Abstract
This chapter is an essay in reconciling or mediating theology. Its presupposition is that, in the Church of Christ, there is an imperative to reach out to those with whom we disagree. It expounds three heuristic ‘concepts for convergence’. ‘Conversation’ points to genuine dialogue that identifies common ground, pin-points real differences and looks for a path of convergence in the future. ‘Communion’ (koinonia) refers to the very being of the Church and—in obedience to the ‘love commandment’ of the New Testament—contains an obligation to maximize the degree of communion that is possible ‘beyond all differences’. ‘Conversion’ is the transforming dynamic of all reconciling theology and signifies a turning from our own preferences to the one Church of Jesus Christ.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter is a revised and expanded version of a paper given at a conference at Nashotah House, Wisconsin, USA, in June 2017. The conference was jointly sponsored by The Living Church and Nashotah House.
- 2.
The proverbial phrase is not found in Household Management and is apocryphal.
- 3.
The phrase ‘the talking cure’ came originally from Breuer’s celebrated patient ‘Anna O.’ (Bertha Pappenheim).
- 4.
The face-to-face theme was developed in a seminal way by Emmanuel Levinas; see the comprehensive account in Morgan (2007). A more substantial exposition of interpersonal Christian speech than the present article attempts would engage with and draw on Jürgen Habermas’ work on the concepts of ‘undistorted communication’ and ‘the ideal speech situation’, leading to unforced consensus, and on the theological development of these by Helmut Peukert; see, for example, Habermas 1972, Peukert 1984 and the extended discussion in Davis, Theology and Political Society, esp. pp. 77ff, 141f and 146–8.
- 5.
This imperative has also shaped the fifth guiding principle of the House of Bishops of the Church of England with regard to those who cannot in conscience accept the episcopal ministry of women: ‘Pastoral and sacramental provision for the minority within the Church of England will be made without specifying a limit of time and in a way that maintains the highest possible degree of communion and contributes to mutual flourishing across the whole Church of England’ (my italics).
- 6.
Lonergan saw conversion as the existential basis of the theological enterprise. Robert Doran sees a danger in an over-intellectual view of what happens in conversion. To correct this, Doran proposes a fourth stage of ‘psychic’ conversion, understood in a Jungian sense. However, I do not myself understand Lonergan’s three stages of religious, moral and intellectual conversion in an over-cerebral way, but rather as the conversion of the whole person, including the affective dimension within each stage. See Doran’s work at https://www.lonerganresource.com/book.php?14 and www.lonerganresource.com/pdf/books/14/119_D0207_Psychic_Conversion_(offprint).pdf. I am grateful to Professor Michael Cover of Marquette University for pointing me to Doran’s work.
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Avis, P. (2019). Reconciling Theology: Three Concepts for Convergence. In: Miller, V., Moxon, T., Pickard, T. (eds) Leaning into the Spirit. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19997-5_13
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