Abstract
The picture of ecumenism that many people in the mainstream of church life, but outside the process of ecumenical dialogue, have is of a bunch of idealists fantasizing about something that is never going to happen. For them, ecumenists live in an unreal world, detached from the tough reality of church life. In particular, they suspect that when ecumenists get together in theological dialogue, the very specific traditions that they are meant to represent are thrown into the melting pot and that what is brewed up is some kind of tasteless ecumenical soup. In this chapter, I want to begin exploring the issues of reality and illusion and of vision and pragmatism in the enterprise of Christian unity and to sketch very briefly why I believe that ecumenical dialogue can be pursued with both realism and integrity.1
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Notes
Walter Kasper, That They May All Be One: The Call to Unity Today (London: Continuum, 2004), 1.
Lukas Vischer, Ulrich Luz, and Christian Link, Unity of the Church in the New Testament and Today (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2010), 2, 14.
J. H. Yoder, “The Imperative of Christian Unity,” in The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical, ed. Michael Cartwright (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1994), 290–91.
Vatican II, Unitatis Redintegratio (UR), §3; Austin Flannery, OP, ed., Vatican Council II: Volume 1: The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents (Northport, NY: Costello, 1975), 455: “For men who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in some, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church.” Cf. Latin: “Hi enim qui in Christum credunt et baptismum rite receperunt, in quadam cum Eccle-sia catholica communione, etsi non perfecta, constituuntur.” For the Latin text, see http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_unitatis-redintegratio_lt.html.
On the question of theological convergence on initiation, see Paul Avis, ed., The Journey of Christian Initiation: Theological and Pastoral Perspectives (London: Church House Publishing, 2011), and on the reports of Anglican-Baptist dialogue: Pushing at the Boundaries of Unity: Anglicans and Baptists in Conversation (London: Church House Publishing, 2005); Conversations around the World 2000–2005: The Report of the International Conversations between the Anglican Communion and the Baptist World Alliance (London: Anglican Communion Office, 2005).
Cf. Walter Kasper, Harvesting the Fruits: Basic Aspects of Christian Faith in Ecumenical Dialogue (London: Continuum, 2009). See also Paul Avis, “Editorial” and
Geoffrey Wainwright, “Harvesting the Fruits: A First Methodist Response,” both in Ecclesiology 6, no. 2 (2010), 139–41, 143–47. For a powerful summary of ecumenical convergence in ecclesiology,
see Michael Kinnamon, “What Can the Churches Say Together about the Church?,” Ecclesiology 8, no. 3 (2012), 289–301.
Cf. Pope John XXIII’s opening speech at Vatican II: “The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another”; Walter M. Abbott, SJ, ed., The Documents of Vatican II (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1966), 715.
Henri de Lubac, Meditation sur l’Église, 3rd ed. (Paris: Aubier, 1954), 123–37;
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985);
John Zizioulas, Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist and the Bishop during the First Three Centuries, 2nd ed., trans. E. Theokritoff (Brook-line, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001);
Paul McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993; Fairfax, VA: Eastern Christian Publications, 2006).
See also, Paul Avis, The Identity of Anglicanism: Essentials of Anglican Ecclesiology (London: T&T Clark, 2008), ch. V: “Anglicanism and Eucharistic Ecclesiology.”
Vatican II, Christus Dominus (CD) §11; LG 21, 25; see further, Ormond Rush, “The Offices of Christ, Lumen Gentium and the People’s Sense of the Faith,” Pacifica 16, no. 2 (June 2003): 137–52. Cf. Paul Avis, A Ministry Shaped by Mission (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 21–42.
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1966), 313. The Pensée continues: “There must be no sleeping during that time.” No, indeed, but rather ceaseless work for unity!
John Calvin, The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, trans. John W. Fraser, Calvin’s Commentaries, ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1960), 264.
See also the philosophically realist account of the Church, in which Calvin’s comment is quoted, in Arthur Michael Ramsey, The Gospel and the Catholic Church (London: Longmans, Green, 1936), ch. 3.
W. C. Ingle-Gillis, The Trinity and Ecumenical Church Thought (Alder-shot: Ashgate, 2007). Cf. my review in Ecclesiology, 5, no. 3 (2009), 362–65.
G. M. Trevelyan, Clio, A Muse, and Other Essays (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1930), 42.
Yoder, “The Imperative of Christian Unity,” 291–92. A recent powerful apologia for ecumenical dialogue, which employs Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action, is Erin M. Brigham, Sustaining the Hope for Unity: Ecumenical Dialogue in a Postmodern World (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012).
Stanley Hauerwas, Learning to Speak Christian (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2011), 7.
John Milton, Paradise Lost, book I, line 26 in The English Poems of John Milton (London: Oxford University Press, 1913), 114.
Cf. Paul Avis, Reshaping Ecumenical Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2010).
Paul D. Murray, ed., Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), xii–xv: “Some dreams are not simply subjective fantasy… but given to us by an Other whose dreams they are, and given to us precisely in order to be born into being” (xv).
Cf. Nicholas M. Healy, Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Pope John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint (1995), 2, 15.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. Geoffrey Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1936–), IV/1, 675–77.
W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, The Gospel According to St Matthew, vol. 2, Matthew 8–18, International Critical Commentary (London: T&T Clark, 1991), 633; see the discussion of a range of interpretations, 630–34.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, §28: R. C. Zaehner, trans., Hindu Scriptures (London: Dent, 1938), 34.
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Avis, P. (2016). “Unreal Worlds Meeting”?. In: Mannion, G. (eds) Where We Dwell in Common. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137503152_8
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