G
GratiaCorpusChristi
Guest
Well, I'm exited to start my first new thread in this subforum. And with that in mind, I wanted to post a (re-edited) version of something I wrote in a similar thread in GT. I think it's pretty a propos.
Promoting ecumenical fellowship through common causes and activities- the pursuit of joint evangelism, social justice, creation stewardship, just peace, ethic reconciliation, and a just end to abortion- is a good and noble goal, and has historically been the focus of the twentieth century's primary ecumenical endeavors (beginning with the laudable work of the 1910 World Missionary Conference which eventually became the World Council of Churches). I believe in that. But I do also believe in hard-nosed ecumenical discussion of theological, exegetical, and historical issues. And one simply cannot substitute for the other. They are both critical to the local and global life of ecumenical Christianity. And while both may be done on the local level, through ecumenical Bible studies, through joint missionary and social work, and cross-denominational church fellowship activities, I'll stick to the professionals and their potential for genuine advances in the goal of Christian unity.
On to the rules themselves.
On each side of the discussion, there should be one conservative and one liberal (broadly speaking). That is, each side should be represented by one person for whom the ultimate goal is reunion and who genuinely believes that the differences are either misunderstanding or irrelevant, and one person who genuinely believes that the differences are real and important and perhaps insurmountable. Otherwise, it's not a genuine dialogue between representative parties; it's just er, well, I won't use that term on CF. Any thorough examination of the process of schism (Oriental and Eastern, Eastern and Western, Protestant and Catholic) and post-schismatic ecumenical debates (Justinianic, Heraclean, the Councils of Lyon II, Ferrara-Florence, Trent) shows that a major factor was the tendencies of the time and the personalities involved. In a matter as important as church unity, simply balancing out those forces goes a long way toward transcending the vicissitudes of history and focusing instead on our eschatological unity. It also helps balance out the evangelistic impulses (conservative) that can derail ecumenical discussion, and the postmodern impulses (liberal) that can achieve only a paper unity.
Second, instead of just one liberal and one conservative on each side of the debate, there should be four of each: one for each theological sub-discipline: biblical exegesis, systematic theology, church history, and pastoral care. Each discipline has its own tendencies in ecumenical debate, but in general they can all potentially go either way; it really depends on the individual scholar or churchman. Unfortunately, some past debates, successful or not, have been shaped by only one or, at best, two of these concerns. A cursory reading of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (which had the potential to be the most important ecumenical document of the past four hundred years) shows overt concern for systematic theology and secondarily for church history, and only marginal reference to biblical exegesis and pastoral care. Ironically, the JDJ was at work at a time when critical biblical studies had not yet developed the current insights on justification (and the New Perspective on Paul) that would have greatly benefited the discussion. Perhaps that's the very reason the document takes so little stock of exegesis. Until the past thirty years, the overwhelmingly dominant interpretation of Paul was a parody of Luther, with its roots in the work of Adolf von Harnack as developed by Rudolf Bultman. The JDJ was published at just that time when the tide was turning, but takes no stock of it.
Of course, the JDJ represented forty years of work with focused attention in all these areas, but even as a summary statement it falls flat. It did not result in the reunion of WLF churches and the Catholic Church (of course, it did not intend to), and therefore should have at least provided greater direction for church practice within these circles. Which brings me to my next point:
Ecumenical discussions need to have clear goals. This is a particular fault of the World and National (American) Councils of Churches. While the WCC has done some good in terms of organizing global Christianity toward some social ends (not surprising, given its origins in the 1910 World Missionary Conference), I honestly don't know how useful it has actually been in promoting Christian unity. Again, although I don't think the JDJ was a glowing success, it nevertheless is a good example for the future. Discussions should focus on a single area of theology (in that case, justification and soteriology) and should be bilateral (in that case, only the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity). Yet not only should the specific area of discussion be clear, the goals should be clear as well. The JDJ makes clear that the end goal of the document is not unity between the churches, but removing one single barrier between them. Good. But at the end of the day, it had no practical effect on the issue that actually sparked the Reformation debate over justification: the practice of issuing penance as a post facto condition for absolution. Ideally, the goal of the document would not only have been to rescind anathamas that have no immediate practical effect (given that the churches will remain separated), but to also bring Lutheran and Catholic liturgical practice into some sort of unity. Historians on both sides are well aware that the issuance of penance is rooted in monastic, not apostolic, practice; that the issuance of penance is not necessarily tied to any theology of works-righteousness; and that the form of the words of absolution can be modified on either side. Would it not be possible for Catholics to issue a declaration of absolution that is absolute and not conditioned on penance, yet still demand that the penitent perform penance in order to make restitution to the offended individual or to discipline themselves in a way that would not offend Lutheran sensibilities?; would it not have been ideal for the Catholic Church to encourage Lutherans to return to the historic practice of regular private confession and absolution in a form that brought Lutheran liturgical practice into conformity with this new Catholic form?; and should this not have been the point of any discussion of the doctrine of justification to begin with?
The tragedy here is that this was entirely possible, but the goal was missed because systematic theology dominated the discussions at the expense of biblical exegesis and pastoral practice. What have we gained? A new day on the church calendar to celebrate a paper victory. I wax lyrical. More importantly, however, is to note that it was in fact possible (and, indeed, that particular goal- of creating common praxis- is even more likely than creating common doctrine in the upcoming discussions between the confessional International Lutheran Council and the PCPCU), and that it was possible because Catholic-Lutheran dialogue was conducted between two churches that were historically tightly bound together and theologically far closer than other church bodies.
This brings me to my final point: not only should the goals be clear, but the boundaries should be clear.
There is an insightful parallel here between ecumenical organizations and international political organizations. Regional political organisations like the European Union, NAFTA, and NATO, global but mission-specific institutions like the IMF, WTO, and the World Bank, and especially bilateral relationships like that forged between West Germany and France after World War II, the US-UK special relationship, the US-Israeli relationship, and the US-Japanese relationship, have all proved most successful than universal projects like the League of Nations or the UN. Whatever the pitfalls in the dialogue fostered between Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Lutheran World Federation, there should be no surprise that it has been extraordinarily successful relative to other efforts. And, what's more, while the WCC hasn't produced the sort of unity it was meant to achieve, other organizations based in Geneva's Ecumenical Center, like the confessionally-centered Lutheran World Federation and the World Communion of Reformed Churches and the regional Conference of European Churches, have generally met with greater success.
(Aside from the rejection of the document by confessional Lutheran groups (including my own, the International Lutheran Council), part of the weird afterlife of the JDJ was its unilateral adoption by the World Methodist Council in 2006, despite the fact that they weren't party to the discussion and that their doctrine of justification is not discussed in the document! If only the WMC had approved a delegation that would meet with representatives of the PCPCU which would then draw up their own document that addressed the particular issues that divide Methodists from Catholics rather than Lutherans from Catholics.)
Part of the problem with large, national or international pan-Christian ecumenical organizations is that there is so little that all Christians agree on, and what we do all agree on are essentially those aspects that tend to be downplayed as the basis of unity. We all agree that the Bible is Christian Scriptures, but what that means (I mean, a Hasidic rabbi can agree that the Gospel of John is Christian Scripture), how binding it is (is it even binding in terms of faith and morals?), how many books it contains, and the place of the Scriptures vis-a-vis both tradition and life are all up for debate. The World Council of Churches pretty much limits itself to something more than Arianism, but less than Nicene orthodoxy (link), but really ends up focusing on broad statements. Its Lima Text on Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry is hilariously vague.
But what I'm proposing is not a more narrow global organization with a narrower definition. (Well, actually, the Nicene Creed would be nice, and personally I'd go for all seven first millennial ecumenical councils because I want to see a single Catholic Church that unties Roman Catholicism, Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and Lutheranism, but that's definition not what I'm talking about.) When it comes to specific boundaries, I don't think broad organizations are all that helpful. Take the international political organizations I listed above. Each of them are limited, but member states can be members of each mutually. Sweden is a member of the European Union, but not NATO; Norway is a member of NATO, but not the European Union; Switzerland is a member of neither; Germany is a member of both. There are parallels with certain churches in this regard.
For instance, the Churches of North and South India are members of both the Anglican Communion and the World Communion of Reformed Churches. The Lutheran Church of Australia is the only Lutheran church that is an associate member of the Lutheran World Federation and the International Lutheran Council, but it is a full member of neither.
(Another aside: Just as the JDJ is a flawed but promising example of specific bilateral talks between two global church organizations, the Porvo Communion is a flawed but promising example of regional, multilateral ecumenical outcomes; look it up)
I think ecumenical dialogue is best fostered through formal bilateral talks between churches (or international confessional organizations), like that pursued between the LWF and the PCPCU, and especially between churches that have some historical relationship. This would allow, for instance, the Anglican Communion to pursue talks simultaneously with Catholics on mutual recognition of orders (possibly a fruitful discussion with serious practical benefits), but with the Orthodox on the question of rood screens and iconostases and the two-or-three dimensional of icons (again, theologically dense but practically beneficial), and still again with Methodists on something as significant as regional reunion of churches (on the model of the Church of North India). Meanwhile, the Methodist talks might fall through because the Methodists are simultaneously talking to the Assemblies of God about nature of charismatic gifts and their use in Sunday worship, but the alternative could be the case. On an even smaller scale, denominations within the same broad tradition (the ELCA, NALC, LCMS, and WELS, for instance) should place special emphasis on healing those wounds rather than refusing to talk to one another. I'm not sure how beneficial it would be for churches that have no historical relationship to one another to engage in this sort of dialogue (where do Oriental Orthodox and Pentecostals even begin talking to one another?), but as the example above with Anglicans and Orthodox illustrates, there may be some exceptions (for instance, conservative Pentecostals and charismatic Catholics, together with scholars of early Christian spirituality like Luke Timothy Johnson and James D.G. Dunn, may produce some surprisingly insightful ecumenical biblical studies and guides to pastoral practice). And for my part, I honestly do think the deep fault like runs between my favored four (Lutheranism, Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and Catholicism) and so I think this kind of dialogue would eventually bring about my vision for a united church (or perhaps three: a United Evangelical Catholic Orthodox Church, a United Liberal Protestant Church of Christ, and a Association of Baptistic Evangelicals and Charismatics), but it also does so on a very slow, steady basis rooted in tiny victories instead of on grandiose visions that shatter on the rocks of bad history.
And in the meantime, we absolutely should continue the work begun by the World Missionary Conference and work on both shared evangelism and shared social engagement, not only at the global and regional levels but at the local level as well.
So I've outlined five absolute ground rules for the discussions. 1. Parity between liberals ecumenists and conservative confessionalists on each side of discussions. 2. Equal input from historians, theologians, exegetes, and pastoral practitioners. 3. Limited organizational structures with clear confessional and/or regional boundaries. 4. Limited dialogue topics. 5. Clear dialogue goals that address not only the exegetical and theological issues on paper, but have practical effects in the churches.
Finally, sixth, discussion cannot proceed if we are unwilling to open each day with worship and each discussion with prayer. Although many of us cannot commune with each other (especially traditional Lutherans, Catholics, and Orthodox), that should not prevent us from having daily communion services of the sort initiated between the pope and the ecumenical patriarch (one ceremony in one place, but with a double consecration and separate but simultaneous distribution) or found often in military chapels, and prayer offered by all participants on some sort of rotating basis at the opening of each common meal and each dialogue session. If daily communion is not part of a participant church's tradition, they needn't commune, and a homily might not be the best idea of its the conservative historian's or systematic theologian's turn to officiate, but there are ways around it. The important thing is that we gain a vision of worshiping together, which is the eschatological ideal to which we strive on this side of history.
Promoting ecumenical fellowship through common causes and activities- the pursuit of joint evangelism, social justice, creation stewardship, just peace, ethic reconciliation, and a just end to abortion- is a good and noble goal, and has historically been the focus of the twentieth century's primary ecumenical endeavors (beginning with the laudable work of the 1910 World Missionary Conference which eventually became the World Council of Churches). I believe in that. But I do also believe in hard-nosed ecumenical discussion of theological, exegetical, and historical issues. And one simply cannot substitute for the other. They are both critical to the local and global life of ecumenical Christianity. And while both may be done on the local level, through ecumenical Bible studies, through joint missionary and social work, and cross-denominational church fellowship activities, I'll stick to the professionals and their potential for genuine advances in the goal of Christian unity.
On to the rules themselves.
On each side of the discussion, there should be one conservative and one liberal (broadly speaking). That is, each side should be represented by one person for whom the ultimate goal is reunion and who genuinely believes that the differences are either misunderstanding or irrelevant, and one person who genuinely believes that the differences are real and important and perhaps insurmountable. Otherwise, it's not a genuine dialogue between representative parties; it's just er, well, I won't use that term on CF. Any thorough examination of the process of schism (Oriental and Eastern, Eastern and Western, Protestant and Catholic) and post-schismatic ecumenical debates (Justinianic, Heraclean, the Councils of Lyon II, Ferrara-Florence, Trent) shows that a major factor was the tendencies of the time and the personalities involved. In a matter as important as church unity, simply balancing out those forces goes a long way toward transcending the vicissitudes of history and focusing instead on our eschatological unity. It also helps balance out the evangelistic impulses (conservative) that can derail ecumenical discussion, and the postmodern impulses (liberal) that can achieve only a paper unity.
Second, instead of just one liberal and one conservative on each side of the debate, there should be four of each: one for each theological sub-discipline: biblical exegesis, systematic theology, church history, and pastoral care. Each discipline has its own tendencies in ecumenical debate, but in general they can all potentially go either way; it really depends on the individual scholar or churchman. Unfortunately, some past debates, successful or not, have been shaped by only one or, at best, two of these concerns. A cursory reading of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (which had the potential to be the most important ecumenical document of the past four hundred years) shows overt concern for systematic theology and secondarily for church history, and only marginal reference to biblical exegesis and pastoral care. Ironically, the JDJ was at work at a time when critical biblical studies had not yet developed the current insights on justification (and the New Perspective on Paul) that would have greatly benefited the discussion. Perhaps that's the very reason the document takes so little stock of exegesis. Until the past thirty years, the overwhelmingly dominant interpretation of Paul was a parody of Luther, with its roots in the work of Adolf von Harnack as developed by Rudolf Bultman. The JDJ was published at just that time when the tide was turning, but takes no stock of it.
Of course, the JDJ represented forty years of work with focused attention in all these areas, but even as a summary statement it falls flat. It did not result in the reunion of WLF churches and the Catholic Church (of course, it did not intend to), and therefore should have at least provided greater direction for church practice within these circles. Which brings me to my next point:
Ecumenical discussions need to have clear goals. This is a particular fault of the World and National (American) Councils of Churches. While the WCC has done some good in terms of organizing global Christianity toward some social ends (not surprising, given its origins in the 1910 World Missionary Conference), I honestly don't know how useful it has actually been in promoting Christian unity. Again, although I don't think the JDJ was a glowing success, it nevertheless is a good example for the future. Discussions should focus on a single area of theology (in that case, justification and soteriology) and should be bilateral (in that case, only the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity). Yet not only should the specific area of discussion be clear, the goals should be clear as well. The JDJ makes clear that the end goal of the document is not unity between the churches, but removing one single barrier between them. Good. But at the end of the day, it had no practical effect on the issue that actually sparked the Reformation debate over justification: the practice of issuing penance as a post facto condition for absolution. Ideally, the goal of the document would not only have been to rescind anathamas that have no immediate practical effect (given that the churches will remain separated), but to also bring Lutheran and Catholic liturgical practice into some sort of unity. Historians on both sides are well aware that the issuance of penance is rooted in monastic, not apostolic, practice; that the issuance of penance is not necessarily tied to any theology of works-righteousness; and that the form of the words of absolution can be modified on either side. Would it not be possible for Catholics to issue a declaration of absolution that is absolute and not conditioned on penance, yet still demand that the penitent perform penance in order to make restitution to the offended individual or to discipline themselves in a way that would not offend Lutheran sensibilities?; would it not have been ideal for the Catholic Church to encourage Lutherans to return to the historic practice of regular private confession and absolution in a form that brought Lutheran liturgical practice into conformity with this new Catholic form?; and should this not have been the point of any discussion of the doctrine of justification to begin with?
The tragedy here is that this was entirely possible, but the goal was missed because systematic theology dominated the discussions at the expense of biblical exegesis and pastoral practice. What have we gained? A new day on the church calendar to celebrate a paper victory. I wax lyrical. More importantly, however, is to note that it was in fact possible (and, indeed, that particular goal- of creating common praxis- is even more likely than creating common doctrine in the upcoming discussions between the confessional International Lutheran Council and the PCPCU), and that it was possible because Catholic-Lutheran dialogue was conducted between two churches that were historically tightly bound together and theologically far closer than other church bodies.
This brings me to my final point: not only should the goals be clear, but the boundaries should be clear.
There is an insightful parallel here between ecumenical organizations and international political organizations. Regional political organisations like the European Union, NAFTA, and NATO, global but mission-specific institutions like the IMF, WTO, and the World Bank, and especially bilateral relationships like that forged between West Germany and France after World War II, the US-UK special relationship, the US-Israeli relationship, and the US-Japanese relationship, have all proved most successful than universal projects like the League of Nations or the UN. Whatever the pitfalls in the dialogue fostered between Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Lutheran World Federation, there should be no surprise that it has been extraordinarily successful relative to other efforts. And, what's more, while the WCC hasn't produced the sort of unity it was meant to achieve, other organizations based in Geneva's Ecumenical Center, like the confessionally-centered Lutheran World Federation and the World Communion of Reformed Churches and the regional Conference of European Churches, have generally met with greater success.
(Aside from the rejection of the document by confessional Lutheran groups (including my own, the International Lutheran Council), part of the weird afterlife of the JDJ was its unilateral adoption by the World Methodist Council in 2006, despite the fact that they weren't party to the discussion and that their doctrine of justification is not discussed in the document! If only the WMC had approved a delegation that would meet with representatives of the PCPCU which would then draw up their own document that addressed the particular issues that divide Methodists from Catholics rather than Lutherans from Catholics.)
Part of the problem with large, national or international pan-Christian ecumenical organizations is that there is so little that all Christians agree on, and what we do all agree on are essentially those aspects that tend to be downplayed as the basis of unity. We all agree that the Bible is Christian Scriptures, but what that means (I mean, a Hasidic rabbi can agree that the Gospel of John is Christian Scripture), how binding it is (is it even binding in terms of faith and morals?), how many books it contains, and the place of the Scriptures vis-a-vis both tradition and life are all up for debate. The World Council of Churches pretty much limits itself to something more than Arianism, but less than Nicene orthodoxy (link), but really ends up focusing on broad statements. Its Lima Text on Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry is hilariously vague.
But what I'm proposing is not a more narrow global organization with a narrower definition. (Well, actually, the Nicene Creed would be nice, and personally I'd go for all seven first millennial ecumenical councils because I want to see a single Catholic Church that unties Roman Catholicism, Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and Lutheranism, but that's definition not what I'm talking about.) When it comes to specific boundaries, I don't think broad organizations are all that helpful. Take the international political organizations I listed above. Each of them are limited, but member states can be members of each mutually. Sweden is a member of the European Union, but not NATO; Norway is a member of NATO, but not the European Union; Switzerland is a member of neither; Germany is a member of both. There are parallels with certain churches in this regard.
For instance, the Churches of North and South India are members of both the Anglican Communion and the World Communion of Reformed Churches. The Lutheran Church of Australia is the only Lutheran church that is an associate member of the Lutheran World Federation and the International Lutheran Council, but it is a full member of neither.
(Another aside: Just as the JDJ is a flawed but promising example of specific bilateral talks between two global church organizations, the Porvo Communion is a flawed but promising example of regional, multilateral ecumenical outcomes; look it up)
I think ecumenical dialogue is best fostered through formal bilateral talks between churches (or international confessional organizations), like that pursued between the LWF and the PCPCU, and especially between churches that have some historical relationship. This would allow, for instance, the Anglican Communion to pursue talks simultaneously with Catholics on mutual recognition of orders (possibly a fruitful discussion with serious practical benefits), but with the Orthodox on the question of rood screens and iconostases and the two-or-three dimensional of icons (again, theologically dense but practically beneficial), and still again with Methodists on something as significant as regional reunion of churches (on the model of the Church of North India). Meanwhile, the Methodist talks might fall through because the Methodists are simultaneously talking to the Assemblies of God about nature of charismatic gifts and their use in Sunday worship, but the alternative could be the case. On an even smaller scale, denominations within the same broad tradition (the ELCA, NALC, LCMS, and WELS, for instance) should place special emphasis on healing those wounds rather than refusing to talk to one another. I'm not sure how beneficial it would be for churches that have no historical relationship to one another to engage in this sort of dialogue (where do Oriental Orthodox and Pentecostals even begin talking to one another?), but as the example above with Anglicans and Orthodox illustrates, there may be some exceptions (for instance, conservative Pentecostals and charismatic Catholics, together with scholars of early Christian spirituality like Luke Timothy Johnson and James D.G. Dunn, may produce some surprisingly insightful ecumenical biblical studies and guides to pastoral practice). And for my part, I honestly do think the deep fault like runs between my favored four (Lutheranism, Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and Catholicism) and so I think this kind of dialogue would eventually bring about my vision for a united church (or perhaps three: a United Evangelical Catholic Orthodox Church, a United Liberal Protestant Church of Christ, and a Association of Baptistic Evangelicals and Charismatics), but it also does so on a very slow, steady basis rooted in tiny victories instead of on grandiose visions that shatter on the rocks of bad history.
And in the meantime, we absolutely should continue the work begun by the World Missionary Conference and work on both shared evangelism and shared social engagement, not only at the global and regional levels but at the local level as well.
So I've outlined five absolute ground rules for the discussions. 1. Parity between liberals ecumenists and conservative confessionalists on each side of discussions. 2. Equal input from historians, theologians, exegetes, and pastoral practitioners. 3. Limited organizational structures with clear confessional and/or regional boundaries. 4. Limited dialogue topics. 5. Clear dialogue goals that address not only the exegetical and theological issues on paper, but have practical effects in the churches.
Finally, sixth, discussion cannot proceed if we are unwilling to open each day with worship and each discussion with prayer. Although many of us cannot commune with each other (especially traditional Lutherans, Catholics, and Orthodox), that should not prevent us from having daily communion services of the sort initiated between the pope and the ecumenical patriarch (one ceremony in one place, but with a double consecration and separate but simultaneous distribution) or found often in military chapels, and prayer offered by all participants on some sort of rotating basis at the opening of each common meal and each dialogue session. If daily communion is not part of a participant church's tradition, they needn't commune, and a homily might not be the best idea of its the conservative historian's or systematic theologian's turn to officiate, but there are ways around it. The important thing is that we gain a vision of worshiping together, which is the eschatological ideal to which we strive on this side of history.
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, has the Pope ever been behind the Iconostas when the EP is Serving Liturgy [ the Eucharistic Service ] and nor has the EP been at the Altar when the Pope is Celebrating Mass .
