2: Theological Considerations), volume 3, Ecclesiological Considerations, can
too stand on its own. Whereas the focus of volume 1 was on 'God the Creator',
and that of volume 2 was on 'God the Perfector', here the focus turns to 'God the
Performer', to complete the trinitarian vision of what in traditional terminology
is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit respectively. Yet
Augustine has been behind the project all along, and here simply more explicitly
so, whereby the entire work can be seen as a radical attempt to apply Augustine's
major doctrines, particularly as seen in his The City of God, to the Church today
within a postmodern context. In volume three, the concept of the Church comes
to the fore, with the argument being that what makes the Church the Church,
is not the Church as a moral community, a political community, or a social
community, but only the Church as a religio-theological community. As such,
the Church then is too, necessarily, an authoritative community, and in this light,
an argument is made for the primacy of the Roman Catholic Tradition. Thus,
the volume strives to approach ecclesiology anew based on anthropological and
sociological analysis, which forms the basis then of ethics, which finally leads
back necessarily to The Church as part of 'God's' Divine Symphony.
