A kind of unsatisfactoriness

The church has known many different moods in the course of her history. Sometimes she appears to be very confident of herself and of the value of her message, sometimes she seems rather to be a bit confused and unsure of herself; sometimes she boldly tells everyone what they ought to be doing, sometimes she gives the impression of groping in the darkness. And it is not necessarily in her “best” moments, when she is most confident and clear, that she is most true to herself. There is a kind of unsatisfactoriness written into her very constitution, because she is only a transitional organisation, keeping people and preparing them for a new creation, in which God will be all in all, and every tear will be wiped away. When she speaks too securely, she may obscure the fact that her essential business is with “what no eye has seen, no ear has heard, not has it entered the heart of man”. The blunt truth is, as St John says, that “we have not yet been shown what we shall be”.

Quote: Simon Tugwell, Ways of Imperfection, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1984, 1.