Erickson on Ecclesiology

Today I took a stab at reading Millard Erickson.  I am hoping that, over time, my mind will become more focused - but it is very easy to get distracted by every little detail.  I'd wanted to read straight through his section on The Nature of the Church pp 949 - 970.  In actuality, I only got started on his section "Defining the Church". Pp 950-956

Lots of rabbit trails to wander here.  For instance, Erickson's assertion that the doctrine of Ecclesiology has not received as definitive treatment as doctrines such as Christology, the atonement, salvation (951).   

Is this true?  Or does it simply reflect the state of Protestant Ecclesiology after its reframing of the doctrine during the reformation?

The Catholic and Orthodox churches have a very clearly defined ecclesiology.  For them the term "Church" indicates a concrete historical body, with an authority structure, that was passed down to the present through Apostolic succession. This claim to historical continuity with the first disciples of Jesus is, for both bodies, perhaps the most important claim to authenticity.

The idea of apostolic succession appears to have its roots in one of the early churches strategies to combat gnostic heresies.  When rival interpretations of the Christian faith presented themselves - from the very beginning - the church has dealt with one of two strategies.  The first is apologetic - using reason and scripture.  The second is through a type of certification of authenticity - an appeal to a direct line of succession from Jesus' apostles down to the leadership of the church today.  Though one can find appeals to certification through succession in the Bible, the appeal to reason is far more prevalent and important - especially in light of the warnings that "false teachers will arise among you".  Despite this obvious weakness, the popularity of the appeal to succession seems to have grown in importance to the point where it overshadowed the appeal to reason.

The Protestant reformation called in to question the reliability of historical continuity as a criteria for defining the authentic church. What is to stop the church from going wildly wrong?  It suggested that scripture was the agent to employ in keeping the church on track, and that at may even need to operate from outside the institutional body of the church to be the agent of correction.  As Luther argued in his response to The Diet of Worms, "Popes and Councils can err".   The faith of the Reformers shifted from the institutional church, to the scriptures (Sola Scriptura).   "Ad Fontes" (To the Sources,) was the cry of the Reformation. 

SO the protestant reformation shifted the locus of authority from the leadership of the church to the scriptures.  Along with this the composition of the church changed from that of a concrete institution founded by Christ and his apostles and passed down through the laying on of hands, to a community of people gathered by the proclamation of the Word of God.

So, far from saying that ecclesiology has been an ignored topic in Church history - I would argue that there has been some significant activity in trying to define the nature of the church - and that activity has split the protestant church from its Catholic and Orthodox forebears. 

Perhaps what is meant by neglect has more to do with the practical FORM of the church.  The plethora of ecclesiological structures clearly indicate that the matter of organization has not been settled.  But I wonder how important this issue "how we run the church"  is to ecclesiology.  Is it a central, or a peripheral issue?  I would argue that the management of the church is not part of the ontological discussion of what the church is.  The core questions are rather,  what it is made of, how it comes into being, and what is its purpose.  These are all questions that scripture very clearly talks about.