Ecumenical Theology in Worship, Doctrine, and Life: Essays Presented to Geoffrey Wainwright on his Sixtieth Birthday

ECUMENICAL THEOLOGY IN WORSHIP, DOCTRINE, AND LIFE

Geoffrey

Wainwright

ECUMENICAL THEOLOGY IN WORSHIP, DOCTRINE, AND LIFE

Essays Presented to Geoffrey

Wainwright

on his Sixtieth Birthday

EDITED BY

David S. Cunningham Ralph Del Colle Lucas Lamadrid

New York

Oxford

Oxford University Press

1999

Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sao Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan

Copyright © 1999 by Oxford University Press Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in--Publication Data Ecumenical theology in worship, doctrine, and life : essays presented to Geoffrey Wainwright on his sixtieth birthday / edited by David S. Cunningham, Ralph Del Colle, Lucas Lamadrici. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-513136-3 1. Ecumenical movement. 2. Liturgies and Chirstian union. 3. Theology, Doctrinal. I. Wainwright, Geoffrey, 1939II. Cunningham, David S., 1961. III. Del Colle, Ralph. IV. Lamadrid, Lucas. BXp.Eip 1999 262'.001'1—dc 21 99-10430 Frontispiece photo of Geoffrey Wainwright by Jim Wallace. © Duke University Photography.

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

GEOFFRIDO WAINWRIGHT annum aetatis sexagesimum feliciter complenti

lesu Christi fideli discipulo laudibus Dei instanti theologo liturgiae sacrae indagatori peritissimo unitatis ecclesiae fautori indefesso rerum divinarum doctori praestantissima Dei amico

grates rependentes hoc volumen dedicatum voluere amid disdpuli collegae

MCMXCIX

For Geoffrey Wainwright

O Sacred Feast

Keyboard may double voices.

Communion Anthem for SATB Voices First time, solo voices or quartet; full choir on repeat.

Carlton R Young

Antiphon to the Gospel for the Feast of Corpus Christi O sacrum convivium, in quo Christus sumitur: recolitur memoria passionis eius; mens impletur gratia et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur. Alleluia. York Breviary, 1493

© 1999 Carlton R. Young

PREFACE

Of all those human beings to whom one's gratitude and thanks is rightly given, surely one's teachers must be numbered among the most deserving. And for those whose lives are focused on the work of the Church, there are many teachers to thank: parents, Sunday school instructors, catechists and pastors, advisors and professors. Those who have been incorporated into the Body of Christ will, over the course of their lives, grow into their faith largely through the work of teachers—who communicate to them the form, the content, and the significance of the Christian life. In the lives of those who have edited this volume and those who have contributed to it, Geoffrey Wainwright has been a teacher par excellence. By means of his rigorous scholarship, his resourceful theology, and his tireless efforts on behalf of Church unity, Geoffrey has become a true mentor to all of us; from him we have learned the vocation of the Christian theologian. And more than this: Geoffrey has become a mentor to the whole Church of Christ. He has contributed significantly to its visible unity, not only through his day-to-day work on every level of the oikovuevn, but also by his insistence that the Church's theology must always be integrally related to its liturgy. Several years ago, when the idea of assembling a Festschrift first began to take shape, the editors compiled a list of about thirty potential contributors, across all denominational, geographical, and political lines. We expected that perhaps half of these would contribute. Imagine our surprise when almost every one of them not only agreed to write an essay, but actually did so! Suddenly, we were afraid we might have to ask Oxford University Press to publish the work in two volumes. Our first inclination was to select a few choice essays from among the contributors; but the result might not have reflected the truly international and interconfessional influence of our honoree's work. So we chose instead to ask our contributors' indulgence as we set strict word-count limits and edited their essays without mercy and without remorse. We also decided not to include the essays that we, as the editors, had planned to contribute—since we were already playing sig-

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PREFACE

nificant roles in the production of the volume. By making these (often difficult) decisions, we were able to include almost all of the essays that we received; we had to exclude only those few that arrived too late to undergo the full editorial process. The result is a collection of essays that truly reflects the scope of Geoffrey's theological work, as well as the breadth and depth of his influence on worldwide Christendom. The editors would like to thank the contributors for their work, and for their willingness to allow us to exercise a firm editorial hand. We would also like to thank our families for the time and space that they provided us as we completed this work: Teresa Hittner, Monica, and Emily; Lee Coppernoll, Joshua, and Zoe; and Beth Kreitzer and Claire. Additional thanks to Jason Fout for editorial assistance; to Mike Root for hospitality and recommendations; and to Stephen Beall, Teresa Hittner, and Sabine McDowell for help with translations from (or into) Latin, French, and German respectively. Thanks to Cynthia Read at Oxford University Press for her confidence in this project, and to Jessica Ryan for splendid editorial work. And particular thanks to our institutions—Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, Marquette University, and Bellarmine College—for staff support, administrative expenses, and patient indulgence while we worked away at this volume. And finally, of course, we want to thank Geoffrey. He was, and remains, our teacher; to him we owe much of our own vision of theological task. And from him, we continue to receive wisdom, encouragement, and inspiration. The Feast of St. Leo the Great Anno Domini 1998

David S. Cunningham Ralph Del Colle Lucas Lamadrid

TABULA GRATULATORIA

On the occasion of the publication of this Festschrift, the editors received congratulatory letters from Church officials and theologians—from across the confessions and from around the globe. We publish these greetings in recognition of Geoffrey Wainwright's thoroughgoing commitment to, and influence upon, the worldwide oikouuevn. At the Phanar, September 1998 The Rev. Dr. Geoffrey Wainwright, our Modesty's beloved son in the Lord: grace and peace from God and our Lord Jesus Christ. We rejoice with you on this your sixtieth birthday. The Holy Great Church of Christ takes this opportunity to express to you wholehearted congratulations on behalf of her faithful, as well as our own personal paternal and patriarchal prayers, that the crucified and risen Lord will grant you many more years of health, spiritual happiness, and service. We commend the editors of this Festschrift for honoring you and for recognizing your many significant contributions to scholarship and ecumenism. Throughout your sixty God-given years, beloved friend and coworker in Christ, you have been recognized as a notable Christian educator and a scholar of the highest caliber. You have served as a dedicated theologian, a wise mentor, an experienced guide, a firm advocate for Christian unity, and a true man of God. Our own seminarians have consulted and studied your works for generations now. During the course of our association and interaction, we have had ample opportunities to witness and appreciate the particular attention and reverence you have for the Orthodox Church, Orthodox theological thinking, and Orthodox piety. These sentiments have undoubtedly led you to discover the richness and depth of the Orthodox liturgy, and to present it to many persons who otherwise would have had little or no exposure to our tradition. Furthermore, your own

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unwaning spirit of ecumenism is an example and an encouragement for all who struggle together to promote the mutual understanding of the Churches and their unity in the same faith—and, as a consequence, one sacramental communion. Invoking upon you the abundant grace and infinite mercy of the Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we pray that God grant you health and long life so that you may continue your God-pleasing, tireless, and devoted ministry for the well-being of the Church, the further progress of the ecumenical movement, and the study of worship, which is the breath of all Christians. + Bartholomew of Constantinople The Ecumenical Patriarch

At the Vatican, September 1998 To Geoffrey Wainwright, my honored colleague: My warmest regards to you on the occasion of your sixtieth birthday. I think back fondly on the various times when we have met to discuss theological questions together. Your books are always near at hand in my library. I especially value your liturgical perspective on theology; you always consider theology within the context of worship. Theology is thereby lifted up, out of a purely academic realm, and given the space it must have, in order to thrive and grow. Here, clearly, theology is a discipline derived from faith and directed toward faith; and it remains rooted in prayer. I have always been deeply touched by your passion for ecumenism. Your thought is anchored in your own faith community, yet it is always in search of the unity of the Church of Jesus Christ. May the Lord grant you continuous blessings in your work. + Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger Prefect, Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

At Lambeth Palace, October 1998 The occasion of Geoffrey Wainwright's birthday gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to his life of scholarship and his commitment to the ecumenical movement. His own theological work, notably Doxology, reveals him to be one of the world's most creative and imaginative scholars. His contribution to theological dialogues and his membership in the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches has enabled the wider Church to benefit from his theological creativity. Recently, he was a valued ecumenical participant at the 1998 Lambeth Conference. He is valued by many, not only for his scholarship, but also as a teacher and a friend. I am sure that we can look forward to many more years of his faithful service to Christ's Church. + George Cantuar Archbishop of Canterbury

TABULA GRATULATORIA

XI

Lake Junaluska, September 1998 It is a privilege and honor to send my hearty and heartfelt congratulations to Dr. Geoffrey Wainwright on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday! Dr. Wainwright is, and has long been, a key figure in relations between the world Methodist Council and other Christian communions. Despite a very full university teaching schedule, he has taken time to be personally engaged in current and critical conversations with the Roman Catholic Church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and the Anglican Communion. He has emerged as one of the leading ecumenists in the Christian Church today, and is recognized as one of the most significant theologians of our time. One of the great privileges of my life has been to work with him, to feel his passion for the historic Christian faith, to catch his ecumenical vision, and to observe the enormous goodwill that his students feel for him. Over the past twenty years, he has made crucial contributions to the World Methodist Council that have brought integrity and strength to this organization. It is indeed a high privilege to express, on his sixtieth birthday, the congratulations and thanks of all in the World Methodist Council who know Dr. Wainwright and have benefitted from his contributions. joe Hale General Secretary, World Methodist Council

Strasbourg, November 1998 Geoffrey, on the occasion of your birthday, allow me to express the satisfaction and gratitude of many Lutherans around the globe for more than two decades of renewed fellowship in theological work and ecumenical endeavor. Time and again we needed your scholarship and advice in our undertakings, and you were gracious enough to offer your gifts without hesitation—and with sensitivity and a marvelous spirit of cooperation. There have been ample opportunities for Lutherans to appreciate your competence, not only in your own numerous publications but also in dialogue groups and in joint studies. We have admired your remarkable theological and historical knowledge, which you combine with an almost Cartesian clarity of thought and formulation. It was also your unmistakably Methodist contributions—which you repeatedly summed up in some stanzas from your Wesleys—that provided us with an unexpected lesson in lex orandi, lex credendi. But what I recall most vividly, and what I most treasure, are your relaxed serenity and your sparkling sense of humor. Best wishes on your birthday and in the years to come. Harding Meyer Former Director The Institute for Ecumenical Research of the Lutheran World Federation

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Fordham University Over the past several decades, Geoffrey Wainwright has been a splendid influence in the fields of ecumenism and liturgical theology. He reminds us all that theology cannot live up to its promise unless carried on in the context of prayer and praise. I treasure my associations with Professor Wainwright at Faith and Order meetings and in the American Theological Society. But since he has moved from New York to North Carolina, I miss seeing him as much as I would wish! Avery Dulles Laurence ]. McGinley Chair in Religion and Society The Divinity School, Duke University I often tell students that most theologians talk about how they might do theology if they ever got around to doing any. It is Geoffrey Wainwright's great gift to avoid the prolegomena and to get on with the business of theology. He has therefore put us all in his debt for constantly reminding us of the riches of the tradition, particularly as that tradition is rightly liturgically embodied. Any theology that you cannot sing or pray is not theology, and no one has better helped us to see that than has Geoffrey Wainwright. I am honored to have been Geoffrey's colleague over the past years, and I look forward to the future—for I know I have much more to learn from him. Stanley Hauerwas Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics The Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton Geoffrey Wainwright has been and is a paradigm of the civilized and ecumenically committed theology to which this Lutheran, raised in a more combative tradition, is increasingly drawn. Perhaps for that reason, I am always glad when I have a chance to be with him. I want to thank him not only for his achievements, but also for the (now) many years of such occasions. Robert W. Jenson Senior Scholar for Research The University of Cambridge Incredible as it may seem to anyone acquainted with Geoffrey Wainwright's work, many "modern" Christians once thought it possible not only appropriately to think of God with no thought given to the worship from which such thought arises, but also for Protestants and Catholics to think or worship well in ignorance of, or hostility to, each other's habits. I hope the readers of this book will, "with one accord," raise a glass in celebration of Geoffrey's life and work. Nicholas Lash Norris-Hulse Professor, Emeritus

CONTENTS

Abbreviations

xvii

Editors' Introduction

xix

Geoffrey Wainwright: Teacher, Scholar, Churchman David Tripp

3

Part I: Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi 1

The Lex Orandi in Recent Protestant Theology James F. Kay

2

Theology and Prayer: An Orthodox Perspective Nicholas Lossky

3

Apophaticism, Liturgy, and Theology Frans Jozef van Beeck

4

Lex Credendi, Lex Canendi: Noting the Faith of the Church Karen B. Westerfield Tucker

5

Aoeonoyia kai Oikodouan: Der Lobpreis Gottes und der Aufbau der Glaubensgemeinschaft 55 Richard Schaeffler

6

Praising God as Interpreter and Critic of History Dietrich Ritschl

11 24

33

69

40

XIV CONTENTS

Part II: The Shape of the Liturgy 7

A New Look at the Theology of the Pastoral Offices Byron D. Stuhlman

81

8

Sacrament, Sign, and Unity: An Australian Reflection Norman Young

9

Presbyters' Ordination "Vows" in the Wesleyan Family of Churches David Tripp

106

10 Kotvcovia, Oikovuevn, and Eucharist in Ecumenical Conversations David N. Power

116

95

11 Quelle reconnaissance reciproque? Les ordinations des Reformes suisses en perspective oecumenique 127 Bruno Biirki 12

Contextuality and Catholicity: Toward a Theology of Mediated Otherness 136 Richard Clutterbuck

Part III: The Nature of Doctrine 13

Infallibility and the Question of Assurance George H. Tavard

151

14

Christ and Culture Revisited: Niebuhr's Typology in Wain Wright's "Orthodoxology" 164 Robert A. Cathey

15

Die Ewigkeit des ewigen Lebens Eberhard Jtingel

16

Reordering Salvation: Church as the Proper Context for an Evangelical Ordo Salulis 182 Telford Work

17

Is Jesus Still Lord? Lcsslie Newbigin on the Place of Christ in Trinitarian Ecclesiology 196 Philip W. Butin

18

Salvation in Recent Faith and Order Documents Gunther Gassmann

175

207

CONTENTS

Part IV: Church, World, Mission 19

"Separated Brethren" and "Separated Sisters": Feminist and/as Ecumenical Visions of the Church Teresa Berger

221

20

The Scandal of Particularity: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Limits of Ecumenical Dialogue 231 Edward T. Oakes

21

The Challenge of Convincing Unbelievers That the Bible is the Word of God 241 Michael Bame Bame

22

Methodist Identity and Ecumenical Perspective Walter F. Klaiber

23

Anglican-Methodist Relations: Signs of Hope Mary Tanner

24

Spirituality, Worship, Confession, and Church Unity: A Story from South Africa 271 Dirk J. Smit

Bibliography of the Works of Geoffrey Wainwright Contributors and Editors Index of Names Index of Subjects

295

298 303

Index of Scriptural Citations

311

251 262

283

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ABBREVIATIONS

BEM CD Denz GW

ST

Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper No. 111 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982). References are to numbered paragraphs. Karl Earth, Church Dogmatics, 4 parts in 14 vols., trans, and ed. G. W. Bromiley, T. F. Torrance, and others (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1958I977)Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, 37. Aufl., hrsg. Peter Htinermann und Helmut Hoping (Freiburg: Herder, 1991). Works of Geoffrey Wainwright, cited by the corresponding number of the work as listed in the Bibliography in the back of this volume, plus page number(s) (e.g., GW 144g:374-75). For ease of reference, books are cited by short title; a list of these, including publication data, also appears in the Bibliography. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theoiogiae, cited by part, article, and question; Latin text and translations usually from the Blackfriars edition, 60 vols. (New York: McGraw-Hill; London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 19631970).

Classical sources are cited according to abbreviations in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, 3d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

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EDITORS' INTRODUCTION

The intimate relationship between Christian theology and the praise of God now seems obvious to a great many theologians—and indeed, to a wide range of baptized Christians. After all, to be Church clearly requires the gathering of the assembly in worship and prayer, where—nurtured through Word and Table—the congregation enacts its own constitutive reality as the People of God, the Body of Christ, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Such was the claim of the Second Vatican Council, as embodied in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.1 But the degree to which this claim is more and more widely accepted, among theologians across various spectra, is due in no small measure to the work of Geoffrey Wainwright. Geoffrey's wide-ranging impact on the ecumenically engaged Church Catholic has always emphasized the ecclesial vocation of the theologian. Among colleagues and students alike, Geoffrey has served as an exemplar of theological inquiry and productivity that is every bit as fruitful for the life of the Church as it is for its contribution to the world of professional scholarship. The suasive influence of Geoffrey's growing corpus (including his Faith and Order contributions) is already in evidence and is as obvious as the recognition—to which he has, of course, contributed much—that sustained worship transfigures theological vision. The contributors to this volume reflect the depth and breadth of Geoffrey's work as well as the ecumenical influence of the subtitle of his Doxology (The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine and Life). As James Kay observes in his opening essay, since the publication of Doxology, "Protestant systematic theologians have, in fact, increasingly ventured appeals to worship in articulating Christian teaching."2 And on the Catholic side, Frans Jozef van Beeck employs a doxological analysis to examine the apophatic constraints upon Christian theological affirmations. Together, they remind us of the sheer range of theologians who have been inspired by Geoffrey's venture to explore the close relationship between worship and doctrine. In this respect, one might say that Geoffrey was able to point a wide array of Western theologians toward the wisdom of the East—a wisdom summarized by Vladimir Lossky (and quoted in this volxix

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ume by his son, Nicholas): the "theologian does not seek God as one seeks for an object, but is seized by God as one is seized by a person."3 Let's be specific. Throughout Geoffrey's work, the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi is probed at multiple levels. That principle is the theme of the essays in part I of the present volume; the three aforementioned essays probe it from Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox directions respectively. Others place it in the service of addressing a contemporary philosophical complexity: Richard Schaeffler develops a theory of religious language by examining how the doxological word upbuilds the Christian community, while Dietrich Ritschl shows how it might help us rethink the question of God's influence on human history. And Karen Westerfield Tucker transfigures the principle in a musical direction. But just as the lex orandi principle suffuses Geoffrey's own work, so in this volume: its other three parts can be understood as investigations of that principle from the perspectives of, respectively, worship, doctrine, and life. It is, we think, an entirely appropriate "organizing principle" for Geoffrey's work; he once suggested that "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi" might have been a suitable alternative title for Doxology. When Christians invoke the claim that "the law of prayer is the law of belief (and vice versa)," we seek to remind ourselves that "our offering of praise and life can only be a response to God's gift"—a divine gift through which God is made known to us "in a saving encounter."4 The words just quoted are those of Geoffrey Wainwright, of course. But to make that point, he drew on various theological arguments, including Orthodox and Lutheran ones—just one example of a consistent catholicity that has served to bring to the fore both the spirit and substance of his own ancestor in the faith, John Wesley. Wesley's "Catholic Spirit," interpreted as a "generous orthodoxy,"5 is characteristic of Geoffrey's use of the lex orandi principle, leading him in a more recent essay to advance the following hypothesis: "Liturgy constitutes the Tradition. Or even more boldly: Liturgy is the Tradition, and (more boldly yet) the Tradition is liturgy."6 The essays in part II of this book, then, focus on the liturgy in quite particular ways. Two of the contributors (Bruno Biirki and David Tripp) attend to rites and theologies of ordination; another (David Power) points to the central role of the eucharist; and another (Byron Stuhlman) examines the pastoral offices. Yet none of these essays views the liturgy in isolation; all of them see it as a manifestation of, and a means of contributing to, particular theological loci—including theologies of covenant, of communion, and of the cosmic scope of redemption. The centrality of the relationship between worship and doctrine serves to remind us that the "Contextual Questions" that formed part III of Doxology—and consume so much of contemporary theology—can only be understood in relation to its two preceding parts, namely "Substantial Matters" (Image of God, Christ, Spirit, Church) and "Traditional Means" (Scripture, Creeds and Hymns, Lex Orandi, and Lex Credendi). Indeed, Geoffrey's bold venture in Doxology was to bring, to profound theological articulation, the claim that the encounter between Christian faith and its context—and thus between the triune God and the world— takes place in the Church's worship and prayer. How many are tempted to take up the contextual questions of culture and ethics without attending to "substantial matters" and "traditional means"? Such "leap-

EDITORS INTRODUCTION

XXI

frogging" is not only commonplace; it is completely characteristic of much theology in the late twentieth century. In such circumstances, who could imagine that a theologian who not only refused to leap over these issues, but actually took them seriously, would be led thereby to offer such penetrating insights about the ecumenical task, liturgical renewal, theological ethics, and eschatological destiny? And yet this is precisely the ground covered in the final third of Doxology. Appropriately enough, then, essays in various parts of this volume testify to these important practical ramifications of a liturgical systematic theology. For example, in part II, Richard Clutterbuck attends to questions of "contextuality" in all their complexity, positing a "theology of mediated otherness." In part III, Robert Cathey takes up the theme of "Christ and Culture" quite explicitly, with respect to both social ethics and interfaith dialogue. And in part IV, Michael Bame Bame examines biblical inspiration from an apologetic perspective, while Dirk Smit describes how Geoffrey's theology helped South African Christians struggle to overcome various forms of division and sociopolitical oppression. The attention that we have given to the internal structure of Doxology is not intended to place Geoffrey in some unique class, nor to hail a liturgical approach to systematic theology as the only valid one. Rather it is to affirm, with Geoffrey, his "modest hope" that his work has already begun "to exemplify some of the rewards to be found in doing theology in a liturgical perspective."7 As an instance of this, let us return to the substantial theological matter raised by van Beeck. Is it the case that apophaticism imposes a limit on what we may say about God, especially about the nature of God's being? One may argue, for instance, that all religious language about God is metaphorical, expressing thereby only the God-world relation and nothing more; or, with due reverence for the via negativa and its expressions in Christian mysticism, one can claim that we should rather remain silent coram Deo than enter upon all-too-human speculations about the unknowability of God. In either case, God is essentially incomprehensible. But apart from the silence of the mystic, the public worship of the Church has been quite explicit in its trinitarian language about God. The specificity of our confession, prayer, and praise has surfaced in debates over inclusive language and the trinitarian naming of God, liturgical and ecclesial inculturation, and the praxis that attends our imaging of the divine. Geoffrey has addressed himself to all of these in some depth (one really ought to reread his chapters in Doxology on Ecumenism, Revision, and Culture), and done so with a speculative and hermeneutical modesty that is no less profound for its simplicity.8 But with respect to our knowledge of God, Geoffrey would likely affirm van Beeck's claims that "the great Tradition tacitly claims that human language is capable of kataphatic affirmations that leave God's incomprehensibility intact"9 and that dedicated speech, as articulate praise and thanksgiving, "accomplishes what is accomplished by the posture of speechless awe before God."10 This double affirmation serves as a reminder that the doxological approach that Geoffrey has so tirelessly pursued embraces both the human and divine in their relatedness and distinction. Indeed, perhaps a close reading of Geoffrey's first chapter in Doxology might have helped both "kerygmatic" theologians and "correlational" theologians to discover that a liturgical systematic theology could help them tran-

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scend their polar representations of the theological task. For surely a liturgical theology calls into question the general tendency to set the priority of divine revelation (e.g., of a Barth or Balthasar) against the mediating value of a theological anthropology (e.g., of a Tillich or Rahner). A sense of the potential of a liturgical theology in this regard can be gained from various contributors, such as Dietrich Ritschl (with respect to the acts of God in history) and Teresa Berger (who suggests that, just as our categories of gender are not reducible to a simple binary opposition, so might categories such as "Protestant" and "Catholic" be marked by a similar fluidity). Because Geoffrey Wainwright has embodied the integration of liturgical theology and systematic theology, his work helps us understand the relationship between first-order theological discourse (the language of prayer and praise) and the second-order doctrinal claims that the Church has struggled to formulate. Part III is therefore given over to an examination of "The Nature of Doctrine." This has been of major concern in much of Geoffrey's recent work, focusing particularly on the trinitarian substructure of Christian worship. A great deal is at stake—"the identity of God, and the nature of God's presence and action in the world"11—and he is not hesitant to speak against Arian, Sabellian, and Marcionite tendencies.12 Such exhortations, when they do come, are part and parcel of his discernment that the doctrine of the Trinity is emerging again as the "article by which the Church stands or falls." No better summary of Geoffrey's own trinitarian doctrine may be given than that which he applies to John Wesley: both theologians are deliberate Trinitarians who ground the doctrine in Scripture and soteriology, while recognizing its doxological intent and its fruit in personal communion.13 Similar concerns appear in this volume, in the form of essays that attend in one form or the other to the trinitarian structure of Christian faith. Eberhard Jiingel's essay on "the eternity of eternal life" begins with a full-voiced trinitarian credo and maintains the centrality of that doctrine throughout. And Philip Butin highlights the importance of trinitarian claims within ecumenical theology by examining the work of Lesslie Newbigin (who is the subject of Geoffrey's forthcoming book). No stranger to the hard task of engaging doctrinal and theological differences, Geoffrey has here set an example as well. Geoffrey Wainwright on Wesley and Calvin: Sources for Theology, Liturgy and Spirituality14 irenically tackles many of the classic doctrinal differences across the Reformed/Arminian divide. George Tavard, a Roman Catholic who has accomplished for his communion what Geoffrey has for his, contributes here on the issue of infallibility and assurance. No less difficult a task is attempted by Telford Work, as he seeks to resituate evangelicalism vis-a-vis the Church Catholic and within a thoroughly trinitarian ecclesiology. If one has engaged the depth and breadth of theological loci to the extent that Geoffrey has, one develops a characteristic perspective that can be mapped onto new theological issues as they arise. Some theologians imprint this perspective on their students as though producing replicas on an assembly line; but such manufacture of "imitation Wainwrights" would have been wholly antithetical both to Geoffrey's style and to his pedagogical commitments. He has always been supremely gracious to his students, helping them to learn from his well-honed theological perspective hut also allowing them to go their own way. All three of the editors of

EDITORS' INTRODUCTION XX111

this volume are products of his generous and encouraging approach; all of us have been strongly influenced by his work, but our work is critically appreciative, rather than imitative. Such "critical appreciation" marks the thought of others who have written and worked under Geoffrey's direct influence; several examples appear in this volume. Robert Cathey, for example, asks whether Geoffrey's "orthodoxology" requires revision in the light of certain claims of postliberal theology and of theologies influenced by the Radical Reformation. Similarly, Teresa Berger asks whether his understanding of ecumenism might need to be challenged by the perspective of feminism. Finally, Edward Oakes uses the theological perspective of Hans Urs von Balthasar to ask whether we might need to admit certain limits to the ecumenical project. The point to be noted in all these and other possible conversations with Geoffrey's work is that he is himself aware that plying the liturgical traditions of the Church reveals that the "Holy Spirit is integral to its substantive content and to the traditionary process."15 In declaring that "Tradition is liturgy," he simultaneously underscores the hazards risked by any theology that lacks a robust pneumatology: "Without the Spirit who is invoked in worship, there is no Tradition or tradition."16 Geoffrey would certainly agree with his interlocutors that the ongoing development of the Tradition will require a communally undertaken process of "discerning the spirits"—and a willingness to entrust this process of development to the Spirit's movement. Yet another of Geoffrey's valued gifts is his theological interpretation of the ecumenical movement. His many essays on the subject, some of which are collected in The Ecumenical Moment, Methodists in Dialogue, and Worship with One Accord, certainly bear this out. These essays not only offer an excellent theological analysis of the movement toward unity or agreement; they also identify the further work that needs to take place. Sometimes the reportage and interpretation that he offers is itself the insight required to move that convergence along. This aspect of Geoffrey's work is the focal point for a number of the contributors to this volume. Some of these naturally appear in part IV ("Church, World, Mission"); but just as Geoffrey's ecumenical interests have pervaded his own vocation, so are "ecumenically interested" contributions scattered across all four parts of this volume. For example, in part III, Giinther Gassmann examines the soteriological emphases of recent Faith and Order Documents, while in part II, David Power focuses on various bilateral dialogues that examine the relations among koivwvia, otkovuevn|, and eucharist. Geoffrey's other mode of ecumenical engagement is as a Methodist, and a faithful one. Norman Young, Walter Klaiber, and Mary Tanner all remind us of his service to his own heritage by reflecting on Methodist ecumenism in, respectively, Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom. David Tripp adds another perspective by examining changes in Methodist worship. And we must mention again Geoffrey's colleague at Duke, Karen Westerfield Tucker, who matches his erudition in the area of hymnody and takes us full circle—from lex orandi to lex credendi to lex canendi: worship in song, which engages the whole person and "notes" the faith of the Church.

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EDITORS INTRODUCTION

By now it should be clear why this volume of essays is entitled Ecumenical Theology in Worship, Doctrine, and Life. Just as Doxology helped us to understand how a systematic theology could resist the modern dissection of the theological enterprise into separate fields of liturgies, dogmatics, and ethics, so has Geoffrey's overall contribution reminded us that the modern ecumenical enterprise can only succeed if it learns to do the same. Geoffrey Wainwright has, of course, contributed much to the ongoing success of that enterprise—though he would be the first to remind us that it still has far to go. Yet as the Church goes its pilgrim way, many of us continue to be inspired by one of its most gifted pilgrims. In the biographical sketch that follows this introduction, David Tripp provides some fascinating personal insights into Geoffrey's character. We will not attempt to duplicate his yeoman service in that regard. Instead, we will limit ourselves to quoting a single sentence from Geoffrey's writing—one that not only exemplifies and embodies the worship-centered theology that he lives and breathes, but also helps to explain why so many of us continue to be inspired and encouraged by his work. In his recent book on soteriological themes, For Our Salvation, part I is entitled "Senses of the Word." Even the chapter titles—"Listen to Him," "Taste and See," "Scent and Touch"—make tangible the Christus praesens in the Church's worship. The interrelationship between theology and prayer soon becomes selfevident; and we can offer no better entree to this collection of essays than to encourage the reader to read them with Geoffrey's words in mind: the Word, who became flesh and redeemed us, is heard, seen, touched, and tasted by an anointed body called to be and to spread the fragrance of Christ in the world until such time as all who shall become part of it are joined in a perfect fellowship of praise and delight.17 NOTES

1. Lumen Gentium 17. 2. Kay, "The Lex Orandi in Recent Protestant Thought," 11, this volume. 3. Cited in chapter 2, note 2, of this volume. 4. Doxology, 242. 5. Methodists in Dialogue, 283. 6. One Accord, 45. 7. Doxology, 435. 8. See his discussion on the metaphorical character of human speech about God in One Accord, 243. 9. van Beeck, "Apophaticism, Liturgy, and Theology," 35, this volume. 10. Ibid, (same page as note 9). 11. Methodists in Dialogue, 203. 12. Ibid., 247. 13. Ibid., 261-74. 14. GW 106. 15. One Accord, 60. 16. Ibid. 17. For Our Salvation, 96.

ECUMENICAL THEOLOGY IN WORSHIP, DOCTRINE, AND LIFE

Let us look at the sacred testimony of priestly intercessions, which have been transmitted from the apostles, and which are uniformly celebrated throughout the world and in every catholic Church: so that the law of prayer may establish a law of belief. —St. Prosper of Aquitaine

GEOFFREY WAINWRIGHT

Teacher, Scholar, Churchman David Tripp

1 To know Geoffrey Wainwright is to know a man whose life and work are I unified. A Yorkshire Methodist, Geoffrey is the heir of a vigorous and determined culture; of a sporting tradition (cricket) in which teamwork, tradition, and individual responsibility are inseparable; and of a style of Christianity that prefers consistency to compromise. This inheritance alone does not explain Geoffrey; but all who know him at all must know that he has made this inheritance his own. All of it, cricket included,1 has been forged into his theological discipline. Geoffrey Wainwright was born at Monk Bretton in the West Riding on July 16, 1939 to Willie and Martha Anne ("Mattie") Wainwright. From the Barnsley District Holgate Grammar School (a "high school," in American terms, and one dating from Reformation times), he went up in 1957 to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, to read Modern Languages and, after proceeding to the B.A. in 1960 (M.A., 1964), Part III of the Theological Tripos. An accepted candidate (1961) for the British Methodist Ministry, Geoffrey was allowed by the British Conference to complete his Tripos work and then sent in 1962 to study at Wesley College, Headingley, Leeds, in Yorkshire. During his time at Headingley (1962-64), Geoffrey began his association with both Rome and Geneva (1963—66) and the World Council of Churches, specifically with the start of his doctoral studies under the auspices of Nikos Nissiotis. His D.Theol. dissertation is his pioneering study, Eucharist and Eschatology, published in 1972. Later researches brought him further higher degrees, the B.D. (1972) and D.D. (1987), both from the University of Cambridge. Major figures in the communities of Geoffrey's formative years are interestingly associated with the liturgical, sacramental, and trinitarian emphases that were later to mark Geoffrey's own perceptions and creativity. One was John F. Butler, an exceptional Methodist theologian of worship and aesthetics,2 who was superintendent of Barnsley when Geoffrey became a local preacher. Two others were Fellows of Caius before Geoffrey was born: the Anglican patrologist and liturgist and 3

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uniquely perceptive interpreter of Edmund Bishop, James Herbert Srawley,3 and the Methodist Howard Watkin-jones,4 continuer of Henry Barclay Swete's magisterial history of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, subsequently principal at Headingley. And finally, we should mention the Headingley principal of Geoffrey's own time, A. Raymond George (1912-1998), 5 to whom Geoffrey gladly acknowledges his debt. For the most part, however, Geoffrey's connection to these senior colleagues is less through direct influence than through spiritual kinship. In the Church's teaching ministry, there is an affinity not confined to immediate succession. Geoffrey's pastoral ministry, after his probationary circuit years (1964-66) at the Methodist/Anglican ecumenical appointment in the Liverpool suburbs that was to become St. Mary's Halewood,6 has been one of teaching: in academic posts, in the theological and liturgical councils of the Churches, and through his writing. In all these areas, he has been consistently concerned to feed the Church and to witness to its central and life-giving napasdoois. After his ordination to the presbyterate in 1967, he taught systematic theology until 1973 at the Faculte Protestante de Theologie at Yaounde, Cameroon. For church purposes, he was a minister of the Methodist Church's Dahomey-Togo District, which meant that he had to cross several national frontiers to attend his district synod. During one such journey, invited by the local church to preach in an unevangelized village, he saw his preaching attended by the conversion of the entire community. The British Conference called him back to Britain in 1973 to lecture in systematics at the (Anglican/Methodist/ecumenical) Queen's College, Birmingham, until 1979. That year saw him called to the Roosevelt Chair of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary, New York, from which he moved in 1983 to the Cushman Chair of Christian Theology at the Divinity School of Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. His teaching labors have taken him, as duties have permitted, far afield: summer schools at Notre Dame's Liturgy Program; a semester exchange with Norman Young, at Melbourne; and lectureships at seminaries and for Church judicatories throughout North America and beyond. His academic colleagues have turned to him for leadership, notably in the presidency of the international Societas Liturgica, which he serves also as a long-term member of the editorial board of its organ, Studio. Liturgica, and the secretaryship and then the presidency of the American Theological Society. He has served as a surrogate delegate of the Oxford University Press. In the publishing world, therefore—including his vast output of reviews and his sustained succession of survey articles7 published on three continents—Geoffrey has done much to hold the world Church's scholars and researchers together. Obviously, such a ministry is possible only to a linguist of exceptional ability—though it was about much more than linguistic dexterity that Angelus Haussling, O.S.B., wrote of Geoffrey, "Es werden im deutschen Sprachgebiet nicht viele Theologen zu finden sein, die ahnlich konzentriert Theologie zu treiben vermogen."8 A minister of the British Methodist Connexion, granted permission to serve abroad, Geoffrey has continued to serve the British Churches, both in interchurch relations and on a denominational basis (as a member of the British Methodist Faith

GEOFFREY WAINWRIGHT

5

and Order Committee, which has involved him in responsibility for liturgical revision as well as for ecumenical doctrinal relations since nearly the outset of his ordained ministry), and as a representative of his Church to the World Methodist Council in 1971. He served on the Churches' Council on Covenanting9 during the frustrating years of 1978-1981. In a wider sphere, Geoffrey's work in Faith and Order has been long and influential: the Lima Document and the Lima Liturgy are probably the best known of the projects he has nourished. These undertakings— with the evaluation of the Churches' responses to them and the subsequent extended study of the common confession of the shared apostolic faith—remain among his continued commitments. His written examinations of Faith and Order works are accounts of stewardship, and are also pleas for renewed ecumenical courage on the part of the sundered Churches. It may seem strange to class a theologian of the second half of this century as an ecumenical pioneer, but Geoffrey has still had to advocate the unity movement against distrust and reluctance. In the Britain in which Geoffrey was born, despite great advances in Christian relationships, there were still many places where fear of other Christians had hardly caught up with the Victorian clerical diarist who in 1879 wrote: "This morning I went into Bath. Having an hour to spare, I went into the Catholic Cathedral. I knelt and prayed for charity, unity, and brotherly love, and the union of Christendom. Surely a Protestant may pray in a Catholic Church and be none the worse."10 The Church honored Geoffrey in 1979 with the Fernley-Hartley Lectureship, which "induced" the "birth into print" of his long-gestated Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine and Life, A Systematic Theology (1980). This work, as well as being an influential teaching instrument (and both boon and wholesome challenge to confused seminarians), is arguably the principal exposition of a systematics that draws upon the Church's worship as the core expression of tradition. The revelation recorded in Scripture is witnessed to in the liturgy, handed on through the liturgy in the form of creed and Scripture and by means of ministry and prayer, and into that revelation event the Church is drawn, and all humankind invited, in the sacramental acts of the Trinity. Geoffrey's methodological debates with his peers, past and present, draw upon philosophy and phenomenology, but his methods of theological exploration are determined by the subject itself and by its role in the Christian faith community. As he stated in his manifesto on assuming the Roosevelt chair, theology is toward God, obligated to faithfulness, essentially in the service of proclamation, centered upon dogma, answerable to tradition, and thus finally a churchly activity. Liturgy is itself subject to theological critique, testing its fidelity to tradition and supremely to the Bible, testing its effectiveness for the world Church and the necessity and dangers of its localization in changing and diverse cultures (which are themselves subject to critique, most urgently where cultural fashions are blandly humanistic or otherwise not Christian). The eschatological dimension is never far away (as it is also omnipresent in Charles Wesley's hymns, one of Geoffrey's major sources). This gives a special edge and depth to his appeals for a renewed liturgical life in baptism, in eucharist, in communion fellowship, and in preaching—and to his pleading with the Churches for spiritual renewal and humble reconciliation:

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We liturgists and ecumenists . . . are not so na'ive as to think that the hard work of study, writing, and negotiation, necessary as these are, will of themselves achieve the desired unity of Christians in a single fellowship of worship and mission. They will amount to nothing without the blessing of God on what we take to be obedience to divinely given task. Ecumenists and liturgists therefore regard as indispensable, and indeed a foretaste of the deepened communio in sacris which the Churches seek, prayer for Christian unity—and for the world to which the Gospel is to be preached.11

Geoffrey serves as a charitable yet critical interpreter between traditions and as an interpreter of each: Kimbanguist and Roman, Orthodox and Lutheran, Reformed and Anglican, Congregational and Baptist—at least one major publication, in most cases several, being devoted to each of these communities. Naturally, his own tradition claims much of his scholarly concern, first in gratitude for its gifts, second in stewardly responsibility for sharing those gifts with the wider Church, and third in equal stewardship of its own doctrinal and spiritual integrity. Methodists are challenged to learn from their relationships with Anglicans, Roman Catholics, the Reformed, and Lutherans, and not to hide from the challenges of Anabaptism. They are summoned to ask what their place is in the Church Universal (and the Church triumphant as well as militant), and to question their inclination to facile "pluralism" in doctrine. Methodism's ministerial education is strictly scrutinized, as is also that style of feminism which betrays the classical Christian witness of great Christian women of the past. Methodism is primarily a debtor to other Churches, but it still has offerings to bring to the ecumenical table: it is not often that papal infallibility is evaluated by reference to the doctrine of assurance!12 The Wesleyan emphasis on sanctification is commended to the wider oikovuevn—both as a witness to the divine promise and as a gift in anticipation of the "unfettered circulation of glory which will be both God's kingdom and our salvation." At the same time, the Wesleyan holiness theme is both rediscovered and set in clearer focus when seen as worship—and thus for God's glory, not our own: In worship we take in the outpouring of God's creative and redemptive love, and we offer in return our thanks and supplications. In this personal exchange we are coming into the moral and spiritual likeness of our Lover. This transformation is our glorification in both the objective and the subjective senses: by grace we are being made partakers of the divine nature, and in humility God is being enriched by the requital of his love on the part of his creatures. Our being changed from glory into glory is itself for the greater glory of God.13

For every Church, Geoffrey's witness is, at its core, this: that trinitarian faith is the ardculus vel stantis vel cadentis ecdesiae. His reflection and experience have confirmed this, and his earliest perceptions of it are founded in the liturgy: As a child I sat in short trousers on the prickly cushions of the hard pews in the Yorkshire village chapel and whiled away many a sermon time by reading through the hymnbook—and gratefully rose to join in the singing of texts I came to know by heart. . . . My village of farmers and coal miners could sing a hymn that echoes both the affectivity of a "crucified love" (as in Ignatius of Antioch and in Origen) and the bold ontology of the Syriac acclamation, "One of the Trinity has suffered":

GEOFFREY WAINWRIGHT

7

O Love divine! What hast Thou done! The immortal God hath died for me! The Father's co-eternal Son Bore all my sins upon the tree; The immortal God for me hath died! My Lord, my Love is crucified.14 NOTES

1. In addition to numerous obiter dicta, note his Oxford University Sermon "On Church Extension" (GW 41) and his "Rain Stopped Play?" (GW 123). 2. See John F. Butler, "The Sacramental Life," Religion in Life 4/4 (Autumn 1935): 55974; articles on Christian art and architecture in India and elsewhere in International Review of Mission 41 (1952): 374-90, Congregational Quarterly 34 (April 1956): 154-61, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 10 (Winter 1973): 94-120, and Missiology 8 (October 1980): 489-93; The Holiness of Beauty (London: Epworth Press, 1961); "The Camden Society," International Review of Mission 52 (April 1963): 206-10; and "Presuppositions in Modern Theologies of the Place of Worship," Studia Liturgica 3/4 (December 1964): 210-26. 3. See J. H. Srawley, The Early History of the Liturgy, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947); The Liturgical Movement: Its Origin and Growth (Oxford: Mowbray, 1954); and Nigel Abercombie, Life and Work of Edmund Bishop (London: Longmans, 1959). 4. See H. Watkin-Jones, The Holy Spirit in the Mediaeval Church: The Holy Spirit from Arminius to Wesley; and Methodist Churchmanship and its Implications (London: Epworth, 1922, 1929, and 1946, respectively). 5. See T. [Alexander-]Mcquiban and D. H. Tripp, Bibliography of the Works of A. Raymond George, Wesley Historical Society, Bristol Branch, Occasional Paper no. 8 (Bristol, November 1992). 6. On St Mary's, Halewood, as it developed largely in fulfilment of Geoffrey's vision, see D. H. Tripp, "Worship in a Shared Church: Some Personal Experiences," The Preacher's Quarterly 15/2 (June 1969): 3-11, and 15/3 (September 1969): 6-10, and in R. M. C. Jeffery, Ecumenical Experiments: A Handbook (London: British Council of Churches, 1971), 49577. Including "La theologie systematique en Grande-Bretagne" (GW 16), and, to come almost up to date, "Recent Continental Theology: Historical and Systematic" (GW 191). 8. Archiv fur Liturgiewissenschaft 25/1 (1983): 47, commenting on Wainwright's "Der Gottesdienst als 'Locus theologicus'" (GW 57). 9. Most recently surveyed in John Muncey Turner, Modern Methodism in England 19321998 (London: Epworth, 1998). 10. William Plomer, ed., Kilvert's Diary 1870-1879. Selections from the Diary of the Rev. Francis Kilvert (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 317. 11. One Accord, 14. 12. See George Tavard's essay on this claim in chapter 13 in this volume. 13. Doxology, 462. 14. For Our Salvation, 84, 87.

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Part 1 LEX ORANDI, LEX CREDENDI

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CHAPTER I

THE LEX ORANDI IN RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGY James F. Kay

I Geoffrey Wainwright states that his book Doxology: The Praise of God in WorI ship, Doctrine and Life was "primarily intended" to be "a systematic theology written from a liturgical perspective."1 Its publication in 1980 also prompted Wainwright's observation that he knew of no other "complete systematic theology deliberately composed" with "the links between worship and doctrine" in mind.2 Doxology attempted to meld the traditionally Protestant genre of systematic theology with the Orthodox, Roman, and Anglo-Catholic traditions of theological reflection on the liturgy. Wainwright himself signaled the experimental nature of this attempt by characterizing his book as an "essay [to] encourage other systematic theologians to make more sustained use of this approach."3 He added, "One of my purposes in writing has been to rescue the interplay of worship and doctrine— with both its problems and its opportunities—as an area of interest for Protestant theology."4 In the intervening years, Protestant systematic theologians have, in fact, increasingly ventured appeals to worship in articulating Christian teaching. While it is too early to tell whether this development will become a trend, it certainly merits our examination; and it already represents an ecumenical enrichment for theology. The heart of Doxology and its theological method is the discussion in chapter 7 of the lex orandi, immediately paired in chapter 8 with the discussion of the lex credendi.5 Indeed, so central is Wainwright's contention that liturgy and doctrine comprise "correlative norms" that "it might almost have been possible to entitle the whole book Lex orandi, lex credendi."6 Commenting on this old, if often overlooked, theological adage, Wainwright noted: The Latin tag, lex orandi, lex credendi . . . may be construed in two ways. The more usual way makes the rule of prayer a norm for belief: what is prayed indicates what may and must be believed. But from the grammatical point of view it is equally possible to reverse subject and predicate and so take the tag as meaning that the rule of faith is the norm for prayer: what must be believed governs what may and should be

11

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LEX ORANDI, LEX C R E D E N D I

prayed. The linguistic ambiguity of the Latin tag corresponds to a material interplay which in fact takes place between worship and doctrine in Christian practice: worship influences doctrine, and doctrine worship. Much of the present book is taken up with explorations of that interplay.7

In this vein, Wainwright illustrated, from the history of both Christian rites and theological controversies, how typically (if not exclusively) Roman Catholicism gives priority to liturgy as a norm for doctrine, while Protestantism typically (if not exclusively) gives priority to doctrine as a norm for worship.8 Wainwright tried to surmount the resultant impasse in these approaches, when taken as exclusive alternatives, by pointing irenically to the "interplay" of doctrine and worship on both sides of the Reformation divide.9 Nevertheless, precisely because of this interplay, many questions arise as to how appeals to worship can settle theological controversies or establish Christian doctrine. As Maurice Wiles has noted, "Undoubtedly the practice of prayer has had its effect on doctrine; undoubtedly the practice of prayer should have its effect on doctrine. But that is not to say that the effect which prayer has actually had is at every point precisely the effect which it should have had."10 Wainwright posed the issue similarly when, discussing the emergence in the fourth century of trinitarian doctrine, he asked whether this was "either a necessary or a legitimate development from the baptismal practice."11 Granted that appeal should be made to worship in the determination, substantiation, or clarification of Christian teaching, the comments of Wiles and Wainwright suggest that this appeal can never be an exclusive one. There are other sources and criteria that must also be taken into account—for example, Scripture, catholicity, and ethical correspondence, to name only three of those noted by Wainwright.12 Moreover, as Wainwright himself acknowledged, the uses of the lex orandi are complicated by the variety of relations and connections between this doctrinal test and others commonly used to substantiate Christian teaching. This multiplicity of criteria constitutes "a complex of co-ordinates," so that situating "any particular feature of worship" within this complex for the purposes of doctrinal adjudication "can only be approximate." Indeed, Wainwright concedes, "It is hard to see how absolute certainty could attach to any doctrinal conclusion drawn from the worship of the Church. Such conclusions will possess varying degrees of probability and must remain open to revision."13 It is doubtful whether any doctrine of the Church becomes authorized and authoritative only through an appeal to worship; but while the lex orandi is not an exclusive criterion, it remains an essential one. Such considerations suggest that Alister E. McGrath is correct when he observes that "the question of the relative authority of the lex orandi and the lex credendi remains to be further explored, and is likely to be the subject of lively debate for some time to come."14 As a contribution to such exploration and debate, I now turn to the recent work of Thomas C. Oden, Alister E. McGrath, John H. Leith, Robert W. Jenson, and Christopher Morse. Over the past decade, these five Protestant theologians in their systematic work have each claimed worship as a source and norm for Christian doctrine.15 By examining these claims, my intent is to discover the degree to which, and the way by which, the lex orandi achieves formal

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13

acknowledgment and/or material use in the articulation of Christian teaching. Do these recent Protestant efforts to employ an ancient patristic axiom lead to new possibilities, or only to insurmountable problems, for continuing to appeal to worship in determining Christian doctrine?

Lex Orandi as "Tradition" Both Thomas C. Oden and Alister E. McGrath describe "scripture, tradition, experience, and reason" as, in Oden's words, "an interdependent quadrilateral of sources on the basis of which the confessing community can articulate, make consistent, and integrate the witness to revelation."16 Likewise, Oden and McGrath both include worship as a source and norm of Christian teaching under the rubric of "tradition." Indeed, Oden boldly claims that "the strongest and surest medium of tradition is probably not teaching at all but liturgy and church practice."17 For his part, McGrath writes, One of the most important elements of the Christian tradition is fixed forms of worship, usually known as "liturgy." . . . The tag lex orandi, lex credendi, which could be translated roughly as "the way you pray determines what you believe," expresses the fact that theology and worship interact with each other. What Christians believe affects the manner in which they pray and worship; the manner in which Christians pray and worship affects what they believe.18

Note here that McGrath identifies the lex orandi with "fixed forms of worship," embracing the "manner of prayer," presumably both its "what" (rites) and its "how" (ceremonial), and predicated of no specific Church but of "Christians" or the "Christian tradition." Formally speaking, "tradition" is that which is "handed down" or transmitted "intergenerationally through time."19 It is also a communal activity or shared social process in which this transmission occurs.20 As McGrath comments, tradition is "an active process of reflection by which theological or spiritual insights are valued, assessed, and transmitted from one generation to another."21 Presumably, then, it is not simply the "fixed forms of worship" that serve as norms for theology but the very process by which those forms become fixed. In this way, McGrath's definition of the lex orandi can be construed not only as an appeal to liturgy but as an appeal to the process of liturgical formation or development. Furthermore, by situating the lex orandi within the broader context of "tradition," both Oden and McGrath thereby imply that the way theology appeals to liturgy will be governed, in part, by the role it accords to tradition with respect to Scripture. In this regard, McGrath first notes the "single-source theory" of tradition identified with Irenaeus of Lyons. There is an authorized way of interpreting Scripture that goes back to the apostles, so that the parameters of scriptural interpretation are set. In this way, tradition does not displace Scripture as the "single source" or primary witness to divine revelation; rather, tradition becomes understood as the essential communal context or sense governing scriptural interpretation.22 As Oden puts it, "Tradition is simply the history of the exegesis of Scripture."23 Thus, the "single-source theory" of tradition suggests that an appeal to the

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lex orandi is tantamount to a hermeneutical claim that Scripture must be read through the liturgy in order to determine or establish Christian teaching. By contrast, the "dual-source theory," associated with the sixteenth-century Council of Trent, holds that ecclesiastical tradition is "a separate and distinct source of revelation, in addition to Scripture," an unwritten source going back to the apostles and supplementing scripture on matters where scripture is silent.24 Assuming once again that liturgical tradition can be subsumed under ecclesiastical tradition, then it would follow on Tridentine grounds that the liturgy of the Roman Church constitutes a "distinct source of revelation, in addition to Scripture," Thus, the "dualsource theory" of tradition gives appeals to the lex orandi far greater weight than its "single-source" counterpart in the establishment and articulation of Christian doctrine. These two theories of tradition suggest two different ways in which appeals to worship might relate to appeals to Scripture. Take the case of infant baptism. Its defense could be offered through the lex orandi from either a Protestant or a Tridentine standpoint, but in each case the appeal would function quite differently in relation to the norm of Scripture. In the case of Tridentine Catholics, the rite of infant baptism could itself be held as a venerable and veritable witness to revelation in the absence of unambiguous scriptural warrants; in the case of Protestants, an appeal to the rite of infant baptism could have the more modest aim of showing that this rite affords a plausible, that is, communally persuasive, way to read the scriptural witness to revelation. What thus emerges is a significant clue about how the lex orandi could appropriately function in communities committed to scripture as the definitive source and preeminent norm for Christian teaching. Turning now to John H. Leith's Basic Christian Doctrine: here, prayer is recognized as part of that larger pattern of activity comprising theology. Theology in its broadest sense is critical reflection about the meaning of human existence and about the nature of the universe. As critical reflection it is distinguished both from religious enthusiasm and from prayer, though some have attempted to write theology as a prayer. Christian theology is critical reflection about God, about human existence, about the nature of the universe, and about faith itself: (a) in the light of the revelation of God embodied in Jesus Christ and attested in the scriptures; (b) in dialogue with the way the church has understood the revelation in the past; (c) in conversation with human experience today, especially human experience within the church; and (d) in dialogue with and witness to culture, social life, and living religions.25

Note here that theology is understood as "critical reflection." As such, it is contrasted with prayer. Yet, as critical reflection on "how the church has understood revelation in the past" (i.e., "tradition") and on contemporary "human experience within the church," Christian theology can be said to be dependent on prayer as a source and object of its reflection, insofar as prayer remains an experience within the Church or insofar as the Church's understanding of revelation is transmitted through its liturgy. This dependency of Christian theology upon prayer, or on a community that prays, worships, and hence participates in the very subject matter of theology, is

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15

continually contrasted by Leith with "academic theology," whose principal community is not one of prayer but rather that of the university and its networks of scholarly guilds. Academic theology uses "new vocabularies" from nonecclesial contexts, motivated, in Leith's view, by a desire to modify Christian theology to accommodate "secular humanist culture" rather than to illuminate "worshiping communities." By contrast, Christian theology properly arises from the "worshiping, believing community," and it employs, as did the Protestant Reformers over against medieval Scholasticism, "the language and idiom of the worshiping, believing congregation," that is, the language of Scripture and prayer.26 Leith further elaborates the relation between theology and worship by first acknowledging that "Christian faith has been kept alive by the liturgy, by telling the story of Jesus, by the discipline of church practices, by the singing of hymns, by the prayers of the people.. . . The law of prayer is the law of believing. "27 For this reason, Leith holds that "hymns, prayers, devotional writings, and worship practices," while distinct from dogmas, doctrines, and theological thought as such, "have great theological significance" and comprise data from the life of the community that the theologian "has to take seriously."28 Indeed, "even the singing of 'Jesus loves me, this I know; for the Bible tells me so' is filled with theological assertions that the growing child needs to understand."29 Thus, Leith's formal commitment to the lex orandi is seen in his view that it comprises essential data for theological reflection; that it provides (together with Scripture) the language and idioms for theological articulation; and that the community of prayer, defined as "worshiping" and "believing," is a source, principal context, and primary audience for Christian theology. Given these convictions, the one place where an appeal to liturgical practice by Leith might have been expected, is the doctrine of infant baptism—especially in light of the admitted ambiguity in scriptural testimony. Leith, the Presbyterian, concedes that in the New Testament "the transformation of human existence which is the beginning of the Christian life" is only described "in terms of an adult who is moving from an old life into a new life." But given his emphasis on congregational worship as a source, context, and audience for theological reflection, one would have thought that the practice of infant baptism as enshrined in Reformed rites would furnish Leith with a normative Reformed way to read what scripture teaches about "the beginning of the Christian life." Instead, the practice of infant baptism only leads him to observe that churches practicing infant baptism will read scriptural talk of conversion differently from those practicing believer's baptism.30 Leith is certainly employing the lex orandi (and in accord with the "single-source theory" of tradition). Nevertheless, he does not employ it prescriptively to show how the practice of infant baptism provides a communally plausible and dogmatically compelling way to read Scripture; rather, he only employs the lex orandi descriptively as a hermeneutical or pedagogical way to account for divergent readings of Scripture. In other words, right at the point where the lex orandi affords Leith a powerful way to mount a dogmatic defense of infant baptism, he simply appeals to worship to explain that Christians who baptize infants read the Bible differently from those who do not.31 This leads only to the description of an issue awaiting resolution, rather than to a proposal or recommendation for the resolution itself.32

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Thus, in Leith's hands, the lex orandi can explain why Christian communities construe Scripture differently, but it never functions to make a decisive material difference in establishing Christian teaching or in adjudicating disputed doctrines.33 The lex orandi, which seemed so prominent and promising in Leith's understanding of theology, really functions for him more as shorthand, or even a shibboleth, for saying that all Christian doctrines must arise from the Church, employ the language and idioms of the Church's Scriptures and worship, and be addressed to the Church as their primary audience. Lex Orandi et Lex Proclamandi Robert W. Jensen's Systematic Theology begins by plotting the theological task within the "coordinates" of two "rules," the "ancient catholic" lex orandi, lex credendi and the Reformation's lex proclamandi, lex credendi ("the law of proclaiming is the law of believing").34 Jenson says that, according to the first rule, there are distinguishing regularities in the church's communal life of prayer, and these must govern the church's formulation of her belief. Chief among such patterns of the church's prayer is its triune structure, and chief among historical instances of obedience to the catholic rule is the third- and fourth-century development of a conceptually elaborated doctrine of Trinity.35

Thus, the lex orandi is a "principle" that refers to "distinguishing regularities in the church's communal life of prayer." It is these regularities or "patterns" (such as the "triune structure" of prayer) that must govern, and have historically governed, doctrinal formulation. Note that Jenson does not contrast the lex orandi with the lex credendi to highlight their "interplay"; rather, he takes the Latin tag in its fullblooded "catholic" sense to give priority to liturgical prayer as a source of doctrinal formulation. What Jenson does contrast with the lex orandi is the lex proclamandi of the Reformation, which takes "theology as critical reflection interior to the church's mission of proclamation. . . . Theology is to take for its rule the specific character by which the gospel is the gospel and not some other sort of discourse; theology must be thinking that guards the proclamation in this authenticity." More concretely, this rule serves to protect the insight that God's gifts "are given in and through the person Jesus," and, hence, "the giving itself must be a personal act." That is to say, "God's grace occurs as word . . . intrinsically bespoken to us as the church speaks the word of Christ," and this kind of gracious, personal speaking Jenson specifies as "promising."36 Thus, the ley. proclamandi expresses theology's practical assignment of testing church proclamation for its faithfulness to the Gospel, a task that inevitably entails hermeneutics. The lex orandi, on the other hand, expresses theology's speculative vocation of inquiring into its "object," which is identified "in the church's prayer and praise," both verbally and sacramcntally. Without adherence to the lex proclamandi, theology forfeits its critical and hermeneutical assignment; but without the lex orandi, theology loses its essential object, namely, the God attested by "the ineluctably Trinitarian pattern of the church's prayer." Thus, "both formulas

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are needed" to establish any lex credendi. Every doctrine of the Church must be consonant both with the God of the Gospel, who freely addresses us with the promise of grace, and with the God to whom the Church offers its prayers and praises, and thereby identifies, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.37 Moreover, these respective principles of proclamation and prayer, even before they were formulated as such, were "tacit contexts" in the historical emergence of instituted norms by which the Church could determine what is or is not the Gospel. Since the Church exists to speak the Gospel to the world in proclamation and to God in praise and prayer, it requires norms for guiding its practice so that it remains in recognizable continuity with its apostolic mission.38 These norms are what is meant by "tradition." While no tradition can guarantee the Church's continuity with the Gospel, the Church believes that the Holy Spirit works through its norms to preserve the apostolicity and, hence, authenticity of its preaching and prayer.39 Interwoven within the fabric of this singular apostolic tradition are four norms. They are "the canon of Old and New Testaments; the continuity of instituted liturgical action; the dogmatic tradition [i.e., the lex credendi]; and succession in ministerial office." That Scripture has preeminence among these norms, as '"the norm with no norm over it,'" can only be maintained if it is likewise recognized that Scripture is established in this role by its other companion norms: "Without antecedent ministry and creed, there would not have been this book, and without the continuous liturgy of the Church, there would have been no occasion for creed or ministry." Nevertheless, "once a canon of Scripture is in place, it has authority also over against any particular dogmatic proposal, magisterial responsum, or apparently mandatory liturgical order, if our perplexity becomes so extreme as to need such authority."40 This authority of Scripture also functions alongside "the authority of instituted liturgy." Such liturgy refers to a historically initiated, "diachronically identifiable rite" whose repetition is mandated. Within this definition, there are any number of rites that have "varying form, scope, and authority." For example, "the institution of baptism is in its scriptural recounting indistinguishable from the institution of the church itself, and therefore is necessarily judged by the church to be irreversible by the church." Hence, rites such as baptism are "dogmatically authoritative." That authority is manifested as rules governing the Church's discourse. Jenson names three: (1) Irreversible rites must be performed as instituted; (2) all other rites must "bond dramatically with them into one encompassing, continuing communal action"; and (3) "no teaching can be true whose consequences would pervert the practice or darken the understanding of irreversibly instituted liturgy."41 Note here that within the norm of "instituted liturgy" there are varying levels of authority, with dogmatic authority reserved to those instituted rites judged (on the basis of Scripture) as irreversible. Appeals to baptism or the eucharist will presumably carry more weight than appeals to a Shrove Tuesday pancake breakfast or an after-church coffee hour, because the former are irreversible institutions while the latter are not. Indeed, appeals to either baptism or the eucharist are, in effect, simultaneously appeals to a (liturgical) lex credendi or a (dogmatic) lex orandi. Given this double authority, any appeal to a scripturally adduced interpretation of the Gospel—that is, to the lex prodamandi—cannot be accepted if it corrupts the

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"understanding of irreversibly instituted liturgy," Conversely, the lex proclamandi might well have greater authority than appeals to "non-irreversibly" instituted liturgy. In other words, the factor of "reversible" versus "irreversible" institution determines the relative importance a given rite contributes to the establishment of Christian teaching. (A fascinating test case would be infant baptism. Does infant baptism pertain to the irreversibly instituted rite of baptism, or sufficiently "bond" with it into "one encompassing, continuing communal action"? Or is it a reversible "perversion" that obscures the true understanding of baptism?) Precisely because the irreversible rites are preserved (like Scripture and dogmatic formulations) as texts, they too require—from the human side—a community of interpretation to protect them from eccentric or arbitrary readings. In this way, the Church speaks authoritatively, as the Church and to the Church. Such authoritative speaking must itself be tested by Scripture and dogma (including irreversibly instituted liturgy), but the teaching office is also the way "by which Scripture and dogmatic texts can assert themselves." That this office will function as servant rather than usurper of the Gospel is ultimately the gift of the Holy Spirit. Through this gift, the offices of the Church thus "embody by their succession 'catholicity in time.'" While individual theologians may employ the lex orandi to propose what is or is not the Gospel, it is ultimately the teaching office that determines, on the basis of those norms enfolded in the apostolic tradition, when such proposals are to be taken as dogmatic, that is, as irreversibly binding on the Church.42 For Jenson's purpose in treating the doctrine of God, the lex orandi functions primarily in a conservative or traditional way to establish authoritatively that the Triune God, identified as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the structure of the Church's irreversibly instituted liturgy, is in fact the object of theology. While Jenson goes on to propose, on the basis of the lex proclamandi, revisions in the Church's trinitarian teaching, he does so intending to remain faithful to the Triune God identified by the lex orandi. Jenson's Systematic Theology (whose second volume is awaited) does not directly invoke the lex orandi to argue for material revision in Christian teaching. For a theology which does just that, we now turn to our last text for examination.

Consistency with Worship Not Every Spirit: A Dogmatics of Christian Disbelief represents the sustained attempt by Christopher Morse "to determine what disbeliefs are enjoined and entailed today by our faith affirmations."43 In pursuit of this objective, Morse identifies ten tests of doctrinal faithfulness commonly employed in the Christian Churches. These tests include the four of scripture, tradition, experience, and reason (treated by Morse as "coherence"—all discussed earlier in regard to Oden and McGrath)—together with six additional criteria. The full list Morse dubs the "Ten Cs" and gives as follows: continuity with apostolic tradition; congruence with scripture; consistency with worship; catholicity; consonance with experience; conformity with conscience; consequence; cruciality; coherence; and comprehensiveness.44 Morse docs not discuss the relative weight of these doctrinal tests nor suggest that his ordering constitutes a hierarchical ranking. Moreover, he does not spell

THE LEX ORANDI IN RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGY1I99

out the ways in which these tests might be interrelated or coordinated. All that he claims is that these are the "procedural doctrines" by which a Christian community establishes or regulates its "faith doctrines."45 "They serve not to vindicate Christian faith in God but to identify the grounds of appeal by which such faith testifies to its beliefs and disbeliefs and is brought to trial."46 Adopting the language of jurisprudence, Morse characterizes the Ten Cs as "rules of communal deliberation by which open account is rendered to all affected."47 In other words, they are formal criteria regularly used in the theological due process of materially determining what is and is not of God for Christian faith. Historically, Morse derives his third rule ("consistency with worship") from the fifth-century formulation, lex orandi (or supplicandi) est lex credendi et agendi ("the rule of prayer is the rule of belief and action"), now attributed to Prosper of Aquitaine.48 Theologically, Morse acknowledges the difficulties of defining "what constitutes Christian worship." Is it defined by the order or rubrics of the Mass? Or by a "specifiable structure" or "anatomy" of prayer? Or by "certain forms of address"?49 Morse is more certain that, however defined, appeals made to worship in determining Christian teaching "require that dogmatic analysis answer certain questions that would otherwise be ignored." In this regard, he cites double predestination as an example. Calvin, of course, taught this doctrine in his Institutes, but Morse finds it noteworthy that Calvin, like Augustine before him, urged it should only be preached so "that no one is ever viewed as rejected" or deprived of hope. This example shows a Christian doctrine, well supported on other grounds, meeting "resistance in the proclamation of the gospel in Christian worship."50 In his subsequent discussion of "Being Human Sexually," which Morse engages under the doctrine of "humanity" or theological anthropology, he again invokes worship in a double way: to establish and then to challenge present Christian teaching. First, Morse appeals to traditional marriage rites that "speak of 'fidelity in marriage' not only as 'instituted of God' in creation but also as signifying unto faith 'the union that exists between Christ and his church.'" Morse interprets this liturgical testimony to say Christian marriage witnesses "that all human beings are called by God to live in covenant fidelity," which Morse defines as "the human calling of all to be one with another in a spirit of love and freedom." While the marriage rite signifies the calling of all to covenant fidelity, and the role of marriage in signifying "the union between Christ and his church" (Eph. 5:22-23), not all are called to the expression of covenant fidelity through the vocation of marriage. For example, the gift of God's calling can also be expressed in the single life (1 Cor. 7).51 But could covenant fidelity ever be mutually and sexually expressed between persons of the same sex? As Morse affirms, the traditional and most ecumenically held Christian answer is no. In testing this answer for its adequacy to the disbeliefs entailed by faith in God, Morse proposes revising this commonly held Christian position, and he constructs his case by appealing to many of the Ten Cs, including "consistency with worship." As with double predestination in relation to Calvin's congregation, the test of worship again gives ecclesial concreteness, this time to the issue of homosexual love in the life of the Church. Morse speaks of those "professing Christian faith for

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whom it is the case that the love they have been given, and for which they can do no other but thank God, is neither recognized nor acknowledged as such by the church." Morse has in mind "the love between a homosexual couple" for whom there is "no consistency between what the church is teaching about their sexuality and the prayers of their thanksgiving for each other to God." In other words, Morse argues that Christian teaching on human sexuality attends insufficiently to "consistency with worship."52 Note that the prayer to which Morse makes appeal is not a specified text but rather thanksgiving offered within the context of worship by some members of the assembly, perhaps during "the prayers of the people." This appeal to thanksgivings whose content is not canonically or liturgically sanctioned in the widest ecumenical practice may suggest a premature deployment of the lex orandi, before, so to speak, the prayer in question—again, with respect to its content—has become a "law." Nevertheless, that thanksgivings and supplications for particular vocations to covenant fidelity can become common or publicly recognized by the Church over time is evidenced by the historical emergence of ordination and marriage rites. The degree to which theology can appeal to "proto-rites" in relation to disputed questions depends on the degree to which such appeals can successfully make their case across a whole spectrum of criteria, such as the Ten Cs identified by Morse. In this regard, in Prosper of Aquitaine's axiom, legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi ("Let the law of prayer establish the law of belief"), the lex supplicandi referred to "not just any practice, not whatever one might encounter being done in a supposedly Christian assembly," but to "a practice which had biblical grounding, universal acceptance, actual local congregational exercise, and some accompanying sense that it had God's approval."53 If these criteria of Prosper's are seen as ordinarily accompanying appeals to the lex orandi, how much more should this be expected with respect to liturgical practices that have not attained "universal acceptance" or "catholicity." Here, Basil of Caesarea's innovative doxology comes to mind. Contrary to customary liturgical usage, which gave "Glory to God the Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit," Basil introduced to his congregation the "co-ordinated" doxology "Glory to God the Father with the Son together with the Holy Spirit." Basil could not defend his doxology simply by its standing as his prayer or even that of the Cappadocian party within the Church. A case had to be made drawing on wider criteria, and the result is his great treatise On the Holy Spirit.54 What Basil's "protorite" did accomplish in the fourth century, and precisely as a congregational practice, was to keep open the question of the deity of the Spirit and to prevent its premature foreclosure by the church conservatives of his day. Similarly, if the prayers of the faithful giving thanks for their homosexual covenant partners were acknowledged by the churches, this too could prevent a premature dismissal of putative and noteworthy testimony to covenant fidelity. Moreover, such thanksgiving could contribute hermeneutically to a new hearing or revised understanding of the scriptures, even in the face of passages that on prima facie grounds might be heard as rejecting such prayers. But opening the door to further testing of this testimony may depend on showing these prayers to be consistent with a fuller range of doctrinal criteria than simply the fact that they are now arising in Christian worship.

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Conclusion From the foregoing survey of recent Protestant systematic theology, there appears to be an emerging consensus about the role of the lex orandi in establishing Christian teaching. Within the literature examined, there is a consensus that (1) the lex orandi formally constitutes a source, principle, or criterion of Christian doctrine; (2) the scriptures are to be interpreted through the lex orandi, taken as a hermeneutical rule for ecclesial exegesis; and (3) the lex orandi always functions in conjunction with other sources, principles, or criteria of Christian doctrine, variously denominated as the "fourfold quadrilateral," "the lexprodamandi," or the "Ten Cs." Nevertheless, our examination also uncovers a remarkable lack of consensus as to what constitutes either the "law" or the "praying" denoted by lex orandi. If the praying in question is only that of some members, it becomes difficult to claim this as a law for all; perhaps, in this instance, prayer amounts to "proposed legislation." If we regard prayer as "fixed forms of worship" embracing various rites and ceremonial, which and whose fixed forms, pray tell, do we mean? If prayer is taken as "instituted liturgy" or "diachronically identifiable rite," are we referring to patterns, structures, and/or forms of address but to no particular text or ceremonial of any known community? Moreover, is "the law" governing such prayer tradition or its processes? Or is it "mandated repetition" or "irreversible" status? And can liturgies with "reversible" status have "legal" standing in establishing Christian teaching? Until such questions as these are resolved, Protestant appeals to worship are likely to remain experimental—that is, both disputed and inconclusive. In my judgment, these difficulties will not be resolved, in the abstract, through methodological acrobatics. Only over time will attempted appeals to the lex orandi lead the Church to communally and ecumenically persuasive interpretations of Christian faith—not least through compelling encounters with scripture. But since "we do not know how to pray as we ought," even systematic theologians are called to rely on that Spirit who "helps us in our weakness" and "intercedes for the saints according to the will of God" (Rom. 8:26-27). Only in this Spirit does the promise of God fulfill "the law of prayer" as "the law of Christ." NOTES 1. Doxology, ix. Wainwright also characterized the book as "trying on a broader canvas the 'liturgical way of doing theology' which I attempted in my Eucharist and Eschatology," ibid., 1; see also 435. 2. Ibid., ix; see also 219. 3. Ibid., ix. 4. Ibid., 219. 5. In his precis of Doxology, delivered in June 1979 as the Femley-Hartley Lecture at the British Methodist Conference, Wainwright declared, "From a criteriological point of view, these two chapters [on the lex orandi, lex credendi] are really the heart of the book." Wainwright, "In Praise of God," Worship 53 (1979): 505. 6. Doxology, 161. 7. Ibid., 218. Hence, Wainwright can also characterize the lex orandi, lex credendi as a "twodirectional principle" (ibid., 176; see also 293-94). For historical background on the origins of this formula derived from 1 Tim. 2:1-2, and now attributed to the fifth-century anti-Pelagian

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monk Prosper of Aquitaine, see 224-35. Cf. the detailed analysis of Paul De Clerck, '"Lex orandi, lex credendi'. Sens originel et avatars historiques d'un adage equivoque," Questions Liturgiques 59 (1978): 193-212; translated as '"Lex orandi, lex credendi': The Original Sense and Historical Avatars of an Equivocal Adage," Studia Liturgia 24 (1994): 178-200. 8. Doxology, 7, 218-19, 251-52. 9. Ibid., 9, 21. Wainwright documents the occasional dominance of the lex credendi over the lex orandi within Roman Catholicism in the Magisterium's increasing control over the liturgy, so that "in the last two centuries it is the papal authorization of appealed-to liturgical practices which serves to clinch the argument." Ibid., 238. See also 259-63. Occasional appeals to the lex orandi within Protestantism are noted in particular theological proposals advanced by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Regin Prenter, John Mclntyre, Maurice Wiles, Edmund Schlink, and Wolfhart Pannenberg. Ibid., 274-83. 10. The Making of Christian Doctrine: A Study in the Principles of Doctrinal Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 93. Cited by Wainwright, Doxology, 54 and 279. 11. Doxology, 98-99. 12. Ibid., 240-50. Of course, why theologians, especially Protestant ones, would regard the appeal to worship as an essential norm for Christian teaching also needs to be established, at least where systematic theology is concerned. For his part, Wainwright argues that "Worship ... is a source of doctrine in so far as it is the place in which God makes himself known to humanity in a saving encounter. The human words and acts used in worship are a doctrinal locus in so far as either God makes them the vehicle of his self-communication or they are fitting responses to God's presence and action." Ibid., 242-43. 13. Ibid., 249-50. Wainwright explicitly leaves room for "error in both liturgical and theological formulation" in consequence of the provisionality of all doxological statements about God this side of the Kingdom's final and incontestable fulfillment. Ibid., 282-83. 14. Alister McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction (Oxford, UK; Cambridge, USA: Blackwell, 1994), 192, referring to the work of both Wainwright and Aidan Kavanagh. 15. Thomas C. Oden, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (San Francisco: Harper, 1987-1992); John H. Leith, Basic Christian Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993); Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, The Triune God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Christopher Morse, Not Every Spirit: A Dogmatics of Christian Disbelief (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1994). 16. Oden, Systematic Theology, 1:330; McGrath, Christian Theology, 163-200. 17. Oden, Systematic Theology, 1:348. 18. McGrath, Christian Theology, 191. 19. Oden, Systematic Theology, 1:331. 20. Ibid., 1:338. 21. Christian Theology, 188. 22. Ibid., 188-89. Cf. Oden, Systematic Theology, 1:336. 23. Oden, Systematic Theology, 1:337. 24. McGrath, Christian Theology, 189; cf. Oden, Systematic Theology, 340-41. 25. Leith, Basic Christian Doctrine, 1. 26. Ibid., xi-xiv, 7-8,16-17. Cf. McGrath's discussion on "Commitment and Neutrality in Theology," Christian Theology, 143-45. 27. Leith, Basic Christian Doctrine, 13,noting Wainwright, Doxology, 218-83. [My italics.] 28. Leith, Basic Christian Doctrine, 19. 29. Ibid., 18. 30. Ibid., 166. 31. Ibid., 166-69.

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32. See ibid., 170 and 256. 33. Leith does note the baptismal formula as containing the doctrine of the Trinity before that doctrine's conciliar clarification (p. 46), even if he does not discuss the logical or material connections between baptismal practice and trinitarian teaching. Leith occasionally appeals to hymns (e.g., pp. 95, 152, 196, and 215) or to patterns of prayer (pp. 245 and 265) as illustrations. Such appeals are always made collaterally with others to Scripture or to Reformed confessions and theologians. The almost complete absence of liturgical texts from the epigraphs introducing each of Leith's chapters is indicative that, for all the formal acknowledgment of the lex orandi, it plays virtually no material role in this book. 34. Jenson, Systematic Theology, 1:13. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., 1:14. Cf. Karl Barth's claim that prayer (specifically, the "Our Father") keeps the God of the Gospel at the beginning of all theological thinking. "This is why it is imperative to recognize the essence of theology as lying in the liturgical action of adoration, thanksgiving, and petition. The old saying, Lex orandi, lex credendi, far from being a pious statement, is one of the most profound descriptions of the theological method." Barth, "The Gift of Freedom: Foundation of Evangelical Ethics [1953]," in The Humanity of God (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1960), 89-90. 38. Jenson, Systematic Theology, 1:23. 39. Ibid., 1:25. 40. Ibid., 1:26. 41. Ibid., 1:34. 42. Ibid., 1:39-41. 43. Morse, Not Every Spirit, 13. 44. Ibid., 46-69. 45. Ibid., 45. 46. Ibid., 70. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., 52, noting Wainwright's Doxology, 224-35. 49. Ibid., 52-53. 50. Ibid., 53-54. 51. Ibid., 274, 278. 52. Ibid., 281. 53. Gordon Lathrop, "Knowing Something a Little: On the Role of the Lex Orandi in the Search for Christian Unity," in Thomas F. Best and Dagmar Heller, eds., So We Believe, So We Pray: Towards Koinonia in Worship, Faith and Order Paper No. 171 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1995), 39. Cf. Wainwright, Doxology, 225-27. 54. See Wiles, The Making of Christian Doctrine, 77-87, and Wainwright, Doxology, 96101.

CHAPTER 2 THEOLOGY AND PRAYER

An Orthodox Perspective Nicholas Lossky

| In offering an essay in honor of Geoffrey Wainwright, it seems appropriate to attempt a reflection, however modest, on the relation between theology and prayer. Coming from an Orthodox theologian, and a Western one at that, it will naturally endeavor to respond to what Geoffrey has written on the subject and to be true to the Orthodox perspective on the subject of the Latin adage Lex orandi, lex credendi. The very mention of this adage immediately calls for a remark from an Orthodox point of view. When we say Lex orandi, lex credendi, it seems indispensable to add at once Lex credendi, lex orandi—or better, echoing Pope Pius XII, Lex credendi statuit legem orandi. Indeed, if we remain with the traditional saying, without correcting it by adding its converse, we run the risk of finding (as we do in the history of the Church) that sometimes certain local liturgical customs may beget heretical doctrine. One example of such deviation—apart from that of the Arians and others quoted by Professor Wainwright in his article "Lex orandi, lex credendi" in the Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, is the "Adoptionist" heresy in eighth-century Spain. The Spanish theologians who defended the idea that Christ was the "adopted Son of God" were referring to their liturgical tradition, which contained this phrase. The relation between the rule of prayer and the rule of faith must therefore be a two-way relation. Before explaining this in detail, however, it seems necessary to reflect upon the nature of theology—and also, of course, upon certain aspects of the nature of prayer. The popular meaning ascribed to the notion of theology is a subject studied, and therefore taught, at a university or a theological college: what is so often referred to as "systematic" or "dogmatic" theology. Such "theology" is undoubtedly necessary for training pastors, catechists, and scholars—and more generally for the purpose of communication. In this sense theology, as a discourse about God, clearly has a scientific dimension. It implies knowledge, reflection, and above all—like all forms of science—absolute intellectual honesty. This unavoidable dimension 24

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of theology implies an attitude that Geoffrey describes as one in which "believers, as it were, 'step back' a little to think about their faith."1 As a science, academic theology would seem to be obliged to examine its object of study from outside: coldly, dispassionately, objectively—like something dead. However, other branches of science (such as biology, psychology, and medicine) tend more and more to lead the true scientists to discover that mere dissection and purely logical approaches will, in the last analysis, leave the mystery of life unfathomable. The most intellectually honest among them respect this mystery. God could be an object of study pursued from outside only if God were a God of the philosophers. One orthodox theologian, Vladimir Lossky (1903-1958), used to begin his course of lectures on dogmatic theology in the following manner: God is not the object of a science, and theology differs radically from philosophical thinking. The theologian does not seek God as one seeks for an object, but is seized by God as one is seized by a person. And it is because a person has first been found by God—because God, one might say, has gone out to find that person within the encounter of Revelation—that one can thereafter seek God, as one seeks a presence with the whole of one's being (therefore also with one's intellect). The God of theology is a 'Thou': the living God of the Bible, the 'absolute' to be sure, but a personal absolute whom one addresses as 'Thou' in prayer."2

Such an approach to theology is certainly not in contradiction with what Geoffrey Wainwright calls "stepping back a little" to think about one's faith. Nor is it in contradiction with St. Anselm's Prosfogion or Fides quxrens intellectum, which is composed as a prayer (whatever one might think of its famous "argument"). The same is true of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's Mystical Theology. Here are theologians who do not discourse about God from "outside"—as do some philosophers who ask "What can the idea of God mean for me, an intelligent human being?" Rather, these theologians speak of God in God, from the perspective of a relation with God. This in no way prevents them from being "scientific," that is, absolutely intellectually honest. On the contrary: their intellect is enlightened by God's Spirit (cf. John 14:26 and 16:13). Church history can help us to try and grasp what true theology should consist in—and this in two ways. One is the fact that hagiographical tradition has granted the title of "Theologian" (or "Divine") to three Saints only: St. John the Evangelist, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and St. Simeon the New Theologian. What these three have in common is that they all reflected upon the mystery of the Holy Trinity. This recalls the fact that the Greek word theologia once meant discourse upon God the Trinity. Theology is thus properly trinitarian theology. The other way in which a close examination of the history of the Church, in particular in the first millennium, can give us a hint as to the nature of true theology is the discovery of the Church's reticence to speak. When we really pay attention to the "authoritative" texts of councils, for example, it is striking to see how "economical" they are: only the most essential things ate said and only in cases of "emergency," when the heart of the mystery is challenged or endangered by opinions that distort the true meaning of the salvation offered to humanity. The aim of these texts is not so much to "dictate" as to redirect toward the contemplation of the fullness of the

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mystery. This fullness of the mystery is deeply connected with the nature of salvation. The goal is therefore clearly soteriological, rather than speculative. In this light, how can we envisage a sort of definition of true theology? (And the word "definition" is quite wrong, as it is in contradiction with the "negative," silent character of what 1 am trying to say.) Theology, one might say, is an attempt to formulate the ecclesial experience of the essence of the Gospel message. Or better, the experience of "the Gospel of the Gospel"—to quote the outstanding English theologian and bishop of Winchester Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626). In this tentative description of theology, every word, every element needs something of an explanation, a justification. First of all, why an "attempt"? Simply because a theologian must constantly remain conscious of the fact that no formulation, however solemn, however venerable, however much hallowed by time, will ever encompass, comprehend, or exhaust the fullness of the ecclesial experience of the personal God. As the late Father John Meyendorff, of blessed memory, has suggested: for Orthodoxy—when it is faithful to itself—not a single text, no confession of faith, is to be regarded as expressing the whole mystery of the Revelation. Fortunately, the Orthodox Christian East has always succeeded in avoiding the tragic pitfall of considering any human institution, or even any human formulation of Christian dogma as being absolute and infallible as such. Indeed, even Scripture is God's word, but spoken by human beings, so that the living Truth which it contains must be understood not. only in its literal meaning but also through the power of the Spirit, which inspired the authors and continues to inspire the faithful within the body of the Church. Historical knowledge and critique are therefore necessary for the understanding of how inspiration occurs.3

Many, especially among the Orthodox, would certainly benefit from pondering these words. Theologians must endeavor to speak only when forced to do so, as it were. They must speak teluctantly, with as few words as possible—one is tempted to say, as "silently" as possible. And silence in this case does not mean absence of words or sounds. It means that every sound, every word uttered must strive to be in constant relation with the Word who was made flesh. This brings us to the ecclesial character of the attempt at formulation. Indeed, the Word made flesh, as we know, is present "where two or three are gathered together in [Christ's] name" (Matt. 18:20). Now the intellectual honesty implied in the scientific aspect of theology necessarily obliges the theologian to do his or her very best to express the truth and nothing but the truth about the "Gospel of the Gospel." Since this truth is approached only with the help of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is one (cf. I Cor. 12:4) and breathes in a privileged manner in the Church, the theologian cannot speak alone. Theologians cannot, or rather should not, offer their own, private impressions about God. In the one Spirit, they are called to speak in unanimity with the cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12:1) of all times. In other words, they are to speak in the Church and for the Church, in the "communion of Saints." Every word, every sound, should be for the edification of the "spiritual house" (1 Pet. 2:5). This can only be achieved, or even attempted, in communion—and

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thus within the community that is by definition called to live in communion. In this communion, past, present, and future are all recapitulated. Theology is a service, a 8iakovia in the Church, no less responsible than any other ministry, and no less to be exercised within the unity of the Body. This unity of the Body, as has just been suggested, brings together the cloud of witnesses of all times—with the local community, but also with the whole of the contemporary world. Hence a theologian can never be content with repeating what has been said, and often said so well, by those who have gone before. We call the Fathers of the Church "Fathers" not because they have said all there is to be said but because they have witnessed in their times and in their contexts to the ecclesial experience of the essence of the Gospel. And they have done it in such a way as to become models for us as we seek to do the same for our time and in our contexts. A true father begets sons and daughters who are invited to become his equals and not remain in servile imitation. This is probably the most difficult aspect of the theologian's task. History constantly offers new challenges, often unprecedented ones. This calls for imagination on the part of the theologian who, in announcing the Good News, is to speak to the world today—and not only within the comfortable community of fellow Christians, preferably of the same "denomination." Theologians—and in this sense all baptized persons are called to be theologians, whatever specific ways they are called to witness—are never to forget that Christ gave His life "for the life of the world" (Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom) and prayed for unity "that the world may believe" that the Father sent Him (John 17:21). That theologians need to use their imagination does not mean that they are to give unbridled freedom to all sorts of private thoughts or impulses. The theologian's imagination must needs be enlightened by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of communion. To find this "perfect freedom," the theologian must speak from experience, the experience of the essence of the Gospel, the experience of God. This is the experience of the Church. A theologian must therefore be deeply and firmly rooted in the Church. Such rooting is naturally to be sought in the breathing of the Church, in the most intimate heart of the Church's life—and that is in the Church at prayer, or in other words, in the Church's liturgical life. That a theologian should partake in the liturgical life of the Church may appear to go without saying. Unfortunately, some "professional" theologians consider that since they are "professionals," they do not really need a regular liturgical life. By being rooted in the liturgical life of the Church, a theologian acquires the ecclesial experience of God and grows toward the condition of true theology as described by Evagrius Ponticus in his famous text: "If you are a theologian, you pray truly, and if you pray truly, you are a theologian."4 If we accept this, we must also acknowledge that true theology is not the province reserved for "specialists" but the common calling of all baptized Christians who take their Christianity seriously. The gift of the Holy Spirit, conferred in baptism with confirmation/chrismation (in the Orthodox Church, the one sacrament of initiation), is offered that the Christian may receive it and grow ever more fully into the ecclesial experience of God. This implies overcoming the purely human condition of the "individual," an

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atom of human nature, and growing toward "personhood," in the image of the Holy Trinity, toward becoming a "hypostasis" of humanity in the communion of the Body of Christ through the grace of the Holy Spirit to the glory of the Father. Such growth moves us toward the "measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). Thus, a Christian becomes a "living stone" of the "spiritual house" (1 Pet, 2:5). As for theologians whose specific gifts include speaking: they will acquire more and more the capacity to enter what Father George Florovsky has called the "mind" of the Church (one way of describing Tradition), or, to quote Vladimir Lossky again, to become a "catholic consciousness" of the Church. This supposes a renunciation of one's "self-consciousness" and replacing it by an ecclesial, "catholic" consciousness under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Such catholicity has nothing to do with uniformity; it is by definition a unity in diversity.5 This growth in "catholic consciousness" is achieved through a form of asceticism that Vladimir Lossky, in his classic Mystical Theology, describes in the following manner: "instead of assimilating the mystery to our mode of understanding, we should, on the contrary, look for a profound change, an inner transformation of spirit, enabling us to experience it mystically."6 This invitation is, in his thought, closely related to his conviction that "in a certain sense all theology is mystical, inasmuch as it shows forth the divine mystery: the data of revelation."7 This brings us to the last element in the tentative definition of theology offered above: "the Gospel of the Gospel." This is probably where there might be most disagreement. Many would accept that the Gospel invites us to take the Incarnation seriously: the fact that the Son, the Word of God, became a human being, and did so in order to offer salvation to humanity. Many again would confess that as a result, the most central event in the New Testament is the Passion-ResurrectionAscension of Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Fewer would be those who would follow the Orthodox in confessing that, by taking the Incarnation with all its implications seriously, one is led to believe not only that all flesh—the human body with all its senses assumed by Christ—is therefore called to transfiguration as on Mount Tabor, but that all matter—the whole of creation—is involved as well. This is the true reason why the Orthodox are so deeply attached to the veneration of icons and celebrate the victory over iconoclasm each year on the first Sunday in Lent as the "Triumph of Orthodoxy." This is not, as some are naively tempted to think, the triumph of the Orthodox, but of Orthodoxy— which, if one pays attention at all to the text (the opoc.) of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicea II, 787), is equated with the Gospel, understood precisely as belief in the absolute reality, in the most literal sense, of the Incarnation. The icons are only the tip of the iceberg. What is really at stake is the nature of salvation. And here again, many will not follow the Orthodox, to whom salvation is understood, first of all, through St. Peter's claim that we are called "to become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4). (The argument of some biblical scholars, trying to refute the Orthodox view of salvation—that this is a unique occurrence in the New Testament—is not very convincing. "The Word became flesh" is also unique!) As everyone knows, St. Peter's bold statement was expounded in the patristic adage that unsettles so many "Westerners": "God became a human being that the human being may become God."

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We all know that this was first stated by St. Irenaeus. He was of course of Greek origin; but was he not bishop of Lyons? Was St. Augustine—who used the same expression in a Nativity sermon—an Easterner? And St. Thomas Aquinas, who quoted St. Augustine? Is this really only a "typically Eastern Orthodox" view of salvation? The next example I wish to evoke brings us right into the heart of the close relation between the rule of faith and the rule of prayer (and vice versa, of course). The Methodist and the Anglican traditions have lived, and confessed in prayer (since the eighteenth century at the very least) this very doctrine of salvation— understood as the deification (0ewois;) of humanity through the salvific work of Christ and the help of the Holy Spirit. The Wesley brothers were deeply immersed in the best patristic tradition (through reading what the Non-Jurors had kept alive: the best of Richard Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes, and others). Here is a significant extract from one of Charles Wesley's hymns that is a perfect example of theology in prayer: Let earth and heaven combine, Angels and men agree, To praise in songs divine The incarnate deity, Our God contracted to a span, Incomprehensibly made man.

He deigns in flesh to appear, Widest extremes to join; To bring our vileness near, And make us all divine: And we the life of God shall know, For God is manifest below. Made perfect first in love, And sanctified by grace, We shall from earth remove, And see his glorious face: Then shall his love be fully showed, And man shall then be lost in God.8

Many other hymns could be quoted to illustrate the community of thought between East and West concerning the true nature of salvation. But this example will suffice to illustrate the deep relation that ought to exist between theology and prayer. In many ways, what has been said above about the ecclesial nature of true theology applies to what might be termed "liturgical" prayer. Some might think that this makes no sense, contending that all prayer is by nature liturgical. But such a view is highly disputable. Most readers would probably accept that there is a difference between prayer as described by Christ in Matthew 6:6 (prayer in the secrecy of the cell or the solitude of the desert) and prayer as implied in Matthew

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18:20 ("when two or three are gathered together"). In the solitude of the cell or the desert, all forms of freedom to express one's combat to vanquish the "old man" are possible, for only God can hear them. There is room here for "individualistic" prayer. But as soon as "two or three are gathered together in Christ's name," a minimum of order is necessary—and a minimum of respect for the tender consciences of the others. My shouting out my despair of overcoming the "old man" is not necessarily edifying for my neighbor. Like all theology, all prayer—said, sung, or otherwise expressed (in gestures for instance) among those gathered in the name of Christ the Word—must never cease to be the expression of this relation with the Word incarnate. This necessarily excludes all "idle words" or "idle" forms of expression. To be "liturgical," that is, respectful of the free adherence of the members of the community to the call of God that should come through this prayer, the prayer must have this quality of "silence" mentioned above in describing theology. "Silence" and "economy of words" here, as in theology, means to resist by all means the danger of becoming a screen between God and God's people. This danger comes from the temptation to be individualistic in prayer—to draw attention to oneself instead of directing all attention to God. Once again, for prayer to be liturgical, it must be "catholic," which presupposes self-effacement and the expression of the ecclesial experience of God: catholic in the sense of kao'onov, "according to the whole," that is, to the fullness of revelation, even though we now see only "in part" (cf. 1 Cor. 13:9-10). This catholic character of prayer should in no way be understood as affecting the legitimacy of diversity by suggesting that any form of uniformity should be imposed in order for prayer to be truly liturgical. All languages, all ethnic specificities, all local customs, all cultures can contribute to the wealth of liturgical prayer. What they all need to have in common is respect for the principle of noncontradiction between the rule of faith and the rule of prayer. No gesture, no sound, said or sung, can be in contradiction with the faith confessed in "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and for ever" (Heb. 13:8)—Jesus Christ, Son of the Father, in whom the Holy Spirit rests. Liturgy therefore must be "theological," just as theology must be rooted in the liturgical life of the Church. This theological character of liturgy goes very far. Indeed, as has been hinted, there is a "theology" of every aspect of liturgy. It is quite obvious for poetry (that is, the composition of liturgical texts). It is also true for the organization of space (church architecture), for gestures and attitudes (related both to what is being done and to the fact that the people gather together in a community). But there is also—and this might seem strange to some—a "theology" of liturgical music.9 This music is closely related to the words of the liturgy. Therefore, it must respect the principle of noncontradiction, in the same way as lex orandi and lex credendi. In practice, this means that the music should never conceal or distort the words. Liturgical musicians, composers, performers, choirmasters, should never lose sight of the fact that in liturgy, words and music should be so inseparable that one might say that the words sing and the music proclaims. (I will not here discuss the difficult subject of purely instrumental music. As many readers will know, it is not used at all in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition—and this is no accident.)

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To come back to salvation understood as "becoming partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4): this claim presupposes that prayer, together with theology, will be constantly connected to a Christology that is at once Chalcedonian (the reality of the incarnation) and trinitarian (the communion of persons, in the image of the Holy Trinity). That is why the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is no abstract matter reserved for courses in "systematic" theology but a growing in the experience of the communion revealed by God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This doctrine is therefore present in all prayer and at all levels of the Church's life. The trinitarian doxology prayed in practically all our liturgies is no perfunctory polite punctuation but a constantly reiterated worship of the personal God. Charles Wesley's hymn (quoted above) is one remarkable example of liturgical prayer that sings the reality of the Incarnation with all its implications. It presents doctrine with the "silent," "economical" respect for the free reception by the members of the community of the faithful. There is nothing individualistic about it. As a conclusion, I would like to quote another hymn of the same respectful quality, this time from the byzantine liturgical tradition. It is a hymn sung solemnly on the day of Pentecost, the day of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Disciples, or, as Lancelot Andrewes says, the day of the baptism of the Church: when all that Christ did becomes a reality for us, a reality in which we can now partake thanks to the gift of the Holy Spirit who leads us into the whole Truth: and the Truth is Christ himself. The hymn is at once a prayer and a lesson in very respectful trinitarian theology. Thus theology and prayer are truly one, inseparable. Come, all ye people, let us worship the deity in Three Persons: the Son in the Father with the Holy Spirit. The Father timelessly begot the Son, of one essence and one reign, and the Holy Spirit is in the Father, glorified with the Son: one power, one essence, one deity. Him we all worship saying: Holy God who hast created all through the Son with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit; Holy Mighty through whom we have known the Father and the Holy Spirit came into the world; Holy Immortal, comforting Spirit, proceeding from the Father and resting in the Son. Most Holy Trinity, glory to Thee.10

As St. Gregory the Theologian says about the acceptance of the sacrifice of the Son's blood by the Father, "Let the rest of the mystery be venerated in silence."11 NOTES 1. GW 144k:601. 2. Vladimir Lossky, "Theologie dogmatique: Les deux 'monotheismes'," La vie spirituelle 677 (novembre-decembre 1987): 533. 3. John Meyendorff, The Orthodox Church: Its Past and Its Role in the World Today, third edition (Crestwood, NY.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1981) [ET of L'Eglise orthodoxe hier et aujourd'hui (Paris: Seuil, 1960)], viii. 4. On Prayer: 153 Texts, text 61. 5. Vladimir Lossky, "Catholic Consciousness: Anthropological Implications of the Dogma of the Church," in In the Image and Likeness of God (Crestwood, NY.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1974) [ET of A l'image, et a la ressemblance de Dieu (Paris: Aubier- Montaigne, 1967)], 183-94.

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6. Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, trans. Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius (London: James Clarke, 1957) [ET of Essai sur la Theologie mystique de I'Eglise d'Orient (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1944)], 8. 7. Ibid., 7. 8. Methodist Hymn Book, 1933, no 142; quoted in A.M. Allchin, Participation in God: A Forgotten Strand in Anglican Tradition (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1988), 26-27. 9. See Karen Westerfield Tucker's discussion in chapter 4 of this volume. 10. Trinitarian hymn from the Pentekostarion, Great Vespers of Pentecost, 11. St Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 45, 22 [PG 36, 653].

CHAPTER 3

APOPHATICISM, LITURGY, AND THEOLOGY Frans Jozef van Beeck

In a profound and perceptive article, later incorporated into a fine little book,1 Louis Dupre gave us much to think about. He raised an issue that any liturgical theologian must face sooner or later: the correlation of silence and speech in the language of worship, and hence, in the language of theology. He writes: Those who enjoy the closest familiarity with God are most reluctant to be looselipped about him. But sooner or later the question arises: How can we continue to use words at that point? Is silence the end? Is a purely negative theology itself not a "crea turely" approach to God? Should it not, at some point, abandon also its own creaturely reservations and in the absence of words of its own listen to the Word that God himself has spoken?. . . should we not say that in God's silence I hear the Word, in his darkness I see the Light, in his rest I enjoy his active Love?2

In an article written by such a quintessentially Catholic philosopher of religion as Dupre, this is an unexpected thing to find. First of all, the very etymology of the noun mystery reminds us of the significance of deliberate, eloquent silence in liturgical celebrations;3 a scholar like Dupre, whose religious sensibilities were shaped by the Roman liturgy, must be presumed to appreciate the significance of silence in worship. Even more is it to be presumed that Dupre is aware that the philosophical and theological traditions of the West have found it imperative to have recourse to apophaticism in the service of speaking of God;4 Thomas Aquinas himself can close one of his treatises with a nearly literal quotation from a famous decree promulgated by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), which goes so far as to suggest that the element of negativity enjoys pride of place in language about God: [T]he measure of human and divine perfection is not the same. For no likeness, no matter how great, can obtain between the Creator and the creature, without there being found right there an unlikeness which is greater. This is so because the creature is at an infinite distance from God.5 33

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No wonder we find the young Thomas Aquinas explaining, in his Commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences, that when we proceed towards God on the road of removal, we first deny everything corporeal of God. Then we deny everything spiritual as it is found in creatures, such as goodness and wisdom. At that point, all that is left in our minds is that God is, and nothing else; thus God is, in a kind of perplexing fashion, so to speak. Last of all, however, we remove from God even this very being according as it occurs in creatures. At that point, God is left to dwell in a kind of darkness of ignorance; yet after the manner of this ignorance—at least as long as we are on our present way—we are best united with God, as Dionysius says. It is a darkness of sorts, in which God is said to dwell.6

Why, then, should Dupre wish to revise a tradition that goes back to the Cappadocians? Why does he want to commend what looks like naivete in naming God? The answer is as simple as it is profound. Dupre's suggestion raises the stunning possibility that our habit of imposing on ourselves an absolute silence in matters pertaining to the knowledge of God may be the very opposite of docta ignorantia; it may betray a residual intellectual self-regard that is inappropriate in the presence of God. Let us explain the implications of Dupre's proposal. Meister Eckhart insists that the definitive form of the knowledge of God is utter silence. If Dupre should be right, it would follow that Eckhart's position is all too human, since it would imply that human intelligence is the tribunal of last appeal to decide what language suits the living God and what doesn't.7 And as a matter of fact, it turns out that Dupre asks us to entertain the possibility that John Tauler, and Jan van Ruusbroec even more, are not just closer to the Great Tradition (which has boldly spoken of God in explicitly trinitarian terms), but also superior to Eckhart in philosophical subtlety. Dupre writes: John Tauler . . . shows how the Trinity inhabits the soul. . . . "We should learn to find the Trinity in ourselves and realize we are in a real way formed according to its image." . . . Even in its natural state the soul, however imperfect, bears this divine image. Being a finite reflection of that perfect Image of God's self-expression, the soul participates in the divine life of the Son. Spiritual progress consists "in recognizing this blessed image in ourselves above all things."8

In sum, Dupre argues that Ruusbroec's explicit, articulate trinitarianism is not so much the Christian stepping-stone toward apophatic theology as its inseparable, co-equal friend. The Christian tradition has tacitly endorsed this conviction by acting on it: it has not hesitated to speak of God in trinitarian terms, right in the teeth of its own insistence that God is essentially incomprehensible (aatannnros). How can we attempt to account for this? We would have to start by recalling that the undivided Jewish and Christian tradition of faith in God is a tradition of glorification, from protological start to eschatological finish:

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... in his temple the cry is: "Glory!" Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of powers: the whole earth is full of his Glory (Ps. 29:9; Isa. 6:3). Holy, holy, holy is God the sovereign Lord of all ... You are worthy, Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power . . . You are worthy to receive the scroll and break its seals . . . Praise and honor, glory and might, to the One who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb, forever! (Rev. 4:8-11; 5:9-13)

Let us reflect. Praise and thanksgiving are abandon, not cultivation of self. They are ecstatic before they ever give rise to thought. They lift humanity to the peak of the cosmos and its worship, and in this very act of worship humanity finds its transcendental attunement to God (i.e., its radical participation in God) actualized to the fullest available extent. Yet, pace the apophatic tradition, articulate praise and thanksgiving very much drive home the realization that God is semper maior. In that sense, dedicated speech accomplishes what is accomplished by the posture of speechless awe before God. This leads to conclusions about apophatic theology. In the Christian tradition, apophaticism is first of all a response. Like glorification in words, it acknowledges: "God, You are God." In other words, in the Christian tradition apophaticism is a form of worship; it is not a free-standing, autonomous, self-authenticating form of human religiosity. Originally, apophaticism is not so much humanity's realization of the inadequacy of its own conception of God as its awe at finding itself placed before and encompassed by God. This awe is also the point made by articulate Jewish and Christian kataphasis: We will say a lot, and we never arrive; the sum of what we say is: the All—He is it. Glorifying him, at what point will we be up to it? For he is the Great One; beyond compare, above all his works. The Lord is awesome and terribly great; wonderful is his sustained power. Glorify the Lord as much as you can, for he will always be higher. As you extol him, muster all your strength; be untiring, for you never arrive. (Sir. 43:27-30, LXX)

Thus the inspiration to praise God affirmatively, in speech and not by silence alone, comes from awe; even as we utter God's praises we realize that no matter how much we glorify God in explicit words, there will always be more to say. Apophaticism is built right into the explicit, expressive language of praise and thanksgiving. Let us sum up. The great Tradition tacitly claims that human language is capable of kataphatic affirmations that leave God's incomprehensibility intact. This claim, however, raises a serious fundamental question. From a linguistic point of view, is it legitimate to propose that affirmative language leaves God's incomprehensibility intact? Let us try.

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We live in a culture that glorifies information and data. Large numbers of educated people tend to think you either know exactly "what you're talking about" or you don't. In the latter case, you "hypothesize," "do research," and "collect data," to find "solutions" (and "answers"). The method is practical (or at least common practice). It is hardly subtle. Why? We tend to overlook Aristotle's warning, to the effect that our knowledge "will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions."9 In such a denotative world, pleas for ethics (especially of the contractual, just-playby-the-rules kind) can still be heard (if rarely followed con amore). By contrast, pleas in favor of value-driven ethics are seldom heard. Why? Because it takes a commitment to a shared system of moral values and priorities, conscientiously endorsed, to arrive at a moral consensus rather than a merely pragmatic one. Yet experience teaches us that appeals to conscience are invariably used to assert individual rights and justify individual decisions. In this rational, contractual context, material value ethics are hard to come by. What is in even scarcer supply is agreement on the tacit foundation of any valuebased ethic: the sense that the moral sense is not self-supporting. In the end, moral living is predicated on a sense of mystery. But in a world of denotation, appeals to "mystery" sound irrational and naive; they are "medieval," "vague," "impractical." In other words, where denotation reigns supreme, wisdom and considered judgment are scarcely part of "objective" or "useful" learning, and prayer even less (not to mention contemplative prayer). What has been explained can also be put as follows: we live in a culture that admires denotation. However, theologically and philosophically speaking, we cannot speak of God in denotative ways. We do not have any handles on God; we have no purchase on God, which would allow us to speak denotatively. Yet the culture we live in loves denotation. No wonder many will say that knowing and speaking of God is a matter of feeling: they will suggest that we speak of God only by connotation, and in fact we often do. That connotation is a factor at every level of human communication is, of course, well known; and interpreting faith in God in terms of pure feeling has interesting credentials in Romanticism. The problem is that the feeling elements in language (both spoken and written) cannot so easily be separated from the rational elements. So when we are told connotation signifies the "irrational part" of human communication, we are skating on thin ice; for feeling is a quality of what we say, not a part. Besides, believers claim that faith in God is not only deeply felt, but also reasonable, as well as a call to responsible action. To account for the "knowledge" of God on the basis of connotation alone is to ignore that all connotation is parasitical on denotation and performance.10 What is far less well realized today is this: we use words symbolically, and we do so all the time, even today. We often speak and write to convey, with an odd immediacy, something different from what our words signify, denotatively or connotatively. Let us give a linguistic account of this. We begin by recalling that meaning is not the prerogative of words taken singly. True, the fact that words taken by themselves can signify apart from context or particular situations is one of the marvels of language. But normally words convey meaning not: by themselves but in clusters; reading dictionaries from cover to cover

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is not a habit of the mentally healthy. Only together with other words do single words reliably refer to realities "out there." In that sense, too, "the meaning of words is determined by the company they keep" (Ludwig Wittgenstein). In religious language, clustering typically occurs in two different (though related) "figures of speech": metaphor and paradox. This invites clarification. Those among us who have ever harbored, or muttered under our breath, or actually uttered, sentiments like "A real toad!" or "A real honeybun!" know that these phrases not only connote a few exquisite feelings on our part, but also refer to an intensely present reality out there. However, they do not do so by ordinary denotation. Instead, "toad" and "honeybun" are metaphors.11 Metaphors are "figures of speech," but this makes them anything but meaningless, harmless, bloodless, or less able to refer to truths. For metaphors say more, not less. They help us refer to and deal with realities more compelling than mere denotation is apt or able to convey. Just think about "My shepherd is the Lord." Paradoxes have one thing in common with metaphors: they, too, refer to "compelling realities out there." But in a paradox the reference results from the complete vacuum of denotative meaning created by the clash of opposites. One example is T. S. Eliot's powerful evocation of Christ as the "wounded surgeon" plying "the steel / That questions the distempered part."12 Gerard Manley Hopkins, in addressing God, weds metaphor to paradox to create a sense of God's mysterious presence: Be adored among men, God, Three-numbered form; Beyond saying sweet, past telling of tongue, Thou art lightning and love, I found it, a winter and warm; Father and fondler of heart Thou hast wrung; Hast thy dark descending and most art merciful then.13

In light of such texts, why not consider it reasonable, even today, to join Hamlet, face to face with his father's ghost? Caught between the Great Tradition (which knew of dreams and visions) and the New Learning (which had come to consider them purely mental) he said: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."14 The matter is put differently, but no less incisively, by a twentieth-century American woman—one with a sharp pen, intensely Catholic instincts, a splendid love of the truth, and an uncanny flair for the difference between plain truth and learned humbug. To an inquiring friend, Flannery O'Connor writes: "Dogma can in no way limit a limitless God. The person outside the Church attaches a different meaning to it than the person in. For me a dogma is only a gateway to contemplation and is an instrument of freedom and not of restriction. It preserves mystery for the human mind." And to drive the point home, she adds, with characteristic sassiness: "Henry James said the young woman of the future would know nothing of mystery or manners. He had no business to limit it to one sex."15 Point made. A point made in this book, not to add to what we have learned from Geoffrey Wainwright, but to honor what he has taught us. And to honor him.

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NOTES

1. "From Silence to Speech: Negative Theology and Trinitarian Spirituality," Communio International Catholic Review 9 (1984): 28-34. The book mentioned in the text is The Common Life: The Origins of Trinitarian Mysticism and Its Development by Jan Ruusbroec (New York: Crossroad, 1984). 2. Ibid., 32 (italics added for emphasis). 3. The Greek noun uvornpiov is derived from the verb uvw. Any good Greek dictionary will inform us that uvw means "to close one's eyes" or "to close one's mouth." But what does that meant Let us try. Mvw means: "observing the kind of silence that becomes so eloquent that it elicits the kind of speech that reveals the Truth (while at the same time veiling it), and thus creates room for a sacred silence once again, inclusive, pregnant with truth, and intolerant of falsehood." This is not a translation, of course, but a periphrasis; it sins by prolixity, but it conveys the true meaning. 4. For an early treatment of affirmation and negation in modern thought, compare his The Other Dimension: A Search for the Meaning of Religious Attitudes (New York: Doubleday, 1972), 323-76. 5. Expositio super secundam Decretalem (Opuscula theologica I, ed. Marietti, nr. 1198): "Non tamen est idem modus perfectionis humanae et divinae, quia non potest esse tanta similitudo inter Creatorem et creaturam, quin major inveniatur ibi dissimilitudo, propter hoc quod creatura in infinitum distat a Deo." Compare Denz 806. 6. In I Sent, 8, 1, 1, ad 4: "... quando in Deum procedimus per viam remotionis, primo negamus ab eo corporalia; et secundo etiam intellectualia, secundum quod inveniuntur in creaturis, ut bonitas et sapientia; et tunc remanet tantum in intellectu nostro, quia est, et nihil amplius: unde est sicut in quadam confusione. Ad ultimum autem etiam hoc ipsum esse, secundum quod est in creaturis, ab ipso removemus; et tunc remanet in quadam tenebra ignorantias, secundum quam ignorantiam, quantum ad statum viae pertinet, optime Deo conjungimur . . . et haec est quaedam caligo, in qua Deus habitare dicitur." The last phrase alludes to Solomon's words at the temple dedication according to the Vulgate (2 Chron. 6:1): "Dominus pollicitus est, ut habitaret in caligine." 7. Dupre adds that Eckhart runs the risk of placing God's unity beyond the Father— that is, beyond God's trinity. He might have added that Eckhart also gives in to the West's long-standing bias in the direction of a philosophic, monistic, modalist monotheism in trinitarian theology. Strikingly (but not really surprisingly), this very conception of monotheism has been called into doubt in works by two great Jewish thinkers: Martin Buber's Ich und Du, and (with splendid indignation) Emmanuel Levinas's Totalite et infini, 8. Ibid., 33 (italics added for emphasis). Readers familiar with Cappadocian theology will notice that Tauler here retrieves—intentionally or coincidentally—the understanding of the Son as "archetype" (apxetvnos: the stamped image on a coin). 9. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I, 3 (1094b14-15); italics added for emphasis. TO. On "performative" language, cf ]. L. Austin's classic How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962). 11. In terms of structural linguistics, what happens in metaphors is "the disjunctive (or selective) application of meaning-elements." To clarify this, let us explain ex contrario. Take the two sample phrases, and assume that, instead of yourself, the speakers are, respectively, a zoologist and a pastry baker. In their several contexts, odds are that the entire complex of meaning-elements of "toad" and "honeybun" would apply, respectively, to an (ungainly) little animal or to an (attractive) piece of confection. After all, amphibiologists and pastry bakers arc apt to refer to an actual toad and a ditto honeybun almost every day. In other words, they would use the two words denotatively; they would apply all the meaning-elements of "toad" or "honeybun" together ("conjunctively") to the amphibian or the piece of pastry.

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39

In metaphors, however, only a few selected meaning-elements—the "relevant" ones—are applied, either to the unpleasant person or to the attractive one. But that application is all the more forceful for being selective. Less denotation means stronger reference. Would you not rather deal with a little unpleasant amphibian croaking sotto voce and scrambling around your office than with a colleague you cordially detest? And is a charming friend not infinitely better company than the sweetest bun? 12. Four Quartets, East Coker, IV, lines 147-48. 13. The Wreck of the Deutschland, 9. 14. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, I, v, 166-67. 15. Letter of 2 August 1955, Collected Works, ed. Sally Fitzgerald, The Library of America, vol. 39 (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1988), 943-44.

CHAPTER 4

LEX CREDENDI, LEX CANENDI

Noting the Faith of the Church Karen B, Westerfield Tucker

Christians have always offered God sung praise and thanksgiving in imitation of the angelic choir (Luke 2:13-14) and of Jesus' own practice (Mark 14:26; Matt. 26:30). New Testament and noncanonical hymns testify to the growing repertoire of Christian song by human composition even in the apostolic period. Though the principal venue for Christian singing initially may have been the communal agape rather than the eucharist or the daily office,1 by the fourth century the singing of "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs" (Eph. 5:18-20; Col. 3:1617) had been thoroughly woven into the fabric of liturgy and devotion, both public and private, as a means of "stirring the soul with piety" and "inflaming the affection of divine love."2 Because what was "confessed with the lips" was essentially tied to what was "believed in the heart" (Rom. 10:9), the early Christians were justifiably concerned that the received tradition be accurately maintained and articulated (1 Cor. 11:2; 2 Thess. 2:15; 3:6), Christian hymnody, which blended—sometimes spontaneously (1 Cor. 14:26)—doeonoyia, evxapioria, and ouonoyia with a melody proved to be an effective medium for both reinforcing and disseminating the faith. Thus certain hymn fragments displaying a "creedal" character were originally selected to function as doctrinal warrants in the New Testament epistles (e.g., Phil. 2:5-11; 1 Tim. 3:16); the confessional quality of these texts is such that some scholars have classified them as primitive regulae fidei rather than hymns. The integral connection between the napasools, of the Church and its song continued to be stressed, and such a link may be implied in the Odes of Solomon:3 Teach me the odes of Thy truth, That I may produce fruits in Thee.

And open to me the harp of thy Holy Spirit, So that with every note I may praise Thee, O Lord and stand behind the statement in the Epistle to Diognetus:4

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41

Then the fear of the law is sung, the grace of the prophets is known, the faith of the gospels is established, the tradition of the apostles is guarded, and the grace of the church leaps for joy.

The ability of texts conveyed by catchy tunes to attract the ear and consequently the lips and heart was equally exploited by the Naasenes, Bardaisan, Paul of Samosata, Arius (the Thalia), and other early heretics, whose variant Christologies expressed in song earned the ridicule of the church fathers.5 As a countermeasure, efforts were made periodically to limit the use of freely composed texts on sacred themes; the fifty-ninth canon of the Council of Laodicea (c. 365-380), for example, forbade the use in church of "psalms" (hymns) composed by private individuals. For the sake of protecting the Church's doctrine, restrictions may have silenced the singing of particular new songs, but limitations could not dispel the creation of personal or regional songs of devotion at the grass roots. Indeed, some popular hymns and prayers that embellished or augmented the classical teaching of the Church eventually found a wider hearing in official liturgies, as is clear from the development of the Marian hymns and offices. The expectation has always been that doctrine (lex credendi) should govern the formulation of Christian song (lex canendi), but with the recognition that, reciprocally, singing has the power to nuance and shape the Church's belief. Ideally, hymnody is the existential counterpart to doctrine: hymns add flesh and blood, heart and soul to the structural bones of doctrine. While transmitting the Church's belief, hymns promote its interiorization by the use of concise, simple, and "personalized" language sung to a memorable tune. Thus, "at its most characteristic, the Christian hymn may perhaps be considered as a sung confession of faith"—as Geoffrey Wainwright has suggested.6 This notion of the hymn as a sung doctrinal confession harkens back to the dual function of the hymn fragments in the New Testament epistles to reinforce and disseminate the faith; it will guide our further examination of the relationship between the lex credendi and the lex canendi. While some hymn writers prefer to make their own digest of the scriptural story, here the focus will fall upon creedal hymns, and especially versifications of the symbolum apostolicum.

The Cantillation of the Creed The earliest witness to the cantillation of the creed in the liturgy may be Ambrose's late fourth-century testimony that the Milanese congregation daily sang in verse a trinitarian profession of faith—though precisely what was sung is not identified.7 The evidence seems more certain in a description of the Syrian liturgy provided in the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy by pseudo-Dionysius, which is usually dated in the early sixth century. Twice (III, 2; III, 3, 7) the author apparently refers to the singing of the creed before the celebration of the eucharistic liturgy; in the latter citation, the vuvonyia ka0onikn is also identified as ouonoyia, avubnov, and e v x P a r i a since it gives "a compend of the holy gifts which come to us from God."8 In the West, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed entered the Mozarabic eucharistic rite by decree of the Council of Toledo (589), and then spread to France and other

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parts of Europe where it functioned as a spoken public profession by the people against the new or revitalized heresies that the Church continued to encounter. As part of the Carolingian liturgical renewal, a new Latin translation of the creed was introduced that, by order of the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle (798), was to be sung by the people at mass, a custom that may be traced to the creedal cantillation already extant in Irish praxis.9 By the tenth century, congregations were surrendering the creed to the clergy or to a schola cantorum; the letter's role in the declamation of the Credo significantly increased with the introduction, in the late twelfth century, of polyphonic settings of the mass ordinary. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan formulation may have become the symbol in the Western mass, but it was not the creed of the masses, for that place belonged to the symbolum apostolicum. Emphasis on a personal knowledge and appropriation of the baptismal creed is evident from the widespread usage in the fourth century of the traditio symboli and redditio symboli, and of the recommended daily recital of the creed for both catechumens and the faithful10—a practice that would be codified by the inclusion of the creed in particular hours of the daily office (e.g., prime). When infants became the primary recipients of baptism, the older custom of handing on and reciting back the creed was not lost but, rather, adjusted so that the symbol was taught after baptism as one of the rudiments (along with the Our Father and the Decalogue) of Christian catechesis and formation. Legislation requiring priests to teach the Apostles' Creed in the vernacular, and the people to learn it, proliferated from the eighth century, and numerous liturgical manuscripts attest to the variety of vernacular versions that were available.11 Transmission of the creed was strengthened in the West by artistic exegesis of the symbol in stone, wood, and glass, and, of course, by complementing the recitation of the text with a tune. Documents from the thirteenth century indicate that the people's familiarity with and preference for the western baptismal creed led to the institution of congregational singing of a vernacular translation, paraphrase, or condensation of the Apostles' Creed while the priest intoned the longer mass-creed. Berthold von Regensburg (d. 1272) commended the practice of singing in German a brief trinitarian affirmation during the recital of the mass-creed: "Ich gloube an den vater, ich gloube an den sun miner frouwen sant Marien, und an den heiligen geist, kyrieleys."12 An English metrical version of the entire creed text, dated in the middle of the thirteenth century, shows evidence of farsing on the subject of the "communion" of saints ("I trow that housel es bothe flesshe and blode"), and hence the willingness to make theological elaborations on the basic text in addition to those alterations necessary for the sake of both rhyme and meter. Though a rubric indicates that the text was to be said simultaneously with the mass-creed, it could easily have been cantillated sotto voce. I trow in God, fader of might, That alle has wroght, Heven and erthe, day and night, And alle of noght. And in Ihesu that God's Son is Al-onely,

LEX CREDENDI, LEX CANENDI 43

Bothe God and mon, Lord endles, In him trow I; Thurgh mekenes of tho holy gast, That was so milde, He lyght in Mary mayden chast, Be-come a childe; Under pounce pilat pyned he was, Us forto save, Done on cros and deed he was, Layde in his grave; Tho soul of hym went into helle, Tho sothe to say; Up he rose in flesshe and felle Tho thryd day; He stegh till heven with woundis wide, Thurgh his pouste; Now sittes opon his fader right syde, In mageste; Thethin shal he come us all to deme In his manhede, Qwyk and ded, alle that has ben in Adam sede, Wel I trow in tho holi gost, And holi kirc that is so gode; And so I trow that housel es Bothe flesshe and blode; Of my synnes, forgyfnes, If I wil mende; Up-risyng als-so of my flesshe, And lyf with-outen ende.13

Vernacular creed compositions designed for singing were a staple of the Protestant Reformation and have flourished in the generations since. While strict translations have always been available, metrical versions and paraphrases, as well as substantial elaborations upon the basic text, have also appeared in liturgical and hymn books. Each category of creed-hymn has a liturgical function: literal translations and metered texts typically serve as part of the ordinary, as may freer paraphrases; where a whole series of hymns has been based upon the creed clause by clause, the liturgical purpose has to be understood more broadly, and in some cases individual hymns have been extracted from their original context and have all but lost their creedal association.

Versified Translations One of the oldest direct restatements of the creed for Protestant use was the Apostles' Creed contained in Aulcuns pseaumes et cantiques mys en chant (1539), edited by Calvin for the French refugee community (ecclesiola gallicana) in Strasbourg, and included

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for devotional and catechetical as well as liturgical reasons: Reformed revisions of the mass in Strasbourg, perhaps influenced by the content of the medieval Prone as well as by the desire for simplicity, had often replaced the Nicene symbol with the Apostles'.14 The French translation, possibly rendered by Calvin himself, was neither rhymed nor strophic. Each syllable was connected to a distinct pitch of the melody, thereby avoiding the melismas believed to distort the articulation (and consequently the hearing) of the text. A rhymed metrical version succeeded the older translation in La forme des prieres et chantz ecclesiastiques (1 542), published by Calvin after he returned to Geneva.15 The 1542 text did not survive for inclusion in the Genevan Psalter of 1562: Je croy en Dieu le Pere, tout puissant, Qui crea terre et ciel resplendissant. Et en son Fils unique, Jesus Christ, Nostre Seigneur: conceu du sainct Esprit, Et de Marie entiere vierge ne. Dessous Pilate a tort passionne: Crucifie, mort en croix estendu. Au tombeau mis, aux enfers descendu. Et qui de mort reprint vie au tiers jour. Monta la sus au celeste sejour, La ou il sied a la dextre du Pere, Pere Eternel, qui tout peut et tempere. Et doit encor' de la venir ici, Juger les morts et les vivans aussi. Au sainct Esprit ma ferine foy est mise: Je croy la saincte et catholique Eglise, Estre des saincts et des fideles une Vraye union, entre eux, en tout commune: De nos peches pleine remission: Et de la chair la resurrection.

Finalement, croy la vie eternelle: Telle est ma foy, et veux mourir en elle. New versified translations of the Apostles' Creed have been produced as a consequence of the Church's ongoing mission to every nation and people, and also on account of the modernization of linguistic structures and changes in word definitions, and the desire for fresh restatements deemed necessary for the vitality of the Church. Because of the complexity and perhaps also the length of the text, direct versifications of the Nicene Creed have proved virtually impossible. A Chinese translation of the Apostles' Creed in unrhymed metered verse was made by Peter Li in 1993 for confession by Lutheran Christians in Taiwan and Hong Kong.16 Timothy Dudley-Smith's English text, also of 1993, employs both meter and rhyme in an accurate reproduction of the western baptismal creed: We believe in God the Father, God Almighty, by whose plan

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45

earth and heaven sprang to being, all created things began. We believe in Christ the Saviour, Son of God in human frame, virgin-born, the child of Mary upon whom the Spirit came. Christ, who on the cross forsaken, like a lamb to slaughter led, suffered under Pontius Pilate, he descended to the dead. We believe in Jesus risen, heaven's king to rule and reign, to the Father's side ascended till as judge he comes again. We believe in God the Spirit; in one church, below, above; saints of God in one communion, one in holiness and love. So by faith, our sins forgiven, Christ our Saviour, Lord and Friend, we shall rise with him in glory to the life that knows no end.17

Metrical Paraphrases A Reformation paraphrase of the creed still in use in the late twentieth century is that which first appeared in a Wittenberg hymnal (1524) and was composed by Martin Luther. The German reformer borrowed and expanded an existing medieval verse that some have described as a trope,18 but which, instead, may be another example of a single-stanza hymn designed for congregational participation in the Credo since it succinctly and simply summarized the doctrinal content of the longer mass-creed. The text (in Latin and German) and melody (which Luther also imitated) have been preserved in a fifteenth-century Breslau manuscript.19 Building upon the foundation of the single medieval stanza and relying upon the Nicene symbol as a source, Luther explicated in three stanzas the work of the respective persons of the Godhead in such a way that the text both encompasses and amplifies the ancient doctrinal formulations: Wir glauben all an einen Gott, Schopfer Himmels und der Erden, der sich zum Vater geben hat, dass wir seine Kinder werden. Er will uns allzeit ernahren, Leib und Seel auch wohl bewahren; allem Unfall will er wehren,

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kein Leid soll uns widerfahren. Er sorget fur uns, hut' und wacht; es steht alles in seiner Macht. Wir glauben auch an Jesus Christ, seinen Sohn und unsern Herren, der ewig bei dem Vater ist, gleicher Gott von Macht und Ehren, von Maria, der Jungfrauen, ist ein wahrer Mensch geboren durch den Heil'gen Geist im Glauben; fur uns, die wir warn verloren, am Kreuz gestorben und vom Tod wieder auferstanden durch Gott. Wir glauben an den Heil'gen Geist, Gott mit Vater und dem Sohne, der aller Schwachen Troster heisst und mit Gaben zieret schone, die ganz Christenheit auf Erden halt in einem Sinn gar eben; hier all Sund vergeben werden, das Fleisch soll auch wieder leben. Nach diesem Elend ist bereit" uns ein leben in Ewigkeit.20 The text was intended as a paraphrase of the Nicene Creed, and since Luther had conceded in the Formula Missae (1523) the virtue of singing the creed, the hymn was substituted for the Latin Credo in his Deutsche Messe (1526) and in various subsequent Lutheran Kirchenordnungen. But the text, by its content, does not necessarily demand a reading of the Nicene formulation: it may be understood as a general explication of the basic trinitarian confession essential to Christian faith, and this may have encouraged the replacement of the classical creed text with the simpler, yet theologically profound, paraphrase. Stronger allusions to the Nicene formula are evident in a German hymn written in 193 7 by Rudolf Alexander Schroder in which a creedal summation is given twice (stanzas 1 and 2; stanzas 3-5): Wir glauben Gott im hochsten Thron, wir glauben Christum, Gottes Sohn, aus Gott geboren vor der Zeit, all machtig, allgebenedeit. Wir glauben Gott, den Heil'gen Geist, der Troster, der uns unterwcist, der fahrt, wohin er will und mag, und stark mach, was daniederlag. Den Vater, dcssen Wink und Ruf das Licht aus Finsternissen schuf,

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47

den Sohn, der annimmt unsre Not, litt unser Kreuz, starb unsern Tod. Der niederfuhr und auferstand, erhoht zu Gottes rechter Hand, und kommt am Tag, vorherbestimmt, da alle Welt ihr Urteil nimmt. Den Geist, der heilig insgemein lasst Christen Christi Kirche sein, bis wir, von Sund und Fehl befreit, ihn selber schaun in Ewigkeit.21

A truly ecumenical hymn derived from an ecumenical creed is the paraphrase obtained from combining a three-stanza hymn written by Lutheran Tobias Clausnitzer ("Wir glauben all an einen Gott," 1668) and translated by Anglican Catherine Winkworth (1863) with three new stanzas by the Reformed liturgist Howard G. Hageman (1982). Winkworth's version of Clausnitzer's text (in the new hymn, stanzas 1,2, and 4) was identified in some nineteenth-century Protestant hymnals as a summation of the Nicene Creed, and in others as an abbreviation of the baptismal creed, despite the affirmation in the final stanza (here the fourth stanza) of the filioque.22 While Hageman's additional stanzas fill out Clausnitzer's hymn, they do not add a particularly Nicene character to the hymn paraphrase: We believe in one true God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, ever-present help in need, praised by all the heav'nly host; by whose mighty power alone all is made and wrought and done. We believe in Jesus Christ, Son of God and Mary's son, who descended from his throne and for us salvation won; by whose cross and death are we rescued from sin's misery. We believe he rose again: raised to rule at God's right hand; he'll return to be our Judge, reigning Lord of every land. Dead and living rise to meet at his glorious judgment seat. We confess the Holy Ghost, who from both fore'er proceeds, who upholds and comforts us in all trials, fears, and needs.

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LEX ORANDI, LEX CREDENDI Blest and Holy Trinity, praise forever be to thee! We confess the holy church catholic in every way, here on earth and kept in heaven, waiting for that glorious day; we confess forgiving grace freely giv'n to our lost race. And with expectation high we await that final morn when the dead shall rise again and creation be reborn, light and life forever more on that brighter heav'nly shore.23

Of the several thousand hymns attributed to Charles Wesley, none seems to be identified specifically with any creed—Apostles', Nicene, or Athanasian—though creedal allusions and restatements may be found in numerous texts. One entire hymn from Hymns for Children (first ed. 1763) resonates strongly with the symbolum apostolicum, as well as giving expression to the "experience of real Christians." The affinities with the creed may be more than coincidental: the hymn collection was designed as a companion to the Wesleyan Instructions for Children, which went through several editions following the initial printing of 1745. Section Four of the Instructions ("How to regulate our understanding") includes, as the sixth lesson, the creed text and a digest of "what may be learned from it."24 The purpose of the hymn—whose first stanza echoes also the opening exchange of the Westminster Shorter Catechism—is didactic as well as doxological. But the hymn also rehearses the expectation of corporate and personal obedience, and the promise of salvation—the hallmarks of the Wesleyan via salutis—which suppose that the received faith is what shapes the individual life: Thee, Maker of the world, we praise, The end of our creation own; Being Thou gav'st the favourite race, That man might love his God alone; With knowledge fill'd, and joy, and peace, And glorious, everlasting bliss. But man his liberty of will Abused, and turn'd his heart from Thee: His fault on us entail'd we feel, While born in sin and misery, We from our God with horror fly, And perish, and for ever die. We must have died that second death, had not the Son of God been man:

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Jesus of us resign'd His breath, For us revived, and rose again; He purged our sin, He bought our peace, And fills us with his righteousness. We now, by His good Spirit led, Our own desires and will forego, Delight in all His steps to tread, And perfect holiness below, Our ransom'd souls to God resign, Fill'd up with peace and joy Divine. In Jesus join'd to God again, To all Thy saints in earth and heaven, We triumph with the sons of men, Thy utmost grace to sinners given Sure at His coming to receive, And bless'd with Thee for ever live.25

Two settings of the Apostles' Creed from the late twentieth century illustrate the desire to maintain the doctrinal contents of the ancient text while employing a loose translation with images or language that may captivate and compel. One text uses the first person plural pronoun throughout, thereby effectively functioning as a congregational reaffirmation of the baptismal faith. The other, in the first person singular, declares the benefits of God's saving work and expresses the individual believer's acceptance of them. The first text, a three-stanza hymn (1977) by David Mowbray, reflects the three articles of the creed, and in the second stanza fleshes out Jesus' ministry of "doing good and healing" (Acts 10:38) that is silently assumed in the symbol between his birth and his suffering. The dynamism of living faith and the corporate witness are confirmed in the first and third articles, and therein also is attested the ongoing creative work of the Father and the Spirit: We believe in God Almighty, maker of the earth and sky; all we see and all that's hidden is his work unceasingly: God our Father's loving kindness, with us till the day we die— Evermore and evermore. We believe in Christ the Savior, Son of God and Son of Man; born of Mary, preaching, healing, crucified, yet risen again: he ascended to the Father, there in glory long to reign— Evermore and evermore.

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We believe in God the Spirit, present in our lives today; speaking through the prophets' writings, guiding travelers on their way: to our hearts he brings forgiveness, and the hope of endless joy— Evermore and evermore.26

The more personalized text is an inclusive-language paraphrase (1987) by Gracia Grindal which, after the manner of Luther's Small Catechism, stresses an application and appropriation of creedal faith: Oh, I believe that God created me and everything, and daily gives to me the life and strength I need to sing such praises as I ought to bring to God whose heart is love. This is most certainly true. I trust in Jesus Christ, true God and true humanity. He is my Lord and God for I was lost and he saved me from sin and Satan's tyranny so I might be his own. This is most certainly true. For I am certain 1 cannot believe on Christ as Lord by my own strength or thought. The Holy Spirit through the Word has called, enlightened me, and stirred new life, true faith in me. This is most certainly true. 27

Hymn Series Based on the Apostles' Creed Because creed versifications have generally been conceived for liturgical usage, the texts are confined to several manageable and memorable stanzas. Few poets have attempted a longer exposition of a creed whereby a whole series of hymns address portions of the creed text in succession. Two important nineteenth-century series of creed-hymns, which developed within eighteen years of each other, were inspired by Tractarian programmatic poetry and comprised part of the second wave of sacred verse that issued forth from the Oxford Movement. Like John Keble's Christian Year (1827), which both of these authors of the creed-hymns admired, the collected hymns were produced out of concern for preserving from liberal attack ancient Christian truths ("a sound rule of faith") and for reinforcing Prayer Book

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and popular piety ("a sober standard of feeling in matters of practical religion").28 Designed primarily for private catechesis, devotion, and worship rather than for corporate liturgical purposes, the most successful of these hymn texts eventually acquired a place in the liturgy and in ecclesiastical hymn books, and as a consequence have been divorced from their original context of composition. The older of the two hymnic creed commentaries is by the Irish poet Cecil Frances Alexander (nee Humphreys), whose creed-hymns, contained in the collection Hymns for Little Children (1848), were published on the heels of her Verses for Holy Seasons (1846), itself conceived as a junior version of Keble's Christian Year. With Keble himself providing the introductory "Notice," Hymns for Little Children proceeds as a type of hymnic catechism and abbreviated Prayer Book. Following hymns for morning and evening, a "Hymn of the Holy Trinity," and a hymn on baptism, the collection is then structured by three baptismal promises: "to renounce the devil and all his works" (three hymns on themes of renunciation); "to believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith" (fourteen hymns on the baptismal creed); and "to keep God's holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of my life" (ten hymns on the Decalogue). A hymnic prayer then precedes nine hymns based on the Lord's Prayer.29 Mrs. Alexander divided the creed into thirteen parts, devoting a hymn to each, though two to the phrase "the Holy Catholic Church." The hymns used were, for the first article, "How good is the Almighty God" and "All things bright and beautiful"; for the second article, "When we speak of the Lord Jesus," "Once in royal David's city," "There is a green hill far away," "The rich man did of Pilate crave," and "Up in Heaven, up in Heaven"; and, for the third article, "I knew a little sickly child," "Little children must be quiet" and "The faithful men of every land" (both associated with the Holy Catholic Church), "The Saints of God are holy men," "Once in baptismal waters bright," "Within the churchyard side by side," and "Every morning the red sun." Though the texts were written specifically for children (the first of the two hymns on the "Holy Catholic Church" delineates the behavior and decorum appropriate for public worship), the simplicity of language and theology attracted Christians of all ages, requiring that Hymns for Little Children be sustained in numerous editions and encouraging the use of particular hymns in Hymns Ancient and Modern and other hymnals, where they are typically identified as children's or seasonal hymns rather than creed-hymns. The other hymn series was Lyra Fidelium (1866), a collection devoted exclusively to a dozen hymns on the creed, and from which comes author Samuel J. Stone's bestknown hymn, "The Church's One Foundation." The hymns used here were, for the first article of the creed, "None else but thee, for evermore"; for the second article, "God the Father's only Son," "The Son forsook the Father's home," "My Saviour! I behold Thy life," "All the sacrifice is ended," "On Olivet a little band," and "Wistful are our waiting eyes"; and, for the third article, "God the Spirit, we adore Thee," "The Church's One Foundation," "Weary of earth and laden with my sin," "Winter in his heart of gloom," and "The world is sad with hopes that die." Lyra Fidelium was construed as a didactic, yet devotional, companion to enrich the commonly practiced daily recital of the symbol in the office and in private

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prayer. Stone opted for verse, acknowledging that "the poetical form is more likely to be effectual in securing an abiding place in the general mind, and also in exercising an influence upon heart and life." But he complemented the hymns with prose: every one of the twelve hymns is headed with a theological amplification beginning with "I believe" so as "to render the work more complete by supplying some unavoidable omissions in the Hymns."30 Proof-texts from scripture are also used, with a single scripture-verse governing each hymn, and with each line of every hymn text linked to a biblical citation. Lex credendi, lex canendi Although the relationship between the lex credendi and the lex canendi is not unidirectional, nevertheless the fides quae creditur ideally should undergird the sacred song of devotion and public worship so that, for purposes of identity and formation, the text is consonant with the historic faith of the Church. It is the fides qua rather than the fides quae that is to be affected primarily by Christian song: hymns should invite engagement with the received tradition and thereby inform personal belief. While offering God faithful doxology, hymns may also call the singer (and the Church) to account for neglecting or overlooking certain aspects of the Church's central doctrine; hymns may provide a needed theological corrective lest God no longer delight in the "noise of songs" and the "melody of harps" (Amos 5:23). The creation of new songs in each generation bears witness to the faith the Church proclaims. Hymns are a sign of God's enduring activity, for the Father and Maker "of all that is, seen and unseen," the Son and Word "through whom all things were made," and the Holy Spirit, "sovereign and life-giving," are coinherently the motivator, the author, and the content of the Church's song. Christian poets, divinely inspired, proclaim the faith afresh so that the body of Christ, the "one holy catholic and apostolic Church," may once again hear and pass on to others what God has done and will do "for us and for our salvation." Yet the Church simultaneously must judge the theological fidelity of the hymnic words that are expressed by its poets, well-intentioned though they may be.31 But hymns are more than words. Cantillation brings a new life to the text, a dynamic quality lacking in mere recitation. Sometimes, though, the melodic accompaniment may also generate a new interpretation, particularly if rhythms and pitches overemphasize certain words to the detriment of others. Music also generates a risk: as St. Augustine feared, the music itself may attract or overgratify the senses and thereby obscure the sacred words.32 But music, or more precisely sound, may itself commend the fundamentals of the faith: Sound's temporality . . . symbolizes a God active in creation and history; its seemingly insubstantial nature symbolizes a God who is both present and hidden; its dynamism symbolizes a God who calls us into dialogue; its ability to unify symbolizes our union with God and others; its evocation of personal presence symbolizes a God whom we perceive as personal.33

The harmonious blending of tune with text may even testify to the creative ingenuity of the Holy Spirit, who "has mixed the delight of melody with doctrines in

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53

order that, through gentleness and ease of hearing, we may unconsciously receive the benefit of the words, just as artful doctors, when they give the more bitter medicines to the squeamish to drink, often smear the cup with honey."34 The singing of doctrine truly allows for the embodiment of belief. Because of the physical mechanisms required for singing, sung confession and praise necessarily engage the whole person; assent to God's truths is not only of the mind and lips, but is drawn from the very breath—the breath of the spirit and of the Spirit—that supports life. The breath that animates the individual body is also the breath that sustains the body of Christ, the Church, and that allows the congregation to sing with one voice. By the agency of the one Spirit, the song of faith enables individuals of different backgrounds and experiences to be united in corporate praise and thanksgiving and thus, effectively, to bring about what is confessed and affirmed. Through corporate song, St. Paul's prayer is fulfilled that God would grant the community to "live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Jesus Christ," that "with one voice" they might "glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 15:5-6). NOTES 1. J. A. Smith, "The Ancient Synagogue, the Early Church and Singing," Music & Let ters 65 (January 1984): 1-16. 2. Augustine, Epistula 55, 34 (PL 33, 221). 3. Ode 14:7-8, translation from James Hamilton Charlesworth, ed., The Odes of Solomon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 66. 4. Diog. 11,6, translation from J. J. Thierry, The Epistle to Diognetus (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1964), 21. 5. Hippolytus, Contra haereses, V, x (PG 16, 3159); Ephraem the Syrian, Hymnen contra haereses, 1,17 in Corpus scriptorumChristianorumorientalium, Scriptores Syri, 76-77, ed. Edmund Beck (Louvain: L. Durbecq, 1957), 76:5, 77:5-6; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, V, 28, 5; VII, 30, 10; and Athanasius, Epistula de decretis Nicaenae synodi 16 (PG 25, 44144). For the hymns of Arius, see G. C. Stead, "The Thalia of Arius and the Testimony of Athanasius," Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 29 (April 1978): 20-52. 6. Doxology, 183. 7. "It is alleged that the people are beguiled by the charms of my hymns (hymnorum carmenibus). Certainly, I do not deny it. This is a great charm (carmen), more powerful than any other. For what is more powerful than the confession of the Trinity which is daily celebrated in the mouth of all the people? They all strive eagerly to profess the faith: they know how to praise the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in verse. So they have all turned into teachers, who had hardly been disciples" (Ambrose, Epistula 21, 34 [PL 16, 1060]). 8. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, books 2-4 edited by Johannes Quasten in Monumenta eucharistica et liturgica vetustissima 6, Florilegium Patristicum 7 (Bonn: Peter Handstein, 1937), 294-95, 305- Taft allows the creedal nature of the -uuvonoyia kaoonikn at this point in Pseudo-Dionysius, while questioning whether precisely the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed is meant (Robert F. Taft, The Great Entrance, 2d ed., Orientalia Christiana Analecta 200 [Rome: Pont. Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1978], 48-49, note). 9. Bernard Capelle, "Alcuin et 1'histoire du symbole de la messe," Recherches de Theologie ancienne et medievale 6 (1934): 249—60. 10. Ambrose, De Virginibus ad Marcellinam sororem, 3, 20 (PL 16, 237) and Exhortatio Virginitatis, 58 (PL 16, 369); and Augustine, De Symbolo sermo ad Catechumenos, 1 (PL 40,627).

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11. For English examples from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, see William Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882), 3:251-53. 12. Berthold von Regensburg, Vollstandige Ausgabe seiner Predigten, ed. Franz Pfeiffer (Vienna: W. Braumueller, 1862), 1:498. 13. Thomas Frederick Simmons, The Lay Folks Mass Book or the Manner of Hearing Mass (London: For the Early English Text Society by N. Trubner & Co., 1879), 20-22. 14. William D. Maxwell, The Liturgical Portions of the Genevan Service Book (Westminster: Faith Press, 1965), 17-32. 15. Jean Calvin, Aulcuns pseaulmes et cantiques mys en chant, ed. D. Deletra (Strasbourg: 1539; repr. Geneva: A. Jullien, 1919), and La forme des prieres et chantz ecclesiastiques, ed. Pierre Pidoux (Geneva: 1542; Kassel and Basle: Barenreiter, 1959). 16. An English approximation of the Chinese text preserves much of the original intention to pass on the received tradition of the Church. See Hymns of Praise, rev. ed. (Hong Kong: Taosheng Publishing House, 1994), #575 (English translation by Valerie Peterson). According to the Rev. Philip Min Hock Lim, the Chinese text is unrhymed in Mandarin and Cantonese. 17. Timothy Dudley-Smith, A Voice of Singing (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993; Carol Stream, 1L: Hope Publishing Company, 1993), 40. 18. Wilhelm Baumker, Dos katholische deutsche Kirchenlied in seinen Singweisen (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1962), 1:687. 19. Ibid., 683; also Weimar Ausgabe 35:172-73. 20. Cited according to the Evangelisches Gesangbuch of 1994, #183 in the common core; also Weimar Ausgabe 35:451-52. The 1994 edition has replaced the original's "bloeden troester" in the third line of the third stanza with "Schwachen Troster." 21. Cited according to the Evangelisches Gesangbuch of 1994, #184 in the common core. 22. "Wir glauben an den Heiligen Geist, der von beiden gehet aus, der uns Trost und Beistand leist' wider alle Furcht und Graus" (Cited from Evangelisches Gesangbuch, regional edition for Saxony [Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt, 1994], #779). 23. Cited in Rejoice in the Lord: A Hymn Companion to the Scriptures, ed. Erik Routley (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1985), #609. 24. Instructions for Children, 8th ed. (Bristol: W. Pine, 1767), 43-44. 25. Hymns for Children (Bristol: E. Farley, 1763); repr. in The Poetical Works of john and Charles Wesley, ed. G. Osborn (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), 6:394 (#25). 26. Cited in The Worshiping Church: A Hymnal (Carol Stream, IL: Hope Publishing Company, 1990), #693. 27. Cited in New Songs of Rejoicing, ed. David P. Schaap (New York: Selah Publishing Company, 1994), #147. 28. From John Keble's Advertisement in The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays throughout the Year. 29. Cecil Frances Alexander, Hymns for Little Children, 67th ed. (London: Masters, 1888). 30. Preface in Samuel J. Stone, Lyra Fidelium: Twelve Hymns on the Twelve Articles of the Apostles' Creed. (Oxford and London: Messrs. Parker and Co., 1866), v-vi. Stone acknowledges in the Preface his indebtedness to An Analysis of Pearson on the Creed by James Gorle. 31. An interesting ecumenical study might compare how different churches authorize hymnals for use in their congregations. 32. Augustine, Confessions, X, 33. 33. The Milwaukee Symposia for Church Composers: A Ten-Year Report, July 9, 1992 (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1992), #13. 34. Basil, Homilia in psalmum 1, 1 (PG 29, 212).

CHAPTER 5

Aoeonoyia kai Oikodoun Der Lobpreis Gottes und der Aufbau der Glaubensgemeinschaft Richard Schaeffler

Es gikt kaum einen Theologen, der den Zusammenhang zwischen der Aoeonoyia I (dem Lobpreis Gottes) und der Oikodoun (dem Aufbau der Gemeinschaft der Glaubenden) so deutlich beschrieben hat, wie Geoffrey Wainwright. Der Gottesdienst der Gemeinde ist der primare Ort, an dem das doxologische Wort gesprochen und gesungen wird. Und im gemeinsamen Lobpreis der gottlichen Herrlichkeit (doea) wird diese Gemeinde immer neu zu einem Tempel aus lebendigen Steinen (OIKOs) aufgebaut (Wainwright, Doxology). Gerade dadurch aber wird die Gemeinde einer "eschatologischen Spannung" unterworfen: Die Doxologie ist nicht nur das signum rememorativum, das Gottes Taten in Erinnerung ruft, sondern zugleich das signum prognosticum des Zieles, zu dem diese Gemeinde noch unterwegs ist: Antizipation jener eschatologischen Gemeinde, die im kommenden Jerusalem das Lob Gottes singen wird (Wainwright, Eucharist and Eschatology). Die hier vorgelegten Uberlegungen wollen zu diesem groBen theologischen Thema einen kleinen philosophischen Beitrag leisten. Zunachst soll gefragt werden: Welches sind die semantischen, grammatischen und pragmatischen Eigenschaften, durch die das doxologische Wort fahig wird, zum Aufbau der Gemeinde beizutragen? Dann wird gefragt werden: Wie muB eine Theorie der religiosen Sprache aussehen, wenn sie die doxologische Rede und ihre oikodometische Funktion auf angemessene Weise beschreiben soll? Und schlieBlich soll gefragt werden: Was kann eine solche Theorie der religiosen Sprache dazu beitragen, dem okumenischen Gesprach zwischen den christlichen Kirchen und Gemeinschaften zu dienen?

Die semantische, grammatische und pragmatische Eigenart des doxologischen Worts Aoeonoyia ist, in einer ersten Annaherung, als menschliche Rede zu charakterisieren, die dem "Aufleuchten der gottlichen Herrlichkeit" antwortet, und zugleich als eine Weise, wie das menschliche Wort diesem "Aufleuchten" dient. 55

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Sie ist Antwort, weil sie dieses Aufleuchten voraussetzt: Gott ist aus seiner Verborgenheit hervorgetreten. Die Doxologie als menschliche Rede findet den Gegenstand, uber den sie spricht, nicht durch die eigene Erkenntnisleistung des Menschen vor, sondern nur dadurch, daB Gott sich selber kundgetan hat, teils durch den freien Akt der Schopfung, teils durch sein ebenso freies Wirken in der Geschichte. Weil alles, was ist, sein Werk ist, sind "Himmel und Erde seiner Herrlichkeit voll" (Jes 6,3). Weil er in der Geschichte sein freies Werk vollbringt, das auch durch seine Schopfungstat nicht prajudiziert ist, ist seine Herrlichkeit an denen sichtbar geworden, die er zu Dienern dieses Wirkens gemacht hat, z.B. an Mose (Ex 34,29ff), vor allem aber "auf dem Angesicht seines Gesalbten" (2 Kor 4,6). Aber auch unter der Voraussetzung, daB Gott aus seiner Verborgenheit herausgetreten ist und seine Herrlichkeit hat aufleuchten lassen, ist die Wahrnehmung dieser Doxa nicht durch menschliche Eigenleistung herbeizufiihren, sondern bedarf der gottlichen Gabe der "Edeuchtung": Die gottliche Herrlichkeit muB "aufleuchten in den Herzen zur Erleuchtung der Erkenntnis" (2 Kor 4,6). Diese Gabe der Erleuchtung aber ist zugleich Aufgabe: Der Mensch, dem sie zuteil wurde, weiB sich zum Zeugnis fur Gottes Herrlichkeit berufen und verpflichtet. "Uns obliegt es, zu preisen den Herm des Alls", mit diesen Worte beginnt eines der "Stammgebete" der jlidischen Gemeinde, das nach seinem Anfangswort "Alejnu" genannt wird und die Auserwahlung dieser Gemeinde aus den Volkern zum Ausdruck bringt: Doxologie wird moglich, weil das Aufleuchten der gottlichen Herrlichkeit fur die, denen Gott sich gnadig zuwendet, zugleich zum Licht wird, das die Herzen der Menschen erleuchtet, seine Lippen "reinigt" und sie so erst zu einem Wort befahigt, das sie nicht aus eigener Kraft sprechen konnten. Ein Ausdruck fur dieses BewuBtsein ist die schon erwahnte Szene aus dem Buche Jesajah, die berichtet, daB das doxologische Wort ursprunglich ein Wort der himmlischen Flammengeister (Seraphim) ist, das der Mensch nicht horen kann, ohne daB es ihn zunachst der "Unreinheit seiner Lippen" iiberfuhrt (Jes 6,4). Die so ermoglichte Antwort ist zugleich wirksamer Dienst an der gottlichen Doxa. Sie ist wirksames Wort (Verbum efficax), und dies in dreifacher Hinsicht: Der Sprecher tritt, indem er dieses Wort ausspricht, in eine Beziehung zu dem Gott ein, auf dessen Zuwendung in Gnade und Gericht er antwortet. Er wird zweitens zum Mittler dieser Zuwendung fur die, die sein Wort horen und nun ihrerseits zur lobpreisenden Antwort eingeladen werden. Und er bereitet drittens, gemeinsam mit ihnen, durch sein doxologisches Wort fur diesen Gott einen Ort seiner Gegenwart in der Welt, wo dieser "thront auf Israels Lobgesangen" (Ps 22,4). Soeben wurde die Eigenart des doxologischen Wortes an einigen wenigen biblischen Beispielen abgelesen. Aber gerade auf diese Weise konnte eine Eigentumlichkeit der Doxa und der ihr antwortenden Doxologia deutlich gemacht werden, die nicht nur bei Paulus, uberhaupt nicht nur in der Bibel, sondern in vielen Religionen beobachtet werden kann: DaB die Weise, wie eine Gottheit dem Menschen zuganglich wird (in der Bibel "Qabod", doea genannt), einem freien Akt der Gottheit entspringt, ist einer der Griinde dafiir, daB der religiose Mensch das BewuBtsein hat, es mit einer "numinosen Macht" zu tun zu haben, wobei das Wort "Numen" von "Nutum", "der Wink" gebildet ist und die ebenso uugenotigte wie muhclose AuBerung einer freien Entscheidung bezeichnet. Dem entspricht es, daB der Gott in rituellen Anrufungen um sein Erscheinen gebeten werden kann.

Aoeonoia Kai Oikogoun 57 Diese allgemein-religiosen Uberzeugungen gewinnen freilich im speziell biblischen und im noch spezieller paulinischen Zusammenhang eine besondere Bedeutung. Zwar sind, um noch einmal auf Jesajah zu verweisen, alle Lande der gottlichen Herrlichkeit voll; und deshalb konnen alle Geschopfe dazu aufgerufen werden, in das Gotteslob der Gemeinde einzustimmen (Ps 103,22). Aber die "Heiden" erkennen diese Herrlichkeit nicht, sondern beten "falsche Gotter" an; und es ist eine Folge der speziellen Erwahlung des Gottesvolks, daB es aus einer Welt von "Gotzendienern" zur Erkenntnis des wahren Gottes berufen ist (vgl. das Bekenntnis Jos 24,2). Und Paulus deutet diese Verblendung der Heidenvolker, von der auch die Vorfahren des erwahlten Volkes nicht ausgenommen waren, aus der Verwechselung des Schopfers mit seinen Geschopfen (Rom 1,23). Gerade die Tatsache, daB auf allem, was ist, Gottes Herrlichkeit ihren Abglanz gefunden hat, ist also den Menschen zur Verfuhrung geworden, den Geschopfen diejenige Ehre zu erweisen, die allein Gott gebiihrt. Nur Gottes Gnade kann diejenigen, die er erwahlt hat, aus dieser Verblendung befreien. So wird, paulinisch verstanden, die allgemeine Herrschaft des Gotzendienstes zu einem Anzeichen der allgemeinen Siindhaftigkeit: "Alle haben gesiindigt und die Doxa Gottes verloren" (Rom 3,23). Und die Befahigung zur Doxologia ist Folge einer "Rechtfertigung", die den Erwahlten durch Christus geschenkt wird: "Die er gerechtfertigt hat, die hat er auch mit der Doxa beschenkt" (Rom 8,30). Schon diese kurzen Uberlegungen haben deutlich gemacht: Zwischen der Bedeutung des doxologischen Worts, seinem Gebrauch in der religiosen Kommunikationsund Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft und seiner sprachlichen Gestalt besteht ein enger Zusammenhang. Deswegen ist seine semantische Beschreibung nicht von der pragmatischen und von der grammatischen zu trennen. Man kann nicht auf religiose Weise von Gott reden und auch nicht in nachtraglicher Reflexion angeben, was solches Reden bedeutet, ohne von den Ereignissen zu sprechen, in denen Gott in freier Entscheidung aus seiner Verborgenheit hervorgetreten ist und "seine Herrlichkeit hat aufleuchten lassen". Insofern hat jedes religiose Reden von Gott, auch wenn es dessen "bleibende Eigenschaften" beschreibt, zugleich narrativen Charakter. Man kann von Ereignissen dieser Art nicht erzahlen, ohne zugleich davon zu sprechen, in welche Beziehung zum Menschen Gott dadurch eingetreten ist, daB er vor ihm seine Herrlichkeit hat aufleuchten lassen, und welche Moglichkeit der Beziehung zu ihm er dadurch dem Menschen eroffnet hat. Von dieser Beziehung aber kann man nicht angemessen sprechen, ohne wirksam in sie einzutreten— oder, nicht weniger wirksam, dieses Eintreten zu verweigern. Insofern hat dieses Erzahlen, und damit jedes religiose Reden von Gott, stets zugleich Handlungscharakter. Die semantische Betrachtung solchen Redens, die seinen Bedeutungsgehalt bestimmen will, kommt ohne pragmatische Betrachtung, die diesen Handlungscharakter beschreibt, nicht an ihr Ziel. Umgekehrt erreicht die "SprachHandlung", durch die der menschliche Sprecher wirksam in die ihm von Gott angebotene Beziehung eintritt, ihr Ziel nur, wenn der Sprecher vom Aufleuchten der gottlichen Herrlichkeit erzahlt und angibt, auf welche Weise sich Gott dadurch offenbar gemacht hat. Insofern hat die Sprachhandlung "Eintreten in eine Gottesbeziehung" stets zugleich den Charakter der ruhmenden Aussage. Die pragmatische Betrachtung solchen Redens, die angeben will, was durch solches Reden wirksam

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geschieht, ist ohne die semantische Analyse des Bedeutungsgehalts solcher Aussagen nicht durchfuhrbar. Es ist daher ein von vorne herein verfehlter Versuch, die religiosen Aussagen so, wie etwa N. H. G. Robinson es versucht hat, als "verkleidete Sprachhandlungen" aufzufassen, d.h. als sprachliche AuBerungen, die nur "so aussehen", als seien sie Aussagen oder "Propositionen", die aber "in Wahrheit" nichts behaupten, sondern "nur etwas bewirken" wollen. Dagegen ist zu betonen: Die ruhmenden Aussagen sind integrierender Bestandteil der Handlung, die Sprachhandlung ist integrierender Bestandteil der ruhmenden Aussage. In sprachphilosophischer Hinsicht kann daher gesagt werden: Das doxologische Wort ist gerade deswegen fur den Sprachphilosophen ein lehrreicher Grenzfall, weil es die fur lange Zeit gelaufige Dichotomie widerlegt, wonach eine sprachliche AuBerung entweder eine Aussage oder eine Handlung sein musse. In religionsphilosophischer Hinsicht aber folgt daraus: Der Wahrheitsanspruch, den eine religiose Aussage erhebt, besteht gerade darin, daB sie dazu bestimmt ist, Gott in seinem Erscheinen, dieses Erscheinen aber als Eroffnung der Alternative von Heil oder Unheil zu bezeugen: als die Moglichkeit des Heils, wenn der Mensch in die ihm angebotene Gottesbeziehung eintritt, als die Moglichkeit des Unheils, wenn er sich ihr verweigert. Oder kurz: Religiose Wahrheiten sind immer Heilswahrheiten und stellen ihren Horer—und a fortiori ihren berufenen Zeugen—vor die Alternative von Gnade und Gericht.1 Diese gegenseitige Durchdringung von Handlungscharakter der doxologischen Aussagen und Aussagecharakter der doxologischen Handlungen macht auch die spezifische Sprachform doxologischer Rede erst begreiflich. Die wichtigste religiose Sprachhandlung ist, worauf schon Hermann Cohen hingewiesen hat, die Acclamatio Nomznis, durch die der Anrufende in jene Beziehung zu Gott eintritt, die dieser ihm durch das Aufleuchten seiner Herrlichkeit angeboten hat. Aber diese Namens-Anrufung entfaltet sich in eine Reihe ruhmender Pradikationen, oft im "hymnischen Partizipialstil", der zum Ausdruck bringt, daB Gottes Heilstaten, die die hymnische Pradikation in Erinnerung ruft, sich jeweils gegenwartig am religiosen Sprecher und seinen Horern ereignen. Namensanrufung und ruhmende Pradikation konnen ineinander iibergehen, Pradikate zu Namen werden und Namen sich in Pradikationen entfalten, weil Sprachhandlung und Aussage ("speech act" und "statement") sich im doxologischen Wort notwendigerweise gegenseitig durchdringen.2 Auch eine weitere grammatische Eigentumlichkeit des doxologischen Sprechens wird verstandlich, wenn man, in pragmatischer Hinsicht, die dabei vollzogenen Sprachhandlungen berucksichtigt: Die hymnische Pradikation ist haufig mit einem Adressatenwechsel verbunden. Die ruhmende Anrede an die Gottheit ("Du allein bist der Heilige, Du allein der Herr, Du allein der Hochste") wird in der zweiten grammatischen Person ("Du") ausgesprochen. Aber sie kann abwechseln mit der scheinbar adressatenlosen Aussage, die in der dritten grammatischen Person formuliert wird ("Heilig, heilig, heilig ist der Herr, der Gott Zebaoth"). In dieser Form gestattet sie ein Sprechen vor Zeugen (im angefuhrten Beispiel vor dem Propheten) und kann in eine ausdruckliche Anrede an diese Zeugen iibergehen, um diese zur Teilnahme am Gotteslob aufzufordern ("Lobet den Herrn, all seine Knechte"). Die Sprachhandlung "Eintreten in eine Gottesbeziehung" und die Sprachhandlung "Auferbauung der Betergemeinschaft" bilden einen einzigen Vorgang. Und was die ruhmenden

Aoeonia Kai OiKogoun 59 Erzahlungen vom Aufleuchten der gottlichen Herrlichkeit bedeuten, wird nur deutlich, wenn zugleich erkannt wird, da8 dieses Ereignis den, dem es widerfahrt, zugleich zu seinem Zeugen vor anderen Menschen einsetzt und so dazu bestimmt ist, neue Horer zu kunftigen Sprechern des doxologischen Wortes zu machen und so die Gemeinschaft der Betenden aufzubauen. Was also an fruherer Stelle, anhand von wenigen Textbeispielen, uber die Eigenart des doxologischen Wortes gesagt wurde, bewahrt sich darin, daB von da aus seine spezifische Bedeutung, seine Funktion in der Verknupfung von Aussage und Sprachhandlung und schlieBlich auch seine grammatische Gestalt verstandlich gemacht werden kann,

Angebot eines Deutungs-Ansatzes: Die Theorie der Erfahrung als eines Dialogs mit der Wirklichkeit Sollte die hier vorgetragene Skizze die Eigenart doxologischen Sprechens getroffen haben, dann ergibt sich die Frage, von welchem theoretischen Ansatz aus solches Sprechen angemessen gedeutet werden kann. Dafur soll hier ein Vorschlag gemacht werden: Als Ansatz zur Deutung doxologischen Redens wird eine Theorie empfohlen, die die menschliche Erfahrung als Dialog mit der Wirklichkeit versteht. Im Rahmen einer solchen Theorie wird jede Form der akustisch vernehmbaren Rede (des Verbum oris) teils als Ausdruck, teils als Bedingung jenes inneren Wortes (Verbum mentis) begriffen, durch das wir einen Anspruch des Wirklichen durch die Akte unseres Anschauens und Denkens beantworten.3 Es kann sich an dieser Stelle nicht darum handeln, diese Theorie zu entwickeln und zu begrunden. Aber drei Folgerungen sollen gezogen werden, die fur das Thema AoEonoyia kai OiKo8oun (Gotteslob und Aufbau der Gemeinde) von besonderer Bedeutung sind. 1. Nur weil, schon vor aller akustisch vernehmbaren sprachlichen AuBerung, unsere Erfahrung den Charakter einer Antwort hat, die wir durch unser Verbum mentis, d.h. durch unser Anschauen und Denken, auf den Anspruch des Wirklichen geben, kann auch das nach auBen verlautende Wort, das Verbum oris, "Trans-Mentales" bedeuten, statt nur die subjektive Befindlichkeit des Sprechers zum Ausdruck zu bringen. 2. Die Struktur des Verbum mentis ist nicht unveranderlich, sondern wird im Wechselverhaltnis zu den Inhalten der Erfahrung immer wieder umgestaltet. Die Formen unseres Anschauens und Denkens miissen deshalb als Phasen im Dialog mit der Wirklichkeit verstanden werden. 3. Die Geschichte dieses Dialogs mit der Wirklichkeit ist in die Geschichte derjenigen konkreten Kommunikationsgemeinschaft einbezogen, deren Glieder einander den Anspruch der Wirklichkeit bezeugen und sich so gegenseitig zu einer Umgestaltung des Anschauens und Denkens aufrufen. Die Sprache, die in einer Kommunikationsgemeinschaft gesprochen wird, ist das Ergebnis dieser Geschichte; sie druckt in ihrem Wortschatz und in ihrer grammatischen Form jene Weise des Anschauens und Denkens aus, die die Mitglieder der Sprachgemeinschaft im Verlauf dieser Geschichte erreicht haben. Die so zustandegekommene forma mentis aber macht neue Erfahrungen moglich, die auf die Formen des Anschauens und

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Denkens verandernd zuruckwirken. Damit aber verandert sich auch die Form der Sprache, die in dieser Gemeinschaft gesprochen wird. Es ist deutlich, daB dies auch und sogar in besonderem MaBe fur das doxologische Wort gilt. 1. Der Sprecher kann seinem Horer den Anspruch und die Zuwendung der heiligen und gottlichen Wirklichkeit nur deshalb bezeugen, weil sein Anschauen und Denken durch den immer neuen Versuch gepragt ist, diesem Anspruch zu entsprechen. Nur aufgrund dieses dialogischen Verhaltnisses zwischen dem Anspruch des Heiligen und jenem menschlichen Anschauen und Denken, das diesem Anspruch zu entsprechen versucht, bleibt der religiose Sprecher davor bewahrt, nur seine subjektive religiose Befindlichkeit zum Ausdruck zu bringen. 2. Die Formen seines Verbum mentis sind nicht unveranderlich, sondern mussen als Phasen in einem Dialog verstanden werden, in welchem der Anspruch des Heiligen und Gottlichen in den Formen menschlichen Anschauens und Denkens vernehmbar wird und zuleich vom Menschen verlangt, sich durch diesen Anspruch bestandig "umgestalten zu lassen zur Neuheit des Denkens" (Rom 12,2). 3. Auch die Geschichte des Dialogs, den der Einzelne mit der Wirklichkeit des Heiligen und Gottlichen fuhrt und in dessen Verlauf sich die Form seines religiosen Anschauens und Denkens herausbildet, ist in die Geschichte einer konkreten Kommunikationsgemeinschaft verwoben; deren Mitglieder bezeugen sich gegenseitig den Anspruch des Heiligen und Gottlichen und rufen sich so dazu auf, sich durch diesen Anspruch zur "Neuheit des Denkens" umgestalten zu lassen. Darum ist die Sprache, die in einer religiosen Kommumkationsgemeinschaft gesprochen wird, das Ergebnis dieser Geschichte und druckt in ihrem Wortschatz und ihrer grammatischen Form jene Weise des Anschauens und Denkens aus, die die Mitglieder der religiosen Sprachgemeinschaft im Laufe dieser Geschichte erreicht haben. Von hier aus laBt sich der Zusammenhang deutlich machen, der zwischen der doxologischen Rede und dem Aufbau der religiosen Sprachgemeinschaft, also zwischen AoEonoyia und OiKo8oun, besteht. Verbum mentis und Verbum oris. Der Zusammenhang zwischen dem Verbum mentis und dem Verbum oris pflegt in einer Theorie der Spiritualitat als das Wechselverhaltnis von "Herzensgebet" und "auBerem Gebetswort" erortert zu werden, wobei das "Herzensgebet" als Sache des religiosen Individuums, das "auBere Gebetswort" als Sache der Glaubensgemeinde verstanden wird. Doch kann gerade eine sprachtheoretische Uberlegung zeigen, daB das religiose Individuum auch in seinem Verbum mentis immer schon durch die Glaubensgemeinschaft und ihre Geschichte gepragt ist, und daB das gemeinsame Gebet der Glaubensgemeinde nicht nur sekundar zum Ausdruck bringt, welche Form des Anschauens und Denkens sich jeweils im Herzen der Individuen herausgcbildet hat, sondern dem Individuum zugleich ein Kriterium an die Hand gibt, das ihm eine kritische Selbstpriifung gestattet. Jede Erfahrung kommt dadurch zustande, daB der, der diese Erfahrung macht, durch sein Anschauen und Denken den Anspruch einer begegnenden Wirklichkeit beantwortet. Darum muB er diese seine Antwort am Anspruch des Wirklichen uberprufen und sich durch ihn gegebenenfalls zu einer Anderung seiner forma mentis herausfordern lassen. In vielcn Fallen geschieht dies dadurch, daB er versucht, seinen

Aoeonoyia Kai Oikogoun 61 Standort zu wechseln und zu erproben, wie die gleiche Sache sich ihm unter der nun veranderten Perspektive auf neue Weise zeigen wird. Doch ist ein solcher Perspektivenwechsel nicht immer moglich, teils weil wir unseren Standort nicht immer beliebig verandern konnen, teils weil wir nicht sicher sein konnen, daB wir vom neuen Standort aus die gleiche Sache noch zu sehen bekommen. In solchen Fallen gewinnt ein anderes Uberpriifungsverfahren an Bedeutung, fur das das "Verbum externum" unentbehrlich ist: Wir versuchen, andere Beobachter auf die gleiche Sache aufmerksam zu machen, und erproben, wie diese sich durch den Anspruch der gleichen Sache zu einer fur sie spezifischen Weise des Anschauens und Begreifens herausfordern lassen. Dann werden wir uns der Bedingungen und Grenzen unserer eigenen Auffassungsart bewuBt; und dieses BewuBtsein wirkt auf unser Anschauen und Denken zuruck. Wir sehen, daB die Sache "mehr" ist, als sie "fiir uns" sein kann, und daB sie an den, der ihr begegnet, Anforderungen stellt, die uber das hinausgehen, was wir aufgrund der besonderen Pragung unseres Anschauens und Denkens leisten konnen. Durch dieses Moment von Selbstkritik gewinnt dieses unser Anschauen und Denken eine neue Gestalt: Wir erfassen die Sache nun als die "gemeinsame Sache", die zum Thema des Dialogs mit anderen Subjekten werden kann. Wir vernehmen ihren Anspruch als Aufforderung, in einen solchen Dialog einzutreten, und begreifen die Ansicht von ihr, die wir gewonnen haben, als den Inhalt eines solchen Dialog-Angebots an andere. Wir erkennen: Wir haben die Erfahrung, die wir gewonnen haben, nicht nur um unserer selbst willen gemacht, sondern zugleich dazu, ihren Anspruch an andere zu vermitteln und diese Anderen zu ihrer, fiir uns vielleicht uberraschenden Antwort zu befahigen. Dann gewinnt unsere eigene Erfahrung zugleich den Charakter einer Ermachtigung und Verpflichtung zu einem Dienst an denen, denen wir diese Erfahrung bezeugen. Und wir bemerken, oft zu unserer eigenen Uberraschung, daB die Sache auch fiir uns "ein anderes Gesicht zeigt", wenn wir sie auf solche Weise fiir andere zu bezeugen versuchen und so ausdrucklich zur gemeinsamen Sache machen, uber die wir mit anderen ins Gesprach eintreten. Der Versuch, in einen solchen Dialog einzutreten, wird dann zur Bewahrungsprobe, in der sich zeigen muB, ob wir ihren Anspruch auf angemessene Weise erfaBt haben. Die Differenz zwischen dem Anspruch des Wirklichen und unserer Antwort wird fiir uns konkret in der Differenz zwischen den verschiedenen Weisen der Antwort, zu denen die Sache unterschiedliche Subjekte herausfordert; und diese Einsicht gewinnt verpflichtende Kraft, indem wir erfassen: Es ist die Sache selbst, deren Anspruch wir nur erfullen konnen, indem wir sie zur gemeinsamen Sache machen, die uns mit unseren Dialogpartnern verbindet. Lassen wir uns auf diesen Dialog ein, dann machen wir mit der gleichen Sache neue Erfahrungen: Der Partner des Dialogs bezeugt uns nun seinerseits die Weise, wie die Sache ihn durch ihren Anspruch zu seiner Weise des Anschauens und Denkens herausgefordert hat. Und im Echo dieser Antwort des Anderen wird der Anspruch der Sache auch uns auf neue Weise vernehmbar und veranlaBt uns zu einer neuen Weise, sie anzuschauen und zu begreifen. Der deutlichste Ausdruck dieser Erfahrung besteht darin, daB wir uns bemuhen, eine gemeinsame Sprache zu finden, in der wir uber die gemeinsame Sache sprechen konnen. Denn selbst die Differenz unserer Auffassungsarten kann nur in einer gemeinsamen Sprache

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benannt werden. Und diese Bemuhung um eine gemeinsame Sprache wirkt auf die formatio mentis des jeweils einzelnen Dialogpartners zuruck und offer, ihm so einen neuen Blick auf die Sache. In der Bemuhung um eine gemeinsame Sprache, deren Form der jeweils in Rede stehenden Sache angemessen ist, bildet sich auch in den Individuen jene Form des Anschauens und Denkens erst aus, in der sie den jeweils besonders gearteten Anspruch der gemeinsamen Sache, uber die sie sprechen, zu vernehmen vermogen. Die Fahigkeit zu je besonderen Weisen des Erfahrens wird erst im Ringen um die angemessene Sprache des Dialogs erworben. Alles Gesagte gilt auch vom doxologischen Wort. Aber auf dem Hintergrund dieser Gemeinsamkeiten tritt die Besonderheit des doxologischen Wortes deutlich hervor. Wenn namlich die Fahigkeit, das Aufleuchten der gottlichen Herrlichkeit durch das Verbum internum des Anschauens und Denkens zu beantworten, eine "Erleuchtung des Herzens" voraussetzt, und wenn das Zeugnis von diesem Aufleuchten auch den Horer dazu auffordern will, das gleiche Ereignis durch sein inneres (und sekundar auch auBeres) Wort zu beantworten, dann muB mit dem Wort des Zeugnisses auch die Erleuchtung des Herzens wirksam weitergegeben werden. Da aber diese Erleuchtung stets freie, unerzwingbare Gabe Gottes ist, kann sie nur dann im Wort des Zeugnisses an den Horer weitergegeben werden, wenn solches Zeugnisgeben nicht aus der Willkur des Zeugen entspringt, sondern in Erfullung eines gottlichen Auftrages geschieht. "Wie sollen sie predigen, wenn sie nicht gesandt werden?" (Rom 10,15). Um nun die Eigenart dieses Auftrags genauer zu bestimmen, ist es notig, die Weise jenes Verbum mentis et oris anzugeben, zu dem der Horer durch den beauftragten Zeugen befahigt werden soll. Der Horer namlich soll sich das Gehorte so zueigen machen, da6 er nicht nur die Meinung des Verkundigers getreu wiedergeben kann, sondern einen eigenen Blick auf diejenige Wirklichkeit gewinnt, von der in dieser Verkiindigung die Rede ist; und er soll auf diese Weise seinerseits zum Zeugen der gottlichen Herrlichkeit werden. Dabei sind zwei Weisen des Zeugnisgebens zu unterscheiden, die den beiden Weisen entsprechen, wie die gottliche Herrlichkeit aufleuchten kann: als Widerschein der gottlichen Herrlichkeit "auf dem Antlitz aller Kreatur" und als neues Aufleuchten dieser Herrlichkeit in besonderen Ereignissen der Geschichte. Im ersten Falle ist es die Aufgabe des bevollmachtigten Zeugen, die Aufmerksamkeit des Horers auf jenen Widerschein der gottlichen Herrlichkeit zu lenken, die auch er entdecken kann, wenn er sich darum bemiiht, den notigen Spursinn dafiir zu entwickeln. Der Zeuge verhalt sich dann als "Lehrer der Weisheit". Es kann auch sein, daB der Horer von einer spezifischen Verblendung des Herzens befreit werden muB, die ihn dazu verfiihren konnte, den Widerschein der gottlichen Herrlichkeit, den er wahrnimmt, mit dem Gott zu verwechseln, der sich darin zeigt, und so die Geschopfe anstelle des Schopfers anzubeten. Der bevollmachtigte Zeuge verhalt sich dann als "Mittler einer gottgewirkten Heilung," deren der Horer bedarf, wenn sein Anschauen und Denken jene Gestalt gewinnen soll, in der es in aller Kreatur die Gegenwartsgestalt dessen erfassen soll, der von allem, was er geschaffen hat, verschieden bleibt. Von anderer Art ist jeues Verbum mentis et oris, zu dem der Horer fahig werden soll, wenn ihm von den Taten Gottes in der Geschichte gepredigt wird. Hier wird er nicht zum Augenzeugen dessen, wovon der Verkundiger berichtet; er sicht nicht mit

AoEonoyia Kai OiKodoum 63 eigenen Augen, wie die Vater aus Agypten gefiihrt werden oder wie der Auferstandene den Jiingern begegnet. Und doch soll er auch in diesem Falle das Verkiindete nicht nur als Inhalt einer fremden Meinung erfassen und sagen konnen: "Die Israeliten waren uberzeugt, ihre Befreiung aus Agypten sei Gottes Tat gewesen"; "die Jiinger meinten, Christus sei ihnen leibhaftig begegnet und habe mit ihnen gegessen und getrunken". Der Horer soll vielmehr durch das wirkende Wort der Verkiindigung dazu befahigt werden, in jene Gottesbeziehung einzutreten, die durch die bezeugte Gottestat auch ihm moglich gemacht worden ist. Diese neue Gottesbeziehung aber entriickt ihn nicht aus der Welt seiner alltaglichen Erfahrung, sondern verandert sein Anschauen und Denken auf solche Weise, daB er in alien Inhalten seiner Erfahrung die Abbild- und Gegenwartsgestalten derjenigen Gottestat zu entziffem vermag, durch die Gott seine Herrlichkeit hat aufleuchten lassen. So haben immer neue Generationen von Juden in ihren Erfahrungen von Erniedrigung, Todesbedrohung und Errettung die Weise erkannt, wie der Gott der Vater sich auch an ihnen als der "Herausfiihrende aus dem Sklavenhaus" erwiesen hat. Und entsprechend haben immer neue Generationen von Christen in ihren Erfahrungen von Schuld, Leid und Todesnahe, aber auch von Moglichkeiten des selbstlosen Dienstes am Nachsten und von Chancen des Neubeginns in aussichtslos erscheinender Lage die Weisen wiedererkannt, wie sie Gemeinschaft mit der Selbsthingabe Jesu gewinnen und der kommenden Gemeinschaft mit seiner Auferweckung gewiB werden konnten. Die bezeugte Gottestat gab allem, was ihnen widerfahren mochte, einen neuen Kontext und wurde in diesem Kontext auf neue Weise begreiflich: als gegenwartige Gestalt, in der fur immer neue Horer das, wovon die Verkiindigung sprach, sich als "an ihnen und fur sie geschehen" erwies. Und durch die Einbeziehung in einen solchen Erfahrungskontext wurden auch diejenigen Ereignisse, die sie aus eigener Erfahrung bezeugen konnten, ihnen zu einer Weise des Aufleuchtens der gottlichen Herrlichkeit. Mit anderen Worten: Im Horen auf die Verkiindigung wurde auch ihr eigenes Verbum mentis et oris zur doxologischen Rede. Und der Horer des Wortes wurde zum eigenverantwortlichen Zeugen der gottlichen Herrlichkeit: nicht weil er die bezeugten Heilsereignisse historisch miterlebt hatte, sondern weil er sie in ein hermeneutisches Wechselverhaltnis zu seinem eigenen Erleben bringen konnte. Er legte im Lichte der bezeugten Ereignisse seine eigenen Erfahrungen aus und begriff im Lichte dieser Erfahrungen neu, was die Botschaft von diesen Ereignissen bedeutet. Auf solche Weise entsteht eine doxologische Wechselrede, die den bevollmachtigten Verkiinder mit seinen Horern und die Horer untereinander verbindet. Damit diese doxologische Wechselrede gelingt, ist es notig, daB Sprecher und Horer eine gemeinsame Sprache erst ausbilden, in der die Vielstimmigkeit der Zeugnisse fur die Sprecher und Horer verstandlich wird. Und auch in diesem speziellen Zusammenhang gilt, was an fruherer Stelle allgemein formuliert worden ist: In der Bemuhung um eine gemeinsame Sprache, deren Form der in Rede stehenden Sache angemessen ist, bildet sich auch in den Individuen jene Form des Anschauens und Denkens erst aus, in der sie den jeweils besonders gearteten Anspruch der gemeinsamen Sache, uber die sie sprechen, zu vernehmen vermogen (s.o.S 61). Die Fahigkeit, das Aufleuchten der gottlichen Doxa in den Gegenwarts- und Abbildgestalten des gottlichen Heilswirkens wahrzunehmen und zu begreifen, wird erst im Ringen um

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die angemessene Sprache erworben, in der die doxologische Wechselrede gefuhrt werden kann.

Aoeonoyia Kai Oikogoun: Gotteslob und Aufbau der Gemeinde. Von dem Gesagten her ist es moglich, einen bescheidenen Beitrag zur Beantwortung der Frage zu leisten, zu deren Klarung G. Wainwright wie kein anderer beigetragen hat: der Frage, wie sich das Sprechen des doxologischen Wortes zum Aufbau der religiosen Gemeinschaft verhalt. Auch in diesem Zusammenhang sollen zunachst einige allgemein sprachtheoretische Oberlegungen angestellt und sodann Folgerungen fur das spezielle Thema Aoi;oA,oyta Kai OiKo5ouf| gezogen werden. Sprecher und Horer, so wurde an fruherer Stelle gesagt, musseri sich immer neu darum bemtihen, diejenige Sprache zu finden, in der ihr Dialog so gefuhrt werden kann, daB er der Eigenart der Sache entspricht, uber die sie reden. Dennoch ist es nicht notig, aber auch gar nicht moglich, diese Sprache jeweils neu zu erfinden, Dialoge werden in einer Sprache gefuhrt, die die aktuellen Sprecher und Horer jeweils schon vorfinden. Aber diese vorgefundene Sprache wird durch die Weise ihre Gebrauchs teils unbewuBt verandert, teils bewuBt und planmaBig weiterentwickelt. Das gilt fur "Nationalsprachen" ebenso wie fur "Sachgebietssprachen". Denn je deutlicher die Sache, iiber die gesprochen werden soll, die Sprecher und Horer auf eine spezifische Weise in Arispruch riimmt, desto mehr wird der Dialog die Ausformung einer eigenen Sachgebietssprache erfordern, die sich durch ihren Wortschatz und ihre grammatische Form von anderen Sachgebietsprachen unterscheidet. Und je neuartiger die Erfahrungen sind, die in dieser Sprache zum Ausdruck gebracht werden sollen, desto einschneidender wird die Weiterentwicklung sein, die durch ihren jeweils neuen Gebrauch geschieht. Weil nun die Erfahrungen friiherer Generationen deren forma mentis gepragt haben, enthalt auch deren Sprache den Niederschlag dieser friiheren Erfahrungen. Darum gewinnen auch spatere Sprecher und Horer, die diese Sprache gebrauchen, an dieser forma mentis anteil und bieiben so auf die Erfahrungen ihrer Vorganger zuruckverwiesen. Sie verstehen die ubernommene Sprache und alles, was sie in ihr sagen, nur in dem MaBe, in welchem ihnen auch die Erfahrungen der Fryuheren "denkwurdig" bieiben. Inhalte solcher denkwurdigen Erfahrungen miissen im Gedachtnis bewahrt werden, wenn die tiberlieferte Sprache nicht zur leeren Form werden soll, die von den Spateren nicht mehr verstanden wird und deshalb alsbald auch nicht mehr ihren eigenen Regeln gemaB verwendet wird. Dann aber geht die Fahigkeit dieser Sprache verloren, das BewuBtsein ihrer spateren Sprecher zu pragen und sie fur die spezifischen Erfahrungen zu qualifizieren, die diese forma mentis voraussetzen. Die je aktuelle Dialoggemeinschaft ist so, um der Eigenart ihres Dialogthemas willen, darauf angewiesen, sich zur Oberlieferungsgemeinschaft zu erweitern, die auch die uberlieferten Inhalte der Erfahrung, die diese Sprache gepragt haben, nicht aus dem Gedachtnis verliert. Aber indern die je aktuellen Sprecher in der vorgefundenen Sprache neuartige Erfahrungen zum Ausdruck

Aoeonoyia Kai Oikogoum 65 bringen, tragen sie nicht nur zur Weiterentwicklung der Sprache, sondern damit zugleich zur geschichtlichen Veranderung der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft bei, die diese Sprache spricht. Alles Gesagte gilt auch fur diejenige Sprachgemeinschaft, in der die soeben beschriebene "doxologische Wechselrede" gefuhrt wird. Und auch in diese Hinsicht tritt die Besonderheit der doxologischen Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft erst auf dem Hintergrund dieser Gemeinsamkeiten deutlich hervor. Diese Besonderheit betrifft zunachst die MaBgeblichkeit jener Erinnerungsinhalte, die nicht vergessen werden diirfen, wenn die Sprache der Doxologie nicht unverstandlich werden und schlieBlich ihre pragende Kraft fur das Anschauen und Denken ihrer je aktuellen Sprecher verlieren soll. Denn die "aktive Sprachkompetenz" der je gegenwartigen Sprecher beruht darauf, daB sie die Inhalte ihres je gegenwartigen Erlebens als die Abbild- und Gegenwartsgestalten begreifen, in denen das Aufleuchten der gottlichen Herrlichkeit auch ihre Herzen erleuchtet und zum doxologischen Wort fahig macht. Nur so gewinnen die Inhalte ihres subjektiven Erlebens jenen Kontext, innerhalb dessen sie zu Inhalten objektiv gultiger religioser Erfahrung werden. Wiirden daher diese Ereignisse vergessen, in denen Gott diese seine Herrlichkeit auf bleibend maBgebliche Weise hat aufleuchten lassen, dann verlore dieses Sprechen nicht nur seine Form, sondern auch seinen Inhalt. Wer nicht mehr von jenen historisch unverwechselbaren Ereignissen sprechen wollte, durch die Gott sich an den Vatern als der "Befreier aus dem Sklavenhaus" erwiesen bzw. seinen Sohn von den Toten erweckt hat, der wurde auch den Versuch, an den Inhalten gegenwartigen Erlebens die Herrlichkeit Gottes aufleuchten zu sehen, zu einem Spiel mit leeren Worten werden lassen. Und wer an den maBgeblichen Zeugnissen, aus denen er von diesem Heilswirken Gottes erfahrt, nicht zugleich jene forma mentis ablesen will, die auch ihm als MaBstab fur seine eigene "Umgestaltung zur Neuheit des Denkens" dienen soll, der kann diesen Texten zwar mannigfache historische oder psychologische Informationen abgewinnen, wurde sich aber weigern, sich mit jener Form des Anschauens und Denkens beschenken zu lassen, die allein ihn befahigen konnte, wahrzunehmen und zu begreifen, wovon er sprechen will: jene "Doxa" Gottes, die sich dem "unverwandelten" Herzen gerade verbirgt. Die doxologische Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft lebt also davon, daB ihr in alien Generationen die maBgeblichen Inhalte ihrer Erinnerung auf bleibend maBgebliche Weise bezeugt werden. Mit anderen Worten: Sie lebt aus der Weitergabe und immer neuen Auslegung kanonischer Texte. Eine weitere Besonderheit der doxologischen Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft betrifft ihr Verhaltnis zur Zeit. Denn zwar gilt auch von ihr, was von jeder Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft gesagt werden kann: Sie kommt mit der "Umgestaltung zur Neuheit des Denkens" nie an ein Ende. Indem sie lernt, immer neue Inhalte der Erfahrung im Lichte der Uberlieferung zu verstehen, versteht sie auch umgekehrt die Inhalte der Uberlieferung auf je neue Weise. Das "hermeneutische Wechselverhaltnis", von dem an fruherer Stelle die Rede war (s.o.S 63 ), treibt deshalb die Geschichte jeder Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft in eine offene Zukunft voran. Aber fur die doxologische

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Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft gilt zugleich: Diese offene Zukunft wird im jeweils gegenwartig gesprochenen und gesungenen Gotteslob auf antizipatorische Weise prasent. Denn jenes Aufleuchten der gottlichen Herrlichkeit, das den Inhalt der doxologischen Rede ausmacht, ist der Ausdruck einer gnadigen Zuwendung Gottes, die sich an denen, denen er sich zu erkennen gibt, jeweils schon heute ereignet. Die Wirkung dieser gnadigen Zuwendung wird sich gewiB erst am Ende der Tage vollenden; und ihre Eigenart wird sich dem Auge des Menschen erst am Ende der Tage enthullen. Gleichwohl gewinnt sie jedesmal, wenn sie sich wirksam ereignet und vom Menschen mit dem doxologischen Wort beantwortet wird, eine neue Gestalt ihrer Gegenwart. Datum ist jede Stunde, in der das Wort der Doxologie gesprochen wird, die antizipatorische Gegenwartsgestalt jener Fulle der Zeiten, in der die "irdische" Doxologie sich in der "himmlischen" vollenden wird. Und die Gemeinschaft derer, die das Gotteslob singen, darf sich als jener "Ort" begreifen, an dem solche Antizipation der "kommenden Welt" schon heute geschieht.

Ein okumenischer Ausblick Die eine Uberlieferung, in der die fur die christliche Glaubensgemeinschaft maBgeblichen Zeugnisse vom Aufleuchten der gottlichen Herrlichkeit weitergegeben werden, ist faktisch zu einer Mehrzahl von Uberlieferungen geworden, Deren Unterschiede haben konfessionellen Charakter angenommen, d.h. sie sind von dem BewuBtsein bestimmt, das Bekenntnis zu Gottes Erlosungswirken sei zugleich an das Bekenntnis zu jeweils einer unter diesen Uberlieferungen gebunden; denn die Mitglieder einer solchen Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft sind uberzeugt, innerhalb dieser bestimmten Uberlieferung habe das Verstandnis des gottlichen Wirkens seine maBgebliche Gestalt gefunden. Dabei werden die Differenzen in der Lehre nicht hinlanglich verstanden, wenn man sie als bloBe Unterschiede der theologischen Theorie begreift und nicht als Ausdruck des Ringens um die angemessene menschliche Antwort auf das Aufleuchten der A6£,a 0eou Und dabei geht es vor allem um die Angemessenheit jener Antwort, die im Gotteslob der feiernden Gemeinden gegeben wird. Lehrdifferenzen gewinnen bzw. behalten ihr "konfessionelles" Gewicht dort, wo sie die Gemeinschaft im gottesdienstlichen Gotteslob verhindern, weil nach Uberzeugung der Beteiligten dabei die Ehre Gottes auf dem Spiele steht. Doch auch angesichts solcher Differenzen ist es moglich und zugleich unerlaBlich, daB die Angehorigen jeweils des einen christlichen Bekenntnisses im Gotteslob aller anderen christlichen Uberlieferungsgemeinschaften das gleiche Ereignis der aufleuchtenden Doxa Gottes bezeugt finden, auch wenn sie sich die Art dieses Zeugnisses nicht zueigen machen konnen. Darum wird jede dieser Uberlieferungsgemeinschaften um so besser verstehen, was sie in den Sprachhandlungen ihrer eigenen gottesdienstlichen Feier tut, je sorgsamer sie auf das Zeugnis hort, das im Gotteslob der anderen christlichen Uberlieferungsgemeinschaften gegeben wird. Dabei kann gerade die schmerzliche Erfahrung der Differenz neue Moglichkeiten offnen, die Bedeutung des jeweils frcmdcn Zeugnisses klarer zu crfassen. Denn in der Bemiihung um einen theologischen Konsens stellt sich immer wieder heraus: Die Unterschiede betreffen nicht. nur die einzelnen Aussagen der Lehre, uber deren Auslegung man sich in gemeinsamer theologischer Bemiihung einigen kann,

Aoeonoyia Kai Oikogoum 67 sondern zugleich die Form jenes Kontextes, in dem diese Aussagen ihre Stelle finden. Auch solche Satze, iiber die man Einigkeit erzielen kann, gewinnen in diesen unterschiedlich strukturierten Kontexten einen anderen Stellenwert und eine andere Bedeutung. Das wird verstandlich, wenn man sich daran erinnert, daB die "forma mentis", die das Anschauen und Denken jeder einzelnen Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft bestimmt, sich aus dem "hermeneutischen Wechselverhaltnis" zwischen der iiberlieferten Botschaft und je neuen Erfahrungen herausgebildet hat. Die gleiche in kanonischen Schriften mafigeblich bezeugte Weise, wie Gott im Aufleuchten seiner Herrlichkeit aus seiner Verborgenheit hervorgetreten ist, hat die je besonderen Erfahrungen, die in der jeweiligen Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft gemacht worden sind, verstandlich gemacht und ist zugleich im Lichte dieser Erfahrungen auf je besondere Weise verstanden worden. Darum ist die Sprache, in der die jeweilige Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft das Lob Gottes verkiindet, und die forma mentis, in die ihre Mitglieder sich im Gebrauch dieser Sprache eingeubt haben, der Niederschlag dieser ihrer je besonderen Geschichte. Was ein bestimmtes Bibelwort, aber auch ein Gesangbuchvers im Munde des Angehorigen einer solchen Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft bedeutet, ist fur den, der an der Geschichte dieser Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft nicht Anteil hat, weil er einer anderen christlichen Konfession angehort, nicht ohne weiteres verstandlich, auch wenn er das gleiche Bibelwort zitiert und das gleiche Lied in sein Gesangbuch iibernommen hat. Und Vergleichbares gilt (was in theologischen Konsensbemiihungen nicht immer bedacht wird) fur Satze der theologischen Lehre. Sie haben im jeweiligen konfessionell bestimmten Zusammenhang einen besonderen "Klang". Ein Horer, dessen Anschauen und Denken nicht durch die Geschichte derjenigen Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft gepragt ist, in der diese theologischen Satze ihre konfessionsspezifische Bedeutung gewonnen haben, nimmt diesen besonderen Klang oft nicht wahr. Dabei ist es wichtig zu sehen, daB jenes "hermeneutische Wechselverhaltnis", durch das die Geschichte einer solchen Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft vorangetrieben wird, wesentlich auf der Bemiihung beruht, die iiberlieferte Botschaft vom Aufleuchten der Herrlichkeit Gottes in die je gegenwartige Doxologie der Glaubensgemeinde zu ubersetzen. Es kommt darauf an, die je gegenwartigen Sprecher dazu zu befahigen, in dem, was ihnen widerfahrt, die Abbild- und Gegenwartsgestalten dessen zu entziffern, wovon die iiberlieferte Glaubensbotschaft spricht. Nur so werden sie zu eigenverantwortlichen Zeugen fur jenes Heilswirken Gottes, durch das er in konkreten Situationen der Geschichte aus seiner Verborgenheit hervorgetreten ist. Auf der Bemiihung, die Mitglieder der Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft zu solchen Zeugen fiir Gottes Herrlichkeit werden zu lassen, beruht auch die Differenz der Anschauungs- und Denkformen, die sich in der Geschichte einer solchen Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft herausgebildet haben. So ist die Schwierigkeit des interkonfessionellen Verstehens gerade durch den je spezifischen doxologischen Zusammenhang begrtindet, in dem alle Zeugnisse des Glaubens ihre Stelle finden und ihre je besondere Bedeutung gewinnen. Aber gerade deswegen ist es so wichtig, auf die je besondere Weisen des Gotteslobs zu horen, die sich in den unterschiedlichen Konfessionen herausgebildet haben. Gerade diese fiir die jeweilige Bekenntnisgemeinschaft spezifischen Weisen des Gotteslobs enthalten

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den Niederschlag einer Geschichte, an der die Angehorigen anderer konfessioneller Uberlieferungsgemeinschaften keinen unmittelbaren Anteil haben; und sie lassen erkennen, wie in dieser Geschichte jene Herrlichkeit Gottes, der auch die Doxologie anderer konfessioneller Uberlieferungsgemeinschaften dient, ihre je besonderen Abbild- und Gegenwartsgestalten gefunden hat. Darum schulden die christlichen Konfessionen einander das je besondere Zeugnis ihrer je spezifischen Weise der Doxologie und konnen im gegenseitigen Horen auf dieses Zeugnis auch jene Erfahrungen, die in der Geschichte der jeweils anderen Uberlieferungsgemeinschaft gemacht und im Lichte der Glaubensbotschaft gedeutet worden sind, in den Dank einbeziehen, den sie Gott propter magnam gloriam swam darbringen. In solcher Gemeinsamkeit der Danksagung aber wird die noch nicht erreichte Gemeinsamkeit des Bekenntnisses auf wirksame, weil dem gottlichen Gnadenwirken antwortende Weise schon jetzt antizipiert. ANMERKUNGEN

1. Vgl. R. Schaeffler, "Die Vielfalt der Weisen religioser Wahrheit und ihres sprachlichen Ausdrucks," in W. Kerber, Die Wahrheit der Religion (Miinchen, 1994). 2. Vgl. R. Schaeffler, Das Gebet und das Argument (Dusseldorf: Patmos, 1989). 3. Vgl. R. Schaeffler, Erfahrung als Dialog mit der Wirklichkeit (Freiburg und Munchen: Alber, 1995).

CHAPTER 6

PRAISING GOD AS INTERPRETER AND CRITIC OF HISTORY Dietrich Ritschl

Over the years, I have followed, with great sympathy and in basic agreement, Geoffrey Wainwright's writings on the preeminence of doxology—beginning with his splendid systematic theology, Doxology. On a smaller scale, I have entertained similar thoughts on the distinction between descriptive and ascriptive language, on the lex. credendi, lex orandi principle, and on the nature and task of theology from the perspective of worship.1 My openness to the significance of doxology had, I believe, two sources. One of them was my sympathy with Eastern Orthodoxy, which I first encountered when I spent some time in the former Soviet Union in 1961, as a guest of the Orthodox Church and in the company of my friend Paul van Buren. I returned on several occasions, and I also saw the Orthodox Church "at work" in other countries. It was then that my earlier studies in Greek patristics suddenly spoke to me in a very concrete way. Second, I was intrigued by the controversial Episcopal Bishop James Pike in California (who perished tragically in the desert near Jericho). I had befriended him despite massive theological differences, and he invited me to lecture to the clergy in his diocese. Bishop Pike gave me a beautifully bound copy of the Book of Common Prayer with my name printed on the cover; the implicit message was that prayer is what really counts. Pike was controversial because of doctrinal matters; he denied quite a number of traditional "doctrines," but would let them stand in a "doxological" context. This began to interest me. I may add also a "negative source" for my interest in doxology—namely the scanty Sunday service in my home Church, the Reformed Church in Switzerland, where doxology is almost absent from ordinary services. Bishop Pike's understanding of doxology was of course not that of Geoffrey Wainwright, nor is the Orthodox tradition precisely what Wainwright wants us to accept. And yet, the same basic theological question lies behind all three of them: Why doxology? Why do we offer praise to God? This is what I shall discuss. 69

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What Precedes Doxology? Before entering into a discussion of the "object" of (and reasons for) doxology, I should like to reflect briefly on a distinction that seems to be recognized by all those who emphasize its importance and its "special" language. It is the difference between narration and doxology, or, more formally speaking, between descriptive (reporting) and ascriptive language. Professor Wainwright does not want to make much of this difference; and in commenting on my concepts2 in comparison with George Lindbeck and David Tracy, he ponders a possible reversal of my "ideal sequence," which 1 had described as event (or experience), narration, reflection, doxology. In setting up this sequence I had in mind, of course, the actual succession prior to any composition of a (biblical) text, let alone a service of worship in postbiblical times. Wainwright refers to Exodus 15 (Miriam's song), where narration (about God's doings) and glorification (of God) are intertwined. One could, of course, refer to countless similar texts in the Old and New Testaments in order to make that point; I do not disagree with this at all. What I want to stress, however, is the actual distinction between perceiving an event (with whatever preconception, trust, or understanding the percipient may have) and praising someone because of it. Here one must pay careful attention to the question of whether the "events" referred to in the Bible as praiseworthy (of God) could be expressed in nondoxological, reporting language without loss of content. I cannot resolve this question here; it has been hotly debated in twentieth-century theology under a variety of headings. But surely, if we say that faith statements—be they about historical events, about interpretations thereof, or about matters of doctrine in the widest sense—were only possible in doxological language, we would reduce the language of faith in a radical way. In the history of theology, very few have attempted this (though Bishop Pike came close to it). There is, however, a demarcation line between the language used for telling a story and for praising God—although it is, for the reasons Wainwright notes, quite difficult to define. Again, if we were satisfied with the statement "We praise God because God is God"—beautiful as it sounds—we would find ourselves in a circle, and what we say in our worship services would be tautological. We have to be able to name the actions or events for which we are praising God: the calling of Israel out of Egypt, the giving of the Torah, the liberation from exile, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus; the believers of all generations were able to refer to "something" for which they were praising God. Or consider an example from theology, namely the concept of the Trinity. Here, on the basis of the perception of God as creator, of God as having elected Israel, and of God as present in Jesus Christ as well as in the Spirit in the Church— perceptions surely based in part upon interpretations and, connected with them, doxologies—the believers argued back to the unity, uniqueness, and identity of God. This concept of the "economic Trinity" was an enormous help for the believers in the early Church, not a hindrance (as so often in the West, in its Augustinian dress, in later centuries). It was a descriptive concept that connected the God of Israel with the Father of Jesus Christ and the Spirit in the Church. With this concept— certainly a statement of faith—it became easier to express one's faith.

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Here, the descriptive concept certainly bordered on ascriptive language of praise. However, the reverse conclusion—that God ad intra is the same as God ad extra, or that God's inner being is marked by certain characteristics (such as eternal generation, filiation, and spiration)—is language beyond the "demarcation line." It only makes sense if we take it to be language donated to God in worship, openended language from which no further insights can be deduced. I would maintain and strongly defend the thought that statements about the "immanent Trinity" only make sense if understood as doxological language.3 Patristic scholarship in recent decades has convincingly shown that the context of the formation of conciliar creeds was doxological, not professorial. Its context was worship, not the theological academy. I stress this, even though I often lamented the fact that the later Greek Fathers did not shy away from deducing conclusions from doxological statements. This is a theological procedure that I consider illegitimate in principle. If theological authors still go that way—and they often have in the history of theology—they are piling metaphors on metaphors and their conclusions are speculative or at best illustrative. Because they are based upon reverse conclusions, they do not constitute a cognitive gain. I believe that these more formal considerations are reconcilable with Wainwright's emphasis on the constitutive force of liturgy and doxology for the formation and understanding of faith. Although I think that Karl Barth and others since the time of the Confessing Church in the Nazi era overemphasized the importance of preaching, of Zuspruch and Verkundigung, at the expense of doxology, I must admit, however, that in Wainwright's theology I miss an emphasis on proclamation.4 This leaves us with the problem that I want to discuss here: what is doxology about? What is it we are praising God for? Do we have to refer to "acts of God" in order to offer our praise to God?

Doxology in Response to God's Actions? Certainly, the Church praises God "because God is God." This is not a tautology, in so far as the content of this praise is that God is our God, and has been revealed to be for us and with us; that God is, in Jesus Christ, "our only comfort in life and in death";5 and that our naming of the triune God involves us in an enormous number of stories that are inseparably connected with God's name and that can be told and retold. This content, however, must be spelled out; otherwise the doxology would indeed be tautological. The "content" here referred to could of course entail the praise of God because of the beauty of creation; the election of Israel, or of the Church, from among the Gentiles; the wonderful clarity of the direction provided by the Torah; the voices of the prophets; the preaching, obedience, and death of Jesus; the resurrection; the forgiveness of sins; or the hope for the day of the establishment of God's Reign and God's righteousness. But in what sense is this content tied to "actions" of God? Do we celebrate and praise a God who acts?6 In what sense is praising God as "Lord" indicative of divine action in history? What are "acts of God"? Let us leave aside here the strange usage of this term in American insurance law, referring to lightning or earthquakes (although it says

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something about the eighteenth-century understanding of God still operative in America!). The univocal usage with reference to otherwise unexplainable occurrences is certainly not what the biblical records suggest when they refer to deeds or acts of God. What do they suggest? It seems to me that the various concepts of Heilsgeschichte, from Irenaeus to Oscar Cullmann, were helpful in this regard—even if constructed for different reasons. These concepts sought to reckon with the problem that, on the one hand, the Bible says that God did perform acts, and that, on the other hand, things happened in history that obviously were not caused by God. Heilsgeschichte singles out special acts or deeds, "mighty acts of God," that are distinguishable from other events; these acts manifest God to be the Lord and to be worthy of praise. I will not discuss here the overall merits and pitfalls of the concept of Heilsgeschichte. I merely want to observe that the biblical authors, as well as constructive theologians in the later church, seem to have been convinced that God can be praised as "Lord" without saying that everything that happens in history is divinely "caused." The assertion that God is "Lord of history," and the affirmation of a connection between covenantal history and world history, were in the theological air we breathed in the fifties and sixties. The influence of Karl Barth and the Barmen Confession was mirrored in World Council of Churches terminology (e.g., in most of the titles of the world conferences and general assemblies). God in Jesus Christ is Lord of the covenantal history in an obvious ("revealed") manner, but is Lord of the history of the world in an opaque manner. The relation between the "two histories" is guaranteed by a theological assertion, not by an explanation. This is obvious for example in Barth's Church Dogmatics 111/3, §48 and §49, where he deals with providence. The problem of what it really means to say that "God (or Jesus Christ) is Lord of history" (and that God should be praised for this reason) took dramatic shape during the Nazi era and especially in the Eastern part of Europe before the downfall of communism. Two opposing positions were held: • The tempting concept of a "deification of history" in the sense of a utilization of the name of God for the purpose of political (Nazi, or Marxist) ideologies or philosophies of history. Churchmen who accommodated or prostituted themselves to the political powers claimed—directly or indirectly—that God had brought about the advent of a new era for humankind in the coming of Marxism (or of the Fuhrer respectively). • The absolute denial of this position, that is, the refusal to see any political system as the fruit of "acts of God." Churchmen and theologians who resisted these temptations, however, still maintained that "God is Lord of history" and that "rebellious, diabolic powers of history" (Louvain 1971) operate under this Lordship. The relation between the two "histories" is paradoxical, some said. Beginning in the fifties, I paid many visits to churches, theological faculties, and individual theologians in Marxist countries and have reported regularly on these travels. The dividing line between the two groups mentioned was not always clear, partly because both would claim aspects of Karl Barth's theology to be in line with

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their convictions. They would also both refer positively to WCC and Faith and Order statements even though they interpreted them in different ways.7 The first position mentioned certainly had no right to claim the ancestry of Karl Barth, but the second position was, one must admit, clearer in its protest and denial than in its positive theses. In returning to our original question of what it means to say that God "acts" or that God is "Lord of history," we can now observe that the two opposing groups represent positions commonly held in the Western world, both past and present. Any claim made by political leaders or ordinary citizens that God had provided or will provide success for one's political or ideological aims follows the logic of those who in eastern Europe celebrated the advent of Marxism as an act of God. And on the opposite side: those who contradict any concept of deification of history or of human programs, while still maintaining the creed that "God is Lord of history," must explain what God's promise and presence really mean—or else they must admit that they cannot do so. Moreover, it can be observed that these two opposing groups both seem to operate with a selective concept of God's acts. Neither of them claims that everything that happens is caused by God, be it in biblical or postbiblical times. In the first group, the selection is based on political-ethical preferences, for which God's name, help, and providence are usurped. Typical of the second group is a general renunciation of such claims and an insistence on the significance of biblical paradigms such as the Exodus, the coming and dying of Jesus, and the founding through Word and sacrament of the Church in the Spirit. Advocates claim that the present situation has to be seen in the light of these biblical paradigms. Undoubtedly, our sympathy is with the second position. With regard to political ethics, this is the obvious choice. However, having set up this juxtaposition, Miriam's song in Exodus 15 (as well as hundreds of other biblical passages), Augustine's De civitate Dei, and today's "liberation theologies" all look quite strange with regard to this point—and seem embarrassingly close to the first of the two positions! In these cases, the offering of doxologies to God appears to be identical with giving thanks for what is good for us—not for others, and certainly not for our enemies. This is a strange concept of doxology, and reminds one painfully of thanksgiving services for military victories and the like.

Determinism and Calvin's Error in Institutes 1.18.3 Neither of the two opposing positions advocated a deterministic view of history (apart from the Hegelian concept of progress in history, perhaps held by some theologians in that period); rather, they operated with a selective understanding of God's interferences. Yet what of the philosophical-theological possibility of total determinism as the answer to our question? I do not want to say that Calvin advocated a strictly deterministic position, but it is obvious that in his systematic treatment (as opposed to his sermons and commentaries) of, for example, predestination, he comes close to it. I use him as an example here because of a single issue that seems to me to be of importance. He comes up with an aggressive (if not arrogant) judgment directed at certain people who say that "if nothing happens apart from God's

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will, there are in him two contrary wills, because by his secret plan he decrees what he has openly forbidden by his law" (1.18.3). While I do not want to say that there are two wills in God, I want to argue that it is perfectly true that things happen that have been expressly forbidden by God. Calvin negates this obvious perception by distinguishing between God's will and God's precepts (in 18.4), and he follows Augustine, who (in his Enchiridion 100101) proposes two strange concepts. First, he claims that—looking at the matter from God's perspective—those who act against God's will could "in no way have done this, because, while they act against God's will, his will is done upon them." Second, he claims that God would not permit evil to happen if God were unable to turn evil into good (nec sineret bonus fieri male, nisi omnipotens et de malo facere posset bene: 100). Calvin combines Augustine's two theses with his idea that "as Moses teaches, he who is killed by a chance slip of the ax has been divinely given over to the striker's hand." This portrays an absolutely causative understanding of God's actions and it presents a perfect logical dilemma in the light of evil or of transgression of the will of God. The late Ford Lewis Battles adds a footnote to his translation of this passage: "Calvin, in secs. 3 and 4, consciously makes selfcontradictory statements about God 'willing' what he 'forbids,' yet with a will that remains 'one and simple.' Logic is thus subordinated to Scripture, and characteristically for Calvin, is rejected as a device for understanding what is beyond the limits of the revealed mysteries."8 Thus, the deterministic answer is not helpful either. Its advocates recognize the logical contradiction but project it into the "mystery of God." This is in fact what theologians—and pastoral counselors—of all centuries have done when they faced the theodicy question head-on. They insisted that, of the three points of the triangle (the almighty God, God's love, and the evil we experience), only the second and third can undergo changes by interpretation, not the first. This conception of theodicy is a child of determinism, and it is no longer useful in a century that has seen the Shoah and such enormous suffering all over the world. In fact, it never was useful. Augustine's often quoted statement that "God can turn evil into good" is, it seems to me, catastrophic.

The Need for a New Concept of Action Where does this leave us? The deterministic view seems to operate with a univocal understanding of the relationship between divine and human actions, but, despite its logical shape, it ends with the suspension of logic. The other two views (described before our discussion of determinism), opposed as they are, allow for an analogical understanding, whereby the first position usurps God's actions for its own goals and ambitions; the second, denying this, focuses on biblical paradigms and on ecclesial and sociopolitical responsibility in the light of them. It refrains, however, from explaining the creedal assertion that "God is Lord of history"— meaning both covenantal and world history. Nor does it. provide clarity on the question of whether praiseworthy "acts of God" occurred only in biblical or also in postbiblical times.

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It could be argued that the three positions are, in a sense, dated, and that new insights have been presented in WCC and Faith and Order declarations or papers and also by individual authors.9 This is indeed the case; however, their impact on the theological world and the Churches still seems insignificant. This also applies to more recent publications on the meaning of action. Some of them deal with classical theological options; others advocate a new concept of "action" altogether, perhaps by borrowing insights from the social sciences. Some authors (e.g., Gordon Kaufman10) propose that God's influence is general in the widest sense; others (e.g., Vernon White11) focus on God's specific actions. The concept of providentia generalis is revisited by Maurice Wiles.12 Interesting as these different approaches are, they do not offer ultimately satisfactory answers to our question. Christoph Schwobel,13 on a different track, distinguishes between God's creative actions (by which existence is constituted), God's revelatory actions (by which the truth is made known), and God's inspiring actions (by which certainty of faith is provided). The parallel between these three types of action and the "appropriations" of the Trinity are obvious. There is certainly nothing wrong with this attempt at systematizing types of God's action, but one senses that our basic question is still left unanswered. I do not deny that some of these approaches are capable of further specification and may in the end be quite helpful. I wonder, however, whether we really need a new concept of "action." It is an ambiguous metaphor not really fitted for capturing what the biblical books say about God's "counterdesign" or "counter-plan" with which our human-made history, our selfish ambitions, and our loveless actions are confronted. Thus, I would like to suggest a different approach.

Doxology: Praising God's "Counterdesign" Exegetical work in Genesis, in the prophets, and in other books of the Bible has led to the insight that God's voice "comments" on what men and women do, on how they attempt to govern themselves and the world they live in. God's voice sheds light on their situation; it forewarns them; it makes them remember the past and helps them to look forward to the future. This could also be said with reference to Jesus: he comments on peoples' deeds and omissions, he weeps over Jerusalem, he warns and he recalls, he invites hope and trust, he calls people and makes them move. He, too, interprets the doings of his contemporaries, comments on the past and the future, but he does not "cause" their actions. And still, we rightly say that he is "the Word of God." He wants us to turn the other cheek and to love our enemies. He dies for the unjust and wants us to die to our sins. Jesus is the culmination of God's "counterdesign": the new creation that believers anticipate and celebrate in their doxology. God interprets history; God does not cause it. In interpreting it, God judges it in the light of this counterdesign, that is, what the believers hear and what they are supposed to transform into their "God perspective." This God perspective does not, of course, refer to the perspective from which God looks at the world. Rather, it refers to the believers' awareness that the concrete situations in which they find themselves are determined and changed in the light of God's interpretation, cri-

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tique, and promise. From this God perspective, things look different. This, then, is what persuades people to perform certain actions (or not to perform them); in this way, God influences history. Thus, hearing the voice of God, the Word, is what really matters. And it is in the posture of listening to his voice that the believers, for their part, interpret history as well: God's interpretation and critique prompts theirs. Certain events, whether in history or in one's private life, can then be interpreted as being in harmony—or disharmony—with what the voice of God has said, and it is only in this sense that one could say that God indirectly "causes history." This is a modus loquendi for saying that such and such event is, in the God perspective of the believers, according to (or not according to) God's will or design for the future. Auschwitz, the murderous slaughter of the Tutzis and Hutus, the hatred in Northern Ireland, or the isolated death of a young person—none of these can possibly be interpreted in the God perspective as being in harmony with the voice and Word of God. Such thoughts raise questions about, for example, the song in Exodus 15: "Sing of Yahweh: he has covered himself in glory, horse and rider he has thrown into the sea." At that time, the author of this song—or those who transmitted it—may have interpreted history in this way, based on the thought that the destruction of the Egyptians was in line with the voice and will of God. We today may judge otherwise, and may remain open to the possibility that this interpretation was wrong, or at least that it would be wrong to draw parallels to events in our time, for example, the military victory of one nation over another, or the emergence of Marxism after 1948 (when some theologians saw here, too, the finger of God working in history). The legitimacy of such dangerous interpretations cannot be established or called into question by the exegesis of an individual biblical passage. It is the beauty and tragedy of biblical interpretation that this is not possible. Responsible exegesis depends on a synoptic view of many passages and books of the Bible. This wellknown theological and hermeneutical problem cannot be discussed here; suffice it to say that the Word of God as it is heard is the criterion of its own interpretation. For this not to be tautological, one needs to spell out the content of what the voice of God, the Word, has conveyed in the past and promised for the future. The "synoptic view" leads the believers to praise God in their doxologies. Doxologies do not summarize thankful attitudes for acts of God. Rather they donate thankful thoughts to the God of Israel, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, for the continuous presence in the Word by which our self-made history and personal life-stories are interpreted and judged. Doxologies are anticipations of new creation; they acknowledge that God "rules history" by having the last and valid word over it. They affirm God's faithfulness and rejoice with earthly and heavenly hosts of witnesses until the establishment of God's reign and righteousness. This amounts to nothing less than the theological affirmation that it is not "acts of God," but rather the message that comes from God, that ultimately matters. NOTES [. For example, in Memory and Hope: An Inquiry Concerning the Presence of Chrisl (New York and London: Macmillan, 1967) and The Logic of Theology (London: SCM Press, 1986). 2. GW 132.

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3. I am aware that Colin Gunton and other contemporary writers on the doctrine of the Trinity, with whom I agree on many levels, do not take the same position. They are inclined to ascribe to theology the ability to depict or to describe ontic realities within God. 4. In Domlogy, the word does not even occur; preaching is mentioned on a very few pages only—pace John Wesley! 5. Heidelberg Catechism, q 1. 6. See G. Ernest Wright, God Who Acts: Biblical Theology as Recital, Studies in Biblical Theology, no. 8 (Chicago: Regnery; London: SCM, 1952). Later he was critical of this book, especially its last chapter; but it remains an interesting manifesto of the "Biblical Theology" of that time in the United States. A totally different approach was presented by Schubert M. Ogden, "What Sense Does It Make to Say, 'God Acts in History'?" in The Reality of God (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 164-87. 7. I cannot adequately discuss here the extremely complicated theological and political-ethical situation in eastern Europe during those decades. Here it must suffice to mention that, in a contribution to a book in memory of the Hungarian theologian Ervin Valyi Nagy, I have discussed in greater detail his theological (and personal) struggle against deification of history while upholding the confession that "God is Lord of history." Istvan Szabo, one of E. Valyi Nagy's pupils, has attempted a critical history of the Hungarian Churches during these perilous times. A brief preview of his studies is found in "A Long Period of Inner Bleeding," Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 2 (1989): 190-98; and Verkundigung und Forschung 3 (1993): 73-81 and 81-85. The German version of my contribution to the (Hungarian) book in memory of E. Valyi Nagy is also found in the journal Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 1 (1996): 154-63. 8. Ford L. Battles, trans., Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, Library of Christian Classics, Vol. 20 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 234. Cf. my contribution '"God forbid'—or why Calvin was wrong in Inst. 1.18.3," Essays in honor of Dr. Michael Owen, Trinity Occasional Papers, Brisbane, Australia, June 1996, 77-83. 9. One might mention Langdon Gilkey, Reaping the Whirlwind: A Christian Interpretation of History (New York: Seabury Press, 1981), or Edward Farley, Good and Evil (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), or Wendy Farley, Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1990). 10. "On the meaning of 'Act of God,'" chapter 6 of God the Problem (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972). 11. The Fall of a Sparrow: A Concept of Special Divine Action (Exeter: Paternoster, 1985). 12. Maurice Wiles, God's Actions in the World, The Bampton Lectures for 1986 (London: SCM, 1986). 13. Christoph Schwobel, God: Action and Revelation (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1992); chapters 1, 4, and 5 published in Beitrage zum Marburger Jahrbuch Theologie I (1987) and III (1990). Compare also Gijsbert van den Brink, Luco J. van den Brom, and Marcel Sarot, Christian Faith and Philosophical Theology, Festschrift for Vincent Brummer (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1992) and Mats J. Hansson, Understanding an Act of God (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 1991).

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Part 11 THE SHAPE OF THE LITURGY

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CHAPTER 7

A NEW LOOK AT THE THEOLOGY OF THE PASTORAL OFFICES Byron D. Stuhlman

In the early Christian centuries, the Church developed a liturgical theology of its principal rites of worship (the eucharist, the rites of initiation, and the daily office). All of these liturgies found their meaning in the paschal mystery. But toward the end of the Christian antiquity, the theology of the paschal mystery began to be displaced by the theology of the sacraments. The term sacrament originated as a part of the theology of the paschal mystery; its classic Western exposition is found in the homilies and letters of Pope Leo the Great in the fifth century.1 But it was not long before theological concerns shifted; and by the later middle ages, a theology of the sacraments had been worked out, the principal concern of which was individual sanctification through the grace bestowed by particular rites defined as sacraments.2 Such a theology badly distorted the meaning of the Church's worship: with its emphasis on individual sanctification, it lost touch with the corporate, ecclesial dimension of worship and eventually came to be formulated with little regard for the actual liturgical texts of these "sacraments." Reformation debates did not really alter the framework of sacramental theology; the Reformers simply reduced the number of rites considered sacramental. The liturgical movement of the twentieth century has reclaimed the theology of the paschal mystery and recovered something of the richness of the theology of the eucharist and the initiatory rites; and, recently, scholars have begun to devote attention to the theology of the daily office.3 But less attention has been paid to that group of rites whose proper orientation is the sanctification of the individual Christian—the rites known as Pastoral Offices in the Book of Common Prayer 1979.4 This chapter explores the theology of the pastoral offices as an integral part of liturgical theology. After locating the pastoral offices within a phenomenological framework, it attempts to develop a theological perspective on the liturgy of the Church. It then locates the pastoral offices—first, in relation to the eucharist and the rites of initiation, and then, in their pastoral context in the life of the Christian. Finally, it identifies the characteristic liturgical components of each of the 81

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pastoral offices. These steps will lead us to consider what shape a contemporary theology of the pastoral offices might take and what insights it might yield.

The Phenomenological Framework Alexander Schmemann argues that in order to understand the meaning of a particular rite, we need to know where it fits in the whole scheme of Christian worship—its place in what he calls the ordo, or order. According to Schmemann, the basic framework of the Church's worship is constituted by the rhythms of time.5 If we follow this insight, then the services in the Book of Common Prayer can be grouped as "regular services" concerned with the sanctification of time and "occasional offices" concerned with the sanctification of life. This distinction between services is made by the Prayer Book itself, which speaks of "the regular services appointed for public worship in this Church" and "other rites contained in this book."6 The "regular services" are those services the celebration of which is regulated by the calendar and that follow the rhythms of the day, the week, and the year. The other rites are often known as occasional offices because their celebration is determined by occasions in the lives of Christians, the parish, or the diocese. The regular services constitute the Christian form of what Abraham Heschel describes in Jewish ritual as an "architecture of time."7 They are the sacramental means by which the Church participates in Christ's pascha or passover to the kingdom in the power of the Holy Spirit. By these rites the Church is formed and sustained on its journey. The rites for the sanctification of life are intended to transform important occasions or turning points in our lives by taking them up in the Church's passover to the kingdom so that they become occasions of grace for us. It is, as we shall see, through the relationship of the occasional offices to the regular services of the Church that the occasions are taken up into the Church's passover.

A Theological Perspective on the Church's Liturgy The twentieth century has learned to understand Israel's passover at the exodus as the heart of Israel's faith and Christ's passover from death to life by way of the cross as the heart of the Church's faith. This has been the starting point for the theology of worship developed by the Liturgical Movement. This insight has been developed in a somewhat different direction by Alexander Schmemann, whose work provides the basis for the insights that follow. The Reformed theologian Jean-Jacques von Allmen, drawing on the Lutheran Peter Brunner, describes the assembly of Christians for the worship of God as "the epiphany of the Church."8 For Schmemann, it is more than that: Liturgy is the epiphany of the true meaning of all reality in its cosmic, ecclesiological, and eschatological dimensions.9 We might also say that there the extraordinary meaning of ordinary things and actions is made manifest. The world itself is sacramental: it makes present and accessible to us in tangible ways the God who is the world's creator, redeemer, and ultimate fulfilment; it is a link of life and love between God and the human race, whose vocation is to be a royal priesthood that offers the world

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to God in thanksgiving. When we make this offering, the true character of the world is revealed to us and God's purposes for it are realized. The function of the liturgy as sacramental is thus to reveal and make accessible to us the real presence of God in the world. Liturgy is a symbolic activity; but we must understand this symbolism correctly. It is an intrinsic, not an extrinsic, symbolism. The things of the world as symbols do not make present an absent reality, but rather reveal the presence of the reality that they represent and make real and accessible to us. This epiphany occurs in the Church's worship; here, the deeper dimensions of reality become accessible to us. The liturgical language of the Byzantine tradition sees this as the work of the Holy Spirit and asks, in its eucharistic prayers and in the blessing of the font, that the Holy Spirit manifest the true reality of things. This Christian understanding of the sacramental function of prayer is deeply rooted in the Jewish theology of blessing, which lies behind the characteristic form of Jewish prayer, the berakah.10 Before using the things of the world or undertaking an action, the Jew gives thanks to God, and in so doing acknowledges the purposes for which God has given those things or intended the action, usually by citing a text of scripture that reveals that purpose. We see this understanding in the literature of the New Testament: "Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by God's word and by prayer" (1 Timothy 4:4-5). Through this priestly act the Church in its liturgy manifests the world in its God-given dimensions and is enabled to know and participate in the world as a sacramental link of life and love between God and the world. The world as we encounter it in worship is our world, not some other world. But we encounter dimensions of that world that are otherwise closed off to us because of our estrangement from God.11 We have turned from God as the giver of life and sought life from the world. We have made the world an end in itself, rather than receiving the world from God in thanksgiving and recognizing the world as the means by which God seeks in love to share the divine life with us. In our sin, we have short-circuited the world as our link to God and have broken communion. Only in Christ is that connection restored. He alone fulfills the royal priesthood to which the whole human race is called by receiving the world from God and offering it to God in thanksgiving. Only when worship becomes the remembrance of Christ and refers all things to Christ does the world regain the purposes for which God created it. Only in Christ does the world serve as the place of our journey toward the fulfilment of all things in God's kingdom, where God is all in all. In worship the Church passes over with Christ from the world to the kingdom. That is why all Christian prayer is offered through Christ, and all Christian worship is the remembrance of Christ. Christ recapitulates the world's return to the Father; and the Church, reconciled to God in him, begins its passover with him—from a world estranged from God to a world that finds its fulfillment in the kingdom of God. In him the Church reaches the goal for which God created all things. But we still live in a world estranged from God, and our journey is not yet complete. The remembrance of Christ enables our thanksgiving to the Father to

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consecrate the things and actions of the world to the purpose for which God intended them. The Christian berakah moves from thanksgiving to the Father to remembrance of Christ in reconsecrating the world to God. Only by so doing can it pass over with him to the kingdom where the world is restored to God's creative purposes, ceases to be opaque to God, and becomes once again transparent to God. Christian prayer is not only Christological in nature, offered in remembrance of Christ and referring all things to Christ. It is also trinitarian, reflecting the threefold economy of the triune God in creation, redemption, and sanctification, A sacramental vision of reality, Schmemann argues, holds together the three dimensions of reality—the world (creation), the Church (redemption), and the kingdom (sanctification or eschatological fulfilment). In the Church's liturgy, we encounter reality as created good by God, as redeemed from its estrangement to God in Christ (and in the Church as the body of Christ), and as moving toward fulfilment in God's kingdom. We have already taken note of the first two dimensions; here, we need to explore the final, eschatological dimension—the Reign of God. Western theology, which has frequently spoken only of the order of creation and the order of redemption, often neglects this final dimension of reality. In this dimension the Spirit reveals the destiny of the world and moves the world toward that destiny, the Reign of God. God's Spirit enables us to journey in worship, if only by anticipation, where Christ has gone before us, and so makes Christ and the world as it is transfigured by Christ accessible to us. And so the Church in its worship not only gives thanks to the Father and remembers Christ; it also prays for the Spirit. Christian prayer in its classic form moves from thanksgiving to remembrance to invocation. When this final, eschatological dimension is forgotten, we fall into the danger of mistaking either the world or the Church as they are for the Kingdom of God. In this case our vision is tragically stunted and God's purposes in creation and reconciliation are frustrated. On the other hand, God's Reign is a dimension, not of some other world but of the world in which we now live—when it has been reconciled to Christ and has attained fulfilment through the Spirit. In worship, the world makes its pilgrimage, as the Church, to its final destination in God's Kingdom. In this worship, the goal of our pilgrimage—which gives meaning to the Church's life—is revealed.

The Relation of the Pastoral Offices to the Eucharist and Baptism The true dimensions of reality are revealed primarily in the eucharistic assembly of the Church, which is characterized by its baptismal commitment to the triune God. Through baptism and the eucharist, Christ incorporates the Christian and the Church into his passover. The characteristic context, therefore, for the key ritual actions of the pastoral office is the eucharist; and the occasions ritualized in these offices entail the commitment of the participants to the baptismal covenant as it relates to those occasions. In the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the Standing Liturgical Commission intentionally placed all the pastoral offices (except that of the reconciliation of a penitent) in the context of the eucharist.12 The provisions of the present revision

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reveal a characteristic framework for the incorporation of the pastoral offices within the eucharist, which ordinarily brings together the commitment, the ritual action, and the prayer of blessing (consecration) proper to the office. In addition, it allows the context for the ritual action and prayer of blessing to be set by the special provisions for the gathering and the liturgy of the word and the whole action to be sealed by communion. The key to understanding the theology of each rite is the central ritual action and the prayer of blessing that usually accompanies it. These give each rite its "shape," in Gregory Dix's terms.

The Pastoral Context of the Pastoral Offices All the Church's rites begin with what Schmemann calls the cosmological dimension of reality—the stuff of the world as we find it, the basic realities of human life, and the structures and relationships of life in community. They then move on to orient all reality to the remembrance of Christ, that all things may be reconciled in Christ and drawn by the Spirit toward their ultimate fulfilment in the kingdom of God. The cosmological dimension is mediated to us in particular cultural traditions, which shape such human institutions that encode the kind of relationships characteristic of that society. But these institutions are subject to critique by the Gospel; the Gospel attends to the "world" of a particular culture, but rather than accepting cultural institutions as they are, it seeks to transform them. The pastoral offices in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer give ritual expression to particular turning points or occasions in the life of a Christian. Great care is needed, however, if these occasions are not to be confused or misidentified in ways that fail to transform them in the light of the Gospel. Without such transformation, the meaning of the rite is distorted and it no longer functions as it was intended to function. Let us now look at the turning points that find ritual expression in the pastoral offices. Baptism and the Baptismal Journey The first set of pastoral offices are those related to the process of preparation for baptism—what we might call the baptismal journey.13 While baptism itself is one of the regular services of the Church, it has a pastoral dimension as well, and the preparation for baptism is properly grouped with the pastoral offices. Preparatory rites for both the baptism of adults and the baptism of children are found in The Book of Occasional Services. Baptism is properly associated with the beginning of the life of faith within the Church as a community of faith, not with any particular chronological moment in the human life cycle. The process of preparation for baptism can take one of two quite different shapes, for persons come to Christ in two distinctly different ways. Some come to Christ by way of conversion: they "turn" to Christ by turning away from some other commitment. Others are born into Christian families, so that for them the process is one of nurture rather than conversion—"growing into" their Christian identity within the Christian community. The first come into the life of the Church from outside; the second grow up in the life of the Church from the beginning. Both adult converts and the children of

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practicing Christians enter the Church through the same ritual act, but their journeys to baptism and the rites associated with those journeys will differ. Confirmation Confirmation as a distinct sacramental rite of Christian maturity is a Western anomaly that developed out of two historical accidents: (1) the treatment of the reconciliation of heretics or schismatics as an act equivalent to the laying on of hands and the final anointing at baptism, and (2) the delay between baptism and the laying on of hands and final baptismal anointing in the West once these last two ritual actions were reserved to the bishop.14 What happened by historical accident eventually acquired a theological rationale, but it was a rationale that undercut the meaning of baptism itself. It associated confirmation with either the age of reason or with puberty and interpreted the rite as a sacrament that bestowed a distinct character. The original rite of confirmation has no coherent meaning when administered apart from baptism. The Episcopal Church (and several other Churches) rethought the rite in the process of recent liturgical revision. The texts and ritual gestures for confirmation taken from the concluding portion of the ancient baptismal rite have been restored to baptism. Confirmation in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer is best understood not as an unrepeatable gift of the Spirit that confers a sacramental character, but as a repeatable strengthening by the Spirit at moments of intensified commitment. A new rite (with its own process of preparation) has been created for a context in which the concluding portion of the baptismal rite was inappropriate. Rites for the Formation of Households Households or families are the basic unit of societies. In Christian antiquity a household might be formed by the union of a man and a woman through marriage, by two men legally united in what is generally known as "adoptive brotherhood," or by celibates who formed a monastic community. In late Christian antiquity the range of relationships encompassed by the word "family" or "household" was broader than it has been in recent centuries. Two men could form a household, and celibate monastics living together were also understood to constitute a family or household. Both of these domestic arrangements had precedents in classical antiquity as well: Roman law recognized fraternal adoption, and in the Middle East various forms of relationships between men took institutional form. Monastic communities had their analogues in the Essene community of sectarian Judaism and in certain philosophical communities in the Greco-Roman world. The New Testament provides no concrete forms for ritualizing these familial institutions, although it does provide a Christian perspective on them.15 Because there was initially no specifically Christian form for these institutions and no specifically Christian ritual forms for entering them, the Church took over the institutions and the forms that gave them ritual expression as it found them in each culture. In adopting these forms, however, it was not always successful in transforming them so thar they reflected a genuinely Christian perspective.

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Entry into marriage, adoptive brotherhood, and the monastic life are passages from one state of life to another, and we make such passages by stages. These stages are still part of the entry into the monastic life. Marriage rites still tend to reflect two stages (betrothal and marriage), though in the course of time these stages tended to be telescoped into a single rite. The Byzantine rite of a8eAaOnoinois (fraternal adoption) shows no signs of such stages: it ritualizes the legal act of adoption. Marriage rites reflect a wide variety of cultural understandings of marriage in the actions they incorporate to bring marriage to ritual expression.16 Most involve the exchange of rings, although originally this was the significant act in betrothal, not marriage itself. A patriarchal understanding of marriage, which does not cohere with the earliest stratum of the New Testament, found particularly clear expression in the rites of the Roman tradition. In this tradition the significant act was the veiling of the bride. The rite speaks clearly of the woman's change of status, but ignores any change in the status of the man. Later witnesses to this and other Western traditions include the giving of the bride from her father's hand to her husband's hand: this action gives expression to the same social reality. The Byzantine tradition, on the other hand, finds its focus in the crowning of the bride and groom—a focus that gives far better expression to the mutuality of the covenant of marriage. A further characteristic of later rites is a shift in emphasis from the blessing of the marriage to the legal contracting of marriage. This emphasis on legal contract rather than blessing tends to place the emphasis on the place of marriage in the created order and to lose sight of the transformation of marriage in Christ and its eschatological dimensions. The Byzantine rite of a8eA(|)Onoinois was the ecclesiastical expression of the Roman legal institution of "adoptive brotherhood."17 This institution gave legal status to a household formed by two men and recognized rites of inheritance. In the context of Hellenistic culture, d8eAOonoinais represented an apparent effort by the Church to recognize the affective ties between men that were customary in this society without giving sanction to sexual intimacy within such relationships. The rite itself does not present adoptive brotherhood as the equivalent of marriage (which is not to deny that some who entered such unions may have treated them as such). The readings and the central ritual acts of the two services are quite distinct. For marriage in the Byzantine tradition the key ritual acts are the exchange of rings and crowning. For d8eaOOninaisroic,,the ritual act is placement of hands on the Gospel book in the presence of a priest—an act that would seem to represent a solemn mutual commitment. The prayers used in the two rites are also quite distinct: those for marriage envisage a union that finds its expression in sexual intimacy (the two "become one flesh"); those for adEO0noinois make no allusion to such intimacy. The Church's attitude toward adeAooninois was ambiguous, and eventually the institution was suppressed in most Eastern Churches, as was the somewhat similar institution of "spiritual marriage" (where a man and woman live together without sexual intimacy).18 Rites for same-sex unions today thus find only a partial precedent in adEAoonoiois Vocational celibacy has taken many forms in the history of the Church. In the New Testament the purpose of such celibacy was to avoid the societal tics and obligations inherent in marriage and thus to render someone free for the service of

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the Gospel. Later Christian attitudes toward celibacy and marriage—where human sexuality received a more negative evaluation, where marriage was understood as a concession to human weakness, and where celibacy became in the West a requirement for ordination—were grounded in one strand of late antique culture rather than in the Gospel. Basil and Benedict, the classic authorities on monasticism in the East and in the West, favored cenobitic rather than eremetic monastic life: that is, they considered the monastic household the appropriate context for the vocation to celibacy. Clothing is the classic ritual act in which entry into the monastic life finds liturgical expression.19 As monasticism developed, entry into the monastic life was by stages—each stage being marked by the assumption of the appropriate habit. Reconciliation Reconciliation, properly understood, is also a process.20 In the early centuries, reconciliation to the Church after alienation from its fellowship through sin took the form of public penance, beginning with confession and exclusion from the life of community, continuing with amendment of life, and concluding with readmission to the community and its eucharist. In this way the health of the community was preserved and the holiness of the penitent was restored through the community's prayer and pastoral care. At times the reconciliation to the community took place in a series of stages. Public penance was usually imposed or undertaken only for serious sins. The problematic aspects of the context for public penance were the Western rule that reconciliation could be granted only once in a lifetime (which led many to delay entrance into the status of a penitent until their deathbeds),21 the absence of remedies for less serious sins, and contamination of public penance with the concept of satisfaction and with penalties enforced by civil authority. The rite of individual reconciliation that eventually replaced public penance finally took the form of confession and immediate reconciliation, so that the rites that marked the beginning and end of the process were celebrated on the same occasion. This alternative to public penance evolved out of the process of guidance characteristic of monasticism and the use of that process by Celtic monks in the pastoral care of laity in tariff penance. Individual reconciliation also came to be associated with the requisite preparation for every reception of communion in the late middle ages—a context that badly distorts the meaning of both ongoing spiritual guidance and the eucharist. The Anointing of the Sick The use of ointment for medicinal purposes crosses cultural boundaries. It is not unique to Christians, but in the context of the prayer of the Church it gives expression to the power of the Holy Spirit to bring relief from suffering through healing or through death.22 In the Letter of James, unction was administered by the presbyters of the Church; but the earliest prayers for the blessing of oil for the unction of the sick suggest that it was often self-administered or consumed internally. It was used in the context of any serious illness. Later, the Church ordinarily

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reserved administration of unction to its ministers. But the middle ages in the West saw a shift in context: unction came to be understood as a last rite in preparation for death with a focus on penitence and forgiveness, not as a rite related to healing. In the Byzantine tradition we see another development: unction is sometimes administered in a public service as a kind of general absolution. Unction ultimately conforms us to Christ in his victory over suffering and death by the power of the Spirit. That may mean release from suffering through healing or release from suffering through death and entry into eternal life. Unction does not release us from human finitude and mortality. To the extent that some modern theology treats unction almost entirely as a sacrament of healing, it misconstrues the context; it fails to take human mortality into account.23 Rites for the Burial of the Dead Rites for the Burial of the Dead are obviously derived from local funerary rites, but the actual form of the rite for burial varies considerably from tradition to tradition and from age to age.24 In early centuries Christians took over the local form of the burial procession but transformed it from an occasion of mourning to an occasion of paschal triumph. It sealed the Christian's participation in Christ's passover. The basic form is a procession from the place of death to the place of burial with stations during the procession. The initial station consists of prayers, readings, communion, and the commendation of the dying to God as death approaches, concluding with the preparation of the body for burial when death comes. The final station occurs at the place of burial. But the rites associated with an intermediate station at the church have taken quite different forms. Usually such services include a vigil of prayers and readings, or the eucharist, or both. The full form of the rites in the Western traditions includes both the office and the eucharist. In later centuries, particularly in the West, the rites once again took on a mournful character; fear of judgment overwhelmed the joyful assurance of victory characteristic of early rites. The function of the rites shifted as well. Christians no longer faced death with joyful confidence that they would share in Christ's victory; rather, their perspective was characterized by fear and trepidation before the prospect of making satisfaction for their sins in purgatory. This radically altered the function of the burial eucharist, which became one of a series of memorial eucharists whose function was to secure the release of the departed from purgatory. Once again the deleterious effect of Western legal traditions on theology altered the context of the rites.

The Liturgical Components The ritual components of the pastoral offices include particular forms of commitment, distinctive ritual actions, prayer, and subsidiary formulas used in the administration of these rites. The primary expression of Christian commitment is the creed used to administer baptism. Since the sixteenth century, confirmation has been an occasion for renewal of the baptismal covenant.25 In some traditions, the baptismal covenant is

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also renewed on such occasions as rites of reconciliation and ministry to the dying. The renewal in all these cases ordinarily takes the form of the creed. On other occasions, the baptismal covenant may be particularized to fit the situation—as in vows of monastic commitment and in marriage vows. The next component is the significant ritual acts proper to each rite. Sacramental definitions since the fourth century have generally ignored the importance of the ritual action, defining the eucharist, for example, in terms of matter (bread and wine) rather than the ritual actions in which these things are used (eucharistic eating and drinking). In the pastoral offices, the distinctive ritual action characteristic of the rite is often far less obvious or fixed than is the case with the regular services, for each society encodes its understanding of such occasions in the action that it selects as its ritual focus. The ritual action recognized as the key action of a pastoral office is therefore often determined by the particular cultural tradition rather than by the Gospel. The most obvious example of this is the variety of acts used to ritualize marriage. A gesture common to almost every pastoral office is blessing (by laying on of hands, extension of hands, or the sign of the cross). Every pastoral office is a blessing of persons at a turning point in their lives, so a gesture of blessing is implicit in all of them. Other actions relate to the occasion being celebrated and may be particular to a culture. These actions must be tested against the understanding of the occasion in the Gospel, in order to determine whether the understanding encoded in the gesture is consistent with the Gospel. Prayers of intercession and blessing serve to interpret the ritual actions of the pastoral offices and so help to interpret the occasions that they celebrate. In the 1979 Book of Common Prayer we often find a special set of intercessory petitions (the Prayers of the People); the Byzantine rite often uses a standard litany with special biddings; in the Roman rite we sometimes find a special petition inserted in the eucharistic prayer. Historically, the solemn prayer of blessing or consecration often resembled the eucharistic prayer in structure and might be sung to the tone of that prayer (the preface tone). In Western traditions such solemn prayers of blessing are found at the blessing of the font in baptism; at the nuptial veiling and the veiling of virgins and in the later forms of monastic profession; at the solemn reconciliation of penitents on Maundy Thursday; and at the blessing of chrism and the oil of unction. At other times the prayers of blessing took the form of a simple blessing, akin to the prayer "over the people" of the Roman eucharist in Lent and the Byzantine prayer "with bowed heads" (kEoanoknioia). As rites developed, a proliferation of other prayers sometimes obscured the sharp focus of the original solemn prayer distinctive to each pastoral office. The idea prevalent since the fourth century that sacramental rites of the Church consist of words ("the form") and "matter," both of which are fixed in the text of the New Testament, has had a pernicious influence on the Church's rites.26 It has tended to lead Christians to think of sacraments as "things" that contain "grace" rather than as ritual actions by means of which God touches and transforms our lives. It is also problematic to think that there is a form of words fixed by the New Testament.

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Except in the case of baptism, the prayers of each of the pastoral offices, rather than the formulas used in administering the rites, are the key texts to explore in our search for the meaning of the ritual actions. In the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the form of prayers in most rites is a special form of the Prayers of the People and a prayer of blessing. In general, the prayers serve to reveal the occasion under the dimensions of God's creative purpose, Christ's reconciling work, and the final goal in God's kingdom. They make the occasion an epiphany of the fullness of this reality in God's eyes, and by revealing this reality they allow the Christian to participate in it. A liturgical component may be described as "subsidiary formulas of administration." The baptismal formulas that replaced the interrogatory creed influenced formulas for administering other rites "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." At times the formula may be supplemented by a clause that continues with prayer for the person. The formulas may also take a variety of other forms. Except in baptism, however, the prayer of blessing is the key to the meaning of the principal ritual action proper to a rite; the subsidiary formulas serve to elaborate the meaning and to apply it to the recipient. This was once true even of reconciliation, which in its private form has lost the solemn prayer of the public rite of reconciliation on Maundy Thursday.

Conclusion As we draw together the threads of our investigation, what theology of the pastoral offices emerges? A phenomenological examination allows us to distinguish regular services—which follow a schedule determined by the rhythms of the day, the week, and the year—from occasional offices, whose celebration is determined not by the rhythms of the calendar but the rhythms of human life. Through the celebration of light at sunrise and sunset each day, the proclamation of the Gospel and the celebration of the eucharistic meal each week on the Lord's Day, and the ritual cleansing and anointing of candidates at the great baptismal feasts, the Church enters again and again into Christ's passover from the world to God's kingdom, making that passover its own. In the pastoral offices, usually celebrated in the context of the regular services, the turning points of human life are caught up into this passover, becoming milestones on the way of the cross. The occasions or turning points in human life that find ritual expression in the pastoral offices are not in themselves distinctively Christian. They are part of the reality of the world as we experience it. All persons seek to find a basic orientation for their lives and to renew and deepen that orientation, to establish the social context (the "household" or "family") in which they will live their lives, to achieve reconciliation when they are estranged from their community, to come to terms with serious illness, and to make sense of death. The Christian rites for these occasions are the rites of initiation and reaffirmation (baptism and "confirmation"), the blessing of bride and groom (matrimony), of two men or two women making a lifelong commitment to each other (for which the Byzantine rite ofQSEadEnAoonoinois provides a partial precedent), and of those who undertake a life of celibacy (monastic vows), the reconciliation of a penitent, ministration to the sick and suffer-

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ing, ministry to the dying, and the burial of the dead. The rites take these common occasions and place them in the context of the passover of the Christian and the Church from the world to God's kingdom, making them occasions of grace through focal ritual acts interpreted by solemn prayer. It is important to identify the occasions celebrated by these rites correctly if we are to understand their function. The occasion for baptism is the decision to set oneself or one's children on the paschal journey—not some biologically determined moment in life. Occasions for intensification of this commitment ("confirmation" as it has developed in the West) draw their meaning from baptism yet are not initiatory in themselves. The understanding of what constitutes a household or family vary enormously from society to society and form age to age, and the definition of a household at any given time and place and of how members of the household relate to each other need to be tested continually against the norms of the Gospel. Norms of reconciliation should reflect the Gospel of grace and also guard the holiness of the Church and of the sinner in a life of continuing conversion. Ministry to the sick should reflect the power of the Spirit both to heal and to raise us from death to eternal life. Ministry to the dying and the burial of the dead should sustain our faith in the face of death and bear witness to our participation in Christ's passover from death to life. The ways in which these moments find ritual expression must serve to link them with the anamnesis of Christ and his passover and to reveal the trinitarian dimensions of the Christian life: God's purposes in creation, the way in which Christ restores all things when God's purposes are frustrated by human sin, and the movement of all things through the Holy Spirit toward their ultimate goal in God's kingdom. In bringing these moments to ritual expression, care must be taken that the acts chosen to express the significance of these moments in the Christian life conform to the norms of the Gospel and to give due expression to the trinitarian dimensions of human life, rather than simply reflect the norms of the culture in which the Gospel has been planted. This is often difficult, for we are so immersed in our own culture that we are unconscious of the ways in which the presuppositions of the culture distort the norms of the Gospel. But when the anamnesis of Christ and the trinitarian dimensions of reality find proper ritual expression in the pastoral offices, the occasions become milestones on the way of the cross, as we pass over with Christ in the Church to the Reign of God. NOTES 1. Dom Odo Casel initiated the recovery of the theology of the paschal mystery in the present century, drawing on key patristic texts. See his Mystery of Christian Worship and Other Writings (Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1962) and Louis Bouyer, Liturgical Piety (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1955). 2. The number of sacraments was fixed at seven in the medieval West. Reformers generally restricted the term to baptism and the eucharist. The catechism of the 1979 American Prayer Book refers to these as sacraments of the Gospel and speaks of the remaining five as "other sacramental rites." 3. For a concise overview of developments in sacramental and liturgical theology in the twentieth century, see Peter E. Fink, s.v. "Sacramental Theology after Vatican II," in

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idem, ed., The New Dictionary of Sacramental Worship (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1990), 1107-14. For the theology of the daily office, see Robert Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1986). 4. These services, generally grouped together since 1549 without title, are titled "Pastoral Offices" in the American Book of Common Prayer 1979 (hereafter BCP). They have also been known as "occasional offices." I treat these services in greater detail in Occasions of Grace: An Historical and Theological Study of the Pastoral Offices and Occasional Services of the Book of Common Prayer (New York: Church Hymnal, 1995). 5. Schmemann sets out his framework in An Introduction to Liturgical Theology, 3d edition (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1986). 6. BCP, 13. 7. Abraham Joseph Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modem Man (New York: Farrar, Giroux, and Strauss, 1975), 8. 8. Jean-Jacques von Allmen, Worship: Its Theology and Practice, trans. W. Fletcher Fleet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), chapter 2; Peter Brunner, Worship in the Name of Jesus Christ (St. Louis: Concordia, 1968). 9. The most concise treatment of this is found in the essay, "Sacrament and Symbol," appendix 2 in For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1973). See also his essay, "Theology and Eucharist," in Thomas Fisch, ed., Liturgy and Tradition: Theological Reflections of Alexander Schmemann (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1990). My treatment in this section draws on those essays and various other works of Schmemann. 10. On this see Louis Bouyer, Liturgical Piety (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1955), 115-28, especially 119. 11. See Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 18-20. 12. Reconciliation has the effect of restoring the penitent to communicant status and so is inextricably related to the eucharist. 13. "Baptismal iter" is the expression that Miguel Arranz uses for this process in the Byzantine tradition in a series of articles entitled "Les sacrements de 1'ancien euchologe constantinopolitain," in Orientatia Christiana Periodica 48-55 (1982-1985). 14. For this history see E. C. Whitaker, Christian Initiation in the Medieval West (London: SPCK, 1965). 15. Jesus provides a critique of marriage in his day (Matt 19:3-9 par.) and a justification for vocational celibacy (Matt. 19:10-12); Paul provides his own commentary on both marriage and celibacy (1 Cor. 7); and the later household codes in the New Testaments (cf. Eph. 5:21-6:9) provide regulation for marriage. The Byzantine rite of a8enoonoiis appears to claim as its precedent Mark 6:7, but here the bond of spiritual brotherhood is an aspect of a missionary vocation. 16. Kenneth Stevenson offers two excellent studies of Christian marriage rites, Nuptial Blessing: A Study of Christian Marriage Rites (New York: Oxford, 1983) and To Join Together: The Rite of Marriage (New York: Pueblo, 1987). 17. On this, see John Boswell, Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York: Villard Books/Random House, 1994), 97-106. 18. See Elizabeth A. Clark's analysis of John Chrysostom's two treatises against "spiritual marriage" (known as "suneisaktism"), "John Chrysostom and the Subintroductae," in Church History 46 (1979), 171-85), reprinted in her Ascetic Piety and Women's Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1986), 265-90. 19. For the veiling of virgins and later monastic rites, see Adrien Nocent, "The Consecration of Virgins" and "Monastic Rites and Religious Profession" in A. G. Martimort, ed., The Church at Prayer, vol. 3 (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1988).

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20. On the history of reconciliation, see James Dallen, The Reconciling Community (New York: Pueblo, 1986; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1992). 21. One penance appears to have been the rule in the regions where The Shepherd of Hermas was received as authoritative—in the Latin-speaking West and in Egypt, but not in the rest of the East. 22. The most convenient study of the anointing of the sick is Charles W. Gusmer, And You Visited Me: Sacramental Ministry to the Sick and Dying (New York: Pueblo, 1984). See also the important study by Thomas Talley, "Healing: Sacrament or Charism?," in idem, Worship: Reforming Tradition (Washington, D.C.: Pastoral Press, 1990), 47-58. 23. Thus scholastic theologians treated unction as a last rite and carefully defined the grace of the sacrament to avoid suggesting that it conferred healing, because this was clearly not always the case. For a treatment of the rite in the Byzantine tradition, see Sergei Bulgakov, The Orthodox. Church, trans. Lydia Kesich (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1988). 24. The best study of Western rites of burial is Damien Sicard, La liturgie de la mort dans les Eglises latines, des originesalareformecarolingienne (Munster, Westfallen: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1978). The most accessible study in English is Richard Rutherford, The Death of a Christian: The Rite of Funerals (New York: Pueblo, 1980). 25. Many of the reformers treated the rite in this way, following in this the earlier lead of the disciples of Jan Hus. See J. D. C. Fisher, Christian Initiation in the Reformation Period (London: SPCK, 1970), 166-69, for early Hussite testimony to the practice. Only in 1662 was an explicit reaffirmation included in the rite for confirmation in the BCP. 26. This continued to be true for the Churches of the Reformation as well as for the Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth century.

CHAPTER 8

SACRAMENT, SIGN, AND UNITY

An Australian Reflection Norman Young

This personal reflection is a tribute to Geoffrey Wainwright—scholar, I ecumenist, and minister of the Gospel. I write as a long-standing friend and colleague, and also as a representative of the Australian churches, in gratitude for his valued contribution made to us on two occasions: as F. J. Cato Lecturer1 at the Uniting Church Assembly in 1985, and as visiting professor at the United Faculty of Theology in Melbourne in 1991. I begin with a reference to our mutual mentor and friend, Raymond George, who preceded us both as a member of the World Methodist/Roman Catholic international dialogue. At one of the dialogue sessions he presented a paper entitled Sign and Sacrament (which, so far as I know, remains unpublished), on which my own thinking about sacrament has depended ever since. I also remember his saying on one occasion that when reflecting on matters profound, "Go back to the beginning, and don't be afraid of using plain language." I hope to follow that wise counsel in what follows. Reflection on the Liturgy To go back to the beginning, then, to my first experience of the sacrament of holy communion: it was one of exclusion. I grew up in a Methodist church of about a hundred families, in an Australian provincial city. Once a quarter, the minister of that church would announce, "Following the worship this morning there will be a service of Holy Communion." Worship would then proceed as usual—hymns, the "long prayer," children's address, bible readings, offering, and, as the climax, the sermon, followed by the closing hymn and benediction. The minister would then walk to the door to shake hands with most of the people. A small group remained in the church, to whom the minister returned; for what? I had very little idea, except that it was something reserved for a few people, who (I concluded) must have been especially qualified in some way. I was fifteen years old before I plucked up 95

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the courage to stay for what had been made to appear an ancillary service. I stayed in response to the invitation of a newly arrived minister, that "all who love the Lord" were welcome to stay for communion. This practice of having holy communion as an appendix to the main service was common in Methodist Churches in Australia until the 19605, and, I have since discovered, in many other places until the present time. Why a subsidiary role for the Lord's supper, especially given the central place it held for the Wesleys? Frequent communion was one of the marks of those first called Methodists at Oxford, at a time when this was far from the norm in the Church of England. Attendance at the supper of the Lord, as the General Rules of the Societies made clear, was "expected of all those who desire to continue" as members of those Methodist societies.2 And it could be argued that John Wesley was so concerned that the people should not be deprived of the sacraments that, although abhorring schism, he was prepared to court that possibility by ordaining his own preachers for America, because of the shortage of Anglican clergy there after the War of Independence. (The alternative of lay administration he firmly rejected.) The reason for the evident downgrading of the sacrament lies partly with that "American" break. Wesley was so concerned that there be no separation from the Church of England that he insisted that the services of worship in Methodist chapels should not be sacramental. Chapel was for scripture reading, prayer, praise, and exhortation, but not to take the place of the Sunday service in the parish church, and not to be held at the same time. It was in the Anglican parish church that Methodists were expected to be on Sundays, and to receive communion. For Methodists in America, Wesley provided a liturgy for the sacraments that followed very closely the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. In Britain, however, the gradual development of Methodism as a separate denomination after Wesley's death meant that Methodist chapels became the places where Methodists worshiped, and the order of worship tended to be patterned on existing chapel services rather than on the parish church liturgy. When holy communion was celebrated then, it was commonly added to that chapel worship. Since Australian Methodism was transplanted from Britain, communion as an ancillary to the Sunday service became the norm. Later reflection, however, has led me to conclude that this historical development was complemented, if not supported, by a common view of sacrament that developed from the theology of the Reformers—and especially from Luther's understanding of the righteousness of God (although this would have been far from their intention). As Wainwright reminded his Australian hearers, for example, Calvin's Institutes, "from the first edition to the last, maintained that the Lord's Supper could have been administered most becomingly if it were set before the church quite often, and at least once a week."3 So long as God's righteousness was seen as a quality that belonged to God's own being, the holiness of the almighty and perfect creator, it was also held to demand a congruent quality of human life—obedience, holiness, and righteousness—that we can never achieve. It was then concluded that the only way of avoiding God's judgmental wrath, and thus being numbered among the saved, was to receive the saving grace of God through the sacraments of the Church.

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However, this notion was transformed by Luther. Once the righteousness of God is thought of as a feature of God's action—God's unmerited loving action in putting us in the right—then we are justified as we receive this in faith. The grace of God by which we are saved through faith is not then an entity to be conveyed, but a feature of God's gracious initiative for our salvation; and this saving action is effective once our faith is awakened on hearing the good news of the Gospel, especially through preaching. To this conclusion can be attributed some familiar features of Protestant worship. Priority is given to the Word (generally understood as the word preached); sacrament finds its place as enacted word.4 Pulpits came to occupy the liturgical space previously given to the altar, and the sermon occurred at that point in the service when once the host would have been elevated. Priests became ministers, and ministers "preachers." "Holy Communion" or "the Lord's Supper" became the preferred terms (over "the sacrifice of the mass," which was thought open to the misunderstanding of endlessly repeating the sacrifice of Christ). Hence Protestant liturgies stress that the sacrifice of Christ could only be offered once, and only by Christ "upon the cross for our redemption; who made there (by his oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world."5 Why then the sacrament at all—if through this once-for-all sacrifice we are justified, and if our hearing the word from scripture and preaching is enough to arouse faith, so that we may receive this gracious saving act of God? Two answers were given in the traditions (Methodist and Reformed) in which I stand. First, because the sacraments were instituted by Christ, given to us for our benefit, we are required to participate. Consequently the term "sacrament" is restricted to the two "dominical" sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper; it is held that the New Testament records Christ's commanding only these two: "go, baptize"; "this do in remembrance of me." In Wesley's sermon "The Means of Grace," he maintains that prayer, searching the scriptures, and receiving the Lord's supper are "the ordinary channels of conveying [God's] grace to human souls." Therefore "all who desire an increase of the grace of God are to wait for it in partaking of the Lord's Supper; for this also is a direction Himself hath given."6 That we should receive the sacrament because commanded by Christ was firmly entrenched in the Reformed/Presbyterian tradition as well. This is reflected in the prominent place given to "the narrative" in its liturgies, where it provides both the warrant for and necessity of the sacrament. One of the liturgies of the Uniting Church in Australia, prepared "to reflect the insights of our reformed traditions,"7 includes three versions of this narrative: the words of institution from Paul are rehearsed; the people are called upon to "follow our Lord's example in words and action" on the night of his betrayal; and at the breaking of the bread, the minister says that we do this "according to the holy institution and command of our Lord Jesus Christ and in remembrance of him." Second, the Reformed and Methodist traditions have sometimes given the impression that, because of human weakness, the visible and tangible nature of the sacrament is meant primarily to supplement or reinforce the audible word of preaching. Thus, even in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, the audible traditionally

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remained paramount. In the Methodist and Presbyterian liturgies with which I became familiar, there was so much justification for what we were doing, and so much care to say what we were not—so little color and gesture. There was so much explanation of what was going on, so little that was pictorial and magnanimous in the symbolic action; so much hand-wringing at our miserable offenses, so little joy at our release and renewal. My first experience of Methodist worship that I would now consider to have given an appropriate place to the Lord's supper was in the United States in the 1950s.1 was assistant minister at a Methodist church in New Jersey—not far from Drew University, where I was a postgraduate student in theology. Although in that church a large central pulpit, high and lifted up, overshadowed the small communion table tucked in front, the liturgy (or as it was called "The ritual for the administration of the sacrament"8) provided the order for the whole morning service, and for all the people. While I appreciated this as a fuller and more significant celebration, there was better to come. For my first two years at that church, we used a modification of the order provided by Wesley, itself very close to the 1662 Prayer Book. Although Wesley thought highly of the order and doubted it could be bettered, and while I came to appreciate more and more the rhythm and cadences of its language, it did have its limitations. For example, the prayer of consecration imposed a particular view of real presence, changing "may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood" to "may also be partakers of the divine nature through him." And by retaining the Gloria in its place after the communion, we returned to a confession and plea for mercy that should already have been made, heard, and answered. The focus was all on the Last Supper and the death of Jesus, with hardly a reference to the resurrection and none to the postresurrection meals. The note of thanksgiving too was muted; we were called to "give thanks unto the Lord" and we acknowledged that it was "meet and right so to do," but did not actually go on to do so. The first time I took part in a genuinely eucharistic celebration in that church occurred when another senior minister was appointed. He had been introduced to the theology of Orthodoxy by H. A. Hodges in Reading, and later by Nicholas Zernov. He came greatly to appreciate the Orthodox liturgy with its weekly celebration of the whole of God's gracious work, from creation at the beginning, new creation in Jesus Christ, and looking forward to the fullness of "all things new" at the end. Ignoring the rubric at the beginning of the Methodist order ("We call upon all our ministers to make faithful use of the forms and orders here provided, without other deviation than is here indicated"9), he incorporated into the liturgy what I now recognize as the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving. We were led to give thanks to God the creator of all things, the one who nurtures and sustains, who called a covenant people Israel to be a light to the nations, whose Son was incarnate, lived, suffered and died and was raised for our salvation . . . and so on, to the anticipated culmination at the end of the age. I returned to Australia in 1960, but it was another fifteen years before that eucharistic dimension became a regular part of Methodist celebrations of holy communion. Only three orders of service were authorized for general use: the 1662 variant, a much truncated version designed for "add-on" to the ordinary Sunday

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service, and the Church of South India order, none of which included a great prayer of thanksgiving. Only with the 1975 Revised Sunday Service from the British Methodist Church, first used in Victoria at the 1976 Methodist Conference and then more widely, did our sacramental worship become more discernibly eucharistic. In that 1975 order the great prayer did appear—fully trinitarian and incorporating the Sanctus. Geoffrey Wainwright contributed significantly to that order, and I understand that Raymond George gave the prayer its final shape. During the twenty-one years between 1954 (when I went to the USA) and 1975 (when the eucharistic prayer came into more general use in Australia), negotiations for union between the Methodist, Congregational, and Presbyterian Churches had been taking place, culminating in the founding of the Uniting Church in Australia in 1977. In preparation for that union, a Liturgical commission had written and distributed three orders of service for holy communion. The first drew upon "the ancient liturgies of the Church"; the second reflected "the insights of our reformed traditions"; and the third was "more suited for use in small groups and in ministering to the sick."10 All three included the eucharistic prayer, although in the second order it was very brief. I believe the third order to be the best, both in the language used and in its completeness. In addition, this service included a reference, which I had long advocated, to the postresurrection meals the risen Lord shared with his followers, thus broadening what I considered too narrow a focus on the death and the Last Supper. This prayer followed the words of institution: Be present, risen Lord Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, as you were with your disciples; and make yourself known to us [I prefer to add here, "also"] in the breaking of the bread; for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever, Amen.

I am disappointed that in the 1988 service book Uniting in Worship,11 which provides a number of alternative eucharistic prayers, this prayer has not been retained.

Theological Reflections So much for my experience, going back to the beginning, of receiving and celebrating the sacrament of holy communion within the Methodist (and, now, Uniting Church) traditions. In wrestling with the theology of the sacrament, I had to go back to the beginning as well—not so much in order to teach others, but because, almost as soon as I began teaching, I found myself in formal dialogue with Christians of other traditions. Although there were lengthy discussions about the sacraments in the Joint Commission on Church Union (which was set up by the three Churches to prepare a Basis of Union, and of which I was a member), the statement about sacraments is brief, and its writing called from me no significant reexamination of my theology. I was prepared to say more, especially about "real presence," but I had no

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objection to what is said.12 The first sustained challenge to think again came in the Working Group appointed by the Australian Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church, post-Vatican II. As a result of our discussions we were able to make, in 1969, this agreed statement:13 1. Christ himself meets us in the eucharist. It is the Holy Spirit who makes Christ really present for us in the eucharist according to the words of institution. 2. The proclamation of the Word is a necessary part of the eucharist, which, as a sacrament of faith, is born of the Word and nourished by it. 3. The eucharist can be called a sacrifice, firstly because it presents in a realistically symbolic way the once for all sacrifice of Christ on the Cross; and secondly because we participate in his sacrifice, offering our whole lives in obedience to Christ. 4. The eucharist is more than a merely human remembering. It is a memorial [anamnesis] in which God's saving event in Christ is presented to us, and a communion in which his people, growing together in Christ, realize their reconciliation in him. 5. The eucharist also points forward to the fullness of God's promised redemption. It is a foretaste and a beginning of the perfect communion with God and of the restoration of all things in Christ. As with all such consensus statements, this one has its limitations. A great deal of meaning is packed into a few words; some key terms may be understood in somewhat different ways by the dialogue participants; and some issues are implied rather than spelled out. Nevertheless, the dialogue participants were clearly able to answer in the affirmative when approached with the question later posed by the authors of Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry. 14 not "Is this exactly the way you would express your view?" but "Do you recognize in this text the faith of the Church through the ages?" That five-part statement still carries my conviction, and was arrived at, on my part at least, only after going back to first principles and to what was really involved in that familiar catechism question and answer: "What is a sacrament? A sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." It was soon clear that the Roman Catholic members of the group understood "sign" in this context not as a mere designator, a pointer to something else, but as actually sharing in and conveying the reality of that which it signified. Hence the phrase "realistically symbolic way" in part 3. The distinction between signs that are "weak" or "strong" ("standing outside and pointing" or "participating in the reality they signify") was already familiar enough. Tillich's theological system depended heavily on that distinction, as he reserved the term "symbol" for the latter kind of sign, accounting for its power by its place in the ontological structure of reality.15 But I came to recognize an additional dimension through reading Joseph Powers's Eucharistic Theology. In particular, his chapter on the real presence and "transignification" emphasized the dynamic aspects involved. He emphasizes that the sign "is not simply a 'thing.' The sign-act is an action, and the reality of the sign can only be understood in terms of the totality of the sign-act in the personal reality which is expressed and given in the

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expression; the sign-act is basically an act of communication, of self-participation to other persons."16 The implications for celebrating the eucharist are clear. Bread and wine are appropriate symbols, not just because they come from God and so participate in the reality of their source (as Tillich would say, "everything that is has being, because it participates in Being"), but also because they come from the creative act of God. The provision of bread is itself God's sign-act—symbolizing, indeed making real, the Creator's love in sustaining the creature. But to that natural capacity of bread to feed and thus symbolize God's sustaining love (which a stone, for example, does not do) is added a new dimension by God's sign-acts in history—in particular the calling of a covenant people and establishing the new covenant in Christ. Therefore the eucharist is not a mere exhibiting or displaying of things, "these creatures of bread and wine." "It presents in a realistically symbolic way" the oncefor-all sacrifice of Christ. This participation involves acts—prayers offered, proclamation made, bread broken, wine poured, eating and drinking. The sacrament depends on the totality of the sign-act. Powers explains: The eucharistic presence of Christ is a presence in a sign. But the sign of that presence is not simply the physical reality of the bread. The sign in which Christ is present is the worshiping community, the people at prayer, the celebrant proclaiming the words of consecration, and the bread and wine in the context of sacred action. . . . The symbol, the sign-act is not opposed to reality, it is the very incarnation of the deepest reality.17

This view of the presence of Christ in the sacrament through sign-event I found the more convincing because I had already been influenced by Rudolf Bultmann's insistence on the presence of Christ in the sign-act of preaching. According to the New Testament, Jesus Christ is the eschatological event, which means that he is the action of God by which he has set an end to the old world. In the preaching of the Christian Church the eschatological event will ever again become present and becomes present ever again in faith. The old world reaches its end for the believer [who] is a new creation in Christ.18

I have dealt extensively with the implications of Bultmann's view of incarnation and preaching, and the existentialist categories that inform them, in my History and Existential Theology.19 Despite recognizing other limitations, I am committed to his view of pteaching as sign-event that re-presents God's once-for-all saving event in Jesus Christ, and does so not merely by "human remembering" but through an event in which God is present to the believer, offering renewal and re-creation. This provides an approach to affirming the real presence of Christ in the eucharist in a congruent way, as the following quotation shows—if "proclamation" as "setting forth" is understood widely enough to include sacrament as well as preaching: A merely "reminiscent" historical account referring to what happened cannot make the salvation-occurrence visible. . . . Consequently in the proclamation Christ himself, indeed God himself, encounters the hearer, and the "now" in which the preached word sounds forth is the "now" of the eschatological occurrence itself.20

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Karl Barth's comment on this as "an existentialist translation of the sacramentalist teaching of the Roman Church"21 was intended to be dismissive. For me it was reassuring, confirming that I had been interpreting Bultmann correctly, and that here was a way of keeping word and sacrament together and providing common ground for Protestants and Catholics. Language such as "realistic symbol," "sign-act," "real presence," and "re-presentation of saving event" provides the context in which the word "realize" (in paragraph 4 of the agreed statement above) should be read: "The eucharist is ... a communion in which his people, growing together in Christ, realize their reconciliation in him." This could be understood in the purely subjective sense, of "coming to recognize"; or perhaps subjective/objective, "recognizing that reconciliation has already been achieved by God's act in the past." However, "realize" here should be understood in the more ancient and active sense of "make real." Anamnesis sets forth, offers now, makes real now what God's past action makes possible when received in faith. Thus the sign, the symbol is effective—it does what it signifies— not because of our doing, but because "Christ himself meets us in the eucharist. . . the Holy Spirit makes Christ really present to us." As a Methodist I had been singing that for years, especially in Charles Wesley's epicletic hymn: Come Holy Ghost, thine influence shed and realize the sign; Thy life infuse into the bread Thy power into the wine. Effectual let the tokens prove and made by heavenly art fit channels to convey Thy love to every faithful heart.22

Is there anything more to say? In one sense, for me, there is not. But the reference to the eucharist as a "communion in which [God's] people, growing together in Christ, realize their reconciliation in him" raises inevitably the question: what needs to be done so that this reconciliation is not only with God but between the Churches? Of course since Vatican II we have moved much closer to each other. International dialogues have contributed significantly to this, and the understanding of Church as Kotvwvia, communion—already expounded in Vatican II documents—has been very fruitful. 23 In 1988 Cardinal Basil Hume visited Australia and gave a very important paper, The Church as Communio,24 the aim of which was to discuss what the concept of Koivwvia "can contribute to our understanding of the theology of the Church and, in particular, to see its relevance to our work together for Christian unity." In hearing, discussing, and responding to that paper, I concluded that understanding the Church as communion (1) helps us recognize and cope with a dilemma that becomes the greater the more serious we become about Christian unity; and (2.) shifts our discussion of eucharistic sharing into a different mode. I wish, in this concluding section, to develop those points a little further.

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As ecumenism grows and is taken more seriously, our attitude toward Christians of other traditions changes—from condemnation for what was perceived as their error and unfaithfulness, to hope that they would repent and receive the means of salvation entrusted to us,25 to recognition of how much they have to offer that enriches us, and, finally, to what yet lies before us—that "flowering of koinonia which is God's will," as Cardinal Hume put it, which demands "not only profound structural changes but a radical metanoia, a change of heart, that might seem like a death but would be in fact a resurrection."26 Just then is the dilemma felt most keenly, for in all our Churches we have builtin limits to our metanoia. We take a stand on matters of conviction to which we allow no challenge. We even invoke the Lund statement on unity that has otherwise proved so helpful: "Do separately only those things which for conscience' sake cannot be done together." But if our consciences have been formed in separation from one another, in different "Christian communions" as we once would have put it, that Lund principle can be used as a barrier to further progress. So the dilemma is in danger of becoming a paradox: only when we share more fully in that Kivwvia which is the Church are we able to show that repentance—that change of heart— which is required for this same Koivwvia to be genuine. The paradox is compounded when we attempt to hold two claims together: the current Roman Catholic refusal to authorize shared communion with other Churches, and Cardinal Hume's identification of one important implication of understanding the Church asKoivwvia:"Communio within the body of Christ in the eucharist signifies and brings about the ultimate union of all the faithful in the body of Christ which is the Church."27 If we follow Vatican I1's insistence that valid baptism, inside or outside the visible unity of the Catholic Church, incorporates the baptized into Christ, then we must acknowledge that there are innumerable fellow-members of the body of Christ with whom we are unwilling or unable to share the means of building up that very body. Therefore, to persist in saying that sharing the eucharist can occur only at the culmination of the process toward that unity which God wills is to commit both a logical fallacy and a theological error. No such intimate union can occur without our first being built up by sharing the eucharist. So the question becomes more urgent: What does need to occur before we can begin to share the eucharist, with Roman Catholics in particular? We already recognize each other's baptism. Is it that we cannot reach sufficient agreement on the meaning of the eucharist—on the doctrine of the real presence, for example? I believe that discussions within Australia and at the international level have provided adequate basis for such agreement, as I have already implied in my comments on the Australian Council of Churches/Roman Catholic statement. To substantiate this contention requires far more elaboration than is possible here. So, in conclusion, I give an example of what has divided us in the past—viz., the doctrine of the real presence—and suggest some features of an approach that could overcome the division. This approach depends upon recognizing the difference between "problem" and "mystery." In ordinary conversation, of course, we often use the words interchange-

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ably, or use "mystery" only for a problem that has not yet been solved. Nevertheless, there are two underlying realities that are different and that can usefully be distinguished by naming as "problem" something that can in principle be solved, whereas "mystery" is not to be solved at all—it is to be recognized, shared, and appropriated. 28 Once having acknowledged the real presence of Christ in the eucharist, we also acknowledge this as mystery. However, to say "eucharist is mystery" does not mean that nothing more should be said. "Incarnation" is mystery too, yet the Church has properly upheld the features that make it mystery ("fully divine, fully human"), refusing to allow the mystery to be diminished by eliminating one of its terms. So the mystery of the eucharist must not be dissipated by reducing its essential features—for example, by saying it is just a "bare" rather than "effective" sign, or that the body and blood of Christ on the altar are identical with the body and blood of his historical person. On the other hand, the mystery should not be turned into the problem of how Christ is present, the different "solutions" to which are then used as rallying cries to keep us apart. Raymond George is no doubt right in saying that the alleged change in the elements so that they are the body and blood of Christ still seems to many Protestants to incur the charge about transubstantiation that it "overthroweth the nature of a sacrament" (Anglican Article XXVIII, Wesley's XVIII); for if they become the reality, how can they also be the sign of it? 29

Yet as he goes on to say, "it may yet: be that fuller exploration of the concept of sacramental signification may dispose of this problem." I am convinced from formal dialogue and informal discussions with colleagues in Australia and overseas, and in various teaching faculties around the world, that this is the case. Nevertheless, any such discussions must acknowledge that what is offered is a way of approaching and appropriating the mystery, retaining its essential features, rather than seeing it as a problem for which definitive solutions can. be provided.30 So Joseph Powers's conclusion is mine as well: Neither the theological elaboration of transubstantiation or transignification can pretend to "explain" or "prove" the eucharistic mystery, the "how" of Christ's eucharistic presence. Only Christ, the gift of the eucharist, can "explain" or "prove" himself to [usj. And that explanation or proof is not a matter of words or human construction. It is found only in the life which Christ shares with His body in this ineffable mystery.31 NOTES 1. The F. J. Cato Lecture was given every three years at the Australian Methodist General Conference. Since the union, it is given at the triennial General Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia. Geoffrey Wainwright's lecture was later published (GW 106). 2. John and Charles Wesley, "The Nature, Design and General Rules of the United Societies," in The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. 8 (London: Mason, 1856), 261. 3. GW 106:46. 4. This is the reason some give for calling ordained presbyters in the Uniting Church in Australia "Ministers of the Word"; Word is inclusive of sacrament. 5. From the 1662 Rook of Common Prayer.

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6. John Wesley, "The Means of Grace," in Sermons on Various Occasions (London: Epworth, 1944), 143. 7. Holy Communion: Three Orders of Service (Melbourne: JBCE, 1980), 1. 8. The Methodist Hymnal (New York: The Methodist Book Concern, 1935), 523. 9. Ibid., 522. 10. Holy Communion, 29. 11. Melbourne: Uniting Church Press, 1988. 12. The Basis of Union, 1971 revision (Melbourne: Aldersgate Press, 1971). 13. Cited in Compass 6/3 (July-August 1972): 16. 14. BEM, page x. Geoffrey Wainwright presented the final draft of this document to the Faith and Order Commission meeting in Lima in 1982. 15. "He who says 'only a symbol' has completely misunderstood the meaning of symbol; he confuses symbol with sign and ignores that a genuine symbol participates in the reality of that which it symbolizes." Paul Tillich in The Theology of Paul Tillich, ed. Charles W. Kegley and Robert W. Bretall (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 334-35. 16. Joseph M. Powers, Eucharistic Theology (New York: Herder, 1967), 166. 17. Ibid., 169. 18. Rudolf Bultmann, The Listener (September 1955): 361. 19. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969. 20. Rudolf Bultmann, The Theology of the New Testament, vol. 1 (New York: Scribners, 1951), 302. 21. CDIV/1, 767. 22. The Methodist Hymn Book for use in Australasia and New Zealand (London: Novello, 1933). #76723. The 1986 Report of the Roman Catholic/World Methodist dialogue, Toward an Understanding of the Church, drew extensively on this concept. 24. At an ecumenical summer school at St Mary's College, University of Melbourne. 25. For example, Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis: "We invite those who do not belong to the [Roman Catholic] Church to yield their free consent to the inner stirrings of God's grace. . . ." 26. Basil Hume, "The Church as Communion" (unpublished, 1988), 21. 27. Ibid., 4, citing the Final Report of the Extraordinary Synod in Rome in 1985, to which he contributed a short address "Church as Communion," printed in The Tablet 239 (7 December 1985), 1297 (emphasis added). 28. Gabriel Marcel elaborates on this distinction in his The Mystery of Being (London: Hartwell, 1950). 29. Raymond George, "Sign and Sacrament" (unpublished paper), 18. 30. For a fuller discussion, see Norman J. Young, "Problem, Mystery and Grace" in The Way 36/2 (April 1996): 141-50. 31. Powers, Eucharistic Theology, 186.

CHAPTER 9

PRESBYTERS' ORDINATION "vows" IN THE WESLEYAN FAMILY OF CHURCHES David Tripp

"Tomorrow I shall say to you, wilt thou, wilt thou, wilt thou? But there will come a day to you when another will say to you, hast thou, hast thou, hast thou?"1—so Bishop Charles Gore addressed his ordinands during their retreat with him on the eve of their ordination. "During his second year at Boston [University School of Theology], Norman [Vincent Peale] was ordained. He promised, as did all Methodist clergymen, to keep out of debt and avoid all use of tobacco"2—which would give the impression, to any reader who did not know otherwise, that these were ordination vows! These two passages illustrate, first, something of the penetrating spirituality attaching to the ordination examination inherited by the Wesleyan family of Churches from their Anglican origin; and second, something of the confusion in Methodist folklore as to the association of "vows" with progression into ministry. At certain points, ordination vows have played a prominent role in British Methodist sentiment and practice. The reintroduction in 1836, in the British Wesleyan Methodist Church, of a full-orbed ordination rite with imposition of hands3 was preceded and prepared for by Jabez Bunting's unauthorized but certainly deliberate introduction of the ordination vows for presbyters (from the Book of Common Prayer) into the examination of candidates for Full Connexion in 1824 and possibly earlier.4 Even before the change, ministers received by the previous procedure had typified their ministerial motivation by recalling that "the vows of God" were upon them.5 A century and a half later, in the British Conference's Service at the Welcome of a Minister to a Circuit, the newly arrived colleague was reminded, "At your ordination you answered to those things which were demanded of you," and then asked, "Will you endeavour to preach the Word of God, to administer the sacraments, to be a shepherd to the flock and to live a godly life in accordance with the promises made at your ordination?" 6 At a very early stage of British Methodism's unsuccessful union negotiations with the Church of Scotland, precise texts for ordination and induction vows were presented to the Churches,7 the 106

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rest of each service being sketched in merest outline. A ministerial spirituality of the personal renewal or reaffirmation of ordination vows, at the time of conference or other significant moments, emerged in the 19705 and 19805.8 The American scene is little different. In the Methodist Episcopal Church before its division in 1840 and after, as also in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and in the reunited Methodist Church, ministers transferring from other Churches were exempted from the laying on of hands but were required to profess "our ordination vows," unless they had already made such profession in other Churches of the Wesleyan family.9 In a controversial setting, a critic of the 1939 union charged prominent Methodist clergy with breaking their (diaconal) ordination vow by espousing modernist views of Scripture.10 And the intensely personal dimension is very present: I look back through thirty-two years to the day, so full of emotional interest to me, when [Bishop Joshua Soule's] hands were laid upon my head in my Deacon's ordination. I bless God, no lapse of time, no change of circumstances, has affected the irrevocable vow I made that day. What I committed into the hands of the blessed Christ—strength, talent, working faculty, life—is still in his hands.11

1784 and After: The American Branch When providing for the future life of the emergent Methodist Church in the newly independent United States, John Wesley adapted the Anglican Ordinal of 1660, probably for the ordinations that he himself carried out, and certainly for use in North America.12 Like the bulk of Anglican ordination liturgy, the ordination examination was derived from Martin Bucer, a fact of great significance but little considered. Wesley altered the text, to remove references to the English realm and its national Church, to simplify where possible, and to make some doctrinal refinements. Wesley's 1784 version survives with minimal change in the rites of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the Methodist Protestant Church, the (American) Wesleyan Methodist Church, the Missionary Methodist Church of America, the Congregational Methodist Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, the Southern Methodist Church, the Free Methodist Church, the Colored (now Christian) Methodist Episcopal Methodist Church, the re-united Methodist Church, and the Evangelical Methodist Church. The United Brethren in Christ adopted an abbreviated variant. The Evangelische Gemeinschaft used a close German translation of the Wesley text, later replaced by an English version, which was kept by both the Evangelical Association and the United Evangelical Church and their successor Evangelical Church, as well as the United Evangelical Church's continuing body, the Evangelical Congregational Church. The Wesley tradition then passed into the Evangelical United Brethren Church, and the United Methodist Church also, via the Methodist Church's 1964 Book of Worship. Thus far, amendments had been verbally limited, even if not trivial. The United Methodist Church's 1980 Ordinal . . . for Official Alternative Use, however, made

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substantial changes.13 These changes were extended, chiefly by way of abridgement, in the 1992 United Methodist Book of Worship. The final (well, final so far) result is: on vocation to eldership; on trinitarian belief; sufficiency of Scripture as unique standard for the Church; faithfulness in prayer and study; exemplary discipleship; denominational loyalty. In a general celebratio ordinum, questions 2 through 5, with another (preceding) question on representative ministry, move forward into a general examination of all candidates for all orders; vocation (specifically to eldership, introduced by a detailed account of the present duties of the Methodist presbyterate) and denominational loyalty are addressed immediately before the laying on of hands and prayer. The unintended result of this rearrangement is to give a functional, utilitarian, and obsessively denominational impression of ministry. The affirmation of trinitarian belief is intended to embed the presbyteral order in the general priesthood of the faithful, but the technique is oddly conceived. The same purpose would be better served by concentrating on the "Recognition of our Common Ministry" now (1992) inserted early in each ordination or commissioning order. The only other major change to be noted here is the 1992 Wesleyan Methodist rite, which adds an optional question to the ordinands' spouses: It is the teaching of Scripture that a spouse shall be a loving companion to the ministry of a mate. You have witnessed the examination of your marriage partner in which commitment to the work and responsibilities of ministry has been stated. Your participation in God's purposes for ministry through your marriage partner is important also. You will be needed to share in prayer, to extend love and compassion to all, to carry forward the example of marriage harmony and family wholesornencss. As the companion of your loved one who is now entering the ranks of ordained ministers in the Church, will you dedicate yourself to complement and embrace that ministry as God enables you? A: I will, by God's grace.

These vigorous words spell out what parishes do indeed usually expect, demand, of the pastor's spouse—a demand that has been much discussed in this century. The Churches' pastoral responsibility for clerical households might, however, better be served by suitable petitions in intercessory prayers. If a married couple is called as a couple to ordained ministry (and this does occur), then the whole ordination preparation and celebration would best apply to them both on equal and parallel terms.

1784 and After: The British Branch In British Methodism after Wesley's death, most ministers were admitted by a public act in which a second examination was followed by a ritualized vote of the whole conference (which long included those upon whom Wesley had laid hands) in the presence of the people, with prayer by the president. The form of examination used in the juridical phase was a Methodist peculiarity, continuing the disciplinary provisions of Wesley's "Large Minutes." The bodies that left Wesleyan Methodism (the original Methodist Connexion), and finally coalesced as the United Methodist Free Churches, continued this pattern. Their form for "Public Reception of Itinerant Preachers into Full Connexion"14 shows not only how this process was seen as a form of ordination but also how different the in-house testing of preachers among

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the Methodists differed from examination of candidates for the ministry of the Church universal: • Will you relate briefly your conversion to God, and your present Christian experience? • Can you declare in the presence of this congregation, and of Almighty God, that you are actuated by the desire to save souls from death, in offering yourself to become wholly devoted to the work of the Ministry? • Do you believe that you are called of God to this work? • Has God owned your ministerial labours, giving you seals to your ministry? • Do you believe the doctrines of the Holy Scriptures as they are generally believed and taught in the United Methodist Free Churches? • Do you approve of our Connexional Constitution and Regulations, of our system of Church discipline, and will you faithfully maintain the same? • Will you engage, if now received into Full Connexion, to the utmost of your power to make full proof of your ministry: diligently devoting yourself to prayer, to reading, and to study, that you may obtain every qualification to make you a devoted and efficient minister of Jesus Christ; and will you faithfully discharge the duties of the pastoral office, especially in visiting the sick and the poorer members of Society? • Will you affectionately and zealously co-operate with your brethren, in the great and important work of the ministry, rendering to your senior brethren such subjection in the Lord, as is not inconsistent with the requirements of the Holy Scriptures? This form evolved. Twenty years later, the second question extended the desire to save souls from death to include ". . . to aid believers to grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" (sanctification!). As to vocation: "Will you briefly state why you believe . . . ?" As to Scripture and denominational interpretation: "Do you believe . . ." is extended: ". . . and will you teach . . . ?" As to study: ".. . giving special attention to the Word of God ... ?" (the implications here are fascinating). The revered "senior brethren" have now given way to "your Superintendent," and subjection not inconsistent with Scripture has become "due respect and loyal co-operation." These texts, except for small residual influences in the British United Methodist Church's 1913 Boole of Services,15 belong to the past, but their emphases and their development illustrate some of the hidden forces working within the Methodist and other Churches in a rethinking of ministry and tradition. As to the other constituent Churches of the 1907 union: the Methodist New Connexion (1 797) published few ritual texts, apparently preferring the minimum of liturgical prescription beyond the text of the New Testament. (It cannot too often be explained that this policy is not indifference to worship but rather a commitment to careful extemporaneity.) The New Connexion ordained with imposition of hands from the outset—this was essential to their platform—and the act was preceded by questions, but no text has survived. The Bible Christians first published an ordination rite16 only very late in the nineteenth century. Its format is close to the old Wesleyan and continuing UMFC model. For only two of the five questions is spe-

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cific wording laid down: they combine materials from the UMFC rite under the headings of (a) total devotion, prayer, work for conversion and sanctification, and (b) cordial identification with the denomination and (a novelty, this) resolve "to remain in our ministry as long as you are able to continue in the work." The Primitive Methodist Church (1810) published no ordination liturgy throughout its history, P.M. ordinations took place at District Meetings, and detailed reports in the denominational magazine show that questions put to the ordinands before the prayer were a settled feature; but no text is known to be extant, even if any one had been written down. These developments represent, generally speaking, evolution of the Wesleyan Methodist practice before 1836, when the complete form of ordination was finally restored. When the rite needed for the Wesleyans, I7 who had only one order of ordained ministry, was issued, its examination showed two significant changes: the question as to vocation was replaced; and after the query as to the sufficiency of Scripture there were inserted two questions as to subscription—to the Wesleyan "Standard Sermons" and Notes, and to the Large Minutes—as being conformable with Scripture. It is significant that the latter change did not take place everywhere in the Wesleyan Methodist world—not, for example, in Canada. The vocation question was lifted from the first vocation interrogation in Cranmer's (not Bucer's) examination for the diaconate. It is addressed not to any specific order but to entry upon the ordained state at all. The candidates are warned that the personal sense of obligation is not self-authenticating, not least because sin and frailty obscure our self-knowledge. The candidates are asked if they trust (i.e., God, not themselves) that behind and beneath their personal perception there is the will and power of the Holy Spirit. The long-term result and criterion of that divine impulsion is the dominant motive and intent of Christian ministry: for the glory of God, specifically (as the Book of Offices adds) through the proclamation of the Gospel and the building up of God's people—to the (growing) exclusion of personal aggrandizement and self-regarding ambition. When the Wesleyans, Primitives, and United Methodists united in 1932, the Wesleyan ordinal was used until a new one could be published. The 1936 Book of Offices18 service made significant changes, without compromising the integrity of the general design. In the vocation question, preaching is explicitly mentioned. The question of doctrine, sacraments, and discipline is moved to fourth place, so that the theme of defense of orthodoxy follows immediately upon the question of Scripture sufficiency, and then the doctrine-sacraments-discipline of Christ issue can itself lead into the query about specifically Methodist doctrine (as subordinate to the shared scriptural faith) and then naturally into the discipline of filial obedience. Diligence in prayer and study, exemplary living, and the service of harmony then follow in their old order. Two questions are introduced: one concerns the encouragement of the body's every member to use their gifts to the full, and to present every member perfect; the second and last addresses ministry as representative of God's personal pleading, and the duty of stirring up the gift of the Spirit to testify to all humankind. This version, part of the rite by which Geoffrey Wainwright and his contemporaries were ordained, may be reasonably identified as the fullest flowering of the

PRESBYTERS ORDINATION VOWS III

text derived through Wesley from Cranmer and Bucer. The revisions of 1975 and 1998 are stark abbreviations of the material. The decisive steps were taken in an ecumenical setting. In Anglican-Methodist Unity: The Ordinal of 1968 (pp. 23-24), the questions are reduced to vocation (to the presbyterate specifically), the sufficiency of Scripture (with no inferences as to their use!), and belief in "this Church's version of the Faith, submission to discipline, diligence in prayer and study"; and they are reduced to a skeletal minimum in each case. Methodism's Faith and Order Committee was instructed to base the new Ordinal on this model, even though the Anglican-Methodist Unity Scheme had foundered, as a tacit pledge on Methodism's part to the further quest for unity. The questions in the 1975 Methodist Service Book19 reproduce those in the abortive 1968 draft, except that "submit yourselves as sons in the Gospel to those appointed to have the rule over you" becomes (significantly) "work together with your brothers and sisters..." The 1998 Draft of the Methodist Worship Book (p. 301) makes only a few, delicate, further changes: "a Minister of the Word and sacraments in the universal Church"; "studies which will equip you for your ministry." One drastic change is common to both British and American main lines: the omission (why?) of the ministerial service to Christian unity. In the Church that reads (professes to read) the sermon "On the Catholic Spirit" as a confessional platform, this omission is inexplicable.

Fons et Origo: Bucer's "Lawful Ordination" and Its Implications for Ordination Liturgy The English, and therefore most Methodist, ordination orders are essentially based on Martin Bucer's advice to Archbishop Cranmer in his De ordinatione legitima,20 which itself probably reflected the actual use of the Reformed Church of Strasbourg. This fact is of more than antiquarian interest. As well as providing a remarkable link with the wider Reformation (of which English-speaking Christians are usually allowed only a brief and prejudiced glimpse), Bucer's rite, and specifically the examination, carries and realizes a distinctive, and for these days ecumenically urgent, ecclesiology—within which stands the ministry, as an ecclesial instrument on a Christological basis.21 For Bucer, the Church carries responsibility for the whole of society, yet it cannot, true to its nature, be simply identified with or tied to its social context or to the present age. By the power of the Word and the Spirit, the Church may and must be constantly renewed in obedience and unity, and grow toward perfection. This is best done by the service of ecclesiolae, "Christliche Gemeinschaften" ("Christian societies, associations, fellowships")—smaller voluntary gatherings of believers, including Christian households. Such a Church requires a ministry to serve its corporate life through the preaching of the true Word; by defense against false doctrine; by personal counsel (in church gatherings, in families, and face-to-face); and in essentially collegial labor for the harmony and peace of the Church universal. All this is the act of Christ giving gifts to and for and within his Body, as is envisaged in Ephesians 5. There is an obvious sympathy between this vision, which is condensed into Bucer's and Cranmer's ordination examination, and the Wesleys'

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vision of a Church renewed in faith and fellowship for the conversion and hallowing of a nation. The structure of Bucer's ordination rite is innovative and deliberate. The examination had a degree of medieval precedent, not least in the vow of canonical obedience.22 The Anglican liturgiologist William Palmer23 reasonably surmised that the questions, developing earlier interrogations addressed to bishops-elect, were more searching than anything that had gone before. As an element in the ordination ritual, the examination and the "vows" are important but not essential. "Suffice it to say, that the only mode of ordination which can be proved to have existed from the beginning, consists in the imposition of hands, with a benediction or prayer that the Holy Spirit may enable the person ordained to fulfil his office in the Christian Church." This further observation of Palmer expresses the general consensus24 of liturgical scholarship: the core and essence of the rite is prayer, that God will make and sustain God's ministers. Far from being the essence or center of the rite,25 the "vows" are secondary. From a separate proceeding, prompted by the advice in 1 Timothy 5:22, the examination has moved into ordination liturgy and has thereby been irrevocably changed. It is a reassurance to the ordainers that their task is being discreetly done. It is a point d'appui for clergy accountability.26 It is a means by which "this present congregation of Christ here assembled may also understand your minds and wills in these things, and that this your promise may the more move you to do your duties"—though, indeed, the latter aspect may be perilous: ". . . sworn word may strengthen quaking heart," said Gimli. "Or break it," said Elrond.27

But all these roles are minor. The centrality of the prayer provides the "vows" with their meaning and sacramental effect. They do more than identify those areas and aims of ministry where God and God's servants work together most closely on the Church's most sensitive and risky tasks of world-confronting mission. The "vows" do not stand alone, nor are they climactic: they follow, as a faith response, upon the proclamation of the Word and its application in the presidential preamble, and lead on, by way of the commendation, into prayer: silent intercession, Veni Creator, and ordination prayer. The wording of the responses, until recently, has made this clear; in the 1936 British version: "I ... have so determined, by God's grace." "I will, the Lord being my helper." "I will do so, with the help of the Lord." "I do so believe, and I will so preach, the Lord being my helper." "I will, the Lord being my helper." "I will endeavour so to be, the Lord being my helper." "I will apply myself thereto, the Lord being my helper." "I will, the Lord being my helper." "I will endeavour so to do, the Lord being my helper." "I will, the Lord being my helper." This is not vain repetition. The emphasis is deliberate. The obligations can in the end be only the work of God, and ministry is conferred, made possible and sustainable, and sustained only through the effectual prayer of the Church, the covenant people. W. David Stacey, biblical scholar, systematic theologian, educator of the ministry, and servant of the British Methodist Church in Faith and Order, puts it well for us:

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Vows belong between the two poles of the spiritual life, submission and initiative. On the face of it, they seem more like initiative. There is the appearance of selfconfidence in the man who stands up and asserts publicly before God that he will do this and he will not do that. But the more we think, the more it appears that vows really represent submission. The crux of it all is not what we promise to do, but the attendant prayer that God who has brought us to this place by His call will use these vows as a means to enable us to fulfil our ministry.28 The weakening of these responses is thus a dire symptom. Following its ecumenical blueprint, the Methodist Service Book 1975 reduces the answers uniformly to "I am" and "I will." The effects of this change are forcibly brought out by Sergio Carile's translation of them all as simply "Si."29 Envoi Adaptations made in recent decades in the two majority communities, British and American, have tended to less demanding stipulations and more functional, activist categories. Far from magnifying the priesthood of all believers, these moves have unintentionally increased clericalism and obscured the ecclesial character of ordained (and therefore of all) ministry. The traditions surviving chiefly in smaller, conservative Methodist bodies ignored (to say no more) by the larger ones, are not fossils: in other liturgical areas, these Churches have been freely innovative. Here, they have preserved a residual seed of an ecclesiology apt to the Wesleyan vision, and of an accompanying spirituality that expects all the more of ordinands because it asks everything of the faithful Trinity. Common action to fashion a workable form of these "vows," to be shared across the Wesleyan family, would not be unthinkable; but such a course would tax all our resources of resolution and courage and humility. NOTES 1. G. Leonard Prestige, The Life of Charles Gore, A Great Englishman (London & Toronto: William Heinemann, 1935), 259. 2. Arthur Gordon, One Man's Way: The Story and Message of Norman Vincent Peale (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972), 85-86. 3. On the history of ordination in Methodism in general: John L. Nuelsen, Die Ordination im Methodismtts: Ein Beitrag zur Entstehungsgeschichte der kirchlichen Selbstdndigkeit der Methodistenkirche, Beitrage zur Geschichte des Methodismus, Heft 2 (Bremen: Verlagshaus der Methodistenkirche, 1935); Albert Brown Lawson, John Wesky and the Christian Ministry: The Sources and Development of His Opinions and Practice (London: SPCK, 1963); A. Raymond George, "Ordination in Methodism," London Quarterly and Holborn Review (April 1951): 156-69; B. L. Semmons, Can We Get Methodist Origins Right? and The Conferences After Wesley (Melbourne: National Press, 1967 and 1971, respectively); John C. Bowmer, "The Ordination Service in Wesleyan Methodism, 1791- 1850," Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 34/6 (October 1974): 153-57; John D. Grabner, "A Commentary on the Rites of an Ordinal, the United Methodist Church," Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 1983; Sergio Carile, "Liturgia per la consecrazione pastorale nella Chiesa Metodista," Rivista Litwrgica [Torino] 83/3-4 (Maggio-Agosto 1996): 528-36.

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4. Observed with disapproval by James Dixon; see Richard Watson Dixon, The Life of James Dixon, D.D., Wesleyan Minister (London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1874), 125132. 5. "The vows of God"; compare Joseph Entwhistle, "Pastoral Duties," Methodist Magazine [New York], 10/9 (August 1827): 329-32; here, 329. 6. The date of this service is uncertain, but prior to 1966. During the work toward the 1975 Methodist Service Book, Faith and Order and its co-opted colleagues agreed that this formulation savored of "re-ordination" and should be eschewed. 7. Methodist Conference . . . Bradford . . . 1978: Agenda, 11-12 (Representative Session only). 8. See Paul Hulme, "Called to the Ministry—for what?", Methodist Recorder 7312 (5 February 1998): 5. 9. See Robert Emory and W. P. Strickland, History of the Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church (New York: Carlton & Porter, 1847), 137-38; P. A. Peterson, History of the Revisions of the Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (Nashville, 1889), 66; Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Church 1940 (Nashville: Methodist Publishing House, 1940), 94; C. W. Bracknell, "The Discipline and the Recognition of Orders: A Brief Historical Review," Methodist History 19 (April 1981): 179-82—a study the importance of which is out of all proportion to its brevity. 10. Newton C. Conant, Present Day Methodism and the Bible (Camden, N.J.: Bible Protestant Press, 1949), 44. 11. W. M. Wightman, Dec. 31, 1865, in Frederick DeLand Leete, Methodist Bishops. Personal Notes and Bibliography; with Quotations from Unpublished Writings and Reminiscences (Nashville: Parthenon Press, 1948), 245. 12. On Wesley's ordinal, see Lawson (note 3 above), esp. appendix 2 (182-98). For the text: James F. White, ed., John Wesley's Sunday Service for the Methodists in North America (Nashville, Tenn.: United Methodist Publishing House, 1984), 291-92. Commentaries on the Wesley text and its derivatives: Nolan B. Harmon, The Rites and Ritual of Episcopal Methodism (Nashville: Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South, 1926), 311-407; Albert Cook Outlet, "The Ordinal," in William F. Dunkle and Joseph D. Quillian, Jr., eds., Companion to the Book of Worship (Nashville & New York: Abingdon, 1970), 103-33, esp- 126-27. 13. See 41-44, 144-47. A commentary (67-70) is included; the Examination is misleadingly characterized (67) as "the liturgical equivalent of the various forms of academic and disciplinary testing undergone by all candidates for ordained ministry." 14. Book of Services for the Use of the United Methodist Free Churches [commissioned by the 1867 Annual Assembly] (London: T. Newton, n.d.), 84-86. The Methodist Free Church Book of Services [n.d., between 1889 and 1898], 60-61. 15. Book of Services for the Use of the United Methodist Church [not its U.S. 1968 namesake] (London: Henry Hooks, 1913), 62-64. 16. Book of Services for the Use of the Bible Christian Church, new ed. (London: Bible Christian Book Room 1903), 35-38. 17. The Sunday Service of the Methodists; with other occasional services (London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1876), 138-39. 18. Also many editions; for example, in the 1936 pulpit edition, 120-30. 19. The pagination is constant in all editions: see p. G9. 20. Printed in the 1577 Scripta Anglicana. Much of the Latin text is cited in parallel columns by F. E. Brightman, The English Rile, Vol. II (London, Rivingtons 1915), 974- 97, esp. 984-87, and by Harmon (see note 12 above). A most valuable English rendering is given by E. C. Whitaker in his Martin Bucer and the Book of Common Prayer, Alcuin Club Collections, no. 55 (Great Wakering, Essex: Mayhew-McCrimmon, 1974), 176-83. For

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Cranmer's extensive yet not uncritical use of Bucer, see Paul F. Bradshaw, The Anglican Ordinal: Its History and Development from the Reformation to the Present Day, Alcuin Club Collections, no. 53 (London: SPCK, 1971), esp. chap. 2. 21. Still of first value: Jacques Courvoisier, La notion de I'eglise chez Bucer dans son developpement historique (Paris, 1933); Willem van't Spijket, The Eccksiastical Offices in the Thought of Martin Bucer (Leiden: Brill, 1996). 22. Cf. Joseph Andreas Jungmann, "Das Gehorsamsversprechen nach der Priesterweihe und der althochdeutsche Priestereid," in L. Lenhardt, ed., Universitas: Dienst an Wahrheit und Leben. FS fur Bischof Dr Albert Stohr, Bd. I, 1960, 430-35, with bibliography. 23. William Palmer, Origines Liturgicae, or Antiquities of the English Ritual, and a Dissertation on Primitive Liturgies, Vol 2,3d edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1839), 303. 24. Ibid., 297. As to consensus: Jean Michel Hanssens, "Les oraisons sacramentelles des ordinations orientales," Orientalia Christiana Periodica 18 (1952): 297-318; Kenneth Grayston, "Ministry and Laity," Church Quarterly 1/2 (October 1968): 149-61; Paul De Clerck, "L'ordination des pasteurs selon quelques liturgies de consecration reformees," in Melanges liturgiques offerts a R. P. Dom Bernard Botte (Louvain: Abbaye du Mont-Cesar, 1972), 75-90; Pierre-Marie Gy, "Theologie des prieres anciennes pour 1'ordination des eveques et des pretres," Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Theologiques 58 (Octobre 1974): 599-617; Martha Ellen Stortz, " 'By the Laying On of Hands and by Prayer": An Analysis of Power in the Rite of Ordination," Consensus 20/1 (1994): 9-28; Ralph W. Quere, "The Spirit and the Gifts Are Ours: Imparting or Imploring the Spirit in Ordination Rites?" Lutheran Quarterly 27 (November 1975): 322-46. 25. But see the amazing evidence from an English Anglican cathedral in Peter Toon, The Ordinal and Its Revision, Grove Booklets on Ministry and Worship, no 29 (Bramcote, Notts.: Grove Books, 1974), 3 and 22. 26. Note the agonized article by Thomas A. Boogaart, "Stumbling Over Ordination," Perspectives 9/4 (October 1994): 3-4, on the plight of a Church without binding ordination vows as an objective point of reference. 27. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 294. 28. W. D. Stacey, "Concerning the Ministry—Three Addresses to Ordinands, III: Vows," Expository Times 75/10 (July 1964): 292-94. 29. See, for example, Frank S. Hickman, Christian Vocation. A Study in Religious Experience (Nashville: Cokesbury, 1930).

CHAPTER 10

KOlVWVIO,

O l K O V U E V N , AND EUCHARIST

IN E C U M E N I C A L CONVERSATIONS

David N. Power

I The purpose of this article is to consider how, in a number of bilateral conversations, the use of the tetm KOtvcovia—borrowed from the New Testament—currently relates to the pursuit of full sacramental communion between Christian Churches.1 In a single article, it is impossible to do full justice to the meaning and use of this word; therefore, attention is focused especially on its sacramental implications.

Methodist/Roman Catholic International Commission Since this is a contribution by a Roman Catholic to a volume appropriately honoring the work of a Methodist, Geoffrey Wainwright, whose service to the oikovuevm is widely acknowledged, it seems fitting to begin with some comment on Roman Catholic/Methodist international dialogue. The statement The Apostolic Tradition,2 presented by the Roman Catholic/Methodist International Commission in 1991, does not make as much explicit use of the term and concept of KOtvcovia as do other recent ecumenically agreed-upon statements. Nevertheless, it is presented in its entirety as an elaboration of the following paragraph from a 1986 report of the same commission, Towards a Statement on the Church: Because God so loved the world, he sent his Son and the Holy Spirit to draw us into communion with himself. This sharing in God's life, which resulted from the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit, found expression in a visible koinonia [communion, community] of Christ's disciples, the Church. What is expressed in this brief paragraph is the visible reality of KOtvcovia in the life of the community of Christ's disciples, and its roots in the love of the Father, shown in the sending of the Son and the Spirit. As The Apostolic Tradition elaborates on this description of the Church, it points primarily arid foundationally to 116

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the preaching of the Word, to repentance and conversion (17, 18), and to the community in faith and baptism that brings the Church together (64). The place of the eucharist in this communion is as that which feeds it (65). In the common worship of word and sacrament (67), the statement points to the experience of the presence of the Lord among his disciples (68), thus adding a typically Methodist emphasis on the experience of grace to a shared catholic accentuation of the visible factors of word and sacrament. It further points to this reality of community as a share in the fuller communion of saints, and so in the holiness, witness and service of the discipleship of Christ (66). The statement also points to a considerable degree of agreement on the place of the ordained ministry, and even of the episcopal ministry, in the life of the Christian community and the handing on of the apostolic tradition (78-85). As the foundation of ecclesial communion, the declaration points to the "real relationships existing within the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit," which "are reflected within the ordered life of creation and, still more clearly revealed to the life of faith, in the pattern they establish and make possible for the community life of God's people" (49). This is not yet a statement that the life of Christians in itself shares in the trinitarian relations, but this possibility is mentioned in the next paragraph, where it is said of 1 John 1:1-13 that it "dares to suggest that the life of the Christian community is a reflection of the life of the Godhead." Hence the fellowship or communal life that Christians share together has not only its horizontal dimension, but also a vertical dimension: "their sharing in the life of the Father and his Son Jesus Christ" (50). While considerable agreement is established on matters of doctrine, and on the nature of the Church and the components of its worship, this Methodist/Roman Catholic document makes it clear that whatever communion exists, it is not yet the "full communion" toward which Christian Churches are obliged to work together, in the very name of the mission given by God through the Son and the Spirit. In the section entitled "Convergences and Divergences," the nature of the impediment to "full communion" is spelled out (86-98). This has to do primarily with the nature of ordained ministry and the place and role of the episcopal succession in the apostolic tradition of the Church. One can only remark that it is primarily divergence on this point that prevents not simply full communion but a recognition of each other's celebrations of the eucharist. Though there are some problems that remain with how the nature of the eucharist is expressed, or with the format of service followed and prayers proclaimed, by and large one might say that there is enough accord on these matters to allow for recognition of Methodist worship on the Roman Catholic side, not only of "eucharistic realities" but of the eucharistic sacrament given to the Church by Christ. Even with this much consensus, however, the problem of a recognition of eucharist continues to lie in problems having to do with the recognition of episcopacy. As the statement very aptly says (94), When the time comes that Methodists and Catholics declare their readiness for that "full communion in faith, mission and sacramental life" toward which they are working (Towards a Statement on the Church, 20), the mutual recognition of ministry will

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be achieved not only by their having reached doctrinal consensus but it will also depend upon a fresh creative act of reconciliation which acknowledges the manifold yet unified activity of the Holy Spirit throughout the ages. It will involve a joint act of obedience to the sovereign Word of God.

This brief prognosis indicates that overcoming present doctrinal differences is only part of the road to communion. Beyond that, there is the need to consider historical facts and to find their place within tradition, and there is the need for an explicit act of reconciliation.3 What is also signified, however succinctly, is that this will require the Churches to consider the diverse ways in which the Holy Spirit has been at work in history, even when divisions came about. This in fact implies that this work belongs within a broad perception of apostolic tradition and of the diverse ways in which, amid sad divisions and enmities, the work of this Spirit has continued in diverse visible forms and communities.

The Use of the Term Koivcovia in Ecumenical Conversations The language of KOtvcovta, with specific reference to the New Testament use of the term, is in fact used more abundantly in several other bilateral ecumenical statements. The term is borrowed particularly from Acts 2:42, 1 Corinthians 10:16, and 1 John 1:3, and then related to many other aspects of the communion between those who are baptized into Christ. Used in this way, the statements do not depend on exact exegesis of scriptural passages but depend more on a concatenation of texts. However, the three scriptural passages mentioned do provide some horizon to this way of addressing the unity of the Church. Acts 2:42 belongs within a passage in which Luke summarizes all that constitutes the shared life of the Jerusalem community in its early days: the common belief in the teaching of the apostles, common prayer, common possessions, and the KOtvcflvia given in the breaking of the bread. Problems about the meaning of the breaking of the bread in Acts are well known. It can include both the commensality of the disciples and possibly the celebration of the Lord's Supper, though this is not clear. Ecumenical statements draw on all these factors of ecclesial life to describe Christian communion. In 1 Corinthians 10, the eucharist as the body and blood of Christ is clearly at issue, where it is said that the saving communion (Koivcovia) in the one loaf and the one cup, in the body and blood of Christ, make of participants one community. This text is evoked in the Lutheran/Roman Catholic agreed statement on the doctrine of justification (quoting Martin Chemnitz) to relate participation in the eucharist to a participation in the life of the Godhead, which is the ultimate foundation of all Christian communion.4 The text of 1 John 1:3, also quoted in this document (63), very clearly relates the fellowship among Christians to fellowship with the persons of the Trinity. The author of the letter seeks fellowship with its addressees, of which it is said "truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." These three texts alone provide what could be said to be the groundwork on KOtvcovta in ecumenical statements, a concept upon which they then elaborate in

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different fashion, in relation to different factors of the life of Christians together, invisible and visible. The relation of Christian communion to the life of the Trinity is quoted as its foundation in several documents. We have already seen how Methodists and Catholics state this, with some reserve on whether Christian life should be called a share in the life of the Godhead or simply a reflection of this life in its own visible patterns of fellowship. As in the statement on the doctrine of justification quoted above, 1 John 1:3 is made foundational in the Porvoo Common Statement that issued from conversations between the British and Irish Anglican Churches and the Nordic and Baltic Lutheran Churches in 1992.5 The dialogue between Pentecostal Churches and the Roman Catholic secretariat for Christian Unity also appeals to this Johannine text to state that "Both Pentecostals and Roman Catholics believe that the KOtvcovia between Christians is rooted in the life of Father, Son and Holy Spirit"6 and that the Holy Spirit is the source of ecclesial communion.7 In noting that the topic of Koivcovia was chosen for this dialogue because of the role it is playing in other dialogues (8,9), and because it evokes the doctrine of the communion of saints (an important point of contact in an earlier phase of Pentecostal-Catholic conversations), this declaration also appeals to the communion of life described in the broad terms of Acts 2. The location of the celebration of the eucharist within the communion of the Church is strongest, as one might expect, in dialogues to which the Orthodox Churches are party. The 1982 statement of the Joint International Commission for the Orthodox/Roman Catholic dialogue on "The Mystery of the Church and of the Eucharist in the Light of the Mystery of the Holy Trinity"8 states that "the Eucharist is truly the sacrament of the Church, at once as sacrament of the total gift the Lord makes of himself to his own and as manifestation and growth of the body of Christ, the Church" (I, 4c). Referring to 1 Corinthians 10:15-17, it says: "This mystery of the unity in love of many persons constitutes the real newness of the Trinitarian koinonia communicated to men in the Church through the Eucharist" (II,1). This same document describes how the celebration of the eucharist belongs in and to the local Church, and how through it the mystery of the Church is realized first and foremost as a local reality. Since however the Church comes into being not through human effort but through a gift from on high, what is realized locally is the universal mystery of the Church that owes its origin and life to the gift and work of the Trinity (II, 1; III,1). The KOivowia of the three persons thus realized eucharistically in the Church is the eschatological newness of God's promise; it is kerygmatic in as much as it announces the event of the mystery; and it is both ministerial and pneumatological (II, 2). The ministry of the bishop (or of the presbyter), who presides over the eucharist, originates in and belongs to the local Church (II, 3,4). The Anglican-Orthodox dialogue also sees the celebration of the eucharist as the realization of the Kowrovta of the Church, in its participation in the Koivcovia of the Trinity.9 Likewise locating the eucharist in the local Church, participants in these conversations chose to emphasize how through the eucharist all local Churches are bound together in a common faith and a common love: At each local Eucharist, celebrated within the catholic Church, Christ is present in his wholeness, and so each local celebration actualizes and gives visible expression

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to the Church's catholicity. Communion in the Eucharist is also the outward manifestation of the common faith and the Christian love which hinds together all the local churches in the one catholic Church.10

The Pentecostal dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church is at the opposite pole, as far as Christian life and its visible components are concerned. Conversion and common discipleship—response to the Word of God—is what constitutes ecclesial communion and the participation in divine life. The statement points to differing starting points in the thematization of Kotvcovia. The Roman Catholic focus is sacramental, particularly baptismal (31), so that they see communion as a given—especially because what is contained in the sacraments is provided as the means to a unity in faith. The Pentecostal starting point is conversion, through repentance and personal faith, which introduces people into fellowship with Christ and with one another (32). Baptism is a sign of this repentance and conversion, and the only kind of Baptism to be practiced is believers' baptism. For Pentecostals, the Lord's Supper has a very secondary role in nurturing and expressing communion (96). For them, "the central element in worship is the preaching of the Word" (ibid.). In keeping with this emphasis, the Pentecostal members of the conversation point to those elements of communion that show up in common obedience to God's Word, in the conversion that is not only internal but manifest, and in the witness that believers and disciples give to the reign of God in the world. Of course, the Roman Catholic participants deny none of these components of Christian, fellowship, but for them the question that is constantly raised is how they relate to their sacramental basis. The Porvoo Common Statement, in stating the agreement and unity that already exists between Lutheran and Anglican Churches, describes the ground and starting point of ecclesial communion as the death of Jesus Christ by which humanity is saved from sin and death, and the proclamation of this good news (15). Faith, then, is said to express the "God-given recognition that the light has come into the world," and that "as life in communion with the triune God, brings us into, sustains and nourishes us in the common life of the Church, Christ's Body" (16). Summoned by the Gospel and baptized into Christ's death and resurrection, in the eucharist Christians "are nourished and sustained as members of the one Body by participation in the body and blood of Christ (1 Cor. 10:16f)" (17). In all of these statements on Kotvcovia, it is evident that ecclesial communion is seen to be a participation in the life of the Godhead, and even in most cases in the Kotvcovia of Father, Son, and Spirit. For all, there is a sense in which it is already a given, because of God's initiative and the death of Christ; but likewise for all, it is not yet fully given until the consummation of God's reign. Though it still has to be built up, it can never be seen as the result of human effort but is always a gift to be received from God, through Christ and the Spirit. In brief, then, Kotvcovia is both given and not yet given, but how this is so cannot be appreciated unless it is seen as a gift to the Church, and not the Church's own attainment. Many of the elements of Kotvcovia are common to the vision of all Churches that take part in these bilateral conversations, and in that sense all would see a measure of communion already existing among all believing Christians, and be-

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tween diverse ecclesial bodies. However, the manner in which communion in the divine life and between members of Christ's body is given to the Church is viewed in somewhat different ways. Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions point primarily to the gift that is given and constantly offered in the sacraments, and particularly in the eucharist. Protestant traditions give primacy to the preaching of the Gospel and to faith, and relate the role of sacraments and eucharist to this. Pentecostal Churches put more emphasis on repentance and conversion and on the witness of discipleship.

Sister Churches From the more recent statements of ecumenical dialogue, it is the nature and understanding of the ministry, and of the episcopacy in particular, that stands out as the greatest hurdle to overcome in reaching "full communion"—that is, a visible communion between the Churches that allows for shared worship. Churches generally seem to agree that this cannot come about without some assessment of historical separation, and without, as for example in the Methodist/Catholic dialogue, an explicit act of reconciliation between Churches. The degree of communion that some separated Churches see themselves as already sharing, and the reason why (even given this sharing) they do not have full communion, is illustrated by the use of the concept of "Sister Churches." This is found in both Roman Catholic/Orthodox and Lutheran/Anglican dialogues. The concept was already introduced into the Decree on Ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council, and was further developed in the 1993 Balamand statement of the Joint International Commission for dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches.11 This document, issued at Balamand, Lebanon, was intended to serve as a practical guideline in determining the polity of relations between the Eastern and Western Church in Eastern Europe, after its opening up to influence from the West due to the downfall of Communism. As the Catholic Church became more active in that part of the world, clashes developed, especially with regard to efforts at proselytizing. The document was intended to express why the two Churches should respect one another mutually, why efforts at proselytizing on either part were discountenanced, and yet why they still remained unready to enter full communion—most visibly by not sharing together in the eucharistic celebration, which both Churches place at the very heart of ecclesial life and communion. It is to spell out this reality that the concept of sister Churches was put to exercise, especially in sections 13 and 14 of the document. The reason why Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches can recognize each other as sister Churches is that they can see in one another those essential elements left to the Church by Christ, acknowledging that these cannot be seen as the exclusive property of either community: On each side it is recognized that what Christ has entrusted to his Church—profession of apostolic faith, participation in the sacraments, above all the one priesthood celebrating the one sacrifice of Christ, the apostolic succession of bishops—cannot be considered the exclusive property of one of our Churches. (13)

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Because of the recognition that each possesses these elements, they may be considered sister Churches (14). Here, a vital role is played by the recognition of the apostolic succession of the episcopacy, and thus of one another's sacraments. In the teaching on the episcopacy, however, the role of this ministry in each local Church is accentuated, just as the celebration of the eucharist in local Churches was put to the fore in the earlier statement on Church, eucharist, and Trinity. This perception of the role of the bishop is grounded in the understanding that the mystery of the Church, as a communion in the life of the Godhead, is given its primary visible expression in the local Church, especially when gathered for the eucharist under the presidency of its ordained minister. Given this emphasis on the reality and mystery of the local Church, the statement can bring diversity to the fore. The mystery of universal communion, or oiKOUU.EV'n, is that it remains a communion within diversity. This diversity is doctrinal, theological, cultural, and liturgical. Preserving this legitimate diversity means that the "search for perfect and total communion" is "neither absorption nor fusion but a meeting in truth and love" (14). This is what leads to the practical rules governing relations between these two bodies when they are located in the same region (19-35). There are many ways in which the Churches can come together in common worship without encroaching on one another's legitimacy, but this continues to fall short of sharing eucharistic communion—especially because of practical and doctrinal differences on the role played by the Bishop of Rome in fostering communion between local eucharistic Churches. From this it would appear that what keeps the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches from a common eucharist, even in their mutual recognition of each other as sister Churches, relates to their differing perceptions of the mystery of the local Church as a eucharistic Church within the unity of all Churches. From an Orthodox perspective, a communion ecclesiology has to begin with the local Church and its eucharist. The mystery of Christ and of divine Koivcovia is given and realized in each Church, within the particularity of its own tradition. The recognition of this mystery has to be the ground for communion between Churches, and nothing can be done in sacramental celebration that obscures this vision. Roman Catholics will for their part affirm the importance of the local Church and its eucharist and ministry, but there is always a way in which Catholic teaching gives priority to the universal over the particular by its forceful teaching on papal primacy. This risks putting the particularity of each Church, and of its liturgy, in peril. For the Orthodox, the eucharist cannot be allowed to absorb Churches and liturgies into some greater ecclesial whole, which is focused on the role of the central office of the Bishop of Rome. There is also a tendency in Roman Catholic approaches to view the eucharist as a mystery and rite in itself, albeit to be realized in a local community; such a tendency can give the eucharist, in itself, priority over the other realities of local Churches. While the very concept of "sister Church" both calls for mutual recognition and stands as an obstacle to eucharistic fellowship in this dialogue, in Anglican/Lutheran dialogue its employ is more amenable in paving the way to full communion, as in the Porvoo Common Statement. For the Churches that joined together in forging this statement and plan of concord, there are both practical and doctrinal aspects

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of the appellation "sister Churches."12 In the first place, and in a practical way, they see themselves brought together in mutual sympathy in facing the challenges of the present age, challenges to the preaching of the Gospel and to the identity of Christianity. On a more doctrinal level, that document says, "We found that there were no essential differences between us in the fields of faith, sacramental life or ministry (each Church already being episcopal in structure)." What needed, and needs, to be worked out between Anglican and Lutheran Churches, as between Anglican and Methodist Churches, is the precise nature of the episcopacy and the degree of its necessity to ecclesial structure and to the life of the Church as the body of Christ. To begin with, these Churches are faced with the fact of a historical break in the line of episcopal succession, which came about because of historical circumstances and was occasioned by the desire to remain faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ (whatever institutional discontinuities this might involve). In present circumstances— in line with the options of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches in its document on Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry — these Churches wish to see the episcopacy maintained, and where necessary restored, as a sign of unity and apostolic succession. The historical break is more evident and unquestionable for Lutheran Churches than for Anglican, but for both there is the question of whether a confessional Church can maintain its connection with the apostolic tradition, according to the will of Christ, even if this succession has been broken by adopted procedures of ordination and induction into ministry. Surfacing from beneath this question is another: whether fidelity to the Gospel, and so to the authentic apostolic tradition, may in given circumstances necessitate this break. That of itself evokes another issue, that is, the nature of the relation between Word and dominical sacrament on the one hand and ordained ministry on the other. Is the apostolic and episcopal ministry needed in order to authenticate the preaching of the Gospel and the proper administration of the sacraments, or is the ministry in fact authenticated as a sign through its own fidelity to the Gospel? This highlights an important ecclesiological implication of the doctrine of justification by faith. Both Porvoo and the statement Toward Full Communion promulgated by the Lutheran/Episcopal Dialogue in the United States make a judgment on the place of the episcopacy in the Church, affirming that the historic episcopacy of itself is not a guarantee of the fidelity of the Church to the apostolic tradition and to the Gospel. As Porvoo puts it, "The use of the sign of the historic episcopal succession does not of itself guarantee the fidelity of the Church to every aspect of the apostolic faith, life and mission."13 For its part, Toward Full Communion states: "We recognize . . . that the ministries of episkope which we have received in each of our Churches do not incontestably link our Churches to the koinonia of the wider Church of God on earth through time and place."14 At this point, it is proposed that the Episcopal Church in the USA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America recognize each other as "Churches in which the Gospel is preached and taught," and that in the process each recognize the episcopacy of the other Church. This is concretely the same proposal made to the Anglican Churches and the Lutheran Churches addressed by the Porvoo Statement. The "sustained and serious commitment to the apostolic mission of the

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Church,"15 which they see in one another, is the ground for mutual affirmation, for recognition of the episcopacy, and for taking steps toward full communion. Thus Porvoo sees the recognition of episcopacy as possible, even if a Church for a certain period has maintained succession through an occasional presbyteral, rather than episcopal, ordination (52). Similarly, it: states that "Resumption of the use of the sign [of the laying on of hands in the historic succession] does not imply an adverse judgment on the ministries of those Churches which did not previously make use of the sign" (53). The nature of the sign of episcopal ordination lies in its relationship to a Church in which the Gospel is preached and the sacraments of baptism and Lord's Supper are duly administered according to the Lord's ordinances, and in which one can see the visible signs or testimonies of conversion and faithful witness to the Gospel. Within this context, these agreements propose to see the episcopacy (and the mutual recognition thereof) as an important sign of, and a divinely willed aid to the maintenance of, the apostolic tradition of the Church. This means that, in practical terms, these Churches recognize each other's eucharists and do not propose any process of reordination in entering full communion. They do however see the need for repentance and the mutual appeal for forgiveness, as well as several concrete and liturgically visible steps that can be taken to forge the communion between them. The U.S. proposal includes acceptance of ministry without reordination, and joint action between bishops of either Church in episcopal ordination.16 The Porvoo Common Statement asks for similar steps but also proposes "three central celebrations of the Eucharist" (59), at which all the Churches concerned would be represented. These celebrations would signify "joyful acceptance of one another; our joint commitment in the faith and sacramental life of the church; our welcome of the ministers and members of the other churches as our own; [and] our commitment to engage in mission together." In this conception of sister Churches and of the way toward their full communion, it seems that the context for recognition of episcopal ministry is set by recognition of the authentic Word, recognition, of faith and faithful discipleship, recognition of baptism, and recognition of the proper celebration of the eucharist according to the Lord's ordinance. Rather than being seen as the necessary preliminary and guarantee of these matters, the episcopacy takes on its own meaning, significance, and authority. Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches will certainly want to keep their own distinctive sacramental emphasis. This means that they look upon the celebration of the eucharist (made possible through the sacrament of order) as the divine sign and offer of the saving grace of Christ, and of that gift of trinitarian Koivcovia, which is the ultimate reality of ecclesial KOtvcovia. However, they may well learn from Lutheran, Anglican, and Methodist Churches what it means to take proper cognizance of historical realities and of the visible ecclesial testimony found both in discipleship and in sacramental celebration. While it may well be that the Lord wished the apostolic succession of the episcopacy to be an integral part of the apostolic tradition, of Word and Sacrament, it could also be that, where human frailty and sin have been the cause of division, the reality of Word and Sacrament—as God's own gift and action- -can be kept alive through the efforts of Christians in

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separate communions. To recognize the Lord's Supper or Holy Communion as celebrated in other Churches as not simply an incomplete eucharistic reality,17 but rather as the Lord's own sacrament and eucharist, would not of itself entail full communion—nor even a shared, if mitigated, eucharistic fellowship. Such a step would, however, allow the Roman Catholic Church to work out ways toward full communion with other Churches that is not hindered by merely partial recognition of their eucharistic celebrations. As Henrik Roelvink, O.F.M., puts it: Porvoo's greatest impact is on our thinking about the apostolicity of the Church and the apostolic succession of episcopal ordinations. The Roman Catholic Church too can find a new perspective here, which may perhaps change its attitude toward ordinations in some Reformation Churches.18

NOTES 1. For helpful comment, see George Tavard, "Considerations on an Ecclesiology of Koinonia," One in Christ 30 (1994): 43-51; John S. Went, "Koinonia: a Significant Milestone on the Road to Unity," One in Christ 30 (1994): 22-39; Ola Tjorhom, "The Porvoo Statement—A Possible Ecumenical Breakthrough?" One in Christ 29 (1993): 302-9; Henrik Roelvink, "The Apostolic Succession in the Porvoo Statement," One in Christ 30 (1994): 344-54; A. Birmele, "Status quaestionis de la theologie de la communion a travers les dialogues oecumeniques et 1'evolution des differentes theologies confessionnelles," Cristianesimo nella storia 14 (1995): 245-284. 2. Roman Catholic/Methodist International Commission, "The Apostolic Tradition," Information Service, Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, 84 (1992): 213-25. References to this and other ecumenical documents are cited parenthetically in the text by the document's paragraph or section number. 3. GW 109, updated version in One Accord, 159-81. 4. Lutheran/Roman Catholic International Commission, "Church and Justification," no. 70, Information Service 86 (1994): 143. 5. Conversations between the British and Irish Anglican Churches and the Nordic and Baltic Lutheran Churches, The Porvoo Statement (London: Council for Christian Unity of the General Synod of the Church of England, 1993), no. 15. 6. Pentecostal-Catholic Dialogue, "Perspectives on Koinonia," Information Service 75 (1990): T79-9I, no. 29. 7. Ibid., no. 30. 8. In John Borelli and John H. Erickson, eds., The Quest for Unity: Orthodox and Catholics in Dialogue (Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir's Seminary Press; Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1996), 53-64. 9. "The Moscow Agreed Statement 1976," VI, 24, in Anglican-Orthodox Dialogue. The Dublin Statement 1984 (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985), 55. 10. "The Agreed [Dublin] Statement," 12-13. 11. Quest for Unity, 175-83. 12. Porvoo, Foreword, 6. 13. Porvoo, 51. 14. William A. Norgren and William G. Rusch, eds., "Toward Full Communion" and "Concordat of Agreement": Lutheran-Episcopal Dialogue, Series III, no. 84 (Minneapolis: Augsburg, and Cincinnati: Forward Movement Publications, 1991). 15. Toward Full Communion, 82.

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16. Concordat of Agreement, 14. 17. The Second Vatican Council, Decree on Ecumenism, 22: "we believe these [ecclesial communities] have not preserved the proper reality of the eucharistic mystery in its fullness, especially because of the absence of the sacrament of Orders, nevertheless when they commemorate the Lord's death and resurrection in the Holy Supper, they profess that: it signifies life in communion with Christ and await his coming in glory." 18. "The Apostolic Succession in the Porvoo Statement," One in Christ 30 (1994): 353.

CHAPTER II

QUELLE RECONNAISSANCE RECIPROQUE?

Les ordinations des Reformes suisses en perspective oecumenique Bruno Burki

Le Concile de Nicee (325) statue "qu'il est defendu a un eveque, a un pretre et a un diacre de passer d'une ville dans une autre." Quand on trouvera encore un clerc "vagabond," il faudra le rendre "a 1'eglise pour laquelle il avait ete ordonne eveque, pretre ou diacre" (can. 15). Le Concile de Chalcedoine (451) prohibe les ordinations absolues et les declare etre sans valeur: "Nul ne doit etre ordonne de maniere absolue, ni pretre, ni diacre ... si 1'ordinand ne se voit assigner a titre propre une eglise de ville ou de village" (can. 6). II faut apparemment souvent repeter la consigne.1 L'eveque est donc toujours ordonne en fonction de 1'Eglise concrete qui lui est confiee. Cependant, autant il est lie a 1'Eglise dont il a la charge, autant cet eveque est, pour les autres Eglises locales, representant de 1'Eglise tout entiere. Par son ordination, 1'eveque devient lien des Eglises. II est reconnaissable ailleurs, par les autres. Mutatis mutandis, le meme concept ecclesio-ministeriel vaut pour les pretres membres du presbyterium d'une Eglise particuliere. Le diacre a son tour est ordonne dans 1'Eglise locale afin d'etre diacre de 1'Eglise de Dieu. L'incardination ou affectation peut etre transferee, mais 1'ordination ne sera evidemment pas repetee. Des 1'Eglise ancienne, 1'eveque en visite dans telle Eglise locale peut etre invite, par 1'eveque du lieu, a dire—avec lui ou a sa place—la priere eucharistique, L'exemple vient du pape Anicet qui avait—d'apres Irenee—laisse sa place a 1'autel a son hote Polycarpe, alors que celui-ci venait d'Orient et apportait un usage liturgique different des habitudes romaines.2 Cette premiere ou originaire forme de concelebration illustre la reconnaissance mutuelle des ministeres ordonnes entre les Eglises qui vivent en pleine communion. Qu'en est-il dans notre situation oecumenique actuelle entre Eglises et communautes ecclesiales qui ne vivent pas la pleine koinonia ecclesiale, mais se reconnaissent pourtant reciproquement une certaine ecclesialite? 127

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On se souvient des tentatives animees par Lord Halifax pour la reconnaissance de la validite des ordinations anglicanes, par 1'Eglise catholique—ordinations conferees par des eveques se reclamant de la succession apostolique. Le pape Leon XIII a refute ces aspirations dans sa lettre de 1896: Declaramus ordinationes ritu Anglicano actas . . . fuisse et esse omnino . . . nullas.3 Des evenements ponctuels significatifs illustrent notre embarras en la matiere: Quand au 18e siecle 1'Eglise anglicane etait pleine d'admiration et d'ouverture pour 1'Eglise reformee de Neuchatel, grace au ministere d'unite de notre predecesseur Jean-Frederic Ostervald, pasteur a Neuchatel, l'archeveque de Canterbury invitait les candidats au saint ministere de Neuchatel a venir recevoir les ordinations dans 1'Eglise d'Angleterre.4 Je pense que mes concitoyens ne s'y sont jamais rendus. Mais frere Max Thurian de Taize qui a ete, dans sa jeunesse, ordonne pasteur de 1'Eglise reformee de Geneve, a souhaite, vers la fin de sa vie, recevoir 1'ordination presbyterale des mains d'un eveque de 1'Eglise catholique. Si 1'on sait le role joue par la Communaute de Taize et Max Thurian dans I'oecumenisme contemporain, en particulier dans le cadre du travail de Foi et Constitution du COE, on mesure le poids de la demarche. II y a parmi nous—entre eveques et pretres catholiques d'une part, pasteurs ordonnes des Eglises de la Reforme d'autre part—une certaine forme de reconnaissance pragmatique de nos ministeres et donc de 1'ordination. Nous ne reconnaissons pas simplement nos titres respectifs par politesse ou diplomatie oecumenique. Quand le Metropolite Damaskinos ou meme le Patriarche Bartolome de Constantinople nous donnent le baiser fraternel, lors de nos rencontres occasionnelles, nous ne prenons pas cela simplement pour expression de cordialite orientale, mais plutot comme signe reel de communion ecclesiale. Le Directoire romain pour 1'oecumenisme de 1993 est cependant formel: il n'y pas possibilite de concelebration, entre pretres catholiques ct ministres ordonnes des Eglises protestantes.5 Cela signifie en clair que les ordinations ne sauraient etre reconnues entre Eglises separees. Une pleine communion ecclesiale sera necessaire pour la reconnaissance mutuelle de ces ordinations. Le fait est ecclesiologiquement et traditionnellement irrefutable, mais il est aussi oecumeniquement douloureux— et a certains moments plus vraiment evident parmi nous.

L'analogie des situations ministerielles dans les differentes Eglises Les Eglises ont pris et continuent a assumer des options differentes pour 1'admission a 1'ordination pour les ministeres, qui sont globalement toujours les ministeres de la tradition commune: l'episcopat, le presbyterat, le diaconat. La difference la plus discutee est, a 1'heure actuelle, sans doute 1'admission ou le refus des femmes a 1'ordination tant presbyterale qu'episcopale. L'Eglise catholique et plus "definitivement" encore les Eglises orientales excluent une ordination presbyterale et episcopale de femmes, pour des raisons thcologiques et d'aillcurs en concordance avec toute la tradition. Les Eglises protestantes acceptent et pratiquent de plus en plus gencralement 1'ordination de femmes. Le constat vaut pour les differentes communautes protestantes, luthcriennes, reformees ou presbyteriennes, etc. 11

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s'etend avec certaines reserves aux Eglises anglicanes. Les Eglises vieilles-catholiques a leur tour examinent la possibility de I'ordination de femmes. Face a ces divergences nous sommes alors frappes par la convergence des problemes ministeriels et des conditions de I'exercice du ministere ordonne, en tout cas parmi les grandes Eglises repandues dans le monde occidental. II s'agit concretement de 1'Eglise catholique et des differentes Eglises protestantes traditionnelles comme des Eglises anglicanes. Pretres et pasteurs se reconnaissent fondamentalement la meme vocation d'evangelisation et de pastorale. 11 rencontrent, dans la societe contemporaine, les memes interpellations et difficultes dans I'exercice de leur ministere au sein du monde contemporain. Puis ils ont des problemes d'identite, en tant que permanents de la fonction ecclesiale, qui se ressemblent. La globalisation des conditions de vie dans le monde moderne ne s'arrete pas aux portes des eglises. II n'est alors plus surprenant que la preparation theologique et ecclesiastique a I'exercice du ministere ecclesial et a I'ordination soient assez semblables chez les uns et les autres. Dans le monde anglophone on connatt des lieux de formation theologique interdominationnels, la formation confessionnnelle specifique est assuree par les seminaires propres a chacune des Eglises. La cooperation va un peu moins loin dans le monde europeen, mais le contact au niveau des formateurs y est aussi concret et intense. Puis il y a les echanges d'etudiants. II est evident—pour prendre 1'exemple suisse—que les approches personnelles du ministere ordonne restent differentes. Autre est celle du seminariste du diocese de Lausanne, Geneve et Fribourg, autre celle de Petudiant en theologie protestante a Berne qui suivra plus tard le Seminaire de theologie appliquee pour se preparer a 1'activite ecclesiastique. Ce dernier aura une perspective d'abord professionnelle de son ministere a venir, le premier aura une vision sacramentelle de 1'Eglise et de I'ordination. Des differences plus pronconcees apparaissent si nous regardons audela du cercle des grandes Eglises en Occident. Le futur ministre d'une communaute evangelique sera en priorite attentif a la vocation personnelle, interieure ou spirituelle que Dieu lui adresse. Autre encore est la vision du futur pasteur baptiste ou presbyterien dans une ficole de theologie ou une Faculte d'Afrique. Pour connattre d' experience personnelle—tout comme cela est le cas de Geoffrey Wainwright— la situation des uns et des autres, j'ose pourtant affirmer que plusieurs differences sont davantage culturelles qu'effectivement theologiques et ecclesiales. Nous avons quoi qu'il en soit recemment ete frappes par la ressemblance du ton et du contenu de deux prises de position situees de prime abord loin 1'une de 1'autre, tant theologiquement qu'institutionnellement. II s'agissait d'une part de 1 "Instruction (romaine) sur quelques questions concernant la collaboration des fideles la'ics au ministere des pretres" (du 15 aout 1997), d'autre part de la reaction du Comite central de la Societe pastorale suisse a des propositions de la Commission pour le diaconat dans les Eglises reformees de Suisse alemanique, concernant la presidence d'actes ecclesiastiques par ce qu'on appelle la-bas des sozial-diakonische Mitarbeiter/innen. lci et la une meme inquietude pour savoir ce que deviendra, dans 1'Eglise de demain, le ministre ordonne. Le directeur d'un Seminaire diocesain catholique disait de I'lnstruction romaine: "Les auteurs du texte ont raison d'insister sur les fondements theologiques du sacerdoce, car comme seminariste on peut se sentir seul parfois." Et

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notre collegue Martin Klockener disait a Fribourg dans son cours special sur la meme Instruction: "II existe un important besom de clarification ... si 1'Eglise catholique ne veut pas dans les faits abandonner sa structure sacramentelle." II faut donc reprendre, dans une perspective resolument ouverte et par consequent aussi oecumenique la question de 1'ordination dans 1'Eglise du Christ.6

Le processus de Lima au sein de Foi et Constitution Apres une preparation qui s'etait etendue sur plusieurs decennies, la Commission Foi et Constitution a mis en consultation des 1982 les Textes de Lima dit BEM.7 Si Foi et Constitution est bien une Commission du COE, il faut pourtant se rappeler que 1'Eglise catholique en fait partie de plein droit et qu'elle a pris une part active dans ce processus de consultation. Parmi les trois textes de convergence vehicules sous le label BEM, le troisieme consacre au ministere a ete recu avec le plus de reserves, par les uns et les autres. Le Texte de Lima consacre un chapitre a 1'ordination et sa celebration, puis suit le chapitre VI intitule "Vers la reconnaissance mutuelle des ministeres ordonnes" (nos 39-55). La definition de 1'ordination est abordee sous deux aspects: theologiquemcnt d'une part, communautairement ou spirituellement ensuite. D'abord le fondement: "L'Eglise ordonne certains de ses membres au ministere, au nom du Christ, par 1'invocation de 1'Esprit et 1'imposition des mains ... en faisant cela, elle cherche a continuer la mission des apotres." Concretement, dans 1'Eglise, cela signifie que 1'ordination est un acte conjoint de Dieu et de la communaute en vue de la fortification des personnes ordonnees par 1'Esprit Saint et de leur soutien par la reconnaissance de la communaute. A propos de 1'agencement liturgique, il est d'abord question de 1'integration de 1'ordination dans une celebration eucharistique de toute la communaute. Puis sont presentees les trois aspects constitutifs de la liturgie d'ordination: 1. L'epiclese pour 1'Esprit qui situe le ministre dans la communaute locale et 1'Eglise universelle. Elle met en evidence "1'alterite de 1'initiative divine." 2. Mots, gestes et formes de 1'ordination sont signes de ce que Dieu agit sacramentellement en eux. On pense ici a 1'imposition des mains qui est accomplie avec action de grace. 3. II y a engagement mutuel entre l'Eglise et le nouveau ministre. Parmi les conditions pour 1'ordination il est en priorite fait mention de la vocation qui est certitude personnelle, mais qui "doit etre authentifiee par la reconnaissance ecclesiale." A propos de la reconnaissance mutuelle des ministeres on appelle a une reprise de la question de la succession apostolique. "L'acte de la transmission (du ministere de la Parole ct des sacrements en continuite avec les temps apostoliques) devrait etre accompli conformement a la tradition apostolique qui inclut 1'invocation de 1'Esprit et 1'imposition des mains." Dans les reponses des Eglises au BEM on constate une grande convergence a propos de 1'ordination en tant que vocatio, benedictio, missio (ainsi la terminologie des protestants d'Allemagne oricntalc).8 Pour qu'un consensus a propos de la sacramentalite de 1'ordination puisse s'etablir entre catholiques et orthodoxes d'une part, protestants d'autre part, la notion meme dc sacramentalitc demanderait a

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etre approfondie. Pour une reconnaissance mutuelle des ministeres il y a controverse pour savoir si une structure et surtout une succession episcopale sont essentielles pour 1'Eglise. Les uns et les autres sont de toutes les fafons d'accord pour dire que reconnaissance des ministeres et constitution eccle'siale ont partie liee. Tels sont les constats de Foi et Constitution dans le cadre du bilan fait au terme de la consultation. Admettons qu'il y a une distance considerable entre la conscience sacramentelle de 1'Eglise pour laquelle la mediation passe par les signes et les personnes qui les transmettent, d'une part, et, d'autre part, la conscience d'immediatete spirituelle pour laquelle les ordonnances ministerielles sont de 1'ordre du fonctionnel.9 La premiere proposition correspond a 1'option catholique, la seconde a 1'option protestante. Pourtant, les uns et les autres considerent le ministere ordonne comme un don de Dieu indispensable pour la vie de 1'Eglise.

La pratique actuelle de 1'ordination dans les Eglises reformees de Suisse Qu'y a-t-il de reellement reconnaissable entre les ministeres de nos differentes Eglises? Nous prenons 1'exemple de la Suisse—comme on pourrait prendre celui des Pays-Bas—en tant que pays europeen ou deux grandes Eglises se cotoient depuis longtemps sur pied d'egalite. Nous connaissons la doctrine des ministeres et la liturgie des ordinations catholiques.10 Pour comparaison, il importe de verifier ou se trouvent, dans le processus oecumenique du renouveau de 1'ordination et sur le chemin de la reconnaissance reciproque des ministeres ordonnes, les Eglises reformees de Suisse.11 Quels points de rencontre entre les ordinations protestantes et une ordination de type catholique? II y a trois constats a faire. 11s regardent successivement les personnes choisies pour 1'ordination, les fonctions confiees aux ministres ordonnes et la demarche d'action de grace et d'epiclese dans I'accomplissement de ce que le BEM appelle un "signe sacramentel" (no 41). 1. Depuis longtemps 1'element primordial et parfois le seul qui soit vraiment pris en consideration dans 1'ordination des ministres reformes est celui de 1'engagement des serviteurs, devant Dieu et dans son Eglise. On a parle du "Serment de consecration." A 1'heure actuelle, nous avons le souci d'elargir 1'engagement des ministres a un engagement reciproque de 1'Eglise et de ceux et celles qui doivent assumer un service parmi les freres, mais aussi devant le monde. II se pose alors toute la question de Pidentite des ministres, de leur vocation et de leur dignite, de la reconnaissance des dons et des aspirations et disponibilites des personnes.12 Jusqu'a quel point peut-on s'engager dans le ministere, est-ce que cela doit ou peut etre pour la duree de toute la vie? Pour Jean Calvin, 1'exercice du ministere ecclesiastique et 1'ordination a celui-ci etait un veritable sacrifice, une "consecration" au plus proche de ce terme. Dans 1'Ancien Testament, on impose les mains a 1'animal qui sera sacrifie sur 1'autel. II y a, chez les Reformes comme dans d'autres confessions, pas mal d'ambiguites autour de 1'engagement des ministres dans le service, a propos de 1'emprise d'un

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ministere sur une vie d'homme ou de femme dans les temps presents. II y a des craintes et des hesitations, chez les jeunes et les moins jeunes. II y a le poids de beaucoup d'echecs et de desillusions qui pesent sur les personnes et sur 1'institution. Les promesses d'ordination s'articulent dans la premiere partie de la celebration de 1'ordination, de facon plus ou moins solennelle. La predication qui precede, comme deja les lectures bibliques, y conduisent. Ces dernieres sont, dans notre contexte, en general choisies pour la circonstance plutot que proposees par un lectionnaire. L'engagement des nouveaux ministres est integre dans un dialogue plus ou moins elabore, parfois avec des elements personnalises, meme improvises. De toutes les facons, nous sommes maintenant tres sensibles au decalage possible entre discours et realite. Ainsi le moment des promesses est toujours un moment grave, parfois aidant, parfois insecurisant. Si on y ajoute le fait que le plus souvent, dans le concret des ordinations, il s'agit de personnes jeunes qui se situent au debut de leur carriere, la precarite de cette partie de 1'ordination devient particulierement saisissable. 2. A un autre niveau se situent les attributions des fonctions ministerielles qui sont liees a 1'ordination.13 Les Eglises de la Reforme se sont constituees en opposition a 1'ordonnance clericale de 1'Eglise catholique de la fin du moyen age. Ainsi 1'attribution d'une fonction est devenue dans ces Eglises la seule legitimation d'une consecration ministerielle. C'est donc cette attribution qui constitue 1'essentiel de la consecration ou ordination. La conception scolastique de 1'ordination avait d'ailleurs deja developpe 1'attribution des fonctions du ministre ordonne. Les pasteurs protestants sont charges de la predication de la Parole et de I'administration des sacrements. En principe, les Eglises protestantes cherchaient des la Reforme une diversification des ministeres selon le modele neotestamentaire. Jean Calvin y etait particulierement attentif. Dans les faits, les Eglises protestantes sont longtemps restees exclusivement des Eglises de pasteurs (Pfarrerkirchen). A notre epoque cependant, on ordonne avec les pasteurs et les pasteures des diacres en Suisse romande et des sozial-diakonische Mitarbeiter dans les Eglises reformees alemaniques. Les pasteurs sont ordonnes a la predication de la Parole de Dieu et a I'administration des sacrements, puis pour remplir la mission de pasteur d'unite de 1'Eglise. La fonction confiee aux diacres est celle d'etre parmi les freres et soeurs "un signe vivant du Christ serviteur," pour stimuler les autres dans leur propre service. Notons que les ordinations sont reservees, parmi les Reformes, aux fonctions pastorales et diaconales, considerees comme constitutives pour la vie de 1'Eglise. Les fonctions episcopales, aux differents niveaux de 1'Eglise synodale, sont confies par une installation des ministres ordonnes ou des la'ics qui sont, les uns et les autres, elus a ces fonctions, par votation au synode ou dans 1'ensemble de la communaute. La reference essentielle aux fonctions, pour les ordinations, n'est par ailleurs pas sans problemes. Elle souleve toutes les questions liees a la competence pour ces fonctions et a la preparation adequate pour leur exercice. Est-ce que 1'ordination est conferee pour un certain temps—comme I'est ordinairement 1'exercice d'une fonction dircctrice ou episcopale dans les Eglises protestantes ou 1'ordination ministerielle est-elle un mandat durable dans la vie du ministre? C'est ici le lieu dc faire mention du tres grand nombre de personnes lai'ques— professionnelles les uncs, benevoles les autres---qui partagent avec les ministres

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ordonnes le souci du fonctionnement quotidien de 1'Eglise, dans les paroisses et ailleurs. Ces collaboratrices et collaborateurs sont institues ou mandates les uns, simplement employes ou benevoles les autres. Leur situation ne peut pas etre traitee dans le cadre de cette etude. Leur presence marque cependant tres sensiblement la vie de 1'Eglise aujourd'hui, qu'elle soit protestante ou d'une autre confession. La question des fonctions souleve celle du professionnalisme dans 1'exercice des responsabilites ecclesiastiques. Quelle difference entre un specialiste du domaine religieux et un ministre de 1'Eglise du Christ? De tout temps, la vocation a ete importante pour le pasteur protestant. Depuis le siecle des Lumieres et plus encore durant le ipe siecle, celle-ci a eu tendance a devenir individualiste plutot que communautaire, plus pieuse, voire moraliste qu'ecclesiale. En ce moment, il n'est pas facile de parler de vocation a des jeunes qui ont de la peine a se situer dans 1'Eglise et le monde. 3. Nous venons d'evoquer des points critiques pour les ministeres et les ordinations reformees ou protestantes a I'heure actuelle. Face a la question de leur reconnaissabilite et reconnaissance parmi les autres Eglises, nous tenons a souligner un element a nos yeux fondamental. Plus que jamais, il importe de situer 1'ordination dans son contexte original et principal qui est celui de la celebration liturgique. Grace aux contacts oecumeniques et a la faveur de la reforme liturgique, grace aussi a un certain renouveau theologique, on prend conscience, dans les Eglises reformees, de ce que 1'ordination est un acte de Dieu dans 1'Eglise.14 L'ordination est conferee par la priere et 1'imposition des mains. Elle se situe dans une tradition liturgique et ecclesiale. Ni affaire de la corporation des clercs, ni distinction individuelle pour personnes formees a la theologie ou marquees d'inspiration, habitees peut-etre d'aspirations personnelles, elle est un element necessaire a la vie de la communion ecclesiale. On trouve maintenant regulierement dans les liturgies d'ordination reformees une priere d'ordination faite d'une anamnese qui s'enracine dans 1'Ancien et le Nouveau Testament et qui conduit a une epiclese sur les nouveaux ministres. L' intercession pour les ministres et toute 1'Eglise, dans ses dimensions universelles, est egalement un element de cette priere. A la priere est lie le geste de 1'imposition des mains. Le plus souvent il suit la priere, accompagne d'une formule pour la transmission des fonctions ministerielles. Dans quelques Eglises romandes, imposition des mains et formule d'institution ont ete integrees a la priere elle-meme. Le fait de recevoir et de reconnaitre des ministres est, pour 1'Eglise qui ordonne ou consacre ceux-ci, hommes et femmes, un signe important. II s'agit d'attester que 1'Eglise ne se parle pas a elle-meme, mais recoit de Dieu la revelation. L'Eglise ne se redit pas I'Evangile en monologue, mais elle le recoit de Dieu en vivante tradition par le ministere de ses serviteurs et, maintenant aussi, servantes. Agissant par priere et imposition des mains, les Eglises reformees sont conscientes de se trouver dans la tradition apostolique de 1'Eglise du Christ.15 La tradition se situe au niveau de la communaute ecclesiale dans son ensemble, mais la communaute assemblee est presidee par ceux et celles qui exercent Pautorite de direction ou autorite episcopale. L'Eglise synodale ou locale qui celebre 1'ordination se sait en communion avec les autres Eglises, reformees d'abord, puis sur un plan plus

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largement oecumenique. La relative faiblesse de ce lien est evidemment une part du defectus des ordinations protestantes, aux yeux de I'Eglise catholique.16 On peut tout de meme mentionner la presence, a 1'occasion des ordinations, de representants invites des autres Eglises. Des pretres ou religieux et religieuses catholiques—guere des eveques, evidemment—peuvent se trouver parmi ces hotes. Leur participation a 1'eucharistie reformee, difficile, voire impossible, illustre une fois de plus la precarite de notre situation de reconnaissance ecclesiale et ministerielle. Quoiqu'il en soit nous comptons beaucoup sur 1'integration de I'ordination ministerielle dans une authentique et pleine celebration eucharistique de I'Eglise assemblee le jour du Seigneur, avec ses membres, sous la presidence de celui ou de ceux et celles qui assument le ministere episcopal dans une Eglise synodale ou, selon la terminologie catholique actuelle, une Eglise locale. Les engagements reciproques des nouveaux ministres et de la communaute de I'Eglise sont pris dans le cadre de la premiere partie de la celebration, la liturgie de la Parole. Avant de proceder a la celebration eucharistique—sous forme de pleine concelebration—la priere d'ordination est dite sur les nouveaux ministres; ceux et celles qui les precedent dans le ministere, representant toute I'Eglise, leur imposent les mains. Ensuite, I'Eglise rend grace a Dieu et recoit le pain de vie.

Conclusion Dieu seul peut savoir ou nous en sommes reellement dans la reconnaissance reciproque des ministeres et autres graces qu'il nous donne en Eglise. L'unite de I'Eglise comrne cette Eglise tout court, est de toutes les facons son oeuvre. Notre vocation et notre fidelite ou obeissance consistent a faire pleine confiance a la promesse de Dieu de ne pas laisser son peuple sans bergers ou pasteurs (Jean 10 et d'autres textes de 1'AT et du NT). Cette confiance s'exprime dans l'action de grace, avec imposition des mains. Donc de la plus pure et vraie liturgie. NOTES 1. G. Alberigo et al., eds. Les Condles oecumeniques. Les Decrets. Edition francaise A. Duval et al., eds., vol. II/1, Le Magistere de I'Eglise (Paris: Le Cerf, 1994), 50 s. 206 s. Cf. Jean Gaudemet, "L'ordre dans la legislation conciliaire de I'Antiquite," in Etudes sur le sacrement de I'ordre, Lex orandi 22 (Paris: Cerf, 1957), 233-56, surtout 237-38. 2. Theologie et pratique de la Concelebration (Paris: Mame, 1967), 18. 3. Denz 33I5-33194. Jean-Daniel Burger, "Ostervald et la reunion des Protestants," in Jean-Frederic Ostervald (1663-1747) (Neuchatel: A la Baconniere, 1948), 82. 5. Pontificium Consilium ad Christianorum unitatcm fovendam, Directoire pour I'application des principes et des normes sur I'oecumenisme, 104 e. Cf. Codex iuris canonici (Cite du Vatican, 1983), can. 908. 6. Sur les aspects de la question dans le protestantisme actuel, en Suissc, voir Pierre Buhler et Carmen Burkhalter, eds., Qu'est-ce qu'un pasteur? Une dispute oecumenique et inlerdisciplinaire (Geneve: Labor ct Fides, 1:997). Puis Marc Edouard Kohler, Vocation, service compris! La diaconie de I'Eglise (Le Mont'Siir-Lausannc: Ouvcrturc; Geneve: Labor et Fides, 1995). Du cote catholique Kurt Koch, Bischof von Basel, In Veranlivortungfur unser Bistum (Document manuscrif disponhile a la Cluanccllcric dc I'eveche a Soleure).

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7. Commission de Foi et Constitution, Conseil Oecumenique des Eglises, Bapteme, Eucharistie, Ministere. Convergence de la foi (Paris: Le Centurion; Taize: Presses de Taize, 1982). Le livre de commentaire du BEM etait edite par Max Thurian et comportait un chapitre de Geoffrey Wainwright sur la reconciliation dans le ministere (GW 62). 8. Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry. Report on the Process and Responses, Faith and Order Paper 149 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1990). 9. Sur ce probleme crucial voir le rapport du Comite mixte catholique-protestant de France, sous le titre Consensus oecumenique et difference fondamentale (Paris: Le Centurion, 1987). 10. Voir p. ex. Bernard D. Marliangeas, Cles pour une theologie du ministere. In persona Christi. In persona Eccksiae, Theologie historique 51 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1978) et Herve Legrand, "Les ministeres de I'Eglise locale," Initiation a la pratique de la theologie 3 (Paris: Cerf, 1983), 181-345. 11. Nous nous permettons de renvoyer a une etude de notre plume a paraitre prochainement, sur le sujet des ordinations reformees en Suisse, par le passe et a 1'heure actuelle: "Ordination in der Schweiz. Evangelisch-reformierte Tradition im Spannungsfeld okumenischer Herausforderungen und zeitgenossischer Gegebenheiten," in Jahrbuch fur Liturgik und Hymnologie 37 (1998). Aupres de la Federation des Eglises protestantes de la Suisse (Secretariat: Case postale 36, CH-3ooo Berne 23) on obtiendra un document de consensus actuellement en discussion au sein du protestantisme suisse: La Consecration. Convention de Hunigen au sujet des ministeres et de la consecration. La version actuellement en circulation est datee du 5.6.1998. 12. Sur cette question, Jean-Paul Willaime, Profession: pasteur. Sociologie de la condition du clerc a la fin du 2oe siecle (Geneve: Labor et Fides, 1986), et Martine Haag, Pasteur: une profession feminine? Etudes et Rapports 55, de 1'Institut d'ethique sociale de la Federation des Eglises protestantes de la Suisse (Lausanne: Institut d'ethique sociale, 1997). Rappelons aussi un livre classique de theologie en Suisse: Robert Leuenberger, Berufung und Dienst. Beitrag zu einer Theologie des evangelischen Pfarrerberufes (Zurich, 1966). 13. Pour la conception reformee traditionelle des fonctions ministerielles, voir JeanJacques von Allmen, Le saint ministere selon la conviction et la volonte des Reformes du 16e siecle (Neuchatel: Delachaux et Niestle, 1968). Puis un moderne: Pierre-Luigi Dubied, Le pasteur: un interprete (Geneve: Labor et Fides, 1990). 14. Un bon exemple presente par Gottfried Hammann, "II ministero ordinato nelle Chiesa Riformata di Neuchatel," Rivista liturgica 83 (1996): 490-509. Cf. M. Bonafede, "II ministero pastorale nella Chiesa Valdese," Rivista liturgica 83 (1996): 510-27. 15. Cf. Giacomo Puglisi, ed., Continwita apostolica della Chiesa e successione apostolica (Roma: Centro pro unione, 1996). Voir en particulier la contribution de 1'oecumeniste lutherien Harding Meyer, 61-72. 16. Concile Vatican II, Decret sur I'Oecumenisme UR no 22. A ce propos Jean-Jacques von Allmen, "Vor allem fehlt ihnen das Weiheamt," Orientierung (Zurich) 39/1 (1975): 12.

CHAPTER 12

CONTEXTUALITY AND CATHOLICITY

Toward a Theology of Mediated Otherness Richard Clutterbuck

I Sunday morning worship in the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga, a Church I in the Methodist tradition, is a complex mixture of local and imported custom and culture.1 True, there are many features that locate the event firmly in Polynesia. There will be a drum (or empty gas cylinder) struck to call worshipers to church. Most will wear around the waist a ta'ovala, a woven mat, to signal respect. All will remove their footwear before entering. Mats and tapa cloth in the sanctuary area are traditional symbols of sacred and protected space. Singing will be enthusiastic and competent, and the sermon will harness traditional Tongan rhetoric; the Tongan language has, perhaps, survived so well through its use in such services. Nevertheless, most elements of the service itself will have originated far away from Polynesia. When the service takes the form of Morning Prayer, congregations of Pacific Islanders find themselves sharing in, and continuing to reshape, a liturgy that transmits a whole strand of Christian tradition. The order of service, printed with the liturgical material at the back of the Tongan Methodist Hymn Book, is a translation into Tongan based on John Wesley's abridgement of the Boole of Common Prayer. Worshipers are thus immediately in relation to a Christian tradition developed in England and to the particular cultural, political, and theological factors that shaped it. The congregation shares in the Cranmerian prayers, confessing that they have "erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep" (though the nearest sheep, lost or found, are usually more than a thousand miles away in New Zealand). The words that resolved the hotly contested sixteenth- and seventeenth-century debates on English worship resound in a context unimaginable to the early Anglican divines. When the Jubilate is sung, connection is made with Anglican chant and with its ancestor, Western medieval plainsong. Hymns will often be translations of those of Charles Wesley, or of the nineteenth-century evangelical revival. One extremely popular hymn, often sung spontaneously by congregations waiting for a service to begin, uses a tune by American songwriter Stephen Foster.2 Where there is a choir 136

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the anthem might well be the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah, drawing on a form of music devised in the eighteenth century to provide something that sounded like Italian opera but was more acceptable on the London stage in the Lenten season. There will, of course, be readings from Scripture. Psalms will make a link with a Jewish culture more than two and a half millennia old, while the Old and New Testaments flesh out the defining narratives of that culture and its Christian interpretation. In the church building there is very likely to be an object which, though it has universal Christian reference, is nonetheless expressive of a particular cultural situation: the cross. It might be added that the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga is by no means the full stop at the end of this process of liturgical transmission. The contribution of Tongans to the further Christianization of the Pacific has been considerable, and many of these features of worship have been passed on (together with some peculiarly Tongan ones) to Churches in Fiji and, more recently, Papua New Guinea. It would now be common to deprecate this kind of service, to urge on Tongan Christians the duty to be more thorough in the contextualization of their worship, to ensure that it is always Tongan culture that expresses the Tongan experience of the Divine, rather than the culture of an alien people and a bygone age. Indeed, there are many in Tonga and elsewhere in the Pacific who raise precisely this concern.3 This essay is not intended to deny the need for Christian worship, theology, and practice to be culturally appropriate to its situation. It will, however, try (somewhat against the stream of current thought) to argue the positive effects of retaining some elements of the cultures through which Christianity has been transmitted. To do so, I will suggest, is both a vital counter to one form of the contemporary threat to Christian unity, and a powerful witness to important theological insights.

"Mediated Otherness": Some Theological Assumptions One of the central paradoxes of Christianity is its insistence, on the one hand, on the radical otherness of God—on the "infinite qualitative distinction between God and humanity"—and its equal insistence, on the other, of the immediacy of God to creation. Certainly, there are theological traditions (such as the one stemming from Barth) that emphasize the otherness of God through a program of dialectics, and divergent traditions (such as those associated with Schleiermacher, Tillich, and Tracy) that stress the analogical closeness of God and humanity. However, both sides of this paradox are integral to the structure of Christian belief, worship, and action. Creation and fall, incarnation and cross, deification and forgiveness of sins: the narrative of Christian doctrine can be summarized in the phrase "mediated otherness." A theology of mediated otherness is implied by Jurgen Moltmann in his early work The Crucified God.4 In introducing the "identity and relevance of faith," Moltmann argues for a dialectic principle of knowledge to supplement the analogical principle that "like seeks after like." Such a dialectic principle is characteristic of the God revealed in the godforsakenness of the crucified one—the God who is most complete in God's opposite. Moltmann goes on to draw out some of the implications of this theological tenet for the life of the Church. The Church must find its identity in creative love for that which is alien, rather than by assimi-

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lation. "If a being is revealed only in its opposite, then the church which is the church of the crucified Christ cannot consist of an assembly of like persons who mutually affirm each other, but must be constituted of unlike persons."5 If the Christian Church is to embody the truth of its doctrine in its life, worship, and witness, then mediated otherness—an intimacy conveyed through that which is alien—will be an important characteristic of the Christian community. In an understanding of the Church, this concept of mediated otherness relates most closely, I suggest, to the traditional ecclesial mark of catholicity. It does so both as a guard against bland (or, perhaps more commonly, oppressive) uniformity and as a defense against isolated sectarianism. As such, it needs to be to the fore in ecumenical theology. There is a sense in which this has already happened, albeit in a limited and incomplete way, in confessional ecumenism—that growing together of the main Christian confessional traditions. Here the work of the Holy Spirit, together with, the dedication of theologians, has resulted in the generation of a centripetal force, a convergence of language and a recognition of identity in the other. Geoffrey Wainwright has been a pivotal figure in this doctrinally centripetal movement, through his involvement with the production of such ecumenical texts as Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry. There has been a fruitful exchange and a willingness to live with differences, in the knowledge that they need not result in total division. This movement has born considerable fruit—including both the mutual recognition of doctrinal traditions and other forms of mutual learning—as a result of "mediated otherness" being taken seriously in the intercourse between confessional traditions. Among these "fruits" are the Roman Catholic recognition of the Christian authenticity of the Augsburg Confession, the willingness of many Protestant Churches to countenance at least a primacy of honor and unity in the papacy, and the new and widespread Western appreciation of Eastern trinitarian language. The otherness that continues alongside this convergence is within a common language, even though it is a language with many different dialects. That this centripetal convergence is likely to continue is perhaps indicated by the emphasis, in the Faith and Order movement, on koivcovia—the communion that belongs to the Father, Son, and Spirit, and which binds different Christian traditions. Yet there is also another force at work in the relationship between different parts of worldwide Christianity, and that has a centrifugal rather than a centripetal tendency; in other words, it is more likely to encourage divergence and to underplay the continuity of Christian language. It is reflected, perhaps most clearly, in a movement that is necessary, important, and beneficial to the Church—but a movement that needs to be given theological parameters if it is not to lead to the sectarian and cultural fragmentation of Christianity in the twenty-first century. It goes by a variety of names, including "inculturation," "contextualization," and "indigenization." It rightly claims that each local church, in its temporal, spatial, and cultural particularity, has the responsibility to act as a hermeneutical community, an interpreter of the Christian scriptures and the Christian faith. This movement is reflected in the articulation of theologies and in the development of Churches in the Southern Hemisphere,6 but it is also a feature of the West—in, for example, the contextual theologies and ecclesial networks of Christian femi-

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nism or of gay activists. Its more strident voices indict European hegemony in theology and church life—a cultural dominance that can be challenged only by radical thought and action. The danger, however, is that a contextualization so radical that it rejects everything that bears the marks of a foreign culture, a contextualization so deeply embedded in one culture that is uses only that culture's concepts and rituals for Christian teaching and worship, will fail to honor the paradox of mediated otherness. By rejecting anything that is culturally other, and by insisting on local culture (or, as with some Western feminist theology, a particular experience) as the sole medium for the expression of Christianity, it threatens to undermine the mark of catholicity, to the detriment of Christian identity. A Church that ceased to be universal in scope, membership, and relevance would cease to be the Church of Jesus Christ. In what follows I will try to pinpoint some of the causes of this failure to honor the mediated otherness (or, we might say, dispersed intimacy) of the Christian tradition. Having begun with one fairly recent example of the transmission and reception of Christianity in the Southern Hemisphere, I will turn to some other examples in order to highlight some theological resources for a recovery and development of the catholicity of mediated otherness. In particular, I will argue that contemporary Christian communities have the Christian Gospel only through the work of alien hands—in other words, that it has been transmitted to them by a more or less alien culture. Only where the culturally other is embraced and welcomed—as part of the particular and local—can a contextual Christianity truly call itself Catholic. Such an appeal is by no means confined to those Christian communities that are currently emphasizing their particularity and difference from the dominant Eurocentricity of the Christian tradition (e.g., those in the Southern Hemisphere). It may well turn out that the failure of the traditional Churches of the West to give positive recognition to the culturally other has been the main cause of the contextuality movement's becoming a potential threat to the unity of the body of Christ. Furthermore, it could justly be argued that both oppressive orthodoxy and stubborn and isolated heterodoxy have resulted from a failure to recognize the other to be a bearer of Christian truth and a mediator of catholicity. Here, I am exploring an area in which Geoffrey Wainwright has already made a pertinent contribution, especially in his chapter entitled "Culture" in Doxology. To investigate this new ecumenical challenge further, some definition of terms such as culture, transmission, and reception are needed.

Defining the Terms of the New Global Ecumenical Challenge A culture may be defined as "a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which human beings communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about [life] and their attitudes to life."7 1 take it for granted that Christianity is culturally transmitted—that is, it can only exist and only move from one situation to another through a set of beliefs and practices that are com-

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mon to a group of human beings. There is no culture-free belief system, liturgical practice, or ethical code within Christianity. Yet, at the same time, I would want to assert that Christianity relativizes all cultures, that it challenges all human ideologies of cultural self-sufficiency. Integral to the effect of Christianity on human culture is the concept of mediated otherness, a form of human-divine intimacy that can only be accessed through that which is alien.8 To spell out what mediated otherness might mean, it will be helpful to speak of transmitting cultures. By this I mean those cultures (by no means confined to Europe and North America) that have been, the means, at different points in history, through which Christianity has been passed on to members of other cultures. The counterparts of transmitting cultures are recipient cultures. These are cultures in which Christianity is received and becomes culturally rooted. It will be obvious that cultures can (at different times, and sometimes together) be both transmitters and receivers. While every fresh Christian context has its own hermeneutical task, there is a sense in which the history of Christian transmission cannot be reversed. There will always be an impact on the receiving culture from the culture that transmits Christianity to it.9 That this impact cannot be completely eliminated is a matter of observation; that it should not be eliminated is an important theological assertion. It is a sign that Christianity is always culturally transmitted. Indeed, to seek to eliminate all traces of the transmitting culture from the Christianity of the receiving culture is to attempt to bypass history and to deny the fundamental historicity of human life and Christian experience. In the nineteenth century, Newman attacked a Protestantism that sought to eliminate elements of its history in favor of a direct appeal to the timeless truths of Scripture and reason. Newman's antidote was to become "deep in history"—to recognize the importance of historical development in Christian thought and practice.10 Mediated otherness needs to be compared with two other models for coping with the relationship between transmission and reception in Christianity. The first of these might be called the Enlightenment paradigm. This model applies, to the Church and to Christian thought, those characteristic assumptions of modernity concerning the normative and the universal. This worldview, as it impacted the Western missionary enterprise, has been characterized by the missiologist David Bosch in the following way. First, it focused on human needs rather than the glory of God, so that the emphasis of missionary activity was initially the spiritual wellbeing of the "heathen," then later their educational, health and developmental needs. Second, it posited a cultural superiority toward the rest of the world that, unlike earlier cultural dominance, was in principle irreversible—because it was considered a matter of "progress." It was almost impossible for those from the West to regard other cultures as anything but a lower stage of human development. Third, it promoted the European domination of the world in terms of destiny. It was thought to be the "divine calling" of the Churches of Europe and North America to use their position for the evangelization of the world.11 It is no accident that a Church imbued with precisely this worldview embarked on the great wave of missionary expansion that took Christianity into innumerable new cultural contexts from the late eighteenth century onward. For the great

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Christian minds of the eighteenth century—minds such as Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley—the Christian religion was not only true but also reasonable. John Locke even sought to tie Christianity to the "universal truths of reason." The Christianity that emerged from Europe and America in this period was confident not only of its superiority to any other faith but also of the normative position of European culture—including its education, its medicine, and its reasoning. Even where the desire to propagate Christianity has disappeared, this model has continued to be pressed into service in the language of "development" and "developing countries." This is a worldview that has great problems with "otherness." Assumptions about religious and cultural progress in humanity made it notoriously difficult to value that which was alien to the European eyes in other cultures, though there were some who worked hard to overcome the difficulties. Nor was it easy to distinguish between the necessary media of transmission and the total domination of one culture by another. If the first paradigm reflects modernity, the second relates to postmodernity— the erosion of confidence in the norms and assumptions of post-Enlightenment Europe. Bosch evaluates this erosion of confidence in a very positive way,12 seeing the basic tenets of Enlightenment thought (especially its very limited understanding of rationality, its naive optimism and belief in progress, and its stubborn adherence to Cartesian dualism) as barriers to a proper appreciation of the worldwide nature of the Christian Church and its mission. He acknowledges that the full implications of the postmodern paradigm have yet to emerge; but we do not need to look very far to find some of the dangers to Christian unity and identity attendant on a completely postmodern worldview. If the Enlightenment paradigm tended to reinforce the homogeneity of Christianity, or at least the universality of its European form, the movement conveniently nicknamed "postmodern" has undermined it. If all metanarratives are suspect, then those that tell a single story of Christian doctrine and Christian history must be open to suspicion and deconstructed to reveal the manipulation and bids for power that underlie them. According to this model, radical heterogeneity in Christian doctrine, liturgy, and practice is legitimated. It is up to those in each particular context to propose a form of Christianity and Church appropriate to their cultural, economic, and political experience. To that end there must be an eradication, or at best a subversion, of the language that has hitherto claimed normative status. One example of this approach is represented by R. S. Sugirtharajah in the introduction to his anthology Interpreting the Bible in the Third World.13 For Sugirtharajah, the meaning of a text in postcolonial hermeneutics is the invention of the reader, produced because of that reader's particular social, cultural, and religious location. The task of such hermeneutics is to serve the emancipation of those who are pushed to the margins by colonialism and contemporary international commercialism. If there is unity, it is not with the mainstream Christian tradition but with others (Christian or not) who share the experience of oppression and marginalization. One contributor to this anthology, the Zimbabwean Methodist minister and former state president Canaan Banana, takes this hermeneutic strategy to an extreme position. He argues "The Case for a New Bible"14 as a means of

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liberating God from the cultural specificity of the West. While he rightly draws attention to the way in which the Christian scriptures have been invoked in support of white superiority, he goes on (with less justification) to question the need for contemporary Christians to hold on to the Judaic cultural background of much of the Bible, with its language of a "chosen people." Could not, he asks, heroes of the national and spiritual life of Zimbabwe be substituted for those of Israel? Furthermore, should not the person of Jesus be freed from the Jewish culture that was his by a mere accident of birth? This is a proposal to disengage from those elements of alien cultures that remain embedded in the Christian tradition (and have been transmitted through many intervening cultures), to enable a total immersion in the local receiving culture. This concern lies behind much of the more recent contextualization. What universality can there be, it is asked, in Christian doctrine, liturgy, and praxis, that is not an abuse of power, preventing the proper expression of human freedom and spiritual maturity? The meaning of Scripture and tradition is given by the context and by those who participate in it. A current Web site introducing Maori theology (set up by a Dominican) says of Jesus that "just as he became a Jew, so he becomes a member of other communities, taking on their particular culture." It goes on to suggest that Maori culture has a revealed status; it teaches the meaning of human personhood, creation, and God. Maori Christians are Maori first and Christian second. For all in this vision that is a proper corrective to the past arrogance of Western Churches, it can only lead to a breakdown in the unity of the body of Christ, a breakdown accompanied by a loss of any sense of the historical nature of Christian existence. Furthermore, there is a tension, among many apologists for this approach, between the assertion of radical particularity and the assumptions that are made about the norms of human needs and rights. To summarize, both of these strategies for dealing with the process of transmission and reception of the Christian faith are problematic and a barrier to the kind of reciprocal appreciation I am urging. They are, perhaps, equally guilty of a failure to live creatively with the presence of the other, and they have more in common than is often realized.15

Mediated Otherness in Early Christian Transmission and Reception Proponents of contextualization rightly point out that, throughout Christian history, there has been an interplay between (what I have called) cultures of transmission and reception. Kwame Bediako, for example, compares the impact of culture upon Christian thought in twentieth-century Africa with an analogous impact in the second century.16 Tatian, Justin, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria all have their counterparts, according to Bediako, in the contemporary debate about the relationship between Christianity and African culture. At issue here, suggests Bediako, is the extent to which Christianity is receptive to, and capable of being reexpressed through, cultures alien to its original context. Unsurprisingly, Clement scores higher on this criterion than does Tertullian. Similarly, the previously

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cited Maori theology Web site finds, in the doctrine of the Incarnation, New Testament warrant for the Church always to clothe itself with the totality of a local culture. Once again, it must be emphasized that the present essay does not dissent from the idea that there has been a long history of Christian contextualization, nor does it stand against the continuation of that history in the present. All I am suggesting is that the story needs to be told both ways—not simply as the narrative of a Christianity adapting itself to (and being developed by) succeeding cultures, but also as the narrative of Christianity being received into new culture through its transmission from and through alien cultures. The adaptation of cultures, as they take on aspects of those already adapted through contact with Christianity, is another way of describing what I have called "mediated otherness." The early growth of Christianity took place in a world where cultural differences between Judaism and Hellenism were important but where these cultures were not watertight, there being considerable interplay between them. Recent studies of the life and ministry of Jesus,17 whatever their differences, converge in locating him firmly within the culture of first-century Judaism. How was Christianity, having emerged in this very particular culture, to offer itself for reception in other cultural situations? Much of the New Testament, especially Acts and the Pauline epistles, can be read as reflections on, or negotiations about, the question of transmission and reception. Through these reflections and negotiations we see the emerging catholicity of the Church. Two passages can be cited as examples of this process. The first is Acts 10, where Peter encounters Gentiles from Joppa and comes to the realization that the God of Jewish history and the God of Jesus Christ is also a God active in the different cultural context of Hellenism. Walter Hollenweger18 calls this passage "the conversion of the evangelist," and it is cited as an example of the Christian faith breaking the boundaries of its original cultural location. But it is more than that, for Jewish culture is not simply the husk abandoned as the pure kernel of the Gospel moves into the Hellenistic context; it remains a powerful carrier of Christian truth and stands as a challenge to many of the values assumed in Hellenism. It is true that Peter is converted—from a mindset in which the Christian faith is but a new twist on the narrative of Israel to one in which, without ceasing to be reliant on Israel's story, Christianity has become a narrative inclusive of other cultures. But if the whole incident is considered (including Peter's report to Jerusalem in Acts 11 and the so-called Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15), then a pattern begins to emerge. Though it is tentative and incomplete, it points to a distinction between, on the one hand, aspects of Jewish culture (which, though alien to Hellenistic culture, are important transmitters of Christian faith) and, on the other hand, those aspects which, if insisted upon, would have hindered inculturation in the Hellenistic world and produced a Jewish cultural hegemony. The Christian narrative is still firmly set within the historical contingencies of first-century Palestine (Acts 10:34-43); some Jewish religious, cultural, and ethical norms are still insisted upon (Acts 15:19-20); and membership in the Church still comes through baptism. Nevertheless, Gentiles are not to be circumcised; and it is clear that language and cultural patterns derived from Hellenism are already, by the time of the writing of Acts, part of the expression of Christian faith and life.

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A second passage concerns something to which we shall later return: the institution of the eucharist. The narrative in I Corinthians 11:23-26 omits many of the cultural allusions to the Passover found in the synoptic accounts of the Last Supper. Nonetheless, the cup is still "the new covenant in my blood"; the central act of Christian worship and fellowship could not properly have been celebrated without reference to the history of Israel and its sacrificial system. The problem with the eucharist in Corinth seems in part to be the assimilation of the sacred meal to the cultural norms of eating to excess—and the reinforcement, rather than subversion, of the unjust social stratification in Corinthian society. Again, I would suggest, Paul is involved in a subtle process of reflection and negotiation, so that Corinthian Christians derive the meaning of their Christianity in part from a reflection on the elements of Jewish culture and religious background in what they have received. Just as the relationship between Christianity and culture works two ways in the New Testament—both in terms of contextualization in fresh cultures and in terms of the critique of Hellenism through Jewish culture—so in the early centuries the same double process can be discerned. Tertullian could just as easily be seen as one who allowed a critique of his classical culture through the transmission of biblical (and therefore primarily Semitic) insights as one who was hesitant about the contextualization of Christianity through the medium of classical culture.

The Eucharist as a Model for Transmission and Reception Much of the above discussion has been rather abstract. The point, though, of drawing attention to the contrast between the centripetal force of ecumenical recognition and the centrifugal force of contextualization is to promote the practice of what I have called mediated otherness. Many possible elements of Christian practice could be included: theological reflection, biblical interpretation, and the important matters of the way Christians tell their history and the way they arrive at a polity for their common life. Nevertheless, Christian worship is, as my opening paragraphs suggest, the prime carrier of mediated otherness—the place where, most fully, the routes of Christian transmission mingle with the roots of a local culture. Geoffrey Wainwright has often drawn our attention both to the theological significance of Christians worshiping together and to the doxological goal of all Christian theology. This is especially so in his work on the eucharist.19 As the sacrament of unity, the eucharist must be the place where any threat to the unity of the body of Christ will be felt most acutely, but it should also be the place where such threats are countered. How might our celebration of the eucharist reflect that respect for the other that is at the heart of Christian catholicity? First, the eucharist takes place because Christians intend to do what has been done by countless Christian communities in the past, and is being done by countless Christian communities in the present. This intention, which is rooted in a desire to celebrate the glory of God, can only be fulfilled by consciously using words and actions that have sufficient in common with words and actions in other Christian contexts that those from other cultures can recognize and share in the eucharist.

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Second, there are the physical elements of bread and wine. Part of the original Palestinian culture of the first century, these are alien to many cultures in which the eucharist is celebrated. (For example, until recently, wine was hardly a common feature of life in Britain.) While there have been calls to replace the original elements with food and drink drawn from local cultures (in the Pacific the flesh of the coconut and the ceremonial drink kava are often suggested), the retention of bread and wine is a powerful sign of what all subsequent Christian cultures owe to events in one particular time and place. They tie us to the actions of Christ rather than to our own. Third, the creed introduces into the eucharist the distillation of Christian thought at a particular point in its history, expressed in the language of Greek thought (which is alien to most in the twentieth century). Of course, the creed of Nicea/Constantinople will need explication. Nevertheless, its presence is a reminder of the historical nature of Christianity, the irreversible process by which God has led his people. Fourth, the prayers of intercession are an important test of any Christian community's commitment to the whole of God's creation and to the Church in different situations. What is offered in intercession can evoke solidarity with those from whom the Christian faith has been received—and with those to whom it has been transmitted. A practical outworking of this is in the exchange of money and resources. The offering of the gifts of the people is (as Paul affirms in 2 Corinthians) is both a reflection of and a response to the generosity that has led to the sharing of the Gospel by those whose culture is alien to us. At the point in the eucharist where the names of the saints and martyrs of the past are invoked, there is a justifiable tendency to concentrate on those associated with that locality, nation, and culture. However, the celebration in worship of the lives of those saints and martyrs whose discipleship has been expressed in other historical and cultural situations can be a powerful ecumenical sign. Finally, in the eucharistic prayer itself—where the mighty acts of God are recounted and offered up in praise and expectation—the Christian scandal of particularity is brought home.20 In this narrative, with its affirmation of God's goodness in creation and God's desire for renewal and reconciliation for all, the universality of Christianity can be recognized. But in its insistence on the centrality of Jesus Christ—who was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, and rose again—we meet the unavoidable presence of a history that is alien to all contemporary cultures. There will, of course, be many other aspects of a eucharistic celebration. Most will bear some marks both of the liturgical traditions through which the eucharist has been transmitted (liturgists will detect family trees of eucharistic rites) and of the cultural context in which the celebration is taking place. There may be other signs of the recognition of Christian truth in the alien. In the Tongan context, for example, consuming the elements at the eucharist breaks the usual taboo on eating and drinking in a sacred place or in the presence of those of higher rank.

Concluding Remarks It is difficult to express the concerns that have been at the center of this essay without incurring the suspicion that here is an attempt to stifle Christian creativity

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among those who are shaking off the Western cultural dominance of the recent past. As a white European I realize that this could be highly inappropriate—though mutual accountability is an important part of mature cross-cultural ecumenism. Perhaps more important is the need to target the cultural assimilation so evident in Anglo-American Christianity, and to ask what it might mean for the Churches of Britain and North America to recognize as Christian that which is culturally alien to their own worldview. NOTES 1. The basis of this description is the author's earlier experience of teaching at Sia'atoutai Theological college, Tonga. A succinct description of the origins of Christianity in Tonga will be found in John Garrett, To Live Among the Stars (Geneva and Suva: World Council of Churches, 1982), while a fuller (though less critical) account comes in Harold Wood, Overseas Missions of the Australian Methodist Church: Volume 1, Tonga and Samoa (Melbourne: Aldersgate, 1975). The relation of Christianity to Tongan structures is analyzed by a leading Tongan historian in Sione Latukefu, Church and State in Tonga (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1974). 2. Helen Taliai, Ko E Himi 'A E Siasi Uesiliana Tau'ataina "O Tonga (Melbourne: Uniting Church Press, 1996). 3. Representative examples would be John Havea, "A Reconsideration of Pacificness in a Search for a Pacific Theology," and Randall Prior, "1 am the Coconut of Life: An Evaluation of Coconut Theology," both in The Pacific Journal of Theology, Series II, No. 10 (1993). 4. Jtirgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology, trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (New York: Harper and Row; London: SCM, 1974). 5. Ibid., 28. 6. There being no agreed terminology, and "Third World" and "Developing World" both Eurocentric, I have decided to opt for geographic (rather than social and theological) inexactitude. 7. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 89, cited by Aylward Shorter in Toward a Theology of Inculturation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1987), 4. In what follows I make considerable use of Shorter's work, as well as that of Robert Schreiter, whose book Constructing Local Theologies (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1985) marked a significant step forward in the theology of inculturation. 8. It will be clear that I am taking a stand on the "Christ and culture" question somewhat more critical than Niebuhr's. Broadly, I would side with those, such as Hauerwas and McClendon, who argue that Niebuhr has somewhat manipulated his five alternative strategies so that trenchant Christian critique of a prevalent culture will appear as an extreme option. (See also Robert Cathey's essay, chapter 14 in this volume.) 9. Aylward Shorter, discussing inculturation as a theological concept, observes: "Without doubt, the already Christianized culture represented by the messengers of the Gospel, the missionaries, must influence the tertium quid, the so-called 'new creation' of the culture they evangelize. It inevitably affects the response from the evangelized culture" (Toward a Theology of Inculturation, 11). 10. John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 6th ed. (London, 1878; reprint, Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989). 11. David Bosch, Trans/ormmg Mission: Paradigm Shifts in the Theology of Mission, (Maryknoll, NY.: Orbis, 1991), 284-345. 12. Ibid., 349-67.

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13. R. S. Sugirtharajah, ed. Voices from the Margin, 2d edition (London: SPCK; Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1995). 14. "The Case for a New Bible", in ibid., 69-82. 15. The anthropologist Jonathan Friedman has argued that cultural fragmentation and modernist homogenization are equally constitutive trends of global reality. See his Cultural Identity and Global Process (London, and Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1994). 16. Kwame Bediako, Theology and Identity: The Impact of Culture upon Christian Thought in the Second Century and Modern Africa (Oxford: Regnum, 1992). 17. So, for example, E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985); John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991); N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Augsburg/Fortress, 1994). 18. Walter Hollenweger, Evangelism Today (Belfast: Christian Journals, 1976). 19. For example, Eucharist and Eschatology, 135-46; The Ecumenical Moment, 54-72. 20. See the essay by Edward T. Oakes (chapter 20 in this volume) for further reflections on Christianity's "scandal of particularity."

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Part III THE NATURE OF DOCTRINE

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CHAPTER 13

INFALLIBILITY AND THE QUESTION OF ASSURANCE

George H. Tavard

Some of the recent bilateral ecumenical dialogues have examined the fundaI mental doctrines of the Reformation (often called its "formal and material principles")—namely, "Scripture alone" and "justification by faith alone." The conclusion has generally been reached that these are no longer essential points of divergence between Catholics and Protestants. In regard to the differences that have emerged since the Reformation—the Marian dogmas and the definition of papal infallibility—the difficulties, though they are far from removed, have been significantly narrowed. It seems, however, that a doctrine that was shared by a number of the Reformers (though not necessarily the most influential ones) has not been a topic of discussion. This is "the assurance of faith," which the Council of Trent referred to as "the heretics' vain trust."1 The Tridentine decree on justification, promulgated on January 13,1547, is the longest of the council's documents (fifteen chapters). While it does not itself discuss the assurance of faith (or the assurance of justification), it alludes to the question in chapter p.2 The other chapters expound the doctrine of justification positively, avoiding direct rebuttal of the Reformers' teachings. Chapter 9, however, is more negative. While it affirms the necessity of faith and the impossibility of obtaining the remission of sins unless the gratuitous mercy of God is extended to sinners propter Christum, its aim is to contradict inanem haereticorum fiduciam: One cannot say that sins are dismissed for a person who boasts of trust and certainty of the forgiveness of sins and who rests in it alone, as can happen among heretics and schismatics, and is moreover the case in the present turmoil, when this vain trust, removed from all piety, is preached with great contention against the Catholic Church.

And similarly, true justification does not exclude all doubt about being oneself justified, for it is not the response to grace that guarantees salvation. It is the grace of God—a gift that cannot be taken for granted. 151

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The decree on justification presents the oddity that while the chapter on trust and certainty is its shortest, more time was devoted to its corresponding anathemas than to any of the other canons. The thirty-three canons appended to the decree were dealt with in great haste. The presentation, discussion, rewriting, amendment, and adoption of the decree had taken from June 22, 1546, to January 5, 1547. A list of projected anathemas had been distributed on October 31, 1546, but it was not debated at the time. The debate took place after the discussion of the decree had been completed. In contrast, the anathemas were dispatched in only five days, January 5 to 9, 1547. The four canons, 12 to 15, that correspond to chapter 9 were examined on January 6 along with eleven others. But canon 14 came back and was debated for two full days, January 8 and 9. In other words, having explained justification at great length, the bishops at the sixth session saw no need to spend time on the condemnation of variant doctrines—except, precisely, in the matter of the assurance of justification. Canon 12 rejects the idea that justifying faith is identical with trust in the divine mercy that forgives sins propter Christum. Canon 13 condemns the notion that it is necessary for the forgiveness of sins to believe that one's own sins are forgiven without any hesitancy that could be due to weakness and lack of the proper dispositions. Canon 14 denies that such a faith is the cause of absolution and justification, that no one is justified without it, and that absolution and justification are caused by this faith alone. Canon 15 denies that those who have been reborn and justified must also believe that they belong among the predestined. The tenor of these canons, and of canon 14 in particular, hardly explains why the Council—given its restraint in chapter 9—became so excited in regard to the faith that one is justified. The reason for this lies in part, it would seem, in the various scholastic opinions that were represented among bishops and theologians regarding the certainty of grace and the assurance of salvation.

Scholastic Variations Trent followed scholastic theology in distinguishing between the assurance of salvation and the certainty of standing in God's grace. The grace of God is an inescapable condition of salvation. On this point the Council was no less assertive than Martin Luther. The assurance of salvation is sure insofar as it is grounded in Christ. It rests on the redemptive purpose of the incarnation and its effectiveness. It affirms the mission and work of Christ, the motive of the incarnation, and the divine purpose. It does not, however, give the certitude that one is listed in the book of life and counted among the elect. The Tridentine decree on justification implies an unequal dialectic between the objective certainty of salvation and the subjective assurance of being included in it. This second assurance is not carried by the faith that guarantees the first certainty. The first is a matter of faith: Christ is the only and sufficient Savior. The second belongs in the category of hope: the believer hopes to be saved, and this hope is not vain since it is founded on the promises of God. Indeed, there may even be tokens of it in the performance of good works. But there is never certitude.

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This teaching was close to the theology of Thomas Aquinas. Thomas had described the predestination of Christ as the model (ST 111.24.3) and, in a sense, the cause of our predestination (111.24.4). He had also affirmed that the passion of Christ is the "proper cause of the forgiveness of sins" (III.49-1). Our salvation is certain, with regard to Christ and to God's acceptance of what the Savior does. Yet there is a condition for sharing the fruit of Christ's passion. This is sharing also the passion of Christ "by faith, charity, and the sacraments of faith" (111.24.5). Salvation through Christ is absolutely certain in itself, but since it is shared only through faith and the sacraments, it does not guarantee the purity of anyone's faith and reception of the sacraments. As to the question of whether human beings can know that they have grace,3 Thomas responds, on the central point, in the negative. Yet there is an ambiguity in the argumentation. The principle of Thomas's position is taken from Ecclesiastes 9:1: "No one is certain of being worthy of hatred or of love." Grace alone (gratia gratum faciens) makes a person lovable to God. Yet no one can be absolutely certain of being in grace. There are, Thomas remarks, three ways of knowing: First, knowledge may come from private revelation, though such a revelation is rare; God reveals it "sometimes, to a few, by special privilege."4 Second, one may obtain personal knowledge with certainty but not in regard to having grace, for the certainty of a conclusion rests on knowledge of its principle, and the principles of logical demonstration, though universal, are themselves not demonstrable. Now the principle of grace is ipse Deus, and this God is unknown to us because of the transcendence of the divine Being (propter sui excellentiam est nobis ignotus). Therefore we have no absolute knowledge of God's presence in us. No one can be certain of grace. The argument of course assumes that grace is not just a gift, but a gift in which God is present. It is based on the essential unknowability of the divine Being. Logically, it assumes also that faith, itself God-given, is not an experiential revelation. Third, there may be conjectural knowledge based on telling signs. Relevant signs of grace could be: finding joy in God, feeling contempt for mundane matters, being unaware of mortal sin. Conjectural knowledge, however, remains imperfect and uncertain. As he refutes the arguments adduced in favor of the certainty of being in grace, Thomas returns to the ways of knowing. We know experientially what lies in our soul by virtue of our essence, as when we know our will by willing (ad 1). The presence of God, however, is not of this category. What faith believes is known with certainty, for the intellect necessarily knows what it knows; but "grace, charity, and other things of this sort are not a matter of intellect..." (ad 2). Besides, "the object and the purpose of grace are unknown to us due to the immensity of its light" (ad 3). Indeed, the gifts of glory are given us in hope and are known with certainty by faith, but "we do not know with certainty that we have the grace through which we could merit them" (ad 4). Being in God's grace is not a matter of knowledge but of desire and love. As we are aware of desiring, we may be aware of loving God. But knowing that God dwells in us by grace can be no more than a conjecture, except by a private revelation to which one cannot aspire without sinful presumption.

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For the Tridentine bishops, faith is an infused cognitive power that gives knowledge of the revelation in Christ and of God's salvific intention but provides no evidence of the actual state of one's soul. The awareness of grace, they would admit, does not go as far as total assurance or certainty. Indeed, those Reformers who affirmed the assurance of personal salvation had a pastoral advantage in the care of souls that could not be matched by St. Thomas's firm teaching that since God is unknown, so is the divine presence in the soul by grace. That the uncertainty of standing in God's grace was generally taught to the Catholic faithful in ordinary pastoral care and preaching can be gathered from a question that was put to Jeanne d'Arc at her trial in Rouen, on February 24, 1431: "Do you believe that you are in the state of grace?" She answered: "If I am not, may God put me in it; if I am, may God keep me in it."5 The notary duly noted: "They were greatly astonished, and they dismissed her at that moment."6 The bishops, however, could not have been eager to debate the assurance of grace or of faith, for Thomist theology was not the only one at work in the Council of Trent. The school of John Duns Scotus had become quasi-normative for Franciscans, and it was well represented among bishops and theologians. This was bound to affect the problematic of the awareness of grace and of the certainty of having the true faith. Duns Scotus's theology admitted two kinds of faith: acquired and infused. "One can assent to all that has been revealed by God with the faith that has been acquired from natural powers alone."7 Such an assent is no more mysterious than the knowledge of history. Past events are held to be true, not by an intrinsic evidence (which is nonexistent), but by trust in the veracity of the witnesses who recorded them. Such a conviction of truth is obviously known to those who have it. Moreover, if infused faith is rationally certain, this certitude has to come from the acquired faith that is present with it, and that is based on the conviction of the veracity of those who teach the faith. The infused faith that "God is three and one" is not the believer's response to God who reveals it, since the faithful in general receive no such revelation. It is a more fundamental attitude of adoration before primum objectum, the First Object of thought that is known through the general concept of God, "three" and "one" being also understood through the general concepts of threeness and oneness. The creaturely state includes an openness to God as the First Object of thought and the Ultimate Reality. When it is also infused into the soul, this fundamental openness becomes a habitus, which "directly turns a person toward the articles of faith, as if it had been directly acquired from these known articles."8 Duns Scotus concludes: "As I believe God to be Three and One, so do I believe that I have infused faith because I believe it, and this comes from God." However interesting it was as a speculative system, the theology of the Doctor Subtilis was too involved to be easily debated in a council. What remained of it for the Tridentine majority was an embarrassment when confronted with a point concerning which Thomas and Duns Scotus were in disagreement. This was the case when they faced the Protestant concept of assurance. The solution was to formulate a minimal Catholic doctrine that would not bring Thomists and Scotists into conflict. Without denying that believers can know that they have true faith and

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are thereby included in the order of salvation, the bishops did not extend this certainty to personal forgiveness and justification. They rejected the inanem haereticorum fiduciam as an illusion. Awareness of God's saving grace in oneself is not included in the experience of faith, except, as both Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus conceded, by private revelation—a privilege that escapes the usual order of divine providence. The certainty of faith is not a personal awareness of grace, salvation, justification, or sanctification. Thomism affirmed the objective certainty of the truth of faith without allowing for the subjective certitude of having faith and grace. Scotism placed the certainty of faith, not only in the objective truth of divine revelation, but also in a conviction of truth that has been intentionally acquired by studying Scripture, tradition, and Church teaching. As it was caught between two great medieval Doctors, the Council of Trent neither denied nor affirmed that such a certainty of faith is available to believers.

Differences among the Reformers Most of the Tridentine bishops must have taken "Lutheranism" in a broad sense that covered the teachings of all the Reformers. Few of the theologians who assisted them had exact information as to differences and nuances between Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and the motley group of the Anabaptists. Thomas's repeated insistence that Deus remains, in this life, ignotus had found a resounding echo in Luther's qualification of God as absconditus. But it was not at the high level of the doctrine of God that the Reformers opposed the pope. The two sides were opposed at the more practical level of ascertaining how God comes to the faithful, and how the faithful in turn relate to God. Since the standard Catholic theology connumerated faith with the virtues of hope and charity, there was no necessity to include the certainty of having faith in faith itself, as long as one of the other virtues included a certainty that was sufficient to quiet an anxious conscience. It was precisely the traditional function of hope to assure the faithful that the promises of God will be fulfilled in their own good time. Luther, however, with his more biblical understanding of faith, included everything salvific in faith itself, including the dimension of certainty that the scholastics had associated with hope. The difference was hardly essential, and it did not touch the nature of the Christian life. Unfortunately, the view of Luther that prevailed at Trent had been contaminated by the turmoil associated with Anabaptism, for which the bishops in general held Luther to be ultimately responsible, in spite of his relentless struggles against the Schwarmer. Rightly or wrongly, Trent attributed to the Anabaptists the tautological conception that only if we believe that we are personally saved are we truly saved. They were certainly mistaken in extending such a view to Luther and Calvin. The Latent Concern: Magisterial Hierarchy Neither the bishops' misapprehensions of the Reformers' doctrines nor their reluctance to interfere in ongoing debates between Thomists and Scotists can fully ex-

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plain the Tridentine anathemas against fiducia—the trust in one's salvation that the Reformers had displaced from hope to faith, and that the Anabaptists were thought to have identified as the essence of faith. The Council itself hinted at an underlying concern. At the end of the decree of the fourth session, the bishops declared: "May all thus understand in which order and way the Synod itself, after establishing the foundation of its confession of faith, is going to proceed, and which testimonies and norms it will use with great power to determine dogmas and to instore morals in the Church."9 The fourth session dealt with methodology. It determined the principles to be followed by the Council in regard to Scripture and the doctrinal traditions that had been faithfully transmitted from the apostles. The data of Scripture and of the apostolic traditions of doctrine were thus identified as the objective norm of Christian teaching and behavior. The council, however, prudently refrained from listing these apostolic traditions. The impact of upholding an objective criterion of doctrine was felt seventeen years later (July 15, 1563), when the decree of the twenty-third session on the sacrament of orders declared that by virtue of "the visible sacrifice of the Eucharist instituted by the Lord," there is in the Church "a new, visible, and external priesthood [sacerdotium]," which the Lord himself instituted, as he also transmitted "to the Apostles and their successors in the priesthood the power to consecrate, offer, and administer his body and blood, and also to forgive and retain sins."10 In other words, the bishops themselves, by virtue of apostolic succession, act as the objective standard of true faith. The faith professed by each believer is certain insofar as it corresponds to the bishops' teaching. The objective standards of Scripture, tradition, and priesthood were not related by Trent to subjective assurance. In the tradition that was handed on at Trent, the certainty of faith lies precisely in the magisterial hierarchy. It is an external, objective certainty, tied to the institution of the visible Church. The faithful relate to it by faith in Christ's purposes, and by hope that they themselves will benefit from the grace that is channeled through the Church and its hierarchy. In this spirit, canon 6 of the twenty-third session declared: "If any one says that in the Catholic Church there is no hierarchy instituted by divine ordination, which consists of bishops, priests, and deacons, let him be anathema."11 More moderately yet no less firmly, the only anathema that had been promulgated with the decree of the fourth session had stated: "If someone does not receive these integral books (of Scripture) as sacred and canonical with all their parts, as they are commonly read in the Catholic Church and found in the old Latin vulgate edition, and, with knowledge and deliberation, expresses contempt for the aforementioned traditions, let him be anathema."12 Like the organization of the Church's magisterium in a threefold order of bishops, priests, and deacons, Scripture and the apostolic traditions are objective data that convey the faith and guarantee its certainty. There is no need for an additional subjective assurance, whatever Scotist theology may suggest. Thus, at the start of the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church officially adopted an objective view of certainty that was thought to render superfluous a personal assurance of faith. By contrast, the doctrine of assurance had arisen from doubts regarding the hierarchy and its teaching of the faith. The Protestant problematic on the internal

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assurance of faith appears to be both logical and necessary once trust in magisterial guidance and in the value of traditional doctrines has been lost. It is logical, because faith is still God's undeserved grace, and God alone can give the assurance of it. It is necessary, because without it the Christian conscience is unavoidably caught in something like the Anfechtungen, those desperate spiritual struggles that had assailed Luther before he was able to equate the "justice of God" not with our just condemnation as sinners but with the justice of Christ that God graciously extends to those who believe. By the time Vatican Council I met in December 1869, the question of the personal assurance of faith was not a concern in Catholic theology; however, the objective certainty of doctrine for the whole Church was one. This was largely a reaction to the liberal philosophies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Pius IX felt the need for a powerful weapon in his struggle with modern times (already expressed in the Syllabus of 1864) and his struggle with the Italian nationalism that threatened the medieval tradition of the temporal power of the popes. Going beyond Trent, Vatican I defined that such a standard has been providentially given to the Church in the bishop of Rome, who in certain conditions can do by himself what all bishops can do together in an ecumenical council, namely, designate specific doctrines as being part of divine revelation. Pius IX had himself, in 1854, defined the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God as a dogma of faith. In fact, papal infallibility, though formally undefined, had been widely acknowledged in the medieval tradition, and it was implied in the opinion of St. Thomas that the bishop of Rome alone has the authority to promulgate new symbols of the faith (1111.1.8). The Roman Catholic propensity to look for objective standards of a public nature rather than for an individual assurance of salvation culminated in the definition of July 18, 1870. The heated debate that preceded the definition did not question the principle of an objective standard of belief—only the opportunity of such a definition and the proper formulation of it. That the definition came at an opportune moment was a matter of opinion, concerning which one could well differ. It was more urgent to choose the right formula, because this would determine the limits of papal authority in matters of doctrine. This problem had emerged in the late medieval discussion of conciliarism, which asked: who has the higher authority, council or pope? The question of 1870 was of more immediate relevance to the people of the Church: what is the limit to the doctrinal authority of the bishop of Rome? The question was introduced into the problematic of infallibility by the opponents of the definition. The limits were eventually set by the four conditions assigned to definitions ex cathedra.13 They were less restrictive than the bishops of a Gallican or Josephist persuasion had wished, but far more than the extreme ultramontane party had expected. In the decades following the council, however, a number of ultramontane theologians and some of the Roman dicasteries have shown a tendency to disregard the conditions determined by Vatican I, and to attribute infallibility to items that do not fall within these conditions, as is clearly the case with the nonordainability of women in Roman Catholic canon law. Such claims, however, do not detract from the normativity of the conciliar definition, which has primacy over occasional responses given by Roman offices. The Code of Canon

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Law faithfully reflects the mind of Vatican I when it specifies that "no doctrine must be understood to have been infallibly defined unless this is evidently manifest" (Canon 748 §3).14 Vatican II could not avoid speaking of papal infallibility in the constitution Lumen gentium. While it fully concurred with the teaching of the constitution Pastor aeternus of Vatican I, it added a far-reaching precision: definitions ex cathedra are valid by themselves (exsese) and not by virtue of the consent (consensus) of the Church; nonetheless, "the assent [assemus] of the Church can never be missing" (LG 25), since the Spirit leads the mass of the faithful to the fullness of truth with no less efficacy than bishops, councils, and popes. In any case, sensus fidei totius populi, the "sense of faith of the whole people," (LG 12), is itself an observable datum, not an intimate confidence in one's personal salvation. Those in ecumenical circles who have been searching for a fundamental difference (Grunddifferenz) between Catholicism and Protestantism may wonder if the urge to find a subjective assurance of faith in faith itself is not a characteristic of the Protestant mind, while the location of an objective assurance of certainty in the hierarchical structure of the Church would be a characteristic of the Catholic mind. Although I do not myself agree that such a fundamental difference exists, the question is worth looking at, be it only to set aside wrong approaches to ecumenical problems.

Bilateral Dialogues I am not aware of a full discussion of the problem of assurance in an ecumenical context. Not one of the post—Vatican II bilateral dialogues has discussed this topic. Yet the question is necessarily touched upon in relation to justification by faith. Both justification and infallibility have been considered at length, notably by Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue. In the common statement on justification that was finalized in 1985, Lutherans and Catholics declared, "Hope and trust for salvation are gifts of the Holy Spirit and finally rest solely on God in Jesus Christ."15 Some Lutherans may wish to add the assurance of faith to this common statement. In and by Christ, believers are justified in the eyes of God. Since this is known by faith alone, and neither by the works of the law nor by any possible good works, then faith in the Savior necessarily entails trust that one is and will be saved, and this trust is a gift of the Spirit. As Article IV of the Confession of Augsburg declared: "Our Churches teach . . . that human beings are freely justified for Christ's sake through faith when they believe that they are received into favor and that their sins are forgiven on account of Christ, who by his death made satisfaction for our sins." Such a certainty is not, as Tridentine canons 12 to 15 feared, a subjective feeling, nor the alleged cause of salvation, nor a revealed object of faith, nor a mark of the justified, nor a token of predestination. It is the experience of believing the promises of Christ and of entirely entrusting oneself to the mercy of God that is graciously extended to sinners through the Savior. Thus the difficulties of the Council of Trent in regard to the assurance of faith seem to have been overcome, at least with respect to Lutheran doctrine and emphases.

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An additional point that came to the fore in the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue is relevant. Justification by faith alone is not only a doctrine and a formulation of the basic Christian experience; it is also a norm of judgment for all doctrines and all Christian feelings and attitudes. Although Luther did not put it in these terms, this is undoubtedly the way he frequently argued. He made the same point when he insisted that justification by faith alone is the articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae. The Church stands when it teaches that justification is by faith alone; it falls when it concedes that justification is in part from human effort so that one is saved also by the practice of good works. Admittedly, this dimension of justification by faith met with a mixed reaction on the part of the Catholic partners in dialogue, some of them being hesitant to accept it.16 Nonetheless, an equivalent point was made in the Declaration that concludes the joint statement. After confessing that we cannot respond to the call of the Gospel on our own initiative but only through "an undeserved gift which is granted and made known in faith" (§161), the text declared: "We are willing to be judged by it in all our thoughts and actions, our philosophies and projects, our theologies and religious practices" (§162). If we are indeed judged by faith alone in all our thoughts and actions, then all our thoughts and actions are entrusted to the one who is the judge of faith, the Lord Jesus. And there is no safer place to be than under the Just Judge. The assurance of faith appears to be the reverse side of the willingness to be judged by faith alone. In the first Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, the problem of infallibility was faced without the question of assurance being raised. The report on Authority in the Church (1976) mentioned four pending problems: the meaning of the Petrine texts of the New Testament, the language of "divine right" as applied to authority of the bishop of Rome, the doctrine of papal infallibility, and the "universal immediate jurisdiction" attributed to the bishop of Rome. The text, however, acknowledged that an objective certainty of truth is given by conciliar and primatial statements "by which the Holy Spirit keeps the People of God faithful to the truth of the Gospel" (Venice Statement II, §20). The principle of papal authority was thus implicitly recognized, this principle being no other than the need for a formal agency to guarantee the objective truth of belief. Elaborating on the four points in 1981, the last report of ARCIC-I made it clear that the relevance of conciliar and primatial authority to the truth of faith need not lead to the conclusion that the "successor of Peter" shares a higher form of the "unfailing charism of the truth" that the Roman tradition has recognized in the bishops. This, however, was not regarded as an impasse. It simply meant that dialogue should remain open-ended. ARCIC-II, the second Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, raised the question of assurance explicitly in its report, Salvation and the Church: "one difficulty concerned the understanding of the faith through which we are justified, insofar as this included the individual's confidence in his or her final salvation" (4). Passing on to a constructive proposal that could be shared by Anglicans and Roman Catholics, the report endorsed the notion of Christian assurance, as long as it "does not remove from Christians the responsibility of working out their salvation with fear and trembling" (10). Such assurance is based on the objective gifts

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of God to the faithful. Martin Luther, ever anxious not to let human constructs and human expectations hide God's sovereign action, might not have chosen this way. For one may well argue that since God gives justification and salvation to those who do not deserve them, additional gifts of whatever people identify as necessary to salvation become entirely superfluous! The certitude that is envisioned in Salvation and the Church derives from faith in God's gifts; yet it does not seem to be intrinsic to faith. The conversations between the Catholic Church and the World Methodist Council have touched on these questions, especially in the Honolulu Report of 1981. This is actually the only dialogue that has seen a correlation between the assurance of faith and the doctrine of infallibility. Under the title "Toward an Agreement on the Holy Spirit," the first section of the report drew attention to the work of the Spirit in the justification and regeneration of each of the faithful (13-18) and to the role of the Spirit in the whole Christian community (19-22). As to the Christian experience: it includes, the text said, the assurance of God's unmerited mercy in Christ, the inner witness of the Spirit that we are indeed children of God, pardoned and reconciled to the Father. The same Spirit also guides the faithful to a knowledge of all the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, and to an ever more faithful obedience to God's righteous rule within the human community at large (24).

The report noted the importance of the assurance of the Spirit in John Wesley's experience, and remarked that in the Catholic theology of Wesley's time, Christian experience was emphasized by mystics rather than by scholastics. The CounterReformation marked a parting of the ways between the personal conviction of God's graciousness and the objective knowledge of the truth of divine revelation as this truth is preserved in the Church's doctrines. As was suggested by canons 12—15 °f the Council of Trent, the assurance of objectivity in the proclamation of doctrine was largely a reaction against the assurance of personal certainty in the experience of faith. There ensued in Catholic theology a growing separation between dogma and experience. And this separation was considerably enlarged in the nineteenth century by the many reports of visions, chiefly of the Virgin Mary, which fed a Catholic piety that was insufficiently nurtured by theological reflection. In these conditions the definition of papal infallibility at Vatican Council I was a radical way of assuring the faithful of a certainty of faith that they were not taught to find in their personal experience of God. One can hardly exaggerate the originality of the Honolulu Report in this regard, even though the insights it reached did not lead to a statement on assurance and infallibility. Rather than to ecclesiology, the dialogue turned its attention to morality and moral guidance (39-56). Ecclesiological principles, however, remain available for further reflection. To "Christ's authority mediated through the Spirit, who is Love," the Honolulu Report ascribed both "the personal authority of holiness" and "the charism of episkope conferred by the Spirit on the ordained ministry" (3 3). It even went a long way toward a papal primacy when it. added: "whethe it be teaching or disciplinary, authority implies that what is propounded, com-

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manded or recommended ought to be accepted on the ground that it comes from this source," namely from Christ through the Holy Spirit. This dialogue read Vatican II as beginning to restore the category of Christian experience in Catholic theology. Seeing the Holy Spirit at work both in the individual conscience that strives after perfection (28-32) and in the Church that teaches the doctrines of salvation that have been illustrated in Scripture and handed down in tradition (33-37), it was able to reach beyond the "special difficulties [that] have been voiced and persist in the matter of papal claims and the character of dogmatic definitions," to the view that "emotions surrounding such relatively modern terms as infallibility and irreformability can be diminished if they are looked at in the light of our shared doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit" (35). It even made a statement that would have astonished Luther and horrified Calvin: "The papal authority, no less than any other within the Church, is a manifestation of the continuing presence of the Spirit of Love in the Church, or it is nothing." One could easily take one step further and add: since it is not nothing, it has to be a manifestation of the Spirit! A future agreement, however, could go in another direction. That some assurance of salvation is implied in the profession of the Christian faith, no one would deny. The theological history that has been surveyed in this essay may suggest that concerns about objective infallibility in dogmatic teaching are superfluous if the very act of faith has given the believer an assurance of justification and salvation that is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Given the weight of the papal tradition, such a recognition is not likely to lead Roman Catholic theology to abandon the concept of infallibility. It should nonetheless foster an acknowledgment that the assurance of objective truth in irreformable definitions is not a convincing warrant of the Church's fidelity to the Spirit. Dogmatic definitions have in fact not generally nurtured the process of Christian perfection, however persuasive modern popes have wished to be in their exhortations to piety. The experience and the theology of John Wesley suggest an understanding of the assurance of faith that should have satisfied the Tridentine bishops had they only known of them. When, after the Aldersgate Street experience of May 24,1738, Wesley wrote in his diary: "I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust Christ, Christ alone for my salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death,"17 assurance was the counterpart of his own total trust in the Savior. It was neither the product of self-confidence nor a quasi-Pelagian trust in his works, but a gift of the Spirit who placed in his heart a total trust in Christ and, along with it, the certainty that this trust was not in vain. Wesley never made personal assurance of faith into the sort of doctrine that the Tridentine anathemas rejected. He saw it rather as a dimension of the "inward religion" that he described in A Plain Account of Christian Perfection. Assurance is no less than the confidence in Christ that those cannot fail to feel who are aware of the fullness of God's saving gift to them. In the words of Charles Wesley, No condemnation now I dread, Jesus and all in him is mine.

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Alive in him, my living head, And clothed in righteousness divine, Bold I approach th'eternal throne, And claim the crown, through Christ my own.18

Indeed, when John Wesley urged the early Methodists to strive after Christian perfection, he pointed to another kind of assurance than the one that had been rejected at Trent: the assurance of the gift of grace to those who sincerely seek scriptural holiness in the fullness of Christian discipleship.

A Final Word In Doxology, Geoffrey Wainwright showed that doctrine does not form a realm outside the domain of divine grace and the worshipful acknowledgement of it by Christian believers and their communities. This could offer the principle of a solution to the problem that was faced by the Catholic bishops when they met in the cathedral of Trent. Geoffrey Wainwright: also wrote: "It is in the perspective of intention and hope that the questions of (in)fallibility can most profitably be considered."19 And again: "It is in the context of God's faithfulness and these limitations [scil., of our failures in fidelity to God] that discussion of infallibility and fallibility, defectibility and indefectibility, must take place. Its proper register is that of hope."20 The experience of confessing the faith that is part of Christian worship holds a key—both to the assurance that the Reformers found in the profession of faith and to the certainty of which Catholics gave a controversial formulation in the language of infallibility. NOTES 1. Denz 1533. 2. Denz 1533-34. 3. Utrum homo possit scire se habere gratiam? (ST I-II.1 12.5). 4. aliquando, aliquibus, ex spedali privilegio. 5. Si ego non sim Deus ponat me; et si ego sim Deus me teneat in illa (Pierre Champion, Proces de Condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc, vol I, Texte latin [Paris: Honore Champion, 1920], 48). 6. Fuerunt multum stupefacti, et illa hora dimiserunt. 7. Fide acquisita ex puris naturalibus potest assentire omnibus revelatis a Deo (Questiones in libro III sentendarum, III, Dist 23, q. 1, n. 8, in Opera Omnia, vol. XV [Paris: Vives, 1954], 11). 8. Ille habitus immediate inclinat in articulos fidd, sicut si ex articulis cognitis immediate acquireretur (ibid., n. 11, p. 16). 9. Omnes itaque intelligant quo ordine et via ipsa Synodus post jactum fidei confessionis fundamentum sit progressma, et quibus potissimum testimoniis ac praesidiis in confirmandis dogmatibus el instaurandis in Ecdesia moribus sit usura (Denz 1505). 10. Denz 11. Denz 12. Denz 13. Denz

1764. 1776. 1504. 3074.

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14. Infallibiliter definita nulla intellegitur doctrina nisi id manifeste constat. 15. George Anderson, Austin Murphy, and Joseph Burgess, eds, Justification by Faith: Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue VII (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985), §4, p. 16. 16. It was to allay the late Carl Peter's hesitancies that the volume Justification by Faith included his paper, "Justification by Faith and the Need for Another Critical Principle" (304-15). While his ideas had been explained in the dialogue, this paper was composed explicitly for the volume and had not been discussed as such. 17. Frank Whaling, ed, John and Charles Wesley. Selected Writings and Hymns (New York: Paulist, 1981), 107. 18. Ibid., #18, p. 197. 19. Doxology, 283. 20. Doxology, 444.

CHAPTER 14

CHRIST AND CULTURE REVISITED

Niebuhr's Typology in Wainwright's "Orthodoxology" Robert A. Cathey

Geoffrey Wainwright uses H. Richard Niebuhr's influential typology from I Christ and Culture1 in at least two of his works: Doxology and The Study of Spirituality.2 At the time these works were published in the 19805, this use probably raised only a few eyebrows among Wainwright's readers. In 1983, when I first read Doxology and when I was doing some background editorial work for SPCK on The Study of Spirituality, the use seemed to me a creative appropriation of a typology about culture to talk about religion and the religions. At least Wainwright had found one more Reformed theologian he could agree with; as a Presbyterian, I felt I should be thankful for that! In Doxology, Wainwright makes two uses of the Christ and Culture typology: one to show the varieties of Christianity's relationships to the world's religions, and the other to show the relations of Christian liturgy to culture. In the first case, his use of the typology follows Niebuhr so closely that Wainwright may be open to the neo-Anabaptist charge of appropriating a flawed typological approach and a flawed typology. But in the second case, on the relationship of liturgy to culture, his use of the typology seems more flexible; indeed, I want to suggest that Wainwright improves upon Niebuhr's use of the typology, and that he may offer a way for some neo-Anabaptists and postliberals to appropriate its positive uses.3 Wainwright's critique of civil religion and infant baptism shows that he is more open to the prophetic power of Anabaptist witness than, was the Niebuhr of Christ and Culture. Some endnote quotations and other references seem much more open to the kind of Church/world model one finds in Hauerwas and Willimon's Resident Aliens. 4 Niebuhr's influential typology has been put under the critical microscope by a number of neo-Anabaptist scholars, beginning with John Howard Yoder. His "Christ and Culture: A Critique of H. Richard Niebuhr" was published in 1996;5 but if had circulated in manuscript for a long time, and had already inspired at least one dissertation. 6 Its influence spread beyond historic peace-church circles to impact Meth164

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odists like Hauerwas and Willimon. Given the popularity of their book Resident Aliens, part of Yoder's critique is now known to a wider ecumenical circle of readers. With the advent of cultural studies in Anglo-American higher education, and a postmodern turn among recent anthropologists, various readers have returned to Christ and Culture to assess anew its meaning and impact, as well as the possible distortions it has introduced into a theological understanding of Christ, culture, and the Church. Before I turn to this recent reassessment and critique, let me say why it is important for reading Wainwright today. I understand Wainwright's theological project as a liturgical, doxological version of neo-orthodoxy, or "orthodoxology." Like the great Protestant neo-orthodox and Catholic ressourcement theologians of this century, Wainwright seeks to retrieve the riches of Christian heritage for a new era and culture. His creative revision of the neo-orthodox project extends the subject matter of theology into Christian worship as embodied in liturgical texts over time and space. My concern is that this project grows out of an agenda for theology that has not yet taken full account of its own modernist assumptions about Christ, culture, and the Church. Thus, my hope is to provoke a conversation between Wainwright and neo-Anabaptist, postliberal, and postmodern theologians that will be mutually beneficial and ensure a place for "orthodoxology" in our postmodern era.

The Neo-Anabaptist Critique of Christ and Culture: John Howard Yoder In recent years a number of theological ethicists, influenced by the work of Yoder7 and by the postmodern turn in cultural theory, have called Niebuhr's achievement into question. Charles Scriven has deftly coined their slogan: "The transformation of culture is Christ's true purpose and his true means is the witness of radically obedient disciples."8 Hauerwas has codified their rule: "any time you see ' and Culture,' you know that a mistake has been made . . . because it is assumed that whatever is put in the blank is something separate from the practices that constitute a culture."9 These critics acknowledge Yoder's critique of Christ and Culture and his The Politics of Jesus as watershed events in North American Christian ethics.10 In these two works, Yoder undermined both the Christology and theory of culture that Niebuhr presented so persuasively. In fact, Yoder dismantled not only Niebuhr's five types in detail, but also his fundamental definitions of Christ and culture, which were presented as if they were essentially separate entities. The first question raised by his critique is: Why typologize anyway? This methodological question is at the heart of one of Yoder's central theses: Christ and Culture has regularly led its readers to make too much of the normative rigidity of the five-type model. A typology which is more convincing to the naive than it is true when examined therefore becomes in the technical sense demonic, a structure which gets in the way of wholeness and understanding rather than serving those goals. (AT 47)

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Further, the typology is not open to falsification "by any kind of test which Niebuhr could suggest" (AT 51). Yoder does not oppose all typologies (as some hermeneutic phenomenologists do), but specifically Niebuhr's typology.11 Yoder critiques Niebuhr's theory of culture by uncovering its implicit but unargued assumptions. The concept of culture in Christ and Culture is, first, of all, monolithic. Thus "you must either withdraw from it all, transform it all, or keep it all in paradox" (AT 54). By contrast, for Yoder "every morally accountable affirmation of culture discriminates" (AT 55). Further, Niebuhr tends to treat culture as autonomous from Christ, who can "critique or 'convert'" cultural values, but their validity stands prior to Christ's prophetic critique (AT 55). Yoder's critique of Niebuhr's monolithic and autonomous concept of culture can be reinforced by Raymond Williams's critique of certain Marxist and literarycritical notions of culture. Since Wainwright cites Williams's work in the chapter on "Culture" in Doxology, the Yoder/Williams analogy becomes more telling.12 According to Williams, "Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language."13 He found "three broad active categories of usage" in English. As an independent and abstract noun, culture "describes a general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development" from the eighteenth century to the present. As an independent noun, whether used generally or specifically, culture "indicates a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period, a group, or humanity in general." Also as an independent and abstract noun, culture "describes the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity. This seems often now the most widespread use: culture is music, literature, painting and sculpture, theater and film."14 Williams goes on to note that "in archaeology and in cultural anthropology the reference to culture or a culture is primarily to material production, while in history and cultural studies the reference is primarily to signifying or symbolic systems."15 Williams's innovation among Marxist scholars of culture was to jettison the old base/superstructure model of deterministic material production in relation to cultural production. Instead, he describes feedback mechanisms and interchange between material production (e.g., the extension of television and digital technology into the home and classroom) and signifying or symbolic systems (e.g., how television and the Internet have changed perceptions of capital, art, society, and gender). What emerges from the work of Yoder, Williams, and many others in the fields of anthropology, literary criticism, and cultural studies is the recognition of a much more sophisticated, more dynamic, and even more pluralistic model of culture and cultures than was available to Niebuhr when he composed Christ and Culture.16 Further, we may ask why Niebuhr didn't think in terms of the Church as Christie culture or subculture in advanced technological societies. In discussing Christ in relation to the cosmos, Jurgen Moltmann has proposed the model of mutual indwelling.17 On this model, any future notions of culture and Christ would speak of how Christ lives in cultural contexts and how cultural contexts live (or fail to live) in Christ. No monolithic or autonomous notions are adequate—whether in terms of postmodern philosophy, social science, or theology. As Kathryri Tanner has shown in relation to postmodern cultural theory:

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Contrary to the influential views of H. Richard Niebuhr ... in the Christian case relations with the wider culture are never simply ones of either accommodation, on the one hand, or opposition and radical critical revision, on the other, but always some mixture. Putting it crudely, the Christian response to a modern Western culture's affirmation of women's rights does not have to be the same as its response to that same culture's practice of sending Jews to concentration camps. Nothing is decided by the simple fact that both practices have figured in the wider culture; everything depends on theological judgments concerning the particulars.18

Finally, Yoder critiques Niebuhr's Christology, and especially his trinitarianism, by means of which Niebuhr criticizes some of his types. Given the centrality of Wainwright's criteriological Christology and trinitarian doctrine for his theology, this critique is most telling for the usefulness of Christ and Culture. As Habib Badr, a Lebanese Orthodox historian of Christianity, once pointed out, Niebuhr's portrait of Christ as a moralist and, in his later work, a "radical monotheist" bears all the marks of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century quests for the historical Jesus. Yoder contrasts this modern image with the mainstream of Christian tradition, which portrays Jesus as "the Son of God incarnate, his teaching authoritative and his person unique" and claims that "his death is the atonement for human sin, following which his resurrection is the guarantee of a new living power in human experience" (AT 59). This portrait is never denied in Christ and Culture, but neither is it made salient.19 In fact, other key themes or patterns of New Testament Christology are lacking from Christ and Culture as well: "that Jesus is in his life and death an exemplary human; not only a teacher whose instructions are authoritative but a person whom his disciples are to imitate ... in free discipleship," and "that Christ is affirmed to be Lord both over nature and over all human history by virtue of his resurrection and ascension" (AT 60). This last point is important to a critique of Niebuhr's trinitarianism as one of his crucial ethical criteria. Yoder outlines the argument that is cloaked by Niebuhr's appeal to trinitarian doctrine, in order to examine its internal logic: Niebuhr is committed... to the independent value of certain "other sources" of moral judgment. They are not autonomous over against God, but they are independent of Jesus, . . . [who] condemned the claims to autonomy of other moral authorities. . . . Niebuhr's first step must therefore be to shift the meaning of Jesus' criticism of creaturely rebelliousness within culture, so that Jesus' call is not itself a real option within history and culture but rather a direction, "pointing away" from the world, and therefore by definition incapable of standing alone. . . . Similarly Niebuhr must proceed to shift the definition of those claimants to cultural values which Jesus judges: the state, money, the arts, the clan, sex. Instead of recognizing the idolatrous rebelliousness of their claim to autonomy, he ascribes this independence of the creatures to a divine mandate.. . . The sum total of these redefinitions means that whereas in biblical faith the coming of God to humankind, in the prophet's word and in Jesus, places before people a judgment and a call to obedience which is itself relevant within history and culture, in Christ and Culture the prophetic impact of God's speaking into history has now been so reformulated that it cannot be taken seriously as able to be

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obeyed. Thus what for the Bible is a pair of alternatives, a summons to choose, becomes with Niebuhr a challenge to synthesize.20

On the Creation of New "Types" Despite the thoroughness of Yoder's critique, he nevertheless credits Niebuhr with stimulating theological conversation and debate on the meanings of culture and Christ. Yoder is open to the creation of many new "types" and to exploring how they may overlap (AT 49). The advent of interfaith dialogue organizations in about one hundred cities across the U.S. and Canada in the 1990s suggests a major theological site where new "types" are needed to understand the plurality of ways the people of God indwell and are informed by the overlapping phenomena of multiple cultures and religions. Following upon Yoder's proposal that Niebuhr's typology is too limited as to the variety of its types, Brethren theologian and historian Dale Brown proposed a sixth "type": Christ the servant of culture, the servant Church, or "candlelight ecclesiology."21 This "type" supplements and corrects Niebuhr's false categorization of "the peace church tradition as against culture." Brown comments: I have regarded this as unfair and would prefer a category [Niebuhr] does not have at all; that is, Christ, the servant of culture. I believe this to be a more inclusive category, one which encompasses a variety of ways of witnessing that are consistent with the [New Testament] texts on powers and principalities [e.g., Eph. 3:7-10], It is possible for the church to serve culture by: submitting to, honoring and praying for the powers; prophetically preaching the gospel of repentance to the structures; participating in the transformation of the structures; opposing counterstructures where feasible; disarming the structures in preaching Christ crucified; and holding fast to the promises of God in spite of the powers.22

The beauty of this proposal is that when it is extended to include the world's religions, the possible relation of Christ to other faith traditions becomes one of service—-not always and everywhere one of nullification. How does Christ act through the Church and Christians to serve the living faith of, for example, jews, Muslims, and Hindus? How does Christian witness in the form of truth-telling work to undermine false, media-created stereotypes of Muslims in Western societies? How has Christian scholarship about the world's religions and Christian hospitality at the two world parliaments of religion furthered the renewal of religious life in the twentieth century for all the faith traditions? How has Christian support and defense of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution helped to create one of the most interfaith societies in recent world history?

Avoiding a Foundationalism of Nonviolence Given the critique of Christ and Culture, and by implication its application to the relation of Christ to the world's religions, Wainwright could respond that

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the neo-Anabaptist prohibition on Christian resort to violence is the critical factor distinguishing its interpretation of the Gospel and culture from other, more widely ecumenical interpretations. Since Wainwright identifies himself with the "Great Tradition" of historic Christianity, and that "Tradition" includes just war theory, he could reply that neo-Anabaptists have turned nonviolence into something like an absolute ethical principle that forms the foundation of their epistemology (and thereby their approach to ecclesiology, culture, and other religions).23 The irony in this use of nonviolence as a critical principle for evaluating theories of culture (or of interfaith relations) is that it is invoked by scholars who have rooted their work in a communal tradition that has avoided erecting creeds and making their principles binding on their members. Nonviolence on this account would turn out to be the hidden creed of noncreedal Churches, the invisible foundation of antifoundational theologies, the sheltered conceit of a perfectionist ethic and ecclesiology. At least one neo-Anabaptist theologian, Charles Scriven, has attempted to avoid the trap of becoming a Sermon on the Mount legalist, while remaining in close conversation with Niebuhr. In The Transformation of Culture, Scriven recovered and revised Niebuhr's theological ethics in light of Yoder's critique and theological insights from across the ecumenical spectrum.24 His work provides a helpful qualification of the Anabaptist commitment to nonviolence, and a postfoundational or nonlegalistic ethic of nonviolence. Scriven argues that in an extreme case (his example is of someone shooting children in a schoolyard), "radical virtue would surely call for creative, nonviolent action." But he also admits that, given the biblical claims against legalism and in favor of effecting justice, "not even the disciple can repudiate violence absolutely." On the other hand, he observes that it would be very unusual for a Christian to be in a position to ask this question; in this world of violence, he suggests, in which "many are trained and ready to maim and kill," it seems "unlikely that someone prepared in the skills of discipleship would ever be crucial in putting a violent stop to carnage."25 Yet in this thought experiment, Scriven begins to build a bridge between neoAnabaptists and those in the "just war" tradition, such as Wainwright and me. For if the radical disciple cannot repudiate violence absolutely, then the door is open to discuss whether one could be trained to use both lethal force and nonlethal measures to prevent the murder of innocent life, or whether God may act through socially sanctioned forms of violence to judge the inhumanity of persons who violate God's children. At the same time, the witness of the radical disciple calls into question the presumption on the part of some just war theorists that certain adventures of the nation-state (e.g., counterterrorist operations of the United States) are no different from the actions of police officers who use lethal force to stop violent criminals. Other neo-Anabaptist and postliberal theologians have offered their own critiques and alternatives to Christ and Culture.26 Given the transformations in cultural theory, theology, and the crisis of membership and stewardship in the "oldline (formerly 'mainline') ecumenical Churches" in Western societies, new paradigms of Church/world relations are bound to emerge.

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Toward a Radical Reformulation of Church/World Relations Given the critique and reconstruction of Niebuhr's project in Christ and Culture, are the questions he raised still adequate to a renewed understanding of the mutual indwelling of Christ and culture? 27 The following theses are intended to open a dialogue between Wainwright's orthodoxology, Neo-Anabaptists like Scriven, and postliberals like Hauerwas, 1. The Person of Jesus Christ never appears to us disembodied from cultures— in particular, the cultures of Israel, the cultures of the Church, and other cultures as they intertwine with Israel and the Church. 2. Culture should not be defined in segregation from Christ's creative presence in Israel, the Church, and the world (as if Christians understood culture from some universal, transcultural point of view); nor should we appropriate secular, anthropological theories of culture without theological review and revision.28 3. The relations between the Church and the world (and by implication, the Church and other faith traditions) are multiple and cannot be reduced to Niebuhr's limited typology (a key point of Yoder's critique). 4. The Church is God's Christie culture (a sign of the promised rule of God or a "provisional community," in Karl Barth's phrase), which participates in both the brokenness of the world and the transformation of all things through Christ in the Spirit.29 5. Christ transforms the cultures of Church and world by the concrete path of radical discipleship embodied in the practices of forgiveness, creating economic justice, evangelism, peacemaking, loving enemies, mutual service, and prayer.30 Wainwright might respond to this neo-Anabaptist and postliberal revision of Christ/culture or Church/world issues with at least three questions. First, why should we worship a Christ of the believers' Church without an ecumenical body (imperfections included)? The Christ of the neo-Anabaptists is so closely tied to their reading of the synoptic gospels and Paul that other dimensions of Christ's being and activity highlighted by the New Testament Christ-hymns (such as John 1, Philippians 2, and Colossians 1) and by the Christian liturgy are slighted. (The ecumenism of the Church of the Brethren appears much closer to Wainwright's ecclesiology at this point.) Second, why should one trade ecumenical inclusiveness for legalism? Wainwright would expand on Scriven's example that the radical disciple cannot become a legalist obsessed with her own radicalism. In Doxology, in the context of discussing repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation, Wainwright comments that "within our present world community, revolutionary action on the part of oppressed classes and peoples should be understood as divine judgment on the oppressing classes and peoples."31 At the same time, Wainwright concludes his discussion of ethics with a haunting story of radical forgiveness about an Armenian Christian who nursed the Turkish officer who had destroyed her home, violated her sexually, and killed her parents. 32

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A third question might be: why should one trade the capaciousness of praise for the homogeneity of neo-Anabaptist communities? Wainwright can appeal to the racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the ecumenical Churches (and their liturgical riches) as a winsome alternative to the predominantly white, European Anabaptist Churches of North America (and their sometimes austere forms of worship). However, postliberals influenced by neo'Anabaptist critiques don't necessarily carry the same baggage. Perhaps postliberals like Hauerwas and postmodernists like Kathryn Tanner have the greatest opportunity of combining the critical resources of the Anabaptist tradition with the liturgical and multicultural riches of the "Great Tradition" represented by Wainwright.

Eck's Interfaith Typology In this final section, I turn to Wainwright's five (or, at most, six) types of relation between Christ and the world's religions. In contrast, Diana Eck has proposed an influential typology of three types of interfaith relations: exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism.33 Like Niebuhr's typology, Eck's seems to have attained widespread influence. Her typology is somewhat simpler than Niebuhr's but similarly cloaks an entire host of assumptions. Some of these hidden assumptions become apparent upon comparison with Wainwright's use of Niebuhr's typology. Religious exclusivists are those in a faith tradition who hold that their way to ultimate reality is the one true way, and that all other ways are false. This type seems to correspond to persons in traditional societies who lack living contact with persons of other faith traditions, and to contemporary fundamentalists. Eck subtly critiques this position in terms of its psychology and social location. By showing how salvific exclusivism is so easily used for the ideological purposes of isolationism, racism, and ethnocentrism, Eck offers convincing reasons why such a position is untenable in a multicultural and interfaith society. The exclusivist turns out to be a practitioner of '"spiritual materialism,' making God into yet another possession" (EG 51). Eck's own life story shows how exclusivism became untenable for her; raised in Bozeman, Montana, in the United Methodist Church, she first encountered the wisdom of living Hindu faith in Banaras, India. The religious inclusivist is the person who interprets the activity of God or ultimate reality in a variety of faith traditions in terms of her own tradition. This type is best exemplified by the life and work of Lesslie Newbigin, and Eck speculates that—due to the influence of Vatican Council II and theologians like Newbigin and Karl Rahner—most Christians fall into this type. The inclusivist seems to synthesize the deep-seated conviction of the exclusivist (Christ is "the way, the truth, and the life") with the more tolerant, generous, and cosmopolitan outlook of persons who have mutual relationships with persons of other faiths. Thus the inclusivist can affirm the wisdom, ethical integrity, and ultimate hope of salvation for nonbelievers while still maintaining that it is nevertheless God or the Holy as known in a specific tradition who shares wisdom, inspires virtuous life, and works toward an inclusive paradise. Yet Eck argues that the inclusivist falls short of fully embracing the implications of religious pluralism. Because a Christian like Newbigin (and by implication

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Wainwright) is always reinterpreting the faith of others in terms of the hidden work of Christ, the claims to truth, salvation, and wisdom of other non-Christian traditions are never allowed to be heard in their own terms. Thus the inclusivists stand guilty of "theological imperialism" (EG 184), for they seem unable or unwilling to suspend the universal claims of their own faith long enough to fully appreciate the radically different claims of other traditions, especially non-Western traditions that do not conceive of ultimate reality as a personal creator God. Eck shows from her own journey through interfaith dialogues sponsored by the World Council of Churches and her encounters with the holy in Hinduism how she came to see the limitations of her own Christian inclusivism. Thus the reader is led by argument and narrative to the final type, the religious pluralist. Eck argues that, in the emerging interfaith societies of the future and the global village, this person seems best situated to appreciate, learn from, and live at peace with persons of other faith traditions. In light of the plurality of faith traditions and the shared wisdom and insight between them, the pluralist takes an apophatic stance with regard to the particular claims of her own tradition. Ultimate reality is at work in all faith traditions (the inclusivist insight) but no one tradition has an inside track on interpreting the work of the Holy. Thus the pluralist affirms a perspectivism in all religious experience, all revelations, all claims to ultimacy. Eck illustrates the power of the pluralist, position by showing how her own encounters with the holy in Hindu worship and Buddhist meditation have thrown new light on the doctrines and practices of her Christian faith. Eck's narrative is powerful and persuasive. However, it is presented in the service of another totalizing typology; and we have already seen that typologies conceal as much as they reveal. For although Eck shows us all the psychological, sociological, ethical, and political problems with exclusivism and inclusivism, her own third type (which happens to correspond to her own theology of world religions) is exempt from the same hermeneutics of suspicion. The pluralist seems to have no social location, or privilege to protect, or psychological disability when compared to xenophobic exclusivists and imperialistic inclusivists. The fact that religious pluralism could be the most serviceable interfaith position for a global market economy where religions offer just one more set of services for commodification (or "technologies of the self," to use Foucault's phrase) escapes Eck as she celebrates interfaith societies— especially her own America. Until pluralists are prepared to be just as suspicious of their own positions as they are of other "types," there can be no true interfaith dialogue. Whether the subject matter is interfaith dialogue, New Testament ethics, or any other theological construct, typologies will always be hazardous enterprises. Only by following the trail of the hermeneutics of suspicion all the way down—applying it even to the most "enlightened" position, or the most "satisfactory" type—do we open the door to a truly apophatic theology. In such a theology, we wait upon Another to reinterpret us, to change the course of our hermeneutical labor, to take us out of ourselves—we who are too willing to live according to the "types" we construct, types that constrict others and cut us off from the messy contingency of life in a world we did not (ultimately) create.

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NOTES

1. H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper and Row, 1951). 2. Doxology, 384-98 and Study of Spirituality, 592-605. This article will be limited to the use of Niebuhr's typology in Doxology. 3. Doxology, 388-98. 4. Stanley Hauerwas and William H Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989); see Doxology, 567, note 982. 5. John Howard Yoder, "How H. Richard Niebuhr Reasoned: A Critique of Christ and Culture," in Glen H. Stassen, D. M. Yeager, and John Howard Yoder, Authentic Transformation: A New Vision of Christ and Culture (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 31-89; hereafter cited as AT. 6. That of Charles Scriven; the published version is cited in note 8, below. 7. Some of the material that follows was prepared for a paper presented at "Anabaptists in Conversation: Mennonite and Brethren Interactions with Twentieth-Century Theologies," a conference in Elizabethtown, Pa, June 19-21,1997. Jessica L. Donnelly co-authored part of that paper with me but none of the material included here. 8. Charles Scriven, The Transformation of Culture: Christian Social Ethics After H Richard Niebuhr (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1988), 65. 9. Stanley Hauerwas, Times Literary Supplement, 4 January 1996. 10. John Howard Yoder, AT 31-89; idem, The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster, 2d. edition (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans; Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster Press, 1994) On Yoder's significance for ecumenical Christianity, see Michael G. Cartwright, "Radical Catholicity: The Witness of John Howard Yoder, 1927-1997," The Christian Century 115/2 (21 January 1998): 44-46. 11. See the negative judgment on the use of typologies in the early work of Paul Ricoeur: "The majority of the words of typology have come to be ignominious categories whereby adversaries attempt to contain each other, as in an abstract enclosure wherein they should die of starvation" ("The History of Philosophy and the Unity of Truth," chap, in History and Truth, trans. Charles Kelbley [Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1965], 47). 12. Doxology, 565, note 971. Concerning Raymond Williams's theory of culture, see his Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 11-20, 75-141; idem, The Sociology of Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); John Eldridge and Lizzie Eldridge, Raymond Williams: Making Connections (London and New York: Routledge, 1994). 13. Raymond Williams, "Culture" in Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, rev. edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 87. 14. Ibid., 90. 15. Ibid., 91. 16. Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology, Guides to Theological Inquiry (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1997), esp. 3-58. 17. "Reply by Jiirgen Moltmann to Alan J Torrance and Gustavo Gutierrez," in Christ and Context, ed. Hilary Regan and Alan Torrance (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1993), 206 with reference to 200. 18. Tanner, Theories of Culture, 119. 19. See Christ and Culture, 12-14, on the biblical portrait of Christ—which indicates the influence of Barth on H. Richard Niebuhr. 20. AT 63-64 Against the logic of Niebuhr's argument in Christ and Culture, Yoder poses a series of theses concerning "The Social Shape of Moral Judgment in the Church" (AT 71-77). A fuller conversation between Niebuhr, Yoder, and Wainwright would have to address the issues raised by these theses. Note that Yoder assumes that the Church under

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Christ constitutes a "new cultural option" or "new form of culture." Cf. Tanner's critique of this notion in Theories of Culture, 97-102. 21. Dale W Brown, Biblical Pacifism: A Peace Church Perspective (Elgin, 111.: Brethren Press, 1986), 128-31. 22. Ibid., 130-31. 23. GW 4 8. 24. His conversation partners include Langdon Gilkey, Bernard Haring, John Macquarrie, Gustavo Gutierrez, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Johann-Baptist Metz, Stanley Hauerwas, and Donald Bloesch. 25. Scriven, The Transformation of Culture, 190-91, my emphasis. 26. Hauerwas and Willimon, Resident Aliens, 39-48; idem, Where Resident Aliens Live: Exercises for Christian Practice (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 55-57; Glen H Stassen, AT, 127-268; Arne Rasmusson, The Church as Polis: From Political Theology to Theological Politics as Exemplified by Jurgen Moltmann and Stanley Hauerwas (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 242-45. 27. Alan J. Torrance and Jurgen Moltmann in Christ and Context: The Confrontation Between Gospel and Culture, ed. Hilary Regan and Alan J. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1993), 200, 206. 28. See John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990); Milbank critiques Peter Berger, but gives no attention to Reinhold or H. Richard Niebuhr. But see Milbank's "The Poverty of Nieburhianism" in The Word Made Strange: Theology, Language, Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 233-54. 29. Kathryn Tanner disputes the notion that Christianity or the Church itself provides an entire alternative culture with its own boundaries (Theories of Culture, 108-9) Although her arguments and evidence are strong, I have a sense that she has explained some moments in the history of Christianity but not others. So, for example, both Calvinist and Anabaptist attempts to create societies, communities, or institutions under the Lordship of God in Christ seem overlooked or slighted as aberrations to her understanding of Christian identity as essentially relational (ibid., 110-19). Tanner seems to fall on the side of those who argue there is no such thing as "Christian mathematics" for Christian identity seems to make no difference to the appropriation of universal mathematical principles. Yet, if Christ is Lord of all reality and all human inquiry, then Christians who seek to understand the philosophy of mathematics will understand differently than others who operate from a background that considers Christ a psychosocial projection or just another disembodied spiritual savior. Parsing out the difference Christ makes in our understanding of all realms of reality is an endless task—a point with which Tanner may agree. 30. Glen H. Stassen, "Concrete Christological Norms for Transformation," in AT 16467. 31. Doxology, 430. 32. Doxology, 434. One wonders whether the charge of legalism cuts both ways: does Wainwright's orthodoxology become legalistic with the language of the liturgy and New Testament with regard to the worship and ministry of feminist and gay Christians? 33. Diana L. Eck, Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), chap. 7. Cited in the text as EG.

CHAPTER 15

DIE EWIGKEIT DES EWIGEN LEBENS Eberhard Jungel

1. Ewigkeit ist Gott selbst im Vollzug seiner Existenz als Vater, Sohn, und heiliger Geist. 1. 1 Ewigkeit ist ein Gottespradikat. Gottes Leben ist ewiges Leben: "aeternitas non est aliud quam ipse Deus: Ewigkeit ist nichts anderes als Gott selbst" (ST 1.10.2 ad 3). Ewig ist Gottes Leben, insofern es sich als gottliches Selbstverhaltnis in der Weise trinitarischer Existenz vollzieht. 1.2 Dem Menschen ist ewiges Leben zwar verheiflen, aber menschliches Leben ist als solches und von sich aus nicht ewiges Leben. Ewigkeit kommt ihm nur zu, insofern Gott ihm an seiner Ewigkeit Anteil gibt. 2. Was Ewigkeit ist und was ewig genannt zu werden verdient, kann nur aufgrund der Offenbarung des dreieinigen Gottes durch Explikation seines sich offenbarenden Lebens angemessen bestimmt werden. 2. 1 Alle Versuche, aufgrund von menschlichen Mangelerfahrungen via negationis durch Kontrastbildungen zu bestimmen, was Ewigkeit ist und was ewig genannt zu werden verdient, laufen Gefahr, die eigentliche Bedeutung der Ewigkeit als eines Gottespradikates zu verfehlen. Solche Versuche sind schon deshalb problematisch, weil keineswegs ausgemacht ist, zu welchen Mangelerfahrungen Ewigkeit den Kontrast bilden soll: zur Erfahrung des nicht verweilenden Augenblicks, zur Erfahrung mangelnder stabilitas loci ("unstet undfltichtig auf Erden"—Gen. 4:12), zur Erfahrung physischer Verganglichkeit, zur Erfahrung psychischer Verletzbarkeit, zur Erfahrung intellektueller Begrenztheit, zur Erfahrung geistiger und moralischer Ohnmacht usw.? 2.2 Ewigkeit ist primar zu begreifen als Explikation von . . . und erst daraufhin moglicherweise auch als Kontrast zu . . . Ewigkeit kommt primar als Naherbestimmung des gottlichen Lebens und erst daraufhin moglicherweise auch als Kontrastbestimmung zum irdischen Leben in Betracht. 2.3 Theologisch legitime Kontrastbestimmungen miilken allerdings vom Ewigkeitsbegriff her bestimmen, was als Gegensatz zur Ewigkeit in Betracht kommt, 175

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statt von irdischen Mangelerfahrungen her zu bestimmen, was ewig genannt zu werden verdient. 3. Fur den nicht durch Explikation des sich offenbarenden gottlichen Lebens gewonnenen, in Philosophie und Theologie weitgehend herrschend gewordenen metaphysischen Ewigkeitsbegriff ist dessen dialektischer Kontrast zum Begriff der Zeit charakteristisch. Dabei iiberrascht allerdings, daB Ewigkeit nicht als Kontrast zu Raum und Zeit, sondern nur zur Zeit konzipiert wird. Was Ewigkeit ist, wird durch eine Kontrastdialektik zur Zeit bestimmt: "in cognitionem aeternitatis oportet nos venire per tempus: zur Erkenntnis der Ewigkeit kommen wir nur durch die Erkenntnis der Zeit"(ST I.10.1C). 1 3. 1 Fur den dominant gewordenen metaphysischen Ewigkeitsbegriff sind leitend geworden: die ontologische Charakterisierung des Seienden durch Parmenides, die Zeit-Ewigkeits-Dialektik des platonischen Timaios und die Zeit-Ewigkeits- Spekulation Plotins. 3.2 Die von Parmenides (28 B 8, 2-6) dem Seienden (TO ov) zugeschriebenen ontologischen Merkmale haben die metaphysische Bestimmung dessen, was ewig genannt zu werden verdient, geleitet, namlich: dyEvr|TOv (ungeworden), dvcoXeQpov (unzerstorbar), otiAov (ganz), nowoyeveq (einzig, nicht anderes als nur sich selber zulassend), ctTpeLtec; (unerschiitterlich), dieXecrrov (auf kein Ziel aus, in sich selbst vollendet), o\)8ercot'fiv (herkunftslos), o\)8'ecrcca (zukunftslos: wederwares [einmal] noch wird es [einmal] sein), enet vuv ecmv ojiou rrav (da es ganz Jetzt, zugleich ganz ist: ein raumloses und zeitloses Zugleich), ev (Eines und nur Eines), G"UV£%ec; (ununterbrochen mit sich selber zusammenhangend). 3.2.1 Die negativen Bestimmungen des Seienden, die vor allem jedes Werden— und deshalb auch jedes Vergehen—aus dem Sein des Seienden ausschlieBen, fuhren zusammen mit der positiven Bestimmung des als raumloses und zeitloses Zugleich verstandenen ganzjetztsdn und jetzt Ganzsein (vuvouov nav) zum metaphysischen Modell einer die Zeit aus sich ausschlieBenden Ewigkeit. 3.2.2 Ewigkeit wurde in dieser Tradition verstanden als zeitloses stehendes Jetzt (nunc stans), das man dem die Zeit konstituierenden flieBenden Jetzt (nunc fluens) entgegensetzte: "nostrum 'nunc' quasi currens tempus facit et sempiternitatem, divinum vero 'nunc' permanens neque movens sese atque consistens aeternitatem facit: unser Jetzt macht gleichsam laufend die Zeit und die [zeitliche] Dauer, das gottliche Jetzt aber macht permanent, sich selber nicht bewegend und stillstehend die Ewigkeit";2 "NUNC, Nuv, tempus praesens. Dividitur in Nunc semper stans, id est, aeternitatem; & in nunc semper fluens, id est, tempus: das Jetzt, Gegenwart, wird unterschieden in das immer stehende Jetzt, das ist die Ewigkeit, und das immer flieBende Jetzt, das ist die Zeit".3 3.3 In sachlicher Nahe zu Parmenides will Platon aus dem Begriff des Seins (oijoria, aeiov) und aus dem Begriff der Ewigkeit Werden und Zeitlichkeit ausgeschlessen wissen. Doch die Zeit und die Werde-Welt sind ihrerseits insofern positiv auf die Ewigkeit des Seins bezogen, als der die Werde-Welt zu einem Kosmos gestaltende Demiurg sich an der Ewigkeit so orientiert, daB sie zum Urbild der nach ihr zu gestaltenden Werde-Welt wird. Insbesondere die zusammen mit den Hirnmelskorpern geschaffene Zeit wird als das bewegliche Abbild der Ewigkeit (EIKCO TWO otifflvoq) verstanden. Als sich KaT'dpi8ji6v bewegend macht die Zeit

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die Werde-Welt meBbar, wahrend die Ewigkeit EV evi uevcov unmeBbar und unzahlbar 1st: die Zeit ist "n| airovoq EV evi Kax'dpiOuov iowa odcoviov EIKCOV: das dauernde, gemaB der Zahl sich bewegende Abbild der in Einem verharrenden Ewigkeit" (Timaios 3?d 7f.). Zum Abbild der Ewigkeit wird die Zeit durch ihre— in den Bewegungen der Himmelskorper sich manifestierende—Kreisbewegung, in der das TeXoq unmittelbar an die apxn ankniipft. 3.3. 1 Fur die platonische Zeit-Ewigkeit-Dialektik ist kennzeichnend: einerseits die fundamentale. Unterschiedenheit von Zeit und Ewigkeit, die sich darin ausweist, daB der Ewigkeit alles das abgehen muB, was der Zeit als geschaffener und zur WerdeWelt gehorender GroBe zukommt; andererseits eine inmitten dieser fundamentalen Unterschiedenheit gro/hmogliche Anndherung der Zeit an die Ewigkeit—nicht umgekehrt!—die sich darin ausweist, daB sich die Zeit in einer geschlossenen Kreisbewegung zu vollenden trachtet (—» ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen). Die Zeit profitiert von der Ewigkeit, deren Erhabenheit es ist, zeitlos zu sein. 3.3.2 In der Tradition der parmenideischen Seinsauffassung und der platonischen Ewigkeitsauffassung verwirft noch F. D. E. Schleiermacher4 alle Ewigkeitskonzeptionen, die "nur die Schranken der Zeit, [aber] nicht die Zeit selbst, fur Gott aufheben". Gottes Ewigkeit ist nach Schleiermacher "vollkommen zeitlos". 3.4 In Aufnahme der platonischen Urbild-Abbild-Beziehung, aber im Gegensatz zu der platonischen Behauptung, daB die Zeit zusammen mit den Himmelskorpern geschaffen wurde, hat Plotin (Enneaden III, 7) die Zeit als auf zeitlose Weise in der Ewigkeit praeexistierend behauptet. Erst durch den Fall und die damit einsetzende Verzeitlichung der Seele tritt auch die nun in ihre Zeitmodi auseinandertretende wirkliche Zeit in einen Gegensatz zur Ewigkeit. Die Existenz in der Zeit bedeutet Ausgeliefertsein der Seele an die Vielfalt der Sinnlichkeit, also Ablenkung und Zerstreutheit. Nur durch einen Akt der Selbstbefreiung vermag sich die Seele von der Vielfalt der auBeren Dinge zu losen, indem sie sich zum Inneren wendet (Enneaden VI, 9,7,17f). Diese Selbstbefreiung vollzieht sich als "Entfremdung von allem Fremden" (Enneaden I, 2,4,6), durch die die Seele ein-sam wird und zum Einsamen flieht: Ovyn uovov Ttpos uovov (Enneaden VI, 9,1 1,5of.). Die Flucht zuriick zur Ewigkeit gibt bei Plotin allerdings die Vielheit des Vielen nicht verloren, ist vielmehr deren Rettung. Ewigkeit ist eine "EKrcoMuwvcruvr0pcnanevn. .. VOTJOK;: ein aus vielen versammelter Gedanke" (Enneaden III, 7,3,4f.). 3.4.1 Wenn man demnach sagen wollte, die Ewigkeit sei vollendet-unendliches Leben dadurch, daB es schon ganz ist, (was es ist), und nichts von sich selbst aufzehrt, da nichts in ihm vergangen ist oder kunftig sein wird—denn sonst ware es nicht schon ganz—so kame man damit einer Definition nahe: KOI e'i nc; omco TOV odcava Xeyoi £cof)v craeipov fi8r| x& jcdcav fitvcd )j,r|8£v avaAicnceiv avtrji; tro jj.f| 7iapEXr|Xx)0evai ur|8'ax) |j,eXXeiv—r\8r\ yap OIJK av EITI Tcaooi—eyytK; av eir| TOU opi^EoQai (Enneaden III, 7,5,25-28). 3.4.2 Bemerkenswert am plotinischen Verstandnis der Ewigkeit ist der fur den Ewigkeitsbegriff konstitutive Gedanke der Konzentration der Vielfalt des Vielen auf das Eine. 3.5 An den iiberlieferten Ewigkeitsbegriff und insbesondere an Plotins ZeitEwigkeit-Spekulation ankniipfend, aber eindeutig das Verstandnis der Ewigkeit als Zeitlosigkeit korrigierend definiert Boethius: "aeternitas . . . est interminabilis vitae

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tota simul et perfecta possessio: Ewigkeit ist der game gleichzeitige und vollkommene (—> vuvouov nav!) Besitz unbegrenzbaren Lebens".5 3.5.1 Thomas von Aquin (ST I. 10.2 ad 4) interpretiert treffend: "aeternitas [dei] omnia tempora includit: [Gottes] Ewigkeit schlieBt alle Zeiten ein". 3.6 Karl Barths Forderung,6 der Ewigkeitsbegriff miisse "aus der babylonischen Gefangenschaft des abstrakten Gegensatzes zum Zeitbegriff. .. befreit werden", wird von der neueren Theologie weitgehend geteilt. Schon Paul Althaus hatte erklart: "Ein Ewigkeicsbegriff, der von der Zeitlichkeit zu abstrahieren meint, wenn er dem Werden und Geschehen das unbewegte Sein gegeniiberstellt, bleibt eben durch diese Entgegensetzung gerade im Banne der Zeitform . . . Die Ewigkeit aber ist das Jenseits unserer Zeitlichkeit."7 Inwiefern sie dies ist, bleibt allerdings ungeklart. 3.7 Karl Barth und Wolfhart Panneriberg8 haben die Bestreitung der Zeitlosigkeit der Ewigkeit trinitarisch zu begriinden versucht und dabei die theologische Bestirnmung des Ewigkeitsbegriffs prinzipiell in die richtige Richtung gewiesen. Aber auch nicht mehr . . . 3.8 Eine trinitarische Bestirnmung des Ewigkeitsbegriffes miiBte Abschied nehmen von der Zuordnung der Ewigkeit zu den Attributen des gottlichen Wesens oder aber— und das ware besser—alle Wesensattribute Gottes trinitarisch bestimmen. 4. Als Vater, Sohn und heiliger Geist existiert das eine gottliche Wesen in trimtarischer Selbstbezogenheit, die die immer noch grofiere Selbstlosigkeit liebevoller Zuwendung zu dem von ihm geschaffenen Menschen und seiner Welt einschlieBt. Sich intensw auf sich selbst beziehend ist Gottes trinitarische Existenz sich konzentrierendes Leben und als solches ewig. 4.1 Ewigkeit ist die Vollzugsform der trinitarischen Existenz Gottes (opera trinitatis ad intra)—so wie Raum und Zeit die Form des gottlichen Handelns an seinem Geschopf (opera trinitatis ad extra) ist. 4.1.1 Indem Gott als Vater in besonderer Weise sich selber Herkunft, als Sohn in besonderer Weise sich selber Gegenwart und als Geist in besonderer Weise sich selber Zukunft ist und sich in dieser trinitarischen Unterschiedenheit intensiv aufeinander bezieht, ist Ewigkeit die Konzentration von Herkunft, Gegenwart und Zukunft und so simul tota possessio temporum. 4.1.2 Fur dieses Verstandnis der Ewigkeit als simul tota possessio temporum ist entscheidend, daB die Differenz von Herkunft, Gegenwart und Zukunft nicht. verloren geht. Sie ermoglicht allererst das Auseinandertreten der Ewigkeit in das fur die Schopfung kennzeichnende Nacheinander von Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft. 4.1.3 Mit Gottes schopferischem Handeln ad extra tritt in Raum und Zeit auseinander, was als Ewigkeit in urspriinglicher Weise beieinander und ineinander ist. Indem die Ewigkeit als Raum und Zeit auseinandertritt (ohne auseinanderzufallen), tritt die Zeit in die drei Zeitmodi der Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft auseinander. 4.1.4 Indem die Ewigkeit in Zeit und Raum auseinandertritt, raumt sie der Kreatur Zeit und Raum fur die Begegnung rnit Gott uncl damit Raum und Zeit fur eine eigene Existenz ein. 4.2 Indem Gott in urspriinglicher Selbstunterscheidung sich selbst als Vater, Sohn und heiliger Geist gegeniibertritt und als trinitarische Gemeinschaft gegen-

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seitigen Andersseins existiert, 1st er ein beziehungsreiches Wesen. Der konzentrierte und intensive Vollzug seines trinitarischen Beziehungsreichtums ist seine Ewigkeit. 4.2.1 Ewigkeit ist die Konzentration und Intensitat gottlichen Lebens und Seins. 4.2.2 Konzentration des Lebens ist die Ewigkeit nicht in einem nachtraglichen Sinn—als ob Auseinanderliegendes im Nachhinein konzentriert wurde. Vielmehr ist Konzentration und Intensitat die urspriinglichste Bestimmung des gottlichen Lebens. Als Konzentration und Intensitat hat die Ewigkeit die Kraft zum Auseinandertreten in immer noch groBere Fernen, ohne sich dabei von sich selbst zu entfernen. 4.2.3 Die als Konzentration und Intensitat des Lebens bestimmte Ewigkeit weist als ihr Gegenteil die Zerstreutheit irdischen Lebens aus. 4.3 Indem Gott sich als Vater, Sohn und heiliger Geist selber derart unterscheidet, daB die als relationes subsistentes existierenden trinitarischen Personen sich aufdas Intensivste aufeinander beziehen und solchermaBen konzentriert leben, ist Gott ewig. 4.3.1 Pointiertester Ausdruck der Intensitat des Aufeinanderbezogenseins von Vater, Sohn und Geist ist deren gegenseitige Durchdringung (Perichorese), in der selbst die "duo maxime contraria" (Luther) des gottlichen Ursprungs alien Lebens einerseits und des zeitlichen Todes am Kreuz andererseits in der Einigkeit gottlichen Lebens so zur Entsprechung kommen, daB Gottes Sein als Einheit von Leben und Tod zugunsten des Lebens—und das heiBt materialiter: als Liebe—gedacht werden muB. 4.3.2 Als Vollzugsform trinitarischer Existenz ist Ewigkeit diejenige Intensitat und Konzentration gottlichen Lebens und Seins, die die Zeit in sich einschliefit. 4.3.3 Als die Zeit in sich einschlieBende Vollzugsform trinitarischer Existenz ist Ewigkeit ereignisreicher Beziehungsreichtum und weist damit als ihr Gegenteil die Ereignislosigkeit und Beziehungslosigkeit des Todes aus. 4.4 Als Intensitat und Konzentration des gottlichen Lebens und Seins ist Gottes Wesen mit seiner trinitarischen Existenz unmittelbar identisch und darin ewig: "Deus non solum est sua essentia. . . sed etiatn suum esse . . . Sua igitur essentia est suum esse: Gott ist nicht nur sein Wesen, sondern auch seine Existenz ... Also ist sein Wesen seine Existenz" (ST I.3-4c). 4.4. 1 In der Identitat von Wesen und Existenz erweist sich Ewigkeit genauerhin als Dauer. 4.4.2 Die als Dauer bestimmte Ewigkeit weist als ihr Gegenteil die Zerstorbarkeit des in der Differenz von Wesen und Existenz sich vollziehenden irdischen Lebens aus. 4.5 Als Intensitat und Konzentration des gottlichen Lebens und Seins ist Gottes Ewigkeit seine von Nichts und Niemandem problematisierbare Bestandigkeit, die sich seinem Geschopf gegeniiber als Treue erweist. 4.5.1 Kennzeichnend fur das biblische Verstandnis von Ewigkeit ist in dieser Hinsicht die Bezeichnung Gottes als eines Felsens, der dauert, auf den man bauen und auf den man sich verlassen kann. 4.5.2 Die als Bestandigkeit und Treue bestimmte Ewigkeit weist als ihr Gegenteil die Unbestandigkeit und Unverlafilichkeit aus. 4.6 Die Intensitat und Konzentration, die fur den trinitarischen Vollzug gottlichen Lebens kennzeichnend ist und die die duo maxime contraria von Leben und

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Tod in sich einbezieht, erschliefit die Ewigkeit als den die Spannung von Leben und Tod aushakenden Friedengottlichen Geisteslebens. Ewigkeit istfriedliche Existenz. 4.6.1 ". . . nicht das Leben, das sich vor dem Tode scheut. . . , sondern das ihn ertragt, ist das Leben des Geistes". G.W.F. Hegels Satz9 gilt auch und erst recht von der als Frieden gottlichen Geisteslebens begriffenen Ewigkeit. 4.6.2 Als friedliche Existenz ist die Ewigkeit der Kern wahrer Bestandigkeit und der Kern wahrer Dauer. Was im Frieden existiert, geht nicht verloren. 4.6.3 Was in gar keiner Weise im Frieden existiert, konnte iiberhaupt nicht existieren: "naturae . . . nullo modo essent, si non qualicumque pace subsisterent: Die Naturen wurden in gar keiner Weise existieren, wenn sie nicht in irgendeiner Weise im Frieden da waren".10 Ewigkeit ist der Friede des Seins. 4.6.4 Die als Friede des Seins bestimmte Ewigkeit erweist als ihr Gegenteil die den Beziehungsreichturn des Lebens zerstorende aiiarchische, zur Versohnung der Gegensatze unfahige Friedlosigkeit. 4.7 Als Konzentration und Intensitat des gottlichen Lebens ist Ewigkeit die urspriingliche Einheit von Wirklichkeit und Moglichkeit. 4.7.1 Im Gegensatz zur metaphysischen (aristotelischen) Tradition ist zu bestreiten, dafi die Ewigkeit den Seinsmodus der Moglichkeit aus sich ausschliefit. Gottes Wirklichkeit ist vielmehr gerade darin ewig, dafi sie Moglichkeiten eroffnet und Moglichkeiten—statt sie durch Verwirklichung zu tilgen—erhalt. 4.7.2 S. Kierkegaards Behauptung, 11 die "Moglichkeit, aus der das Mogliche, welches das Wirkliche ward, hervorgegangen ist, begleitet fort und fort das Gewordene", gilt mutatis mutandis auch fur die Ewigkeit. 4.7.3 Die als Inbegriff urspriinglicher Einheit von Wirklichkeit und Moglichkeit bestimmte Ewigkeit weist als ihr Gegenteil die nichts vermogende tautologische Wirklichkeit (A = A) und die Entscheidungslosigkeit einer sich niemals realisierenden Moglichkeit aus. 5. Der von den Toten auferstandene Jesus Christus verheiBt und verburgt dem sterblichen Menschen eine uneingeschrankte Lebensgemeinschaft mit Gott und insofern Partizipation an Gottes Ewigkeit. 5. 1 Die dem sterblichen Menschen verheiBene und verburgte Partizipation an Gottes Ewigkeit ist als Teilgabe an Gottes ewigem Leben die Verewigung des menschlichen Lebens. Im Ereignis der Tdlnahme an Gottes ewigem Leben ist der Mensch lebendiges Subjekt. 5.1.1 Verewigung ist also alles andere als Musealisierung oder Archivierung des gelebten Lebens. 5.2 Die Verewigung des menschlichen Lebens kanzentriert dieses zu seiner Ganzheit und intensiviert es zu seiner Herrlichkeit. ANMERKUNGEN

1. Vgl. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, Bd. i (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1988), 439, Anm. 155: Der "Zugang zum Begriff der Ewigkeit von der Erfahrung der Zeit her ... ist unerlaBlich". 2. Boethius, De trinilate IV, 72-74. 3. J. Micraelius, Lexicon Philosophicum, 2166z, 905.

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4. Der christliche Glaube, hg von M. Redeker (Berlin: de Gruyter, 71960), Bd. 1, § 52.1 und § 52.2, 268 u. 270. 5. De consolatione Philosophiae V, 6. 6. Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/i (Zollikon-Ziirich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1940), 689. 7. Die letzten Dinge, 81961, 332. 8. Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/1, 693f.; Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, Bd. 1, 439. 9. Phdnomenologie des Geistes, PhB 114, 29. 10. Augustinus, De civitate Dei XIX, 13, CchrSL, XLVIII, 679. 11. Philosophische Brocken, Ges. Werke, 10. Abt. (Gutersloh: Gerd Mohn, 61967), 82.

CHAPTER l6

REORDERING SALVATION

Church as the Proper Context for an Evangelical Ordo Salutis Telford Work

| Geoffrey Wainwright is one of those Christian theologians who practice Christian theology where it demands to be practiced: firmly from within the context of the gathered and worshiping Church of Jesus Christ. He has consistently worked to develop the same practices among his students and friends, whether they be in the academy, the mission field, the pulpit, or the bishop's chair; and he has long resisted the secularization and privatization of mainline Protestant theology. My mentor makes the practice of churchly and academic theology look natural and easy—like the graceful blend of physical and mental exercise that is a professional game of cricket. Things are somewhat different in the American evangelical tradition.1 Here it is Scholasticism, not secularization or privatization, that must most often be resisted. When American evangelicals practice theology, the result often looks less like a cricket match than a baseball strike—where the real contest is among distrustful owners, players, and fans. The evangelical academy and the rest of the evangelical world suffer from a dysfunctional relationship. I have tasted the bitterness from both sides, first as a writer and analyst for church-marketing guru George Barna, then as a systematic theologian at a Foursquare Pentecostal Church.2 So in an evangelical divorce court, I could enthusiastically represent either side: American evangelical theology is lost in the clouds, impractical, irrelevant to the nature of ministry in today's context, and preoccupied with intellectual trivia while our society grows more and more ignorant of the fundamentals of the Bible and the Christian faith. Or, American evangelical Christianity is dangerously acculturated to its society's individualism, consumerism, and power and plausibility structures, and it needs a strong theological prescription if it is to regain its clistinctivetiess as a Christian community in any substantial sense. It is not my intention to rehearse either of these grievances here. As richly as evangelical theologians may deserve other evangelicals' critiques—and vice versa— 182

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evangelical theology also deserves a critique from within. Evangelical ecclesiology is partly culpable for the weaknesses of American evangelical practice and for the estrangement among my tradition's theologians, pastors, and laypeople. In particular, one major structural flaw in American evangelical ecclesiology needs correction: the cherished place of the ordo salutis as ranking ahead of ecclesiology in the evangelical theological system. In this chapter, I will argue that this placement of the ordo salutis is defective and harmful to evangelical practice in at least two ways: first, in the parachurch's exercise of ministry and mission; and second, in the practice of the Word and sacraments themselves.3 1 will then propose a solution, anticipate several objections, and explore how a relocated order of salvation reconceives and rescues both evangelical sacramental practice and the institution of the parachurch.

Person or Church First? The Reformation's False Dilemma A few tables of contents are more than enough to establish Protestant systematic theology's emphasis on moving from Christology, to soteriology, and only then to ecclesiology and eschatology. One begins with the Savior, then salvation won, then salvation personally appropriated; and only then does one turn attention to the invisible and visible communities of the saved. Now the chronological priority of one doctrine to another need not imply that the former determines the latter; this is especially so for systematic theologies consciously developed from a postfoundationalist perspective.4 But in evangelical systematic theology, putting salvation before Church is by no means mere convention or pedagogical technique. It is a Protestant shibboleth, on which the Reformed Church stakes out its position over against classical Catholic ecclesiology. Louis Berkhof's Systematic Theology describes the point of departure for Reformed ecclesiology: In Roman Catholic theology,. . . the discussion of the Church takes precedence over everything else, preceding even the discussion of the doctrine of God and of divine revelation. The Church, it is said, has been instrumental in producing the Bible and therefore takes precedence over it; it is moreover the dispenser of all supernatural graces. . . . The Reformation broke with this Roman Catholic view of the Church and centered attention much more on the Church as a spiritual organism. It emphasized the fact that there is no Church apart from the redemptive work of Christ and from the renewing operations of the Holy Spirit; and that, therefore, the discussion of these logically precedes the consideration of the doctrine of the Church.5

Berkhofs argument is typical in broader evangelicalism. Unfortunately, it falls for a false dilemma that has plagued both Protestant and Catholic Christianity since before the Reformation: over against an ecclesiology that has made the community logically prior to the person, Protestantism must make the person logically prior to the community. There are good reasons for this false dilemma to have arisen with such persuasive power, given its original context in medieval European Christianity. And it has had some salutary effects. The precedence of soteriology was a devastating cri-

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tique of medieval Catholic practice. It profoundly respected the priority of God's saving action to the earthly media of that action. It. produced the great landmarks of Protestant doctrine: justification and sanctification, election and predestination—achievements that remain unmatched in the Christian tradition. It recovered the awesome power of God's ultimate missionary, the Word written and preached, and helped produce some of the greatest missionaries in the history of the Church. However, the question of whether contemporary American evangelicals are well served by the pride of place given to the ordo saiutis is another matter entirely. Whatever its original warrant and merit, in America's individualistic and pluralistic context, it reduces the Church to an afterthought. Since the work of Christ is conceived of primarily in terms of the course of the salvation of individuals, the real Church is the invisible one, and the sacramental practices of the visible Church are reduced to the "means of grace"—in Charles Hodge's words, "the ordinary channels of grace, i.e., of the supernatural influences of the Holy Spirit, to the souls of men."6 Ecclesiology takes a back seat to soteriology, and the Church becomes merely an external instrument—perhaps even a dispensable instrument—of salvation. The earthly Church is to salvation as a wineskin is to wine; its job is to dispense grace to needy souls and stay out of grace's way. Finally, evangelicalism's proper insistence on the necessity of personal conversion further crowds out the communal dimension of salvation, reinforcing ecclesiology's inferiority to soteriology. It warps the Church's communal practices and helps displace the Church from its central role on earth by validating the existence of another, quintessentially American Christian institution: the parachurch.

Church, Parachurch, and the Shape of Evangelical Theology The "place to be" in American evangelicalism is in a parachurch, not a boring old "church." Churches are mainly holding bins for people who are already saved. But parachurches are salvation machines, the ultimate wineskins of salvation. They save the world by evangelizing, training disciples and ministers, renewing families, furthering social action, and lobbying governments. Their work of mission, sanctification, and cultural transformation makes perfect sense in terms of salvation. In fact, under the definition of the visible Church as "just" an external means of saving grace for souls, parachurches make better churches than most churches. And they mediate all this saving grace without baptizing, disciplining, gathering to worship, or celebrating communion! This does not mean that pastors of actual churches are confined to lives of hopelessness. At the very least they can serve as talent agencies and marketing channels for parachurch ministries. Or they can distinguish themselves by turning their churches into ersatz parachurches—by expanding children's programs, funding missionaries, and starting schools, soup kitchens, accountability groups, television ministries, and outreaches. With the rise of the Willow Creek Association, some pastors have even managed to turn their churches into true parachurches. Their

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Sunday gatherings are devoted entirely to the business of mission; elements such as worship, sacraments, and Bible study are packed off to midweek services—rather like the "chapel hour" of a parachurch. Evangelical theologians often place the blame for this radical preference of ministry to Church on evangelical pastors and laypeople, whom they accuse of selling out to the wider culture. But in preferring the parachurch model to the traditional church model, these clergy and laity are simply putting soteriology before ecclesiology. They have taken to heart one of the distinguishing principles of American Protestant theology. It should not shock theologians to see American evangelicals treating the Church as an external instrument of grace, whose practices are measured primarily, if not entirely, in terms of their utility in speeding along the order of salvation. We theologians are the ones who defined it that way. This is obviously something of a caricature of evangelical attitudes toward the Church of Christ. My own local church acts out an impressive commitment to the central role of gathered communities of God's disciples in doing Christ's work in the world. It practices what it calls "worship evangelism," utterly refusing to separate the two, even strategically, or to subordinate one to the other. But caricatures gain their power from distorting and accentuating real features. How real are the features behind the caricature? Even in my own fellowship, I often hear churches and denominations evaluated entirely on their effectiveness in assisting people through their personal salvation-histories. Any qualities that cannot be understood in these terms, or that seem to get in the way of personal salvation (say, Catholic unwillingness to admit Protestants to the eucharist), are simply dismissed as human traditions that frustrate God's saving purposes and make the Church more than it really is. This attitude is tellingly reflected in common evangelical sacramental practice. Many evangelical traditions have managed to strip away even the ecclesial nature of these ecclesial signs in pursuing salvation as they understand it. The signs of salvation are now by and large seen in terms of evangelicalism's central speech-act: the "Sinner's Prayer." Reciting the Sinner's Prayer has generally taken the place of baptism as both the decisive moment of salvation and the normative rite of initiation (conveniently, as one can do it by oneself, anytime and anywhere: at a worship service, at an evangelistic rally, or even privately before a television or a Gideon Bible). It is to evangelical Christianity what the Shahadah is to Islam.7 In response, public baptism has become the ultimate witnessing opportunity, an "act-speech" directed more toward unbelievers and waverers in the audience than toward God, the baptizand, or the Church itself. Similarly, the Wesleyan "Open Table" tradition has often turned into still another witnessing opportunity, this time acted out in bread and juice and followed by a call for those newly converted to take the real step and pray the Sinner's Prayer, and for those newly repentant to renew their original metanoia in private contemplation. Even the sermon itself, once construed widely enough to accommodate teaching, proclamation, and ethical exhortation,8 has in many churches been reduced to a tedious evangelistic message repeated weekly as a lead-in to the climax of worship—the Altar Call. Again, these are not simply acculturated betrayals of evangelical soteriology or ecclesiology; they are

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thorough appropriations of Word, sacraments, and Church as external aids to salvation as evangelicalism understands it. My account is a caricature, but a disturbing one for those who have seen it come alive. Just how widespread is the problem? Consider the story of Billy Graham, the very paragon of twentieth-century American evangelicalism. What was Graham to do when differences over the proper practice of baptism threatened to divide his audiences? Baptism, he reasoned, is "only, to use the standard terminology, an outward sign of an inward grace." And so Graham became a Baptist to win Baptists, and was baptized for the third time in 1938—even though he had no qualms about his last adult baptism by immersion! Having died and risen with Christ yet again, Graham was approached by a friend and told, "I think you ought to be ordained. That would give you a standing in the Baptist Association and be of great benefit to you in many ways." He thought and prayed about it and decided to go ahead. His friend set up an ordination council. When one of its members pressed him on the depth of his newfound enthusiasm for Baptist theology and practice, this is how Graham describes his own response: '"Brother, you've heard me preach around these parts, and you've seen how the Lord has seen fit to bless. I'm not an expert on theology, but you know what I believe and how I preach, and that should be enough to satisfy you.' He chuckled, along with the others, and reckoned it was so. They approved me for ordination."9 Practices like these are intelligible in terms of salvation by evangelical renewal. But they are unintelligible ecclesiologically—and so we evangelical theologians are constantly criticizing them. But at the same time, we write, recommend, and assign systematic theologies that perpetuate and reinforce them, however unwittingly. Once the Church has become a mere wineskin of salvation, it is only natural for someone like Graham to use the technical description of a sacrament in order to justify an ordination of convenience, or a third "baptism." Once Bill Hybels is taught that the Church is only an "external means" of the salvation of individuals, it is no surprise that he might go on to found a movement that turns Sunday gatherings into "seeker services" focused on reaching the unchurched apart from worship or fellowship. Both of these fathers of evangelicalism are acting in ways profoundly consistent with an evangelical tradition that has provided them rich soteriological resources, but poor ecclesiological resources, to guide their ministries. Many questionable evangelical practices look suddenly understandable when seen in terms of evangelical soteriology. Besides the sacramental habits described above, one may cite the widespread practice of "church shopping" and my former occupation of "church marketing." There is nothing wrong with taking advantage of one particular parachurch ministry over another, or choosing a particular demographic group as the target for parachurch ministry. One becomes a Greek to win Greeks. Thus, when churches are reduced to wineskins of personal salvation, and assessed according to the performance standards of parachurches, shopping and marketing make perfect sense. We evangelical theologians cannot point fingers at church marketers and church shoppers unless we are willing to accept our share of the blame—for defining the visible Church in such a way that what they do makes so much sense.

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Relocating the Evangelical Ordo Salutis This diagnosis warrants a hard look at evangelical Protestant soteriology's relationship to ecclesiology, and to the Reformation's dilemma between personal and communal priority that was so formative for it. How much blame does the ordo salutis itself deserve? Given the theological criticism it has taken, is it even theologically defensible? Despite its limitations and abuses, most evangelicals have continued to find it a helpful feature of Christian soteriology.10 People, not just peoples, have salvation histories; and evangelicals have long cherished trading stories of our "Christian walks." The order of salvation comprehends those narratives according to Jesus' narrative. It may be prone to individualist distortion, but it also has the power to keep Christian individualism from degenerating into sheer subjectivity. Its different confessional varieties helpfully delineate the different soteriologies of the different Western Christian traditions and indicate their strengths and weaknesses. At the same time, their commonalities hold ecumenical promise for those seeking to put an end to old theological battles. Even if many versions of the order of salvation are defective, the form itself is not the reason for ecclesiology's second-rate status in evangelicalism. What is far more problematic than the ordo itself is its place in the Protestant theological system—a place determined by the Reformation's false dilemma and hardened by the centuries-long Catholic/Protestant stalemate. The doctrine of atonement is of course inseparable from the doctrine of Jesus Christ. But the salvation of discrete persons does not belong in categories of justification and sanctification abstracted from social relationships. It belongs in the Church. Ecclesiology should be the category within which the ordo salutis is treated. As Miroslav Volf comments (with respect to Matt. 18:20), "Christ's presence is promised not to the believing individual directly, but rather to the entire congregation, and only through the latter to the individual. This is why no one can come to faith alone and no one can live in faith alone."11 Salvation, from election through glorification, has an intrinsically ecclesial character.12 Is this just a capitulation to the Catholic position? It is not. The dilemma between personal and ecclesial priority is a false one; therefore, locating salvation in the context of Church need not lead to a blanket endorsement of either modern Catholic or modern Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology. In fact, it may well do the opposite. Given the origins of Protestantism, it is understandable that most evangelical Protestants still associate ecclesially located salvation with clerical hierarchy. But the Reformation also begat living disproof that ecclesially mediated salvation must be hierarchically mediated salvation. The Radical Reformation and Free Church traditions embody powerful arguments against both the Protestant and Catholic accounts of salvation and Church. Volf's ecclesiology, so insistent about the ecclesiality of salvation, is not an endorsement of hierarchical Catholic ecclesiology but an argument against it. He represents a powerful current of ecclesiology that associates salvation with the priesthood of all believers and with ecclesial egalitarianism.13 Schleiermacher's dichotomy between individualistic communion (one comes through

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Christ to the Church) and holistic communion (one comes through the Church to Christ) may represent two stable and popular opposites over the course of Church history. But the same history shows that they are by no means the only Christian visions of the relationship among Jesus, Church, and persons of faith.14 Volf traces their fundamental weaknesses back to their common failure to appreciate the role of common Christians in mediating saving grace to each other.15 The episcopal caricature fails truly to appreciate the priesthood of all believers, while the congregational caricature fails truly to appreciate the priesthood of all believers. Both miss crucial aspects of the inherent ecclesiality of salvation. And so they talk past one another endlessly as each defends itself against the other's impoverished ecclesiology and soteriology. Another objection to both the Protestant and Catholic accounts arises in Lesslie Newbigin's landmark ecumenical ecclesiology The Household of God.16 Newbigin seeks a way out of the Protestant/Catholic stalemate by appealing to the then newly emerging, revolutionary communities of Pentecostal Christianity, so antagonistic to the ecumenical movement but in some ways holding such promise as its missing key. These Christians emphasize that where the Holy Spirit is recognizably present with power, there is the Church.17 They embody an alternative to standard accounts of the Protestant-Catholic dilemma.18 Do Volf's and Newbigin's accounts offer two objections, or one? Interestingly, McClendon locates his own (Free Church) "baptist vision" of the Church in Newbigin's third group. What Newbigin calls "Pentecostal" McClendon renames "baptist": "It is local, Spirit-filled, mission-oriented, its discipleship always shaped by a practice of discernment."19 My own Pentecostal tradition has important affinities with McClendon's baptist tradition: it refuses to baptize infants; it is suspicious of "Catholic" things like sacraments, and discounts Rome's view of Holy Tradition; it constantly (and often naively) strives to recapture the spirit of the New Testament Church; it has only recently enjoyed significant social status in America; and its attitude toward Scripture is a surprisingly healthy variety of biblicism. (It is not for nothing that America's Baptists and Pentecostals have historically recognized each other across the charismatic divide as fellow defenders of authentic evangelical Christianity against modernists and Catholics.) But Newbigin's Pentecostal type finally does not fit into McClendon's baptist type. The revolutionary newness of charismatic Christianity—which emphasizes the sheer visibility of the Holy Spirit's activity in an unprecedented (and often reckless) way, which softens cultural, class, gender, racial, clerical, and denominational boundaries, and which somehow resists both fundamentalism and liberalism—this revolutionary newness is simply not present in the same way in the baptist tradition.20 Pentecostalism manages to synthesize an egalitarian ethos and the episcopal structure it inherited from the Wesleyan Holiness tradition. It retains far less of its ethnic-theological heritage than do the English Baptist and continental European Radical traditions. It is more enthusiastic about inculturation and less resistant to acculturation. Most importantly, it has less of an air of political self-sufficiency than baptist Christianity. The last word on a believer's ecclesial legitimacy lies not in the precise mode of one's baptism but in the Spirit's unpredictable presence.

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In its ecumenical form as "charismatic" Christianity, Pentecostalism manages to accommodate the polities of almost every Christian tradition, Constantinian or otherwise. It is less committed to Troeltsch's "sect" type and less uncomfortable in the role of his "Church" type. Pentecostals may not endorse Newbigin's view that the Protestant, Catholic, and Pentecostal types are radically in need of each other, but neither do they repudiate that view as vigorously as do baptists.21 They mainly seek spiritual revival, not political reform, in other traditions. McClendon keenly senses the broad affinities between Newbigin's third type and the baptist tradition. Both intuitively sense the falseness of the Protestant/Catholic dilemma. But the Pentecostal tradition itself more closely embodies the community Newbigin intended to describe (and chastize). These clusters—baptist and Pentecostal/charismatic—are, in the end, two evangelical subtraditions rather than one. They propose two distinct objections to the Reformation's false dilemma, two ecclesial visions of salvation, and two roads toward ecumenical unity. They constitute proof that there will be no one self-evident way for evangelicals to relocate the order of salvation under the doctrine of the Church. And the evidence multiplies as one considers the variety of forms a thoroughly ecclesial soteriology can take. It can be sacramental and hierarchical (Roman Catholics), sacramental and antihierarchical (highchurch charismatics and nondenominationals, and Catholic Workers), antisacramental and antihierarchical (Friends), or anti-sacramental and hierarchical (the Salvation Army). Very well, a Protestant might concede: ecclesially located soteriology might be a road to Munster rather than Rome. But even then, does locating salvation in the Church not surrender the hard-won Protestant insight into the priority of Christ's work? On the contrary, it recovers and safeguards it. Alasdair Heron admits that putting Book IV after Book III of Calvin's Institutes "gives a certain systematic priority to the activity of the Spirit within the individual, whereas medieval and Roman Catholic teaching placed first its work in and through the Church; and this shift has remained broadly characteristic of Protestantism."22 But, Heron says, Calvin himself was . . .far from the extremes of individualism to which some strands of Protestantism have veered.. . . He would have rejected as false any absolute antithesis between the two approaches, or any notion that the church occupied a merely secondary or incidental place in the divine scheme. Much more indicative of his position than the setting of the individual believer over against the community of the church is his insistence running through both of these books that church and individual alike depend wholly upon Christ. . . . The Spirit does not raise up the individual over against the church but directs both to Christ, unites them with him, and refashions them in his likeness.23

Calvin refuses to place ultimate priority in either the order of salvation or the institution of the Church, because such priority belongs in the atoning work of Christ. Jesus himself is the ultimate solution to the Reformation's dilemma. Both soteriology and ecclesiology follow logically from our incorporation into Christ, as two sides of the same coin. Over against both ecclesiocentrism and soteriocentrism belongs

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Christocentrism, the most biblical position of the three. Christocentrism saves evangelicals from having to choose either false opposite. It saves us from something else, too: the anthropocentrism that threatens theologies centered either in the Church or in the salvation of individual believers. In the United States, at least, this is no empty threat. Yet if Calvin was so insightful, then what was wrong with putting soteriology before ecclesiology, so long as both follow from Christology and pneumatology? How does the ultimate priority of Jesus Christ argue for setting salvation within the context of the Church? There are several possible answers. First, reversing the usual order may simply be a contextual corrective for American evangelicals. According to this reasoning, there is nothing inherently wrong with treating soteriology before ecclesiology. Under different circumstances—say, in sixteenth-century Europe—the classical Protestant order might be the proper corrective. There is a lot going for this view. Indeed, it may actually have been the conclusion of the Catholic Reformation. In responding to the Protestant challenge, Trent devoted its own sixth session to justification—before the seventh session's treatment of sacraments. So the classical Protestant order does not necessarily lead to individualistic abuse. We can hardly accuse the Council of Trent of producing individualistic ecclesiology! Or can we? Colin Gunton does. He finds Catholicism guilty of the very same abuses as evangelicals. The main difference is that Catholic individualism works institutionally and sacramentally, turning sacramental practices into individualistic events.24 These too have become divorced from the Church in its fullest sense. Sin has become understood in terms of the individual, and the sacraments of baptism and penance have become matters of personal cleansing, "with minimal relational content, so that the primary function of baptism, relation with God through the mediation of Christ and in the context of a living community, [has become] secondary." According to Gunton, the familiar definition of a sacrament as an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace betrays all the worst aspects of the syndrome. It is not much of a parody to say that the sacrament was rather like a dose of religious medicine, administered by a priest, with little sense of its being institution into a living community of worship and life. . . . The vital link between the atonement and a living community in which it becomes concrete is lost.25 So soteriology's place within ecclesiology is apparently more than just a fix for American individualists; it is a fix for Catholics too. It is of the very nature of salvation (which after all is unity with Christ) to belong to the Church (which after all is the body of Christ). The Protestant priority of "salvation before Church" does not guard the doctrine and practice of Christian salvation against the abuses of the medieval Catholic West. It only reproduces the same abuses, in Protestant forms. According to this reasoning, it is not just ecclesiology that suffers from being in soteriology's backseat. Soteriology suffers as well, by being cut off from the dimension of salvation that is Church. So a properly ecclesial, truly Christocentric account of salvation has the potential to rescue not only evangelicalism's truncated

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understanding of the Church but also its truncated understanding of salvation. We are now ready to examine the promise of an evangelical, ecclesial soteriology.

The Dominical Order of Salvation: Faith, Baptism, Communion Whereas evangelical sacramental practices testify negatively to evangelicalism's truncated understanding of salvation, biblical sacramental practices testify positively to the promise of a truly ecclesial account of salvation. For if the visible Church is really only external to personal salvation, then Jesus chose his ordinances very poorly! All of the signs of salvation radically require the actions of the visible Church. One cannot baptize oneself; communion is communal; even evangelism requires evangelists (Rom, 10:14-15). If Jesus chose these signs in order to reveal something of the nature of salvation, then his community must be the proper context for his salvation. And if evangelical soteriology and ecclesiology instead emphasize the dispensability of these signs, then they ignore part of what it means to be saved. Jesus' Church is not the fifth Spiritual Law, content to be relegated to small print on the last page of an evangelistic booklet.26 It is the very ark of our salvation, the connecting point between salvation as won by Christ and salvation as appropriated in the lives of the lost. In the New Testament, hearing the Word in faith, being baptized, and participating in the body and blood of Christ are not just external means or aids of the order of salvation. They are the order of salvation—the necessary embodiments of conversion, justification, and sanctification. And all of them depend deeply on "the community to which they are ordered."27 Volf calls them "the esse of the Church"—not as magical rites that manipulate God's power but as divinely initiated means of salvific grace that are indispensable as forms of the confession and expression of personal and collective faith.28 They bestow an entirely new set of relationships on the believer. And these communal relationships of course include a direct, personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Both sets of relationships are necessary fruits of God's saving action. Thus, an ecclesially located soteriology is in no way antithetical to the spirit of evangelicalism as a renewal movement. The opposite is true: it significantly enriches that renewal. The plurality of evangelical ecclesiologies suggests variety in how the various traditions would describe how salvation operates in the context of Jesus' Church. Nevertheless, as they explore the ecclesial nature of salvation, they will generally be brought back to baptism and eucharist as high points in the narrative of a believer's saving relationship to God through Jesus Christ. Since there is no one standard evangelical appreciation of baptism or the Lord's Supper, each evangelical tradition will tend to interpret these in its own distinctive way. How might the sacraments function in these different visions of ecclesial salvation? The likely trajectories are clearest in the "third-way" traditions already explored above. Baptists could renew their earlier stress on the work of both ordinances in distinguishing Church from world, and calling both Church and world to discipleship, discipline, and discernment—in other words, to salvation. McClendon himself

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outlines a kind of baptist ordo salutis in four churchly practices: Preparation (preaching and teaching), conversion (baptism), following (eucharist), and soaring (communal discernment). These are still loosely tied to the categories of uETavoia, justification, and sanctification, but they are no longer expressed in terms that can be treated individualistically or apart from the institution of Christ's visible Church.29 Likewise, by seeing in Jesus' baptism the Father's response of sending the Holy Spirit, and at Pentecost the baptismal gift of the same Holy Spirit, Pentecostals could lay the groundwork for an ecclesiology of pneumatic presence grounded in SpiritChristology, free of the modalistic dangers of separating Son from Spirit or "water baptism" from "Spirit-baptism," but equally free of the subordination of the Spirit that has plagued so many other traditions. In deepening their eucharistic practice, they could follow through Paul's chain of reasoning from eucharistic to incorporative to eschatological to charismatic ecclesiology in 1 Corinthians 11-14, yielding a celebration of the Lord's Supper both poignant and exuberant, and a doctrine of the Church of great soteriological richness, political flexibility, and ecumenical promise. From starting points like these, evangelicals would see God's triune salvation in more and more of its communal, eschatological fullness. The "invisible Church" would begin to look less invisible. Far from diluting the evangelical focus on mission, ecclesial soteriologies should concentrate and energize it, while further strengthening evangelicals' growing openness to other Christian traditions.30 It would certainly help heal the rifts that have soured relations between theologians and the rest of the movement. Finally, a thoroughly ecclesial soteriology would give evangelicals and other Protestants needed resources for a better account of the parachurch. Christian theologians, especially evangelical ones, need desperately to make ecclesiological sense of parachurches—because as long as the parachurch model remains unintelligible to theologians, theologians will remain unintelligible and uninteresting to most American evangelicals. The very popularity of the term parachurch suggests the depth of the problem. Just what is a parachurch? Something operating alongside the Church of Christ but which is not the Church of Christ? Only a tradition without a coherent ecclesiology could even use such a word! Such a distinction between ministry and Church puts a theological imprimatur on the radical division between soteriology and ecclesiology—not just at the abstract doctrinal level but at the concrete institutional level. The use of "parachurch" gives ministries an excuse to "dispense grace" apart from its proper sacramental and communal context, and it gives churches an excuse to "worship" while letting others do the work of mission.31 There is a term for parachurch ministries that is both ecclesiologically coherent and more biblical: the diaconate. In Acts 6 as it has been traditionally read,32 the diaconate arises when the nascent Church, stung by its own ethnic insensitivity and overcome by the burdens of its various commitments, discovers the diversity of its spiritual gifts. The Twelve tell the gathered disciples, "It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve [diaKOveiv] tables. Therefore, brethren, pick out from among you seven men . . . whom we may appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the service [StaKOvia] of the

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word" (Acts 6:2-4). Today's parachurches, like the Lukan diaconates, are absolutely vital to the health of the Church. They are God's marketing and affirmative action programs, reaching within and without the Church, respecting demographic and cultural difference. The Hellenistic deacons take the Christian community to its next stages in Acts' narrative: Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth (Acts 8:1-40, 11:19-30). But in Acts there is no hint that God's StdtKOVOt are distinguished from the Church, or that they are any more or less important, or that the daily distribution is 5iaKOVta and the pulpit is not. All offices are charismatic; all are ordered toward salvation; and all are ordered in and by God's catholic community. None are "parachurches." All are Church. By accepting and perpetuating an impoverished, incoherent ecclesiology, evangelical theology has helped take some of God's most faithful and fruitful servants out of the Church business. If evangelical theologians can accept our share of the blame, then rather than turning on those who practice what we have preached, we can exercise what Richard Mouw calls a "hermeneutic of charity" toward the sensus fidelium of the evangelical Church.33 When we do this, a number of evangelical practices begin to look not just understandable but like rather valiant attempts to compensate for evangelicalism's underpowered ecclesiology (and to find the harmony of Church and diaconate that is essential to both). Ironically, at the same time that many evangelical churches are trying to be more like parachurches, many parachurches are responding to the incoherence by trying to be more like churches. For instance, evangelicals operate through various networks (e.g., the National Association of Evangelicals) that function as a kind of "teaching office" that is all the more remarkable for its informality. It is a kind of grassroots magisterium that does what it can to provide the kind of framework the early Church provided its diaconates. Its local counterparts are the countless evangelical ministries (e.g., InterVarsity Christian Fellowship) that function surprisingly like traditional churches. Through such groups, evangelicalism is creating quasi churches "outside" the Church, which seek to provide the kind of harmony of fellowship, salvation, and mission that Protestant systematic theology has tended to separate. Locating the order of salvation in the context of the community of salvation would encourage these positive developments. Furthermore, it would train evangelical theologians not to throw stones at evangelicalism's emerging institutions but to see them as soteriological and ecclesial achievements that are all the more impressive considering the flawed theological categories that shaped them. We theologians should take our share of the blame for the incoherence, and do our part to show the real coherence of what God is doing in our midst. Our diaicovia to evangelical Christianity can help bring the Church back to salvation—and bring salvation back to the Church.34 NOTES

1. The boundaries of American evangelicalism are elusive. Robert K. Johnston identifies evangelicals according to (1) dedication to the Gospel that is expressed in a personal faith in Christ as Lord; (2) an understanding of the Gospel as defined authoritatively in Scripture; and (3) a desire to communicate the Gospel both in evangelism and in social reform ("American Evangelicalism: An Extended Family," in Donald W. Day-

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ton and Robert K. Johnston, eds., The Variety of American Evangelicalism [Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity, 1991], 252-69). 2. Among Barna's more controversial works, see Marketing the Church: What They Never Taught You About Church Growth (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1988). "They," of course, are seminary professors. 3. This essay will not distinguish between the terms sacrament and ordinance, nor among the terms Lord's supper, communion, and eucharist. 4. See, for instance, James Wm. McClendon Jr., Systematic Theology, vol. 2, Doctrine (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 327. 5. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1938), 553, my emphasis. 6. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1917), 3:466. 7. "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his Messenger." Saying these words sincerely makes one a Muslim irreversibly, and makes the Shari'a (Islamic Law) legally binding. 8. C. H. Dodd calls these homiletical forms didache, kerygma, homilia, and euangelion (The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments [New York: Harper, 1944], 7-8). 9. Billy Graham, Just As I Am (San Francisco: Harper, 1997), 56-57. 10. For instance, see Stanley Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Nashville: Broadman & Holman), 595. 11. Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 162. 12. Ibid., 172-81, on "The Ecclesial Character of Salvation." 13. John Howard Yoder endorses this term explicitly in The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical, ed. Michael G. Cartwright (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 370. 14. See Volf, After Our Likeness, 159. 15. Ibid., 134. 16. New York: Friendship, 1954. 17. Ibid., 95. 18. Ibid., 102. 19. McClendon, Systematic Theology, 2:343. He discusses Newbigin's ecclesiology at length at 2:335-44. 20. This is of course not to deny the character of McClendon's baptist communities as "communities of the Holy Spirit"! 21. McClendon follows Yoder in complaining that H. Richard Niebuhr's fivefold typology in Christ and Culture disingenuously leads the reader to endorsing the "Christ transforming culture" vision. (On this point, see Robert Cathey's essay in chapter 14 of this volume.) His complaint about Newbigin is the very opposite: The threefold ProtestantCatholic-Pentecostal typology "made it appear that none could flourish except by merging with the other types" (McClendon, 336). In other words, it fails to respect the self-sufficiency of the baptist vision. 22. Alasdair I. C. Heron, The Holy Spirit (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), 104; also n. 5. 23. Ibid., 104-105. 24. See George Tavard's analysis of the factors motivating the Council of Trent (and more recent Roman Catholic thought) in chapter 13 of this volume. 25. Colin Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 187. 26. See Bill Bright, Have You Heard of the Four Spiritual Laws? (San Bernardino, Calif.: Campus Crusade for Christ, 1965). This is a tremendously influential tract within evangelicalism in America and worldwide, in which the Church is an afterthought.

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27. Gunton, Actuality of Atonement, 177. 28. Volf, After Our Likeness, 152-53. 29. See McClendon, Systematic Theology, 2:137-45. 30. Volf finds such ecumenical openness (which is not equivalent to commitment to organic, institutional union) actually to be constitutive of the Church, as a sign of its eschatological hope for the final gathering of God's people everywhere (After Our Likeness, I54) 31. By contrast, for Paul, all the various functions of the body of Christ are its XoyiKT| Xoctpeict, its rational worship (Rom 12:1, 4—8). On the post-Christendom Church's recovery of, and appreciation for, its own inherently missionary nature, see Newbigin, Household of God, 1-17. 32. Critical readings of Acts have distinguished much more sharply between the servants of Acts 6 and the deacons of the Pastorals. See Raymond E. Brown, Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 294 n. 39 and 658. 33. Richard J. Mouw, Consulting the Faithful: What Christian Intellectuals Can Learn from Popular Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 15-19. 34. This essay includes material from "Sharing the Blame for Ecclesiology's SecondRate Status in Evangelicalism," a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, November, 1997. Thanks to Richard Mouw and Letty Russell for their many helpful suggestions.

CHAPTER 17

IS JESUS STILL LORD?

Lesslie Newbigin on the Place of Christ in Trinitarian Ecclesiology Philip W. Butin

I In the winter and spring of 1994, a remarkable written exchange took place I between two highly influential figures in the world ecumenical movement: Lesslie Newbigin,1 former Bishop of the Church of South India, and Konrad Raiser,2 the recently installed general secretary of the World Council of Churches, The occasion for the exchange was Newbigin's sharply critical review of Raiser's programmatic book, Ecumenism in Transition: A Paradigm Shift in the Ecumenical Movement? .3 This review was published in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research under the title "Ecumenical Amnesia."4 The two were agreed that the fresh articulation and appropriation of a thoroughly trinitarian ecclesiology was crucial for the future of the ecumenical movement. But the exchange illustrated significantly differing emphases between the two, both with respect to the understanding of the Trinity itself, and also regarding the specific lines along which such a trinitarian ecclesiology would be developed. At particular issue in the exchange, according to Bishop Newbigin, was the lordship of Christ—how it was to be construed within trinitarian ecclesiology, and its significance for the future of world ecumenism. Raiser intended Ecumenism in Transition to address the growing uncertainty that had characterized the ecumenical movement over the previous several decades.5 He attempted to do this by articulating the hypothesis that a profound paradigm shift had actually been taking place during this period.6 Raiser sought to identify and describe this shift by tracing the emergence of a number of controversial ecumenical issues: (1) an increasing awareness of religious pluralism; (2) a growing ecumenical focus on structural evil and oppression in place of the prior sense that history was moving toward the realization of God's purposes for the world; (3) a new consciousness of global threats to the integrity of life and the creation; and (4) a growing pessimism about the necessity and possibility of the previously assumed ecumenical goal of "church unity."7 He regarded the prominence and intransigence of these issues as a signal that the originally helpful "Christocentric Universalism" paradigm of the early WCC was no longer adequate to address them, 196

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and had thus waned in its power to inspire forward progress in the ecumenical movement.8 In place of this former paradigm, Raiser sought to describe and affirm the emergence of a more contemporary, encompassing, and adequate ecclesial paradigm, shaped by a revised understanding of the oiKOuuevri as "the one household of life,"9 by the biblical idea of KOivcovia as a less centrally structural and more realistic form of Christian unity able to embrace diversity,10 and ultimately by a social vision of the Trinity.11 Newbigin's sharp reaction to this proposal might seem unexpected to those only generally familiar with the long and significant history of his efforts to expand the Christocentric categories of the early ecumenical movement into more comprehensive trinitarian ones.12 After all, wasn't Raiser's trinitarian proposal in significant continuity with Newbigin's own lifelong effort? The beginnings of an explanation lie in the fact that Newbigin and Raiser had articulated and embraced two distinct understandings of the Trinity, which had inspired two different visions of the place of Jesus Christ in trinitarian ecclesiology and which had issued in two divergent understandings of the Church's mission.13 The urgency of the issue, as Newbigin understood it, was that these two visions and their corresponding ecclesial implications were finally incompatible.

The Trinity as Purpose, Pattern, and Power of Church Unity and Mission Lesslie Newbigin's early writings sought to broaden the "Christocentrism" that informed and inspired the early (1910-1968) accomplishments of the ecumenical movement into a more thoroughgoing trinitarianism. Newbigin repeatedly attributed this trinitarian concern to reading Charles Cochrane's Christianity and Classical Culture.14 He learned from Cochrane "how the trinitarian doctrine provided a new paradigm for thought, which made possible the healing of dualisms that classical thought had been unable to overcome."15 The Household of God (1953-54) sketched an implicitly trinitarian ecumenical ecclesiology by correlating the biblical images of "the congregation of the faithful," "the body of Christ," and the "community of the Holy Spirit" broadly with Protestant, Catholic, and Pentecostal traditions. It sought to show that the wholeness of the Church as depicted in scripture requires adequate emphasis on all three of these ecclesial patterns. However, Newbigin's more conscious efforts to redirect the ecumenical movement toward a more comprehensively trinitarian ecclesiology and missiology are articulated in the booklet Trinitarian Faith and Today's Mission.16 Here, the challenge of Christian missions in relationship to the purpose of world history is in trinitarian terms, with an emphasis on the universal and sovereign rule and purpose of God the Father as revealed and culminated in salvation history. However, because God is triune, this idea of "Lordship" is not translated into an imperialistic dominance of the Church over those outside it. On the contrary, "The task of the church in relation to the events of world history is not to be the governor and controller of them, but to be the suffering servant and witness of the Lord, manifesting in its witness the true meaning of these events."17

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Newbigin also addresses the challenge of expanding global secularism, that is, the tendency to determine the meaning of the various realms of human life without reference to religion or religious authority. He does so by focusing on "the life of the incarnate Son," which was "a life lived in full acceptance of the human institutions of his time—political, social, economic." Jesus accepted these institutions "as part of the provision made by the Father for the preserving and ordering of human life." Indeed, these institutions "were created through Christ and for Christ and that they are therefore subject to his will." However, the Church must remember that "these spheres of life are indeed subject to Christ but not to the Church." The Church addresses secularism by confessing Jesus as the Lord of these human institutions. This confession "breaks out into words and deeds, which the Spirit may use in his own freedom and sovereignty to bear witness to the lordship of Christ over these structures of human life."18 Finally, Newbigin discusses the challenge of the apparent "immobilization of the missionary movement" with reference to missionary institutionalization and legalism, with their stifling effect on missionary expansion. Newbigin calls for the Church to recognize and respond to the freedom of God's sovereign Spirit within the Trinity as the life-giving, guiding, and directing power that goes ahead and opens up "ways that the missionary never expected." As this takes place, the Church's mission follows God's direction and enters doors opened before it, rather than being guided or directed by its own or the world's priorities. Mission is responding to the prior action of God the Holy Spirit.19 Newbigin's other overtly and systematically trinitarian work is The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission. Here, mission is articulated as "proclaiming the kingdom of the Father," "sharing the life of the Son," and "bearing the witness of the Spirit."20 Behind this obvious structural use of the doctrine of the economic Trinity lies a more subtle, fundamental, and integrated sense of the perichoretic interaction of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in all the work of God. The mystery of divine election, which Newbigin here regards as the key to the relationship between the gospel and world history, derives from the fact that interpersonal relatedness belongs to the very being of God. Therefore there can be no salvation for human beings except in relatedness. No one can be made whole except by being restored to the wholeness of that being-in-relatedness for which God made us and the world and which is the image of that being-in-relatedness which is the being of God himself.21

Election assumes this interrelatedness on a divine level, and establishes it on a human level. It ensures that "the gift of salvation would be bound up with our openess to one another." The election of the Christian communities intended in the letter to the Ephesians is all the action of the Father, who has freely chosen them in his beloved Son and assured them of the completion of what he has begun by giving them the Spirit. . . . The whole action has its origin in the eternal being of the triune God before the creation; it has its goal in the final unity of the whole creation in Christ; and meanwhile the secret of this cosmic plan, the foretaste of its completion, has been en-

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trusted to these little communities of marginal people scattered through the towns and cities of Asia Minor.22 In the chapter "Mission as Action for God's Justice," which responds to concerns raised by Liberation Theology, Newbigin again appeals to God's trinitarian nature, this time as the paradigm and motivation of the Church's concern for justice. He uses the image of the holy city as a metaphor for the realization of God's own just purposes for the world.23 In his chapter on "Church Growth, Conversion, and Culture," he argues that the Church must resist the temptation to identify itself with the kingdom of God; for "the relation of the church to the kingdom" is complex and "can be truly grasped only by a trinitarian model."24 Finally, the trinitarian perspective of The Open Secret is evident in its outworking of the relationship of Christian faith to other religions in its chapter on "The Gospel Among the Religions."25 Newbigin assumes here that I meet the person of another religion "simply as a witness, as one who has been laid hold of by Another and placed in a position where I can only point to Jesus as the one who can make sense of the whole human situation that my partner and I share as fellow human beings." His further concern, then, is how, from this starting point, I can begin to understand the religion of my partner. The first step is the recognition that "the Christian confession of Jesus as Lord does not involve any attempt to deny the reality of the work of God in the lives and thoughts and prayers of men and women outside the Christian church." The second is an honest recognition of the fact that as human beings, we all (Christians included) "take the good gifts of God and make them into an instrument to cut ourselves off from God, to establish our independence from God." Third,"the revelation of God's saving love and power in Jesus entitles and requires me to believe that God purposes the salvation of all. .., but it does not entitle me to believe that this purpose is to be accomplished in any way that ignores or bypasses the historic event by which it was in fact revealed and effected." Fourth, "an essential part of the history of salvation is the history of bringing into obedience to Christ of the rich multiplicity of ethical, cultural, and spiritual treasures that God has lavished upon humankind." Finally, "the church .. . does not face the world as the exclusive possessor of salvation . . . [but] rather, as arrabon of that salvation—as sign, firstfruit, token, witness of that salvation which God purposes for the whole."26 For Newbigin, the true grammar of dialogue is provided by the doctrine of the Trinity. Belief in God as the Father and sustainer of all, to whom all are accountable, leads to a deep sense of commonality with the dialogue partner. Participation in dialogue as members of the body of Christ implies vulnerability, a deep sense of personal humility and need for grace, and constant dependence upon the means of grace available through the Church: worship, teaching, sacraments, and shared discipleship. As those inspired by the Holy Spirit, Christian participants bear the expectant hope that the Spirit can work in and through dialogue to accomplish God's own sovereign purpose of glorifying Jesus "by converting to him both partners in the dialogue."27 Newbigin applied this trinitarian perspective to the specific issue of Christian unity in his 1984 lecture entitled "The Basis and the Forms of Unity." After enu-

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merating several factors that he understood to have "effectively removed Church unity from the top of the agenda of most Christians today," he proceeded to consider the basis of unity, which he described as the triune nature and action of God. Because God the Father has given his Son to us, and in the incarnate Lord Jesus Christ he both freely declared his nature and effected his purpose, and because he continues by the work of the Spirit to disclose that nature and effect that purpose from generation to generation, from race to race, by drawing men and women to him, we are under the obligation of love and faithfulness to bring every thought, every activity, and every visible form or organization into subjection to him. There is one God and one mediator between God and human beings in whom he wills to reconcile all things to himself. Therefore those who are the bearers of his mission must themselves be reconciled.28

This trinitarian basis, however, cannot be artificially opposed to Christocentric concerns, because Christ is the incarnation of the triune God. Subjectively speaking, "there can be no movement toward unity except on the basis of a deep, personal commitment to Christ." Objectively speaking, It is only if Jesus is indeed supreme above every other name or power or principle or program that the unity of his people is really essential. He is, in simple fact, the one in whom the Father purposes to unite all people, all nations and all created beings, making peace by the blood of his Cross. Because this is so it is of the very essence of the Church that it should be one—a sign and firstfruit and instrument of that unity.29

By 1989, the focus of Newbigin's writing had shifted to analysis of the interface of the Gospel with Western culture. But he was still committed to articulating the mission of the Church in trinitarian terms that incorporated the salvation history concerns of the original ecumenical paradigm.30 Paradigm Shift or Paradigm Expansion? Students, friends, and colleagues who share the theological concerns of Geoffrey Wainwright will likely hope with both Lesslie Newbigin and Konrad Raiser that the doctrine of the Trinity may indeed provide the fundamental theological paradigm that informs the emerging ecclesiologies connected with the ongoing world ecumenical movement. However, the present discussion points toward a decisive theological watershed toward which the movement will need to commit itself, if talk about a "trinitarian paradigm" is to come to vital, tangible, transformative expression in the faith, worship, and life of congregations. Does the future of the ecumenical movement call for a paradigm shift of the kind envisioned by Raiser, or rather for a paradigm expansion of the kind envisioned by Newbigin? In spite of their many similarities as active leaders of the world ecumenical movement, the thought-worlds of Newbigin and Raiser show significant differences. In addition to being a theologian, apologist, and ecumenical leader, Newbigin was always (and to the end) a missionary bishop and pastor. He spent almost half of his life in the midst of non-Western culture, personally extending the love of Jesus Christ to Hindu villagers and city dwellers, Christian parishioners and ministers

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and Indian scholars and community and political leaders. Every facet of Newbigin's theology is suffused with a personal sense of connectedness with the triune God, whom we sense he knew by direct pastoral experience as living and active in every individual life and in every corner of the world. When Lesslie Newbigin's writings speak of the Trinity, we are in the realm, not primarily of ideas, but of the living, tripersonal God who stands above, comes within, and goes before the people of God as the purpose, pattern, and power of their shared life and mission. Perhaps reflecting his Reformed background,31 his many careful formulations of the implications of God's triunity for the Church's being, life, unity, and mission are mostly economic in their focus: they are concerned with the external work of the triune God in relationship to human beings and the whole creation. However, when he was occasionally led to speak of the immanent Trinity, he did so in terms that emphasized the intrinsic relationality and unity in difference of the three persons, rather than in more traditionally Western categories. On the other hand, Raiser has spent the majority of his adult life in global ecumenical endeavors and in university teaching. Not surprisingly, his use of the doctrine of the Trinity is more abstract. But it is also more derivative and, as such, more vulnerable to the weaknesses of its sources.32 He states as a bald fact that the Cappadocians developed a "social doctrine of the Trinity."33 He accepts with approval the sharply drawn antithesis between "lordship" and "fatherhood" that Moltmann imposes on both the biblical material and the tradition.34 He speaks of the community of the Trinity as a "symbol" that holds the conceptual poles of "personhood and social being," "independence and relatedness," "being bounded and being open," and "identity and communication" together in tension. It is as though the idea of the Trinity and the intellectual problems it can resolve are of more interest than the triune action of God in human life and the world. It is not surprising that significantly different ecclesiological prioirites for the ecumenical movement might emerge from the proposals of persons with such different life experiences and such different perceptions of what it means to be "trinitarian." Raiser's concern is that the theology of the ecumenical movement be articulated in specific and conscious response to the contemporary challenges of religious pluralism, structural evil and oppression, global threats to the integrity of creation, and the perceived need for new models of Church unity, as defined largely within Western academia. For him, a "trinitarian paradigm" offers a conceptual alternative to the prior "Christocentric universalism" that informed the early ecumenical movement. Newbigin's theology—as we have seen—has been formulated with specific intention to address many of these same challenges pastorally and practically, but also with a distinct theological concern for the sovereignty of God's purpose for humanity and the whole creation, for the "full organic unity" of the Church, and for ongoing commitment to the Church's "worldwide missionary and evangelistic calling."35 The nub of their differences, as Newbigin suggests in his review36 (and as Raiser is apparently willing to acknowledge, judging by his explicit comments in Ecumenism in Transition37), may be found in their differing assessments of the idea of the lordship of Christ. For Raiser, who begins his book with the subtitle "Bestandsaufnahme" ("The Present Situation"),38 this doctrine appears to have become a problem that

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needs to be overcome, or at best the impact of which needs to be minimized. He speaks of the "easily misunderstood ambiguity of talk of the 'kingdom of God' or 'lordship of Christ,'" and refers to his own "initial questioning of the traditional language of the 'lordship of God'" based on his assumption that "house and kingdom, father and king, indwelling/relationship and rule/authority are in tension with each other."39 He can assert that "in the language of the 'lordship of Christ' the tradition of theocracy lives on."40 While he admits a qualified acceptance of "lordship language" when it aims at "a radical revaluation of all forms of authority" as in the Barmen Declaration, the following statements are more characteristic: Where, however, theocentric criticism goes no further than capping all absolute claims to authority with God's universal authority, or even makes the lordship of Jesus Christ a principle out of which to construct a universal theology of history, it remains caught in the logic of domination and loses the liberating impetus of the biblical prophetic tradition.. . . Our criticism must go deeper and even question the transfer of the political-social category of "authority" or "power" to the acts of God. All authority structures are constituted with one individual at the apex of the authority pyramid. 41

For Newbigin, on the other hand, the lordship of Christ is not only completely consistent with a thoroughly trinitarian understanding of the Church and its unity and mission; it is also the source and foundation of the doctrine of the Trinity and the key to faithfully addressing the ecumenical "challenges" Raiser enumerates (in a way that is culturally and pastorally sensitive while still being biblically and theologically faithful). This is the ultimate explanation for Newbigin's harsh review of Ecumenism in Transition. As he says in "Ecumenical Amnesia," a trinitarian perspective can be only an enlargement and development of a Christocentric one and not an alternative set over against it, for the doctrine of the Trinity is the theological articulation of what it means to say that Jesus is the unique Word of God incarnate in world history. Of course Raiser knows this well, but one has to ask whether, in his development of his thesis, the truth in the former paradigm is developed or obscured.42

Trinitarianism as Public Theology? Newbigin's final published reflections on the Trinity are found in an essay entitled "The Trinity as Public Truth." Newbigin's concern in this essay is that trinitarian faith "ought to be playing an explicit and vigorous part in the public debate that makes up the life of the public square." Instead, he points out, "the public image of God" in the West has been effectually Unitarian since the Enlightenment.43 He believes that the Trinity can become a paradigm for thought that helps us see new patterns of relationship between God, humanity, and the world. The doctrine of the Trinity "was the result of a new fact (in the original sense of the word factum, something done). God had done those things that are the content of the good news that the Church is commissioned to tell, the Gospel. This fact required a complete rethinking of the meaning of the word 'God.'"44

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In other words, in light of the Gospel, the doctrine of the Trinity must become "a new starting point for thought." This leads Newbigin (by a somewhat different route) to a critique of Western theological categories for God. Here, he shares two common concerns with Konrad Raiser and with his sources, Jurgen Moltmann and Leonardo Boff. To Newbigin, both the West's legacy of individualism and the broader world tendency toward a monarchical understanding of power need to be held accountable to a biblical account of power: "a trinitarian understanding of God [that] provides us with an ontology of love to replace an ontology of violence." "The ultimate reality," he continues, "is the eternal mutual self-giving-in-love of the three persons of the Blessed Trinity." "[T]he trinitarian understanding of God, in which relatedness is constitutive of the divine being, corresponds to a view of society that understands the human person in his or her relatedness to others."45 At this point, however, Newbigin shifts his concern specifically to the future of the World Council of Churches, trinitarian ecclesiology, and the "paradigm shift" that Konrad Raiser seeks to describe and affirm in Ecumenism and Transition. As Newbigin interprets him, Raiser regards the model of "Christocentric Universalism" of the earlier ecumenical movement as unacceptable "because it carries the message of lordship, of control from one center." And it is precisely here that the crux of their difference lies: What gives ground for anxiety here is the positing of a trinitarian model against the model of Christocentric universalism. The doctrine of the Trinity was not developed in response to human need for participatory democracy! It was developed in order to account for the facts that constitute the substance of the gospel. It is the work of Christ in his incarnation, in his atoning work in death and resurrection, and in his bestowing the gift of the Holy Spirit upon the Church that made it necessary to undertake a radical reunderstanding of the being of God. To set a trinitarian paradigm over against a Christological one, and to commend it as corresponding to an egalitarian climate of opinion, would surely be a disastrous mistake.46

He concludes: "A trinitarian understanding of God cannot become part of public truth except through the acknowledgment of the universal lordship and saviorhood of Jesus Christ," and "in the measure that the Church is faithful in its mission to the world."47 For Newbigin and the majority of world Christians of Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and traditional Protestant theological conviction, any appeal to trinitarianism intended to downplay or minimize the kingship of God or the lordship of Christ reflects a misinformed attempt to drive a wedge between two complementary and mutually reinforcing aspects of the biblical witness.48 For almost fifty years, Lesslie Newbigin was among the most articulate spokespersons of our time in envisioning the Church, its unity, and its mission according to a trinitarian paradigm. It was his undying conviction that the future of the ecumenical movement rested on its ability to articulate and embrace thoroughly trinitarian responses to the profound challenges facing the Churches; responses which nevertheless retain a wholehearted commitment to the lordship of Christ, the unity of the Church, and "its worldwide missionary obligation."49

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NOTES

1. Of English origin and Presbyterian background, Newbigin served as a missionary in India from 1936 to 1959. He was elected bishop in the newly formed ecumenical Church of South India in 1947. He became general secretary of the International Missionary Council in 1959, subsequently leading that organization into the World Council of Churches as the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism and serving as its director until 1965. He returned to India as bishop of Madras for the next decade, and then settled in Birmingham, England, in 1974 to teach at Selly Oak College and to write and lecture in the fields of theology, missiology, cultural analysis, ecumenics, and apologetics. In the 19805 he also served as pastor of a small local inner-city church in Birmingham. He died on January 30, 1998. Newbigin is to be the subject of a forthcoming "theological biography" written by Geoffrey Wainwright (GW 208), for whom he was a trusted friend and ecumenical guide. 2. Raiser has served as general secretary of the World Council of Churches since 1992. From 1983-1992 he was Professor of Ecumenical Theology at the University of Bochum, Germany. For the prior 14 years, he served on the staff of the World Council of Churches. 3. Geneva: WCC Publications, 1991 German original: Okumene im Obergang: Paradigmenwechsel in der okumenischen Bewegung (Munchen: Kaiser, 1989). 4. Newbigin's original review was published in One in Christ 29/3 (Summer 1993): 26975. The version published in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research 18/1 (January 1994): 2-5 included minor alterations and had a significantly greater impact. The next issue of the Bulletin published an engaging response by Raiser and a somewhat conciliatory counterresponse by Newbigin (18/2: 50-52). 5. Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition, 1-30. 6. Ibid., 31-33. 7. Ibid., 54-78. 8. Ibid., 31-53. For the classic statement of "Christocentric Universalism," see W. A. Visser't Hooft, No Other Name: The Choice Between Syncretism and Christian IJniversalism (London: SCM, 1963). 9. Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition, 84—91. to. Ibid., 71-77, 96-102. 11. Ibid., 91-96. 12. See, for the most prominent examples, The Household of God (New York: Friendship Press, 1953); Trinitarian Faith and Today's Mission (Richmond: John Knox, 1964); The Open Secret, 2d edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 19-65, 105-10, 113, 139, 179, 183-88; "The Basis and Forms of Unity," Mid-Stream 23/1 (January 1984): 1-12; The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 118 ff.; and, written after the exchange in question but referring back to it, "The Trinity as Public Truth" in The Trinity in a Pluralistic Age, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 1-8. 13. As the exposition below will illustrate, the difference does not—as Raiser sometimes implies in Ecumenism in Transition—lie primarily in the conventional contrast between Eastern and Western trinitarian understandings and approaches See Raiser, 91-96. 14. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1940), 232-49, 359-72, 384-98. 15. Newbigin, "The Trinity as Public Truth," 2; compare The Open Secret, 26. 16. Newbigin refers to the consciousness of this effort on his part in "Ecumenical Amnesia," 2. 17. Newbigin, Trinitarian Faith and Today's Mission, 37-42. 18. Ibid., 55-59. 19. Ibid., 66-76. 20. Newbigin, The Open Secret, chapters 4-6, 30-65. See also his "The Future of Mis-

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sions and Missionaries," Review and Expositor 74/2 (Spring 1977): 209-18, esp. 214-15, where "the presence of the kingdom in history" is connected with the work of the Son, and the assurance that the work of God is not "domesticated within the church" is connected with the work of the Spirit. 21. Newbigin, The Open Secret, 70. 22. Ibid., 71-2. 23. Ibid., 105-6. 24. Ibid., 139-41. 25. See also the original published version of these thoughts: "The Basis, Purpose, and Manner of Interfaith Dialogue," Scottish Journal of Theology 30/3 (1977): 253-70. 26. Newbigin, The Open Secret, 175-80. 27. Ibid., 183-88. 28. Newbigin, "The Basis and Forms of Unity," 4. 29. Ibid., 5. 30. Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 118-19. 31. See my Revelation, Redemption, and Response: Calvin's Trinitarian Understanding of the Divine-Human Relationship (New York: Oxford, 1995) esp. 41-49, 128-31. 32. Raiser's discussions of the oiKOi)|j,evr|, KOivwvla, and the Trinity are heavily indebted to Jurgen Moltmann (eg., The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, trans. Margaret Kohl [San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981]) and Leonardo Boff (Trinity and Society, trans. Paul Burns [Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1988]). 33. Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition, 93. Historically, it is both inaccurate and anachronistic to claim more than that the trinitarian theologies formulated by the Cappadocians provided an important precedent for the development of twentieth-century "social trinitarianism." 34. Cf. Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom. 35. "Ecumenical Amnesia," 2, 5. 36. Ibid., 3-4. 37. Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition, 62-63, 90, 92-94. 38. Raiser, Okumene im Obergang, n. 39. Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition, 90, 92. 40. Ibid., 92. 41. Ibid., 93. 42. "Ecumenical Amnesia," 2. 43. Perhaps triggered by his inner-city pastorate in a significantly Muslim area, this essay interestingly emphasizes the historical interface of Christianity and Islam with regard to the doctrine of the Trinity. Attention is drawn to the various ways medieval thought— with its significant Muslim influence—subtly absorbed a more and more "theistic" (as contrasted with "trinitarian") understanding of the word "God" into Western theological and philosophical traditions. 44. Newbigin, "The Trinity as Public Truth," 2-3. 45. Ibid., 6. Compare Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition, 96, who on this point speaks of the Trinity in similar terms. 46. Newbigin, "The Trinity as Public Truth," 8. 47. Ibid. 48. Raiser himself seemed to recognize this in his gracious response to Newbigin's review, where he appeared to retreat from the strong "paradigm shift" position taken in most sections of Ecumenism in Transition, and to move more toward a conjunction rather than a disjunction between the two paradigms: "Finally, I am in agreement with [Newbigin]—and have said so in my book—that the Trinitarian perspective cannot be placed as an 'alterna-

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tive' over against Christological confession but must be understood as its proper biblical frame of interpretation. However, we seem to disagree about what it means to take the Trinitarian faith seriously and specifically to appreciate the constitutive role of the Holy Spirit in understanding the Christ event." ("Is Ecumenical Apologetics Sufficient? A Response to Lesslie Newbigin's Ecumenical Amnesia," in International Bulletin of Missionary Research 18/2 [1994]: 50.) 49. Newbigin, "Ecumenical Amnesia," 5.

CHAPTER l8

SALVATION IN RECENT FAITH AND ORDER DOCUMENTS Gunther Gassmann

I The Christian faith is, above all other things, a faith grounded in, illuminated I by, and responding to a saving and transforming event. It is not primarily concerned with providing people with a special and higher knowledge about themselves and the world. Rather, the Christian belief in God the creator, incarnate in God the Son, awakening such belief in human beings through God the Holy Spirit, is—in all its dimensions and aspects—a belief marked by the dynamics of the divine purpose and action toward redemption, renewal, and fulfilment. The Christian faith is a soteriological faith; it is about salvation. This faith is offered to all people, individually and corporately, as the ground of a new existence in communion with God and with fellow believers. Of course, not every aspect of the body of Christian beliefs can be pressed into a soteriological scheme. Here, Wolfhart Pannenberg's warning is certainly appropriate: one cannot make soteriology determinative of Christology (as was done by Schleiermacher or Tillich, for whom Christology is merely a function of soteriology).1 Still, it remains true that if the soteriological dimension—the announcement of God's intervention in favor of the salvation of individuals and humanity—is completely absent from theological reflection on any aspect of the Christian faith, then something essentially Christian is missing. With his thoroughgoing focus on the sacramental nature of the Christian faith, Geoffrey Wainwright has persistently drawn attention to this soteriological basis of the faith: the Triune God's communication of salvation through—to use my Lutheran language—the "means of grace." And with his equally persistent focus on the liturgical-doxological nature of the Christian faith, he has drawn attention to the Church's joyful response to God's gratuitous gift of salvation. Is our thesis—namely, that the soteriological dimension is fundamental to the nature of the Christian faith and, therefore, necessarily an integral part of all theological reflection—also confirmed by the multilateral and bilateral ecumenical theological dialogues of recent decades? These dialogues have become important 207

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(indeed, indispensable) expressions of the modern ecumenical movement. Their aim is to prepare the way toward the visible manifestation of Christian unity in the form of a KOtvcovta or conciliar communion of Churches united in faith, life, and service. The nature and mission of such a communion would be the common praise of God, the creator and redeemer of this world; a shared sacramental life together; a joint witness, through word and deed, to the good news of salvation for all people; and common service toward the provisional betterment of this world, looking toward its final transformation and perfection in a new heaven and a new earth. Obviously, all this has soteriological implications; and if we look at the results of ecumenical theological dialogues with this hermeneutical presupposition in mind, we will most probably discover that the basic soteriological orientation of the Christian faith is present, in some form or another, in all of them—whatever their specific topics may be. That this is the case, at least in a number of ecumenical texts, has already been shown by Andre Birmele in his book Le Salut en Jesus Christ dans les dialogues oecumeniques.1 This helpful study, which focuses on the period to about 1985, confirms the presence of soteriological motives and themes in several texts under consideration. But Birmele also notices that, in other cases, these themes are absent (or insufficiently addressed), because the predominant themes and orientations in all dialogues considered here were clearly ecclesiological.3 This conclusion is understandable given the general ecclesiological focus of all ecumenical theological reflection. The question, then, would have to be modified by asking in what way this ecclesiological focus is nevertheless informed by the soteriological foundation of the Christian faith. There is, of course, no need to ask this question of the few bilateral texts after 1985 that have put soteriology explicitly on the ecumenical agenda, such as the AnglicanRoman Catholic report on "Salvation and the Church" of I986/874 and the LutheranRoman Catholic report on "Church and Justification" of 1993.5 My thesis, then, is twofold. First, as a matter of theological principle, the basic message of salvation—with which the Christian faith and Church stands or falls— should be present in ecumenical theological dialogues even where soteriology is not their main theme. Second, there are indications that the theme of salvation is, indeed, present in these dialogues, but often "hidden" under the dominating ecclesiological concerns. In order to bring this hidden presence of soteriology more clearly to the surface, I will survey the results of three major study projects that were carried out during my official involvement in the work of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. During this time I was a frequent collaborator and theological "co-conspirator" with Geoffrey Wainwright. He was deeply involved in the shaping of two of the three documents to be considered here.

Some Historical Precedents When the Faith and Order Movement began its historical course after 1910, one of the first considerations was to identify those doctrinal issues that had been controversial and divisive between the different Christian traditions and should be, therefore, main topics on the Faith and Order agenda. These issues emerged in a preparatory process leading up to the First World Conference on Faith and Order at Lausanne in 1927. They were all ecclesiological issues; even the section on the

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"Church's Common Confession of Faith," which discussed the differences about the place and role of the creeds in the Church, was regarded in this perspective. However, one year before the World Conference took place, Lutheran theologians from Germany requested the insertion of the theme "The Church's Message to the World—the Gospel" into the agenda that had already been prepared for the conference.6 This was eventually done, and the concise report of the World Conference on this topic was the first major ecumenical text on the theme of salvation. In both its content and style, the report remains a model ecumenical statement. One quotation must suffice: Because Christ himself is the Gospel, the Gospel is the message of the Church to the world. It is more than a philosophical theory; more than a theological system; more that a programme for material betterment. The Gospel is rather the gift of a new world from God to this old world of sin and death; still more, it is the victory over sin and death, the revelation of eternal life in Him who has knit together the whole family in heaven and on earth in the communion of saints, united in the fellowship of service, of prayer, and of praise.7

Even these few lines indicate clearly that this was not the usual ecumenical report formulating agreements and/or convergences on issues that had been controversial in the past. Rather, it was a first example of a common Christian witness— grounded in a common basis of faith that reached deeper than Christian divisions. Encouraged by the highly positive reaction to this report, the Second World Conference on Faith and Order at Edinburgh in 1937 again included a soteriological theme. "The Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ" was discussed in one of the sections of the conference. In the report of this section, a basic agreement was formulated very much along Protestant lines—since there was not much participation by the Orthodox nor, until 1968, by Roman Catholics. The agreement consists of short affirmations on the meaning of grace, justification, and sanctification; on God's sovereignty and humanity's response; and on the Church and grace, the means of grace, and the concept of sola gratia.8 The following Faith and Order World Conferences at Lund in 1952 and Montreal in 1963 did not make salvation an explicit theme on their agendas. Nevertheless, at Lund—given its Christological focus on Christ and the Church—the "new life" (brought about by Christ's saving death and resurrection) was made the presupposition of the Church that is to continue the mission of Jesus Christ to the world. And in its important work on Scripture and Tradition, Montreal highlighted the Gospel of God's revelation and self-giving in Christ, the "paradosis of the kerygma," which is transmitted in and by the Church. Thus, a closer look at the reports of these conferences would reveal that the theme of salvation is present—even though it is overshadowed by other issues that have priority.

Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry The three convergence texts on "Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry," adopted by the Faith and Order Commission at Lima in 1982, have become the most widely distributed and discussed texts in the history of the ecumenical movement. These texts were not formulated in order to demonstrate the sotetiological significance of the two

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sacraments and the ministry. Their purpose was rather to formulate agreements and convergences that had been reached in decades of Faith and Order dialog on controversial, divisive differences with regard to the doctrine and practice of these three fundamental ecclesial realities. The theme of salvation is, however, not absent in BEM (it cannot be absent if our thesis is true). Any treatment of the two "means of grace" and of the ministry serving them that did not include their soteriological significance would be inadequate, even if the main purpose is to overcome inherited differences of understanding and practice. I will not consider the texts as a whole but only indicate the way in which the issue of salvation is present in them. Baptism The theme of salvation forms a strong element in the description of "The Meaning of Baptism." Churches have been divided not just over their baptismal practices but also concerning their varying theologies of baptism. The BEM document offers an effective, sacramental understanding—that God effects through the sign what the sign signifies. This is expressed in clear soteriological terms based on the biblical witness. Baptism is participation in Christ's death and resurrection (Rom. 6:3-5; Col. 2:12); a washing away of sin (I Cor. 6:11); a new birth (John 3:5); an enlightenment by Christ (Eph. 5:14); a reclothing in Christ (Gal. 3:27); a renewal by the Spirit (Titus 3:5); the experience of salvation from the flood (I Pet. 3:20-21); an exodus from bondage (I Cor. 10:1—2) and a liberation into a new humanity in which barriers of division whether of sex or race or social status are transcended. (Gal. 3:27—28; I Cor. 12:13X82)

These biblical and soteriological references are developed more fully in the text that follows. The baptized are united with the suffering and crucified Christ in such an intimate manner that their sins are buried with him and the power of sin is broken. They are raised to a new life in the power of the resurrection of Christ (B3). They are pardoned, justified, cleansed and sanctified by Christ (B 4) and are called to a lifelong growth into Christ in continuing struggle and continuing experience of grace (B9). This salvific significance of baptism pertains, first of all, to each individual baptized person. Yet it is clear that, for BEM, baptism is not to be understood as an isolated individual possession; it has ecclesiological implications that are essential to its institution and nature. Accordingly, baptism is described as incorporation into the body of Christ. The Triune God brings people through baptism into their saving union with Christ, but also and at the same time into union "with each other and with the church of every time and place" (B 6). The horizon is even further broadened when it is said that the baptized persons are "liberated into a new humanity" ( B 2 )and that the dynamic of baptism extends to all nations and anticipates the final confession of every tongue that Jesus Christ is Lord ( B 7 ) . Closely connected with these ecclesiological implications of baptism are its ethical implications—another characteristic emphasis in BEM. Those pardoned and cleansed by baptism are called to a common discipleship and "are given as part of their bap-

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tismal experience a new ethical orientation under the guidance of the Holy Spirit" (B 6 and 4). This motivates people to move beyond personal sanctification and become engaged in doing the will of God in all realms of life (B 10). Thus, the soteriological significance of baptism stretches out to the common responsibility of those who have entered a new life in baptism to become witnesses to the Gospel of Christ in the Church and in the world (B 10). Eucharist Here, the issue of salvation is less apparent than it is with respect to baptism. The headings of the sections describing the different meanings of the eucharist do not include any specific reference to its soteriological significance. This is surprising, since God's salvation is central to the institution, promise, and gift of this sacrament. To a certain degree, this can be explained by the fact that the salvationrelated character of the eucharist has not been, on the whole, controversial within Christianity—especially when compared to the contradictory interpretations of Christ's sacrifice and mode of his presence. These controversial points are of greatest interest. Nevertheless, in the historical debates about the eucharist, the assurance of salvation was often linked to a specific understanding of the real presence of Christ's body and blood and the continuing significance of his unique sacrifice on the cross. Accordingly, in their response to the BEM text on the eucharist, some Churches have wished for a clearer expression of the centrality of Christ's cross and the forgiveness of sins.9 But of course, soteriological perspectives are not wholly absent. The eucharist is presented as the sacrament through which God's love in Jesus Christ is communicated to us by visible signs (E 2) or, more precisely, as God's gift of salvation through the communion in the body and blood of Jesus Christ. "Each baptized member of the body of Christ receives in the eucharist the assurance of the forgiveness of sins (Matt. 26:28) and the pledge of eternal life (John 6:51-58)" (E 2). With the help of the concept of anamnesis, the continuing and effective sacramental presence of Christ's once-for-all sacrifice is explained (E 5) and then broadened to include the presence of "Christ himself with all that he has accomplished for us and for all creation . . . granting us communion with himself (E 6). The eucharist, then, becomes the effective proclamation of "all that God has done for the salvation of the world" (E 7-8). This saving eucharistic communion with Christ is, at the same time, the corporate, ecclesial communion within the body of Christ. As with the text on baptism, the ecclesial nature of the eucharist is also here closely connected with ethical implications. The gifts of grace and of renewed community received in the sacrament are to be extended to others, lived out in solidarity, and communicated socially (E 20-25). Ministry The soteriological orientation of the task of the ordained ministry of word and sacrament is as obvious as in the case of the eucharist; but here too the traditional differences between the Churches about the understanding and structure of the

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ministry of the Church tend to overshadow the theme of salvation. These differences obviously shape the structure and tone of the text. However, in the more general (and much praised) introductory paragraphs (M 1-8), a clear trinitarian, soteriological, and ecclesiological framework is established for all that follows. Jesus Christ's life of service, his death, and his resurrection became "the foundation of a new community which is built up continuously by the good news of the Gospel and the gifts of the sacraments. The Holy Spirit unites in a single body those who follow Jesus Christ and sends them as witnesses into the world" (M 1). The soteriological basis of the Church and its ministries is spelled out in the following Christological and pneumatological paragraphs. The life of the Church is grounded in Christ's victory over the powers of evil and death, his offer of forgiveness and gift of new life in freedom (M 2). "The Church lives through the liberating and renewing power of the Holy Spirit" who calls people to faith, sanctifies them, gives them strength to witness to the Gospel, and empowers them to serve in hope and truth (M 3). The Church, thus conceived in a soteriological framework, becomes itself an embodiment and instrument of God's saving work in Jesus Christ. "The Church is called to proclaim and prefigure the Kingdom of God" that came in Jesus Christ's saving, healing, and liberating ministry among us. The orderly transmission of this ministry is part of the apostolic tradition of the whole Church, which consists in the continuous handing-on of its soteriological, missionary, liturgical, and pastoral tasks (M 34-35). Even though the main part of the text deals with the foundation, function, nature, forms, succession, and ordination of the public ministry, its purpose is clearly in the service of the saving purpose of God. This short review of the three BEM texts has confirmed the assumption that ecumenical theological dialogue must include the theme of salvation, even where this theme is not primary. But these texts also render a special contribution to the general reflection on the meaning of salvation. Precisely because of their dominant ecclesiological orientation, they are able to broaden their soteriological references beyond the individual person and introduce thereby also the communal, ecclesial— and sometimes even cosmic—dimension of salvation. The Church is presented as creature, recipient, communion, and instrument of God's salvation in Jesus Christ, which is communicated by the Holy Spirit through word, baptism, and eucharist— all of which are served by a called and ordained ministry in the midst of the ministries of all baptized believers. Another specific way in which soteriology is integrated into these texts is through the development of its ethical implications. Thus, salvation is not only to be understood in its relevance for individual believers and their ecclesial communities; God's saving, reconciling, and renewing purpose is directed toward all people, all human situations and all of creation.

Salvation in "Church and World" We arrive at a similar theological conclusion when we look at the study document "Church and World" of 1991.10 This text is the outcome of the Faith and Order study project between 1982 and 1990 on "The Unity of the Church and the Renewal of Human Community." The purpose of this study was to develop a theological basis for interrelating the ecumenical efforts toward manifesting the unity

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of the Church with those seeking to develop a common Christian witness in obedience to God's transforming purpose for humanity and creation. All too often these two efforts have been pursued in mutual isolation. But again, the interrelation of these two efforts is not directly related to the theme of salvation. Yet even in the document's Introduction, the theme of salvation plays a major role. There we read that Christians live from the blessings of Christ's cross and resurrection, and that "God's saving action creates a hope for unity and renewal for justice and reconciliation that can never be destroyed" (1.3). The term renewal, which is applied both to Church and to humanity, is interpreted in a soteriological direction; it "points to the saving and transforming action of the Triune God for creation, Church and humanity. Renewal, in this sense, seeks to heal and to transcend the limitations, ambiguities and destructive divisions of a world which is, theologically speaking, fallen" (1.9). This soteriological perspective is spelled out in the following chapters. The Kingdom of God is described as constituting the theological framework and horizon for the relationship between Church and humanity. The soteriological significance of the kingdom has been announced, lived, and pointed to in the life, work and, destiny of Jesus Christ (II.6-9). The good news of the kingdom includes not only forgiveness but also renewal (11.15). As an "event full of grace," the kingdom is related to each individual and the whole of humanity (II. 17,19). The Church is related to the kingdom by being "that part of humanity which has been led to accept, affirm and acknowledge ever more fully the liberating truth of the kingdom for all people." And the Church is related to humanity by living as "that force within humanity through which God's will for the renewal, justice, community and salvation of all people is witnessed to" (III.8). Wherever the Church is obedient to that call, it will be "a sign and bearer of the Triune God's work toward the salvation and renewal of all humankind" (III.io). Thus, because of the salvific relevance of the kingdom, concerns for the Church's unity are closely related to concerns for the renewal of humanity. The relationship of the Church to humanity through the kingdom is further developed with the concepts of the Church as mystery and as prophetic sign. These concepts are explicated with the help of soteriological categories. Thus, the Church understood as mystery belongs in its essence to God's intention to accomplish the salvation of humanity and enjoys, accordingly, the saving communion with Christ that is oriented toward the final inclusion of the whole world in the kingdom (III.I7). This saving communion is experienced by the Church in its union with Christ in the humiliation of the cross and in the victory of the resurrection, which enables the Church to make "present in the life of this world the new life of the kingdom" (III.21). By its designation as prophetic sign, the Church is again related to the kingdom and to humanity in a soteriological context. It is Christ, present and active in the Church, who makes the Church "a sign of judgment and salvation to all humankind" through its life, witness, and service. The Church is a sign that points beyond itself to the kingdom of God; and at the same time, the Church is a sign of the presence of the kingdom in Jesus Christ, by its sharing of God's love through involvement in the world (III.3I, 39, 40).

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The document then introduces the concept of the Church as KOivcovia—a concept which, in a way, includes the other two designations of mystery and prophetic sign. This concept is described in the same soteriological context and direction. As mystery and prophetic sign, as a communion (KOivcovia) sustained by the Holy Spirit, the Church is sent by God to point to and participate in God's saving and reconciling action for all humanity (111-49; cf. 111-5, 111.42). This perspective is further broadened with the claim that God, through the Church as living communion, manifests saving and uniting grace to all creation, and the Church witnesses to the restored relationship between God and the cosmos as the new creation in Christ (111.46-47). Many more examples could be mentioned to confirm the consistent application of the theme of salvation as foundation of the nature, life, and mission of the Church—related to humanity through the perspective of God's Reign and understood as mystery, prophetic sign, and KOtvcovia. An integral part and expression of the nature and life of the Church is its mission and service, which points to and serves God's purpose and will toward the salvation and renewal of humankind and creation. On this theological basis the text then proceeds to deal quite concretely with the renewal of the human community; but even here, the soteriological role of the Church remains the basic approach and foundation. The Christian community—which is sustained and renewed by the proclamation of God's word and the celebration of Christ's meal of forgiveness, thanksgiving, and communion—finds in these means of God's grace its deepest source "for becoming a sign of justice and community for all humanity, until that perfect justice and communion will be celebrated in the Kingdom of God" (VI.25). Since the soteriological references in "Church and World" are connected with the document's primary purposes, these references sometimes appear in the form of stereotypes and repetitive formulas, some of which may have been introduced in order to avoid a one-sided social-ethical orientation. Yet it is precisely the interrelation between salvation and renewal that marks the chief insight of this document. Generally avoiding a simplistic identification of Christian salvation with human betterment, the document indicates the ways in which the social-ethical task of the renewal of the human community in terms of justice, community, peace, reconciliation, and care of creation is rooted in and comprehended by the central Christian message of salvation. Thus, the effort to interrelate soteriology with ecclesiology and social ethics has led beyond the frequent superficial theological trappings of Christian social concerns. It reflects an awareness that the basis of theological, ethical, and ecumenical reflection on whatever topic and for whatever purpose has to be grounded in the history of God's creative and saving revelation and work in Jesus Christ. This divine saving purpose is communicated by the Holy Spirit through the Church for the upbuilding of the Christian community and the transformation of the human community.

Salvation in "Confessing the One Faith" The results of the third recent Faith and Order study "Towards the Common Expression of the Apostolic Faith Today" (1982-1990, but with preparatory work since

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1978) were presented in the 1991 study document "Confessing the One Faith."11 Its purpose is to serve as a tool for the common and mutual recognition and confession of the one apostolic faith by the Churches committed to the pilgrimage toward visible unity. One of the essential conditions and expressions for manifesting this unity is a common confession—which also presupposes a basic doctrinal consensus.12 Here, in contrast to the two other documents considered thus far, the issue of salvation is already integral. Indeed, a basic agreement on the content of salvation and on the fundamental implications of the saving work of the Triune God for all aspects of the Christian faith is indispensable for the common recognition and confession of the apostolic faith. Accordingly and consequently, the whole text, which is structured by the three articles of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, is from beginning to end conceived and formulated in the perspective of the soteriological Leitmotiv. This is, of course, to be expected in the second part of the text dealing with the Christological article of the creed. Here, the two crucial soteriological phrases are explicated: "For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven" and "For our sake he was crucified." The incarnation of Jesus, according to the sequence of the creed, is already described in soteriological perspective: In the ministry and mission of Jesus, God's salvific purpose is already at work; and in the participation in Jesus' sonship, the communion of humanity with God—broken and lost because of human sin—is being restored (90-120). This understanding of salvation is even more forcefully affirmed in relation to Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. This is "the decisive saving event" (127). Our bondage to sin—the result of a life without God and marked by self-justification—leads to the universal dominion of death and provokes God's judgment (142). Jesus took the place of the sinner, carried the sins of the world, and offered his sacrifice of suffering and death in the place and for the sake of others. In the light of the resurrection, we recognize the fulfilment of God's saving purpose for all people. In this way Jesus' suffering and death "has become the salvation of the world because this was the way in which God was reconciling the world to himself," and this reconciliation is the "offer of liberation, through justification and the forgiveness of sins received in faith, as well as the gift of new life in the Holy Spirit" (146, 143-44). In the economy of salvation, the Holy Spirit brings humanity into communion with the Trinity for life and salvation (202). In creation, redemption, and sanctification, God opens the divine life to all through the Spirit and the Son (206-7). This saving action of the Triune God is the foundation of the Church—which is, at the same time, the place, sign, and instrument of this saving purpose and action (216-17, 23°-3i)In its explication of the first article of the creed, the document lays out the foundation, nature, and structure of its soteriological emphasis. The divine economy— that is, the history of salvation in creation, reconciliation, and eschatological fulfilment—is at the basis of the trinitarian faith (15): God the Father reconciles the world to himself through the incarnation, the ministry and suffering of his eternal Son. In the Son God shares the human condition even to death, in order to offer to humanity forgiveness of sin, resurrection and eternal

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life (John 3:16). Through the Spirit God raised the crucified one to a new and imperishable life that will bring about the final transfiguration and glorification of our lives and of the whole creation in the eschatological future." (16)

Throughout this document, then, the explication of the apostolic faith is governed by the divine economy of salvation—in its trinitarian structure, its ecclesiological dimension, and its eschatological scope. "Confessing the One Faith" is the only recent multilateral ecumenical text that integrates explicitly the theme of salvation and makes it the guiding theological motive for the whole text. What is confessed in the creed and explicated in this document is conceived as the deepest foundation of the existence and hope of individuals, the Church, humanity, and creation. This ecumenical explication has succeeded, I believe, in integrating traditional and new insights of the different Christian traditions into a coherent and comprehensive understanding of salvation in the framework of fundamental affirmations and doctrines of the Christian faith. But even here the presentation of salvation in its manifold aspects is shaped by the overall purpose and structure of the text. Because of the trinitarian structure of the creed and its explication in the document, the salvation-historical trinitarian pattern and coherence of the doctrine of salvation is given especially clear contours. Those involved in the drafting of the text were aware of, and sought to express, the all-encompassing Christian tradition (with its essential trinitarian foundation and structure).

Salvation: Comprehensive Dimension of the Christian Faith The assumption of this chapter has been that the doctrine of salvation is constitutive of and central to the Christian faith. This does not imply that all aspects of the faith and of its theological interpretation have to be pressed into a soteriological schema. It does imply, however, that the integrity of the Christian faith would have been seriously distorted if a soteriological dimension had been intentionally excluded from any theological enterprise. Our survey of recent Faith and Order documents has brought into clearer perspective that multilateral ecumenical dialogues have been aware of the integral role and place of soteriology within diverse theological investigations. In, with, and under the dominating ecclesiological themes of these ecumenical dialogues, we encounter a remarkably rich and diverse presence of soteriological orientations, which are shaped and accentuated in particular ways by the impact of the specific themes and purposes of the respective texts of which they are apart. Thus the BEM texts have clearly emphasized the ecclesiological dimension of salvation while announcing also its moral perspectives. The ethical or moral implications of salvation were the natural emphasis of the "Church and World" document, in which they were laid out in a theologically responsible way. And the third text, "Confessing the One Faith," reminded us of the often neglected trinitarian foundation and reality of salvation within the comprehensive framework of God's saving purpose and history from creation to fulfilment. In this way, these texts—and the

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ecumenical reflection that has gone into them—are able to enrich and broaden the understanding of the essence and scope of salvation within the different Christian traditions. The ecumenical movement must now take up the unfinished task of "unearthing" such theological insights so that they can be more thoroughly received into the life and thought of the Churches. NOTES 1. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus Christ—God and Man (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968), 47-48. 2. Paris: Editions du Cerf; Geneve: Labor et Fides, 1986. 3. The Lutheran-Roman Catholic "Malta Report" of 1971 on "The Gospel and the Church" is, with its explicit consideration of the message of salvation in Jesus Christ, "un des rares documents bilateraux a aborder, dans le dialogue oecumenique entre Eglises, les questions soteriologiques" (Birmele, La Salut en Jesus Christ 20). 4. Salvation and the Church: An Agreed Statement by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, ARCIC II (London: Church House Publishing and Catholic Truth Society, 1987). 5. Church and Justification, Lutheran-Roman Catholic Joint Commission (Geneva: The Lutheran World Federation, 1994). 6. Minutes of the Continuation Committee of the World Conference on Faith and Order, Berne, Switzerland, August 23-25,1926, Faith and Order Paper No. 45 (first series). 7. Report of Section II: The Church's Message to the World—the Gospel, in A Documentary History of the Faith and Order Movement 1927-1963, ed. Lukas Vischer (St. Louis: Bethany, 1963), 29-30. 8. Report of Section II: The Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in Vischer, ed., A Documentary History, 40-43. 9. Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry 1982-1990: Report on the Process and Responses, Faith and Order Paper No. 149 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1990), 118-19. 10. Church and World. The Unity of the Church and the Renewal of Human Society, Faith and Order Paper No. 151 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1990). References are to chapters and paragraphs. 11. Confessing the One Faith. An Ecumenical Explication of the Apostolic Faith as it is confessed in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381), Faith and Order Paper No. 153 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1991). 12. In all the statements on the unity of the Church accepted by the WCC Assemblies at New Delhi 1961, Nairobi 1975, and Canberra 1991, the agreement on (or common confession of) the apostolic faith is mentioned as one of the essential elements of visible unity. See Documentary History of Faith and Order 1963-1993, ed. Gunther Gassmann (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1993), 1-4.

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Part IV CHURCH, WORLD, MISSION

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CHAPTER 19

"SEPARATED BRETHREN" AND "SEPARATED SISTERS" Feminist and/as Ecumenical Visions of the Church Teresa Berger

I "Separated Sisters"—this oxymoron was coined during the Second Vatican Council, when the absence of women auditors at the Council first came to be recognized as a problem.1 The expression itself was modeled on a linguistic creation of Pope John XXIII, which the Council had adopted for its new ecumenical vision: Non-Roman Catholic Christians now were designated as "separated brethren"—a definite improvement over the previous terminology. Both these conciliar terms ("separated sisters" and "separated brethren") witnessed to painful ecclesial fragmentations. "Separated brethren" pointed to Christians outside the confines of the Roman Catholic Church. "Separated sisters," on the other hand, did not designate non-Roman Catholic Christian women but Roman Catholic women as "outsiders" within their own Church. The ecclesial fragmentations embodied by the "separated brethren" and the "separated sisters," respectively, then, follow different lines. One centers on denominational divisions, while the other highlights starkly asymmetrical gender divisions as a major source of ecclesial fragmentation. In postconciliar Roman Catholic theology, the term "separated brethren" became one of the key linguistic markers for the Church's ecumenical engagement. The "separated sisters" still await the acceptance of their status as a key issue for the unity and well-being of the Church. Geoffrey Wainwright is one of the "separated brethren" deeply committed to the cause of Christian unity.2 1 write this essay in his honor as one of his "separated sisters," in a triple sense. Not only are we separated by our different ecclesial traditions; in addition, I am one of the "separated sisters" initially eyed at the Second Vatican Council: I am a Roman Catholic (and a) woman. Third, I am committed to a feminist theological vision—which means that my construction of the ecumenical vision separates me at points from my brother ecumenist Geoffrey Wainwright. In this essay, I take the multiple layers of the terms "separated brethren" and "separated sisters" as the starting point for my analysis of the conflictual interplay 221

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of feminist and ecumenical visions. I interpret feminist theological concerns as one form of "faith-ful" struggle for the wholeness and well-being of the Church—and thus for the heart of the ecumenical vision. At the same time, feminist theology obviously challenges the more traditional construction of the ecumenical vision of "unity." The question I raise is how the ecumenical vision can be embodied in the future in faithfulness to its own classical tradition and to new emerging visions of fragmentation and wholeness. I begin by reconstructing the narrative of the Ecumenical Movement with a focus on the presence of women in this movement. I then trace the emergence of a consciously feminist ecumenical vision with its questioning of the classical construction of ecumenism around the notion of "unity." Finally, I recast questions of both ecclesial identity and gender identity in an attempt to move beyond "separated brethren" and "separated sisters."

The Emerging Ecumenical Movement— Moved by Women Women are neither strangers nor latecomers to ecumenism, even if many narratives of the Ecumenical Movement suggest so. In fact, the history of the Ecumenical Movement in the twentieth century can be told in such a way that women become visible as integral "movers" right from the start.3 The Ecumenical Movement, after all, emerges at the same time as the first Women's Movement. The latter forced the "woman question" (such was the terminology of the day) onto the agenda of the North Atlantic world, including its Churches. The Ecumenical Movement itself emerged out of nineteenth-century movements in which women had gained a certain prominence and in which they had championed work across denominational lines: the missionary movement, the Student Christian Movement, and the youth movement (most clearly embodied for women in the Young Women's Christian Association). The beginning of women's crucial contributions to the Ecumenical Movement can be nicely pinpointed: the Women's World Day of Prayer. This first ecumenical liturgical initiative of modern times goes back to Mary Allen James, an American Presbyterian, who was president of a women's home mission board. In 1887, James called on other women to join in a day of prayer for "home missions." This day of prayer became an annual event. Three years later, two Baptist women, Helen Barrett Montgomery and Lucy Peabody, called for a similar day of prayer for "foreign missions." The idea of women uniting in prayer across denominational lines spread rapidly. In 1919 the two days of prayer were combined, and in 1927 this day of prayer officially became the Women's World Day of Prayer. This ecumenical liturgical women's initiative is rooted in a field that women had successfully struggled to enter in the nineteenth century, namely the mission field. This, of course, is also the field that birthed the Ecumenical Movement proper. The movement's start is usually dated to the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh. Subsequent to this conference, a little-known study on "The Place of Women in the Church in the Mission Field" (1923) offered a clear indication that the "woman question" continued to accompany the growth of the Ecumenical

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Movement. This was true even for its dogmatic branch, the Faith and Order Movement. At its first World Conference in Lausanne in 1927, Lucy Gardner presented a memorandum stating that "it has been laid upon the hearts of the women delegates to ask the Conference to realize the significance of the fact that out of nearly 400 delegates only seven are women"4—a very unthreatening way of describing a starkly gendered asymmetry in the Ecumenical Movement. When the World Council of Churches began to take shape in the 1930s, women initiated a worldwide questionnaire. This questionnaire, first formulated by the American Presbyterian Twila McCrea Cavert, inquired into the status and participation of women in the different Churches. Based on the answers to this questionnaire, Sarah Chakko (1905-1954), a Syrian Orthodox Christian from India, presented a report to the founding assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam. Chakko was not the only woman addressing the Amsterdam assembly. Kathleen Bliss (1908-1989), an Anglican from Great Britain, wrote a preliminary draft of the assembly message, which included the famous sentence "We intend to stay together."5 (The fact that a woman first drafted the assembly message led to "prolonged laughter" in Rome, where a Roman Catholic visitor to the assembly had related that fact.6) After the assembly, Bliss, at the request of the World Council, wrote a fascinating book based on the preassembly questionnaire, entitled The Service and Status of Women in the Churches (1952). Meanwhile, the World Council of Churches had created a "Commission on the Life and Work of Women in the Church" with Sarah Chakko as chair and Kathleen Bliss as secretary. At the second assembly, in 1954 in Evanston, two key players were officially added to the name and the vision of this commission, namely "men" and "society." The commission now became the "Department on the Cooperation of Men and Women in Church and Society." The new chair of the department was Madeleine Barot, a French Protestant and ecumenical matriarch. The emphasis on cooperation continued throughout the early sixties. At the same time, another form of cooperation entered women's ecumenism. Roman Catholic women, the doubly "separated sisters," entered into sustained relations with the World Council of Churches toward the end of the Second Vatican Council. In fact, a Women's Ecumenical Liaison Group was created in 1968 (though it was short-lived). The relations between Roman Catholic and "other" Christian women in the oiKOiuevn,however, continued. By the time of the fourth assembly of the World Council of Churches at Uppsala in 1968, fundamental shifts in the cultural context of women's lives were taking place. With this, the narrative of women moving the Ecumenical Movement also has to shift. The narrative of "women in the oiKODuevri" flows into the emergence of an "oiKouuBvri of women."7

The Ecumenical Movement and the Women's Movement: From "Sexism" to "Solidarity" With the 19605, the second wave of the Women's Movement began to roll, and fundamental cultural shifts in women's lives appeared on the horizon—among them the broadening of women's work spheres, the rise of reproductive technologies, and

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diversifying family patterns. Social and ecclesial practices of women changed dramatically. Of particular importance for women in the Ecumenical Movement was the fact that women gained sustained access to theological education and to ecclesial ministries of oversight in many Churches worldwide. With these developments, the "faces" of the women who move the Ecumenical Movement change in fundamental ways. For one, women develop a consciously feminist theological vision, suspicious of facile band-aid approaches to the ecclesial marginalization of women. Feminist visions of ecumenism develop in growing dialogue between women of the first and third worlds, a dialogue particularly nurtured by the (Black) South African Anglican Brigalia Hlophe Bam. Bam heads the new subunit on Women in Church and Society, or "Women's Desk," within the World Council of Churches. With the 1970s, the feminist ecumenical vision increasingly took shape. The 1974 Berlin Consultation on "Sexism in the 1970s" prepared for the United Nations' International Women's Year in 1975 and for the fifth assembly of the World Council of Churches in Nairobi in the same year. ("Sexism in the 1970s" was the first ecumenical "women's only" consultation.) In 1978, women's concerns had become important enough to be put on the agenda of Faith and Order. In conjunction with Faith and Order, the Women's Desk designed a study process, "The Community of Women and Men in the Church," which culminated in the Sheffield Consultation and Report (1981). The reception history of this study process and consultation shows how feminist voices were becoming a conflictual presence in the Ecumenical Movement,8 ever strengthening in theological conviction and imaginative expertise but also calling forth more sustained negative reaction and resistance. The last ten years, 1988-1998, have seen the Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women. The seventh assembly of the World Council of Churches 1991 in Canberra was, for many, shaped by the face of a woman—Korean feminist theologian Chung Hyun Kyung. With Chung's exposition of the assembly theme, "Come, Holy Spirit—Renew the Whole Creation," we come to a focal embodiment of the tensions between consciously contextual feminist visions and the classical ecumenical paradigm. Before focusing on these tensions, I want briefly to look back. Obviously I have only scratched the surface of the development from "women in the oiKOvuevn" to an "oiKOV|J,evr| of women." For example, I have only looked at the international level and the World Council of Churches, both of which provide merely a fragment of the Ecumenical Movement as a whole. Nevertheless, the thrust of the development is clear: women have always moved the Ecumenical Movement, but in the last three decades, women's ecumenical visions have developed in distinct ways, challenging the classical ecumenical paradigm at crucial points. Some of these challenges are as follows: women force certain subjects onto the ecumenical agenda (women's ordination, sexism, violence against women, ministerial sexual harassment, solidarity with women worldwide). Women question the established discourse of unity, suspicious that the envisioned unity masks an asymmetrically gendered ecclesial reality, asymmetrical to the disadvantage of women: cui bono a unity that is also a unity of the marginalization of women? Women engender a new ecumenical vocabulary ("round-table," "re-imagining," "mending of creation"9) and new

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practices of discourse. Women privilege new conversation partners—especially poor women and women from other faith traditions.10 One of the responses to these challenges has been to brand women and "women's issues" as ecumenical troublemakers par excellence. Women are accused of rocking the ecumenical boat and of threatening newly found ecumenical ground among Churches. A clear example of women's ecumenical troublemaking is the question of the ordination of women and the context in which this question is or is not raised, how it is framed, and what price is put on it. In response to the accusation that women rock the ecumenical boat, which (seemingly) had set sail so decisively and with "unity" almost in sight, some feminists have painted traditional ecumenism as one embodiment of the good-old'boys' network, forcing women to choose between "unity" and the new and vibrant challenges of the Gospel. Within these tensions, might there be a way of reconstituting the "separated brethren" and the "separated sisters" in such a way that gender identity and ecclesial identity can be seen together, rather than as rivals in the struggle for the wholeness and well-being of the Church?

Ecumenical and Feminist Visions: No Easy Embrace Obviously, both the classical ecumenical paradigm and feminist ecumenical visions share a common theological concern. Broadly, they both center on ecclesiology— and more specifically on ecclesial fragmentations and the corresponding search for the wholeness of the Church. For the classical ecumenical paradigm, fragmentations among confessional bodies are the crucial rupture. The corresponding "good" is couched in the image of "unity." For feminist theology, starkly asymmetrical divisions between gendered bodies are the crucial fragmentations. The corresponding vision is one of well-being and flourishing for every "body," particularly women's bodies. Both ecumenical and feminist theologies can also be seen as similar forms of theology: they are self-consciously partisan, and they are prophetic denunciations of an ecclesial status quo. Beyond these shared ecclesiological concerns, however, there is no easy embrace between feminist and traditional ecumenical visions. In order to understand the depth of difference between the two,11 it is helpful to step back and look more closely at the initial vision embraced by the Ecumenical Movement. For the early Ecumenical Movement the unity of the Church was at the heart of its message. Denominational divisions between the Churches were recognized as sinful, as something that the Ecumenical Movement—in accordance with God's desire for the Church—was seeking to overcome. The way to overcome these sinful divisions was the struggle for (theological) consensus among the Churches. The central motif, unity, was simply accepted as a biblical mandate, often substantiated with reference to John 17:21 ("that they may all be one"). There was no suspicion that this concept owed (some of) its intra-ecclesial resurgence and prominence in the twentieth century to spirits other than the Holy one.12 With the late 1960s, however, the ecumenical enthusiasm for unity began to undergo changes. Traditional ways of being Church and conceptions of ecclesiology were questioned as Black theology, feminist theology, and other liberation theolo-

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gies "irrupted" into theological (and especially ecumenical) discourse. An ecumenism focused on confessional division and, consequently, on doctrinal consensus did not necessarily speak to ecclesial communities outside of Europe and North America or at the ecclesial margins of the North Atlantic world. Nor was it immediately convincing in a world that came to be marked by the peculiar fragmentations of the conditio postmoderna. These new voices made it clear that unity had always been defined in relation to (and in a sense, produced by and for) a particular context. Supposedly acontextual and universal(izing) notions of unity lost their force. To put it differently: the particular concept of unity in the Ecumenical Movement came to be acknowledged as (also) the result of the social location of this movement. (It is no coincidence that Churches begin to struggle for ecclesial unity at the same time the United Nations was formed on the political level—with both having offices in the same city, Geneva.)13 Ecclesial movements that differed from the classical Ecumenical Movement began to conceive of the core ecumenical vision along new lines. For feminist theology with its recognition of a deeply gendered asymmetry in the life of the Church, confessional differences are not the central threat to the life of the Church. There are other, inner threats: the marginalization of women, racist oppression of women, domestic violence, the double oppression of poor women, and the silencing of women's theological voices even in the Ecumenical Movement.14 Likewise, the vision of restored well-being of the Church no longer centers on "unity" but on wholeness, on healing, on life in abundance, and on the ecclesial flourishing of women in particular. Finally, rather than relegating women's status to the margins, as one of the "nontheological" factors of the fragmentation of the Church, feminists claim the opposite: an asymmetrical fragmentation of the Church into women and men is a crucial theological problem of the whole Church and has to be seen as such. Addressing this fragmentation is not about "ecumenical correctness," nor is it the ecclesiological repercussion of "secular"(?) culture wars. What is at stake is the very embodiment of the Gospel of Life in the midst of the Church. The first wave of feminist theology has now been critiqued, enriched, and reshaped by feminist discourses from other ecclesial contexts than those of white middle-class North Atlantic women. Womanist, mujerista, lesbian, and third world feminist theologies have named divisions between women themselves as part of their very raison d'etre. Fragmentation and wholeness, then, have come to be identified (and are continuously being identified anew) along different lines than those of denomination or of gender. Where do all these developments leave the original ecumenical vision? To begin with, thankfulness for the painful awakening to ecclesial division in the Ecumenical Movement is in order, even if we now recognize this awakening as limited. To confront its limitations, one only needs to think of the photos from the first general assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in 1948. The assembly was basically made up of white, European and North American, middle-aged, Protestant, ordained males. What people saw and celebrated at. that assembly, however, was not this uniformity but the confessional diversity from which the men had come. It seemed like a vision of the new and coming unity of the Church that people of such diverse confessional backgrounds would covenant to

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"stay together," as Kathleen Bliss formulated it for them. Looking at these pictures fifty years later and comparing them with pictures from the seventh assembly of the World Council of Churches, the differences are marked. The assembly in Canberra in 1991 was attended by representatives from over 300 Churches from more than 100 countries: 35 percent of the delegates were women, 46 percent lay, 11 percent youth; 132 delegates came from Africa, 141 from Asia, 13 from the Caribbean, 26 from Latin America, 67 from the Middle East, and 28 from the Pacific. Obviously, behind these photographic changes lie changes in the ecumenical vision. Since the heyday of the classical Ecumenical Movement in the 19603, new divisions have become visible—which in turn have demanded new ecumenical visions. Ultimately the question is What kind of vision will sustain the ecumenical journey into the twenty-first century? Denominational divisions have lost their defining edge in the lives of many Churches while at the same time deep-seated intraecclesial fragmentations have become visible, including those between rich and poor, women and men, black Christians and white Christians, first world and third world, and gays/lesbians and heterosexuals. One could nevertheless claim that the basic problem the Ecumenical Movement tried to address since its inception has remained: there are fragmentations among and in the Church/es that mar and often seem to invalidate the Church's message. The beginnings of the twentieth century gifted the Church with a heightened awareness of the confessional divisions that wound the Body of Christ. Toward the end of the twentieth century, we are being gifted with and challenged by a heightened awareness of manifold other ecclesial fragmentations. Denominational divisions no longer lie at the center of attention, although the struggle to overcome fragmentation and to strive for communion clearly does—even when the discourse is not necessarily couched in traditional "ecumenese." If, then, the ecumenical vision is to continue among the Churches into the next century, it must attend to all fragmentations that threaten the oiKOvuevn, the whole household of life.15 Such attention demands the renarrating of the ecumenical vision in consciously contextual terms—a renarrating that validates the very different (and always contextually defined) fragmentations threatening specific Churches or communities within. One of these fragmentations (if not the "universal"16 one), which a consciously contextual ecumenism must acknowledge, is the stark and painful ecclesial asymmetry between women and men. The identities of literally all Churches have been shaped by a history of the marginalization of women—a historical ecumenism of women's invisibility, so to speak. Any ecumenical vision that does not address this ecclesial marker of identity perpetuates women's marginalization and ultimately cannot truly claim to struggle for ecclesial wholeness.

Re-Imagining Ecclesial Bodies and Gendered Subjects I could rest my argument here, with the claim that any ecumenism worth its name has to embrace feminist concerns. Indeed, this is largely how sympathetic ecumenists up to now have taken note of feminist voices. I nevertheless remain dissatisfied with this approach. This model of the ecumenical vision—"add-feminists-and-

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stir"—does not take sufficient account of the conflictual nature of feminist claims. It basically leaves in place the original players and simply broadens the goal of the game that is played. Let me suggest a different approach: that of redefining the players themselves, or, to put it differently, of reimagining both ecclesial bodies and gendered subjects. My thoughts (as of yet tentative and inconclusive) grow out of the following observation and experience: obviously, the dominant narrative of the ecumenical vision of "unity" has broken off. So has the dominant narrative of what it means to be "woman."17 I myself experience the latter as a grace-ful moment. My life as a Roman Catholic woman theologian has largely been made possible by this breaking off of the traditional narrative of "woman" and by the concurrent expansion of possible narratives. My question for the troubled ecumenical narrative of "unity" is this: can one gracefully expanded narrative, namely that of "woman," help to renarrate the other, namely "unity"? I have so far assumed ecclesial and gendered identity to be fixed: I am a Roman Catholic or 1 am not. I am a woman or I am a man. This is the Catholic Church, these are "other Churches and ecclesial communities of faith." What, however, if we forgo this assumption of a fixed and stable identity of both the ecclesial body and the gendered subject? What if we see identity not as something static but as fragmentary, as multiple, as flexible, as constructed? Such interpretive lenses18 offer the chance of reimagining both ecclesial and gendered bodies. They invite us to assume ecclesial identity not as a fixed category but as an ecclesial "we" constantly being constructed. Such an understanding of an ecclesial body finds its parallel in the way that sexed identity can be seen as a construct. The latter move in feminist theory was initiated by women who contested the notion of "woman" as a false universal, since they did not belong to the white middle-class women who had defined the initial feminist discourse. This contestation ultimately led to a critique of gender dualism (that is, binary gender divisions), and to a destabilizing of the gendered subject, so much so that it has become difficult to use "woman" without qualifiers, quotations marks, and apologies. Let me translate this move in feminist theory into the realm of ecumenical ecclesiology. The argument would be that "Church" and "denominations" are not fixed categories but constantly shifting, unstable, flexible bodies, multiply positioned across coordinates of denomination, gender, ethnicity, and class. Any ecclesiology that nevertheless continues to assume Church/es as stable subject/s is threatened by a number of weaknesses. For one, such an ecclesiology reinforces, by a conceptual reliance on this separation, denominational divisions that are not necessarily paramount in the lived diversity of Christians-in-community. Such an ecclesiology also has difficulties displaying and honoring the contradictions, disruptions, ambiguities, and multiplicities inherent in every ecclesial community. It concentrates, instead, on the visible bearers of denominational identity and thereby leaves invisible other members of the ecclesial body. Finally, such an ecclesiology, especially in the encounter with other ecclesiologies of the same type, tends to identify itself with the dominant and official theological self-understanding of the community, thereby masking alternative communal discourses also present. (Ecumenical theological dialogues can be read in this light.)

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An alternative view would acknowledge Church/es not as fixed identities but as constantly shifting bodies. Such a view, indeed, is amply born out by ecumenical experience. The ecumenical "we" is constantly reconstituted—depending on changing ecclesial subjects, changing cultural contexts, and changing economic patterns. Could it make sense, then, to think of Church/es as a spectrum of ways of being Christian-in-community within which we constantly move, both as individuals and as ecclesial bodies? The Ecumenical Movement, rather than striving toward collapsing the spectrum and bringing about ecclesial closure—the "unity" of the Church—could understand itself as facilitating Churches' and peoples' journeys within this spectrum. Accordingly, God's promise of wholeness will not be couched primarily in terms of "unity" but in terms of multiple webs, sustained by God, of cosmic, human, and ecclesial well-being for all. Obviously these thoughts are fragmentary. I present them here primarily as a way of engendering further reflection. What better location for this than an essay honoring a long-time ecumenist? Certainly, my tentative reflections on destabilizing both ecclesial bodies and gendered subjects are far removed from Geoffrey Wainwright's own theological method.19 Nevertheless, for this supposedly "triply separated sister" of his, they hold peculiar promise. They enable me to conceive of our differences along confessional and gender lines not as stable and fixed markers of identity but as polarities on a broad spectrum within which we constantly move. Naming our differences as unstable, fluid, and constantly in transition shifts the burden of the ecumenical vision away from having to forge unity out of fixed divisions of denomination, gender, and theological preference. Rather, we can invite each other to a faith-ful and gentle mending, wherever torn, of the divinely sustained webs of well-being in which we already live, and move, and have our being together. NOTES 1. See the book by Gertrud Heinzelmann, Die getrennten Schwestern: Frauen nach dem Konzil (Zurich: Interfeminas-Verlag, 1967). For an account of the twenty-three "separated sisters" eventually invited as auditors to the Second Vatican Council, see Carmel Elizabeth McEnroy, Guests in Their Own House: The Women of Vatican II (New York: Crossroad, 1996). 2. Such Geoffrey Wainwright's own affirmation in One Accord, 273. 3. This story has been told in a variety of ways, for example, Susannah Herzel, A Voice for Women: The Women's Department of the World Council of Churches (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1981); Melanie A. May, Bonds of Unity: Women, Theology, and the Worldwide Church (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 15-58; Pauline Webb, She Flies Beyond: Memories and Hopes of Women in the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva: WCC Publications, I993)4. H. N. Bate, ed., Faith and Order: Proceedings of the World Conference, Lausanne, August 3-21, 1927 (London: SCM, 1927), 372. 5. The sentence is taken up again in the World Council of Churches' "Common Understanding and Vision" Statement discussed at the 1998 assembly in Harare. A draft of the statement was published in The Ecumenical Review 49 (1997): 13-27; see I4f. for the quote from Kathleen Bliss. 6. The story is told by Willem Visser't Hooft, in Herzel, A Voice for Women, 10. 7. I borrow this distinction from an article by Reinhild Traitler, "An Oikoumene of

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Women?," The Ecumenical Review 40 (1988): 178-84, here 184: "An oikoumene of women is not the same thing as women in the oikoumene." 8. See, for example, Constance F. Parvey, "The Continuing Significance of the Community of Women and Men in the Church Study: Its Mixed Meanings for the Church," in T. F. Best, ed., Beyond Unity-in-Tension: Unity, Renewal and the Community of Women and Men (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1988), 34-43. 9. I find this image of the South African feminist theologian Denise Ackermann an appealing and convincing one. See her article "Engaging Freedom: A Contextual Feminist Theology of Praxis," Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 94 (1996): 33-49. 10. See Mary Grey, "1st der Dialog cine notwendige epistemologische Voraussetzung fur die Findung der Wahrheit? Eine feministischc Perspektive," Okumenische Rundschau 42 (1993): 196-208. 11. I am obviously choosing to look at two opposite poles on a broad spectrum of ecumenical thinking. Much creative ecumenical work is being done in between these two poles, "traditional ecumenism" and "feminist visions." 12. For the beginnings of an "archaeology" of the concept of unity, see Konrad Raiser's concise essay "Ecumenism in Search of a New Vision" in The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices, ed. Michael Kinnamon and Brian E. Cope (Geneva: WCC Publications; Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1997), 70-77, here 73-75; and Tobias Brandner, Einheit gegeben—verloren—erstrebt. Denkbewegungen von Glauben und Kirchenverfassung, Kirche und Konfession 39 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1996). 13. The 1920 Encyclical of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Unto the Churches of Christ Everywhere, draws a direct parallel between the League of Nations and the vision of establishing a "league (fellowship) between the churches" The document is easily accessible in Kinnamon and Cope, eds., The Ecumenical Movement, 11-14, here 13. 14. Compare May, Bonds of Unity, 15. Konrad Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition: A Paradigm Shift in the Ecumenical Movement? (Geneva: WCC, 1991), 79-111, suggests this image, the whole household of life, rather than the traditional ecumenical, focus on the "unity of the Church" as the new paradigm for ecumenical reflection and action. See Philip Butin's essay (chapter 17 in this volume) on Lesslic Newbigin's approach to this same issue. 16. Robert J. Schreiter, The New Catholicity: Theology Between the Global and the Local (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1997), 15-19, interprets feminist theologies as one new global ("universal?") theological flow. 17. Cf. Rebecca Chopp, "In the Real World: A Feminist Theology for the Church," Quarterly Review 16 (1996): 3—22. 18. Obviously, this perspective is influenced by postmodern sensitivities and, in particular, poststructuralist gender theory. Compare also Neil Brown, "Ecumenical Theology in a Postmodern Context," Pacifica 8 (1995): 175-84, esp. 179. 19. His theological method is most clearly embodied in Doxology. It was this book that enticed me, in 1984, to cross the Atlantic for postdoctoral research with Geoffrey Wainwright at Duke University.

CHAPTER 20

THE SCANDAL OF PARTICULARITY

Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Limits of Ecumenical Dialogue Edward T. Oakes

Few theologians of this century have demonstrated a more consistent commitment to the demands of ecumenical theology than Geoffrey Wainwright. In season and out, he has keyed his work to Christ's prayer that "they may all be one, as you, Father, are one in me and I in you" (John 17:21). Indeed it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that every major essay, article, and book Wainwright has written has ecumenical implications.1 Moreover, he has maintained this ecumenical modulation at a time when, in both Church and society, one can detect a massive "retrenchment into particularity" (a trend often misleadingly labeled "fundamentalism" by an unthinking press). The attentive observer cannot help but notice how individual Churches are increasingly stressing their specific heritage and theological uniqueness while the culture at large moves almost en masse into postmodern philosophies that explicitly deny the possibility of finding any common ground of discourse across disciplines or cultures. In fact, the postmodern temper would condemn at the outset any such search for a common ground as being inherently "hegemonic" and "controlling."2 Wainwright's first book, Christian Initiation, was published in 1969—that is, one year after that epochal moment in European history when the bloom of ecumenical enthusiasm wore off in the wake of the student riots in France and elsewhere. This upheaval left in its wake, among many other consequences, a pervasive suspicion against institutions and "establishments." Suddenly, the idea of working to repristinate institutions seemed at best an irrelevance—and at worst a revanchist attempt to restore the very institutions that made the past so repressive in the first place. It is noteworthy that Geoffrey Wainwright has worked as a published theologian throughout this entire "era of suspicion" and yet has been perhaps the most consistently ecumenical theologian of this century. For this reason, it seemed to me that perhaps the best tribute I could present to him would be to offer my reflections on the specifically Christian roots to the limits of ecumenical dialogue, using the work of that Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, who became the subject 231

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of my dissertation under Wainwright's early guidance. For like Wainwright, Balthasar too was a consistently ecumenical theologian; but unlike Wainwright, Balthasar's work fell almost equally on both sides of the 1968 divide: that is, he pursued the ecumenical command of Christ "that all may be one" both at a time when it was risky in Catholic circles and then later at a time when it became unfashionable in academia. Moreover, he was a close personal friend of Karl Barth and wrote one of the great masterpieces of ecumenical theology: Karl Barth: Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie .3 Yet Balthasar is also often taken to be a theologian who influenced the Roman Catholic return to the specifically Catholic features of the Catholic Church after the heady years of the Second Vatican Council. If the recent history of traditional religions (Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, as well as the various Christian denominations) suggests a certain "retrenchment to particularity," Balthasar certainly played a crucial role in that trend within the Roman Church, especially after the Council. Although he began his career as a theologian in the early 1950s under a cloud in Rome (partly because of his book on Barth and partly because he had left the Society of Jesus to found a secular institute), and although the Council was seen as a vindication of his aesthetic and vaguely antischolastic theology, he soon became disenchanted with the direction progressive forces wanted to take the Church. He sought to counter these forces, especially as they were manifested in the postconciliar journal Concilium, by founding his own vaguely restorationist journal, Communio—a journal that frequently attacked the notion that ecumenism meant that the Catholic Church must jettison such specifically Catholic doctrines as the papal and mariological doctrines.4 Thus it seems that Balthasar's example can be instructive in a number of ways. Throughout the rest of this chapter we shall be considering a series of questions to his life and thought: Despite Christ's prayer (and hence implicit command) that "all may be one," are there limits, Christian limits, to this command? To what extent must Christians feel obligated to abandon their post-Reformation or postCounter-Reformation traditions in order to ensure their fulfillment of Christ's command? Ought traditions that grew up after the division of the Churches be regarded as negotiables that do not pertain to the essence of Christ's Church? The answer to these questions will have to emerge gradually, and perhaps only at the end of the analysis immediately to follow (and of course Balthasar's answers need not be those of other theologians, either Catholic or Protestant). Moreover, it will be one of the theses of this essay that the Great Divide of '68 will prove significant for Balthasar's thought as well, and so I shall divide my analysis into two distinct periods: that of Balthasar's ecumenical enthusiasm prior to 1968 and that of his rather more cautious tone of specifically Catholic stress after that important year. No doubt this will distort the actual contours of his thought to a certain extent. But a shift of emphasis is, in my opinion, still detectable; and this might help us to determine whether Balthasar holds that there are specifically Christian limits to ecumenical dialogue.

The Ecumenical Enthusiast There is no doubt that Hans Urs von Balthasar belongs with Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac, Gustav Weigel, and John Courtney Murray in that select group of

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twentieth-century Roman Catholic theologians who suffered for their pioneering work in ecumenism and whose work was only vindicated later at Vatican II. What characterizes all these men is their search for unity in the face of what divides— that is, their stress on the universal over the particular. As one of these towering figures, de Lubac, once remarked of the standard theology of his time: People are afraid of confusing things, when they should be afraid of not uniting them sufficiently.... It is when people don't know how to unite things properly that they are afraid of confusing them. If too often today the general life of humanity is withdrawing from Christianity, it is perhaps because too often Christianity has been uprooted from the inner vital organs of humanity.5

De Lubac's specific reference here is to the topic of the supernatural, but this insight may be taken as the central animating motif for the whole program that later became known as la nouvelle theologie—a style and outlook that Balthasar absorbed in his Jesuit days when he studied under de Lubac. And Balthasar did more than simply absorb this outlook; he embraced it. Clearly, it animates and determines his entire theological project, especially in the years preceding 1968. It can be seen in works ranging from his small polemical pamphlet Schleifungder Bastionen,6 which attacked the "fortress mentality" of the post-Vatican I Church, to his epochal study on Karl Barth. The book on Barth was published in 1951. The date is significant, for this was the year after Pope Pius XII issued his encyclical Huraani Generis, which condemned the whole of the nouvelle theologie. The upshot of this condemnation was to place the leading lights of this school under a cloud, and most of them—Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Jean Danielou—were forbidden to teach or publish.7 Because Balthasar had left the Society of Jesus that same year to found a secular institute with the converted physician Adrienne von Speyr, and because he had never held an academic post in any case, he was somewhat harder to silence. However, he could not get incardinated in a Catholic diocese until 1956; this meant that he could not preach or hear confessions and could only say private Masses out of public earshot. Perhaps the largest reason for the canonical cloud under which Balthasar had to work was his Barth book, which, besides admitting that any Catholic had to approach Barth with a proper sense of humility before so extraordinary an achievement (an attitude not exactly compatible with the triumphalist Catholicism of so many run-of-the-mill Catholic apologists of the time), had also insisted—on the basis of Barth's critique of natural theology—that Vatican I's definition of the rational cogency of philosophical proofs for the existence of God had to be revised.8 In retrospect, however, we can now see that the most significant passage of the book occurs not where Balthasar tries to revise Catholic natural theology but where he praises Barth's Christocentrism, especially because Barth wants to distance himself from those who are trying, in Balthasar's words, "to subsume Christ within some more overarching category."9 Here is sounded for the first time in Balthasar's writings a theme that will become ever more pronounced in his writings after 1968 and which shows in fact how consistent his theology has always been: the idea that Christ is sui generis and simply cannot be fitted into some wider category. Previous attempts of modernity to situate Christianity within the world scene tried to account for its "scandal of particularity" by subsuming it within the wider

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category of "world religion" of which it was one instance. Similarly, Christ was, along with Muhammad, Moses, and the Buddha, described as a "founder" of one of these world religions. And similarly again, Christians were said to find their identity not through their identification with Jesus Christ but from a more general religious awareness (as in Schleiermacher's feeling of absolute dependence) that could be rationally investigated in the academy and made the object of interreligious conversation. Not for nothing, then, did Balthasar choose Barth as his quintessential Protestant interlocutor—for here was a Protestant who was directly descended from the classic sixteenth-century Reformers, who had repudiated the influence of the liberal Protestant intermediaries of the past two centuries, and who totally rejected the idea of casting theology in terms acceptable to the Enlightenment project: But this much is clear, why Barth has rejected liberal Protestantism: in all of its main doctrines it has moved farther and farther away from revelation. While Catholicism indeed is a "distortion, but nonetheless a distortion of a substance it has not lost" but has preserved, Protestantism—at least in its final phases—has now moved so far from authentic Christianity that all that remains is the name itself. God's revelation coining to us from outside and above in order to elect, save, sanctify and redeem man, has been replaced by a growing interest in subjectivity. Pietism was the first, if veiled, expression of this trend. Idealism further prepared the way, and then in Feuerbach we have the fullest enunciation of the theory of the "religious" person's self-redemption, the reduction of faith to the "highest possibility" of reason, and of revelation to the "highest possibility" of history. And from there it is but a short and inevitable step to interpreting Jesus' "awareness of God" as but the highest possibility of human religiosity.10

The Celebrant of Particularity Given the above analysis, it should hardly have come as the surprise it did when the theological world discovered, rather to its dismay in the heady days after Vatican II, that Balthasar was growing increasingly wary of the style of ecumenical dialogue that had become the fashion following the Council—not, obviously, because of its failure in his own life in his dialogue with Barth but because of the rubric under which it was usually conducted elsewhere. Like Schleiermacher's Christology, which saw Jesus as the highest exemplar of a universally available religiosity and interpreted him in those terms, ecumenical dialogue for Balthasar was too often conducted by seeking a universal "lowest common denominator" shared by all, and— once that had been hammered out—to regard that as the "pearl of great price" that would justify selling off all the rest of the tradition for the sake of this newly polished pearl of unity. Indeed, it is precisely because Christ could not be subsumed under any other category that a dialogue of "least common denominator" was for Balthasar foreclosed from the outset, even as an opening gambit to get the conversation going. But there is a further feature of Balthasar's thought that was sure to cause dismay: his ecclcsiology. It is not that Balthasar even remotely shares in the trium-

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phalism of the old fortress-mentality Church of the anti-Modernist cabal. Quite the contrary: his ecclesiology is as "kenotic" and servant-determined as one might wish. But for Balthasar the crucial reality of the Church is its sacramental reality as the continuation on earth of Christ's own incarnate witness—and that too will mean that the Church cannot be subsumed into a more universal category, either sociological ("denomination," "sect," "voluntary association") or theological ("religion," "one Church among others"). This insistence on the fusion of Christ's uniqueness with the Church's uniqueness perhaps finds its starkest and most uncompromising expression in Balthasar's essay "Christology and Ecclesial Obedience," in which he explicitly links the claim of the Jesus of faith to be "the Way, the Truth, and the Life" to the claim of the risen Lord of the Church to dispose of the life of the individual Christian as He sees fit. But how are the Christians to feel that claim in the course of their ecclesial lives? For Balthasar, primarily by living in a Church that forces them to choose "a state of life," that is, a life either in the clerical state, the religious state, or the married state. And for Balthasar, only the Roman Church has preserved that structure through the course of time. All of this is set forth in startlingly vivid terms in his book The Christian State of Life.11 But in his essay on "Christology and Ecclesial Obedience," Balthasar adds a further polemic, even against the overarching category of the "People of God," which—despite its biblical provenance!—cannot convey the distinct, structured states of life in the Church: It is not even sufficient to say that the "People of God" is the kind of concept that only needs to be supplemented with the differentia specified of the New Testament. For first of all, the Old and New Covenants are not two different types of the same species. God's covenant is single, and supersedes the Old Covenant as fulfillment does promise; moreover, this supersession occurs by God's reprobation of the people in his election of the small remnant, the little flock. Secondly, the concept of "the People" is ordered to the Old Testament and appears in the New Testament only in quotes from the Old Testament. If the Second Vatican Council tried to replace a certainly insufficient concept of the Church . . . with the concept of the People of God, it is nonetheless a concept that hides within itself—when taken abstractly and absolutely—opposite dangers. Concepts are our fate. One cannot emphasize enough that Vatican IPs Decree on the Church Lumen Gentium introduces the concept of the People of God only after it has treated the Church as Mystery.12

This startling view, not found to the best of my knowledge by any other mainstream Roman Catholic theologian (with perhaps the exception of Stanley Jaki) after Vatican II, might make it sound that Balthasar has become a revanchist; but this would be to misunderstand both the passage and the whole context of his postconciliar writings. By no means is Balthasar renouncing the Council here or setting himself against the important ecclesiological innovations and developments set forth in Lumen Gentium, Still less is he "canonizing" the post-Tridentine Church and demanding that the last four centuries remain normative in every regard. On the contrary, what this passage actually exemplifies is Balthasar's own principle of semper reformanda: every development in the Church must be judged by the normativity of Scripture, with the added principle that the New Testament must

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govern the interpretation of the Old. And since the term "People of God" is indeed a biblical concept but primarily an Old Testament one, it must let itself be superseded by the terms more appropriate to the New Dispensation (such as Bride to Bridegroom, or branches to vine). What is actually operative here is a less mechanical but no less radical application of the essential ecumenical moment. Everyone agrees that the Churches will never reunite unless they all convert from their sinful state of division: since division is itself a sign of sinfulness in the Church, the Church must by definition be reformed, in at least that regard. But when it comes time to determine what must be reformed and what held fast to, the principle must not be mechanically applied, as if the traditions of the first five or six centuries were admissible but all those developments since 1054 or 1517 are automatically suspect: In a certain manner, authentic interpretation continues throughout the Church's history: in the face of deviations and blunders, time and again the magisterium, itself looking to Scripture and tradition, has had to present and define the true meaning of Christ's revelation, thus making its source present anew wherever a historical current tended to deviate from it. ... Now this would seem to be a dangerous accumulation of rind and shell around a living kernel, threatening to stifle it, but there exists a kind of self-regulation by the living Christ's Holy Spirit: what is superfluous degenerates by itself; on the other hand, what is essential is transformed again into genuine life on being formulated. According to the profound words of Irenaeus, the Holy Spirit is perpetually rejuvenating the ecclesial vessel that contains the eternally youthful presence of Christ.13

The Limits of Ecumenical Dialogue With these remarks and principles in mind, we are now in a position to provide answers, however provisional, to our questions mentioned at the outset of this chapter: just what are the limits to ecumenical dialogue? We have noted Balthasar's radical Christocentrism and his biblical ecclesiology of the Church as Bride of Christ and as branches to the One Vine (that is, an ecclesiology that entails a very intense and close identification of the Church as Christ's ongoing presence in the world). Therefore we may, without too much difficulty, anticipate the position Balthasar takes toward ecumenism—a position he states with programmatic clarity: What: was just said provides the main postulate for the ecumenical dialogue necessary today, whether it be with the Churches of the East or with those that originated in the Reformation. Certainly, the split Church makes an unconvincing impression on the world; we must do everything to eliminate the scandal of schisms. But a Catholic Church that is split internally makes an impression on the Christian partner in dialogue which is no less unconvincing. We are ripe for dialogue only if we have the certainty that we can manifest in the Church the unity and fullness of faith. Anyone who works in order that the Catholic identity may shine through lays the foundation for a meaningful ecumenical dialogue. 14

But how can that work itself out in practice? If the Catholic is already convinced that the unity and fullness of faith "subsists" (to use Vatican II's nuanced term) in

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the Catholic Church, how can real listening take place and the Other be guaranteed as the other? This is indeed a tricky issue, and in Balthasar's case it is best seen by reading his Barth book in its entirety; fortunately, however, in the same work quoted immediately above, he has explained his basic modus operandi. Any such dialogue, he says, is a complex business that is perhaps easier to recommend than it is to put into practice. For Catholics, this dialogue has two aspects, which must be seen simultaneously. On the one hand, the non-Catholic Christian communities stressed certain basic evangelical truths and kept them in their exodus from the Catholic Church, in which these truths were obscured and not reinserted with sufficient balance by the extreme contrary positions that were taken during the subsequent confrontations (captured in the catchword "Counter-Reformation"). In this case, Catholics must listen to those who point out a piece of the totality of faith which is missing or not sufficiently realized. On the other hand, a member of the Catholic Church must always be aware that his "separated brethren" can alert him only to things that have always rested in the fullness of his faith, things which were merely lost or forgotten through negligence or guilt. If this guilt is admitted, the claim to Catholic totality is possible without arrogance.15 This obviously means that post-Reformation developments in the Catholic Church cannot be negotiated away merely and simply because these developments took place inside a divided flock of Christ. Of course, as Balthasar explicitly affirms in this passage, to the extent that Counter-Reformation developments were born out of a too-polemical reaction to legitimate Reformation concerns, the Catholic Church must admit that the principle of semper reformanda applies.16 But this can never be an automatic principle. Quite the contrary: development is the law of the Church in history, as John Henry Newman came to see. Balthasar insists that legitimate developments can never be sacrificed: In no case can ecclesial unity be gained by theological compromises, such as ignoring the Catholic "surplus" which would then be considered unimportant, e.g., the unity of the office which stems from the primitive Church or the position of woman in the work of salvation. For all the communities which left the Catholic Church rest, inasmuch as they are separated, on more or less drastic negations of elements that belong to the organic unity of the tradition of faith. Theological sensitivity, but also an ethical attitude, is required of the Catholic in order to show others in Christian love that elements subtracted from them really belong to the unity. He must be able to show that the points at issue are a relative but indispensable part of the apostolic Creed. One brings about unity with Protestants, not by abolishing the dogmas concerning Mary or by denying the apostolic succession, but by properly integrating these truths into the comprehensive Christological-trinitarian whole. Unity with the Orthodox is gained, not by giving up the true primacy of the successor of Peter, but by its being lived in a credible way in the spirit of the gospel.17 If Balthasar is right, then he is enunciating some sober truths. Seen from his perspective, and especially in the light of the Christocentrism that he shared with Karl Barth, it does not, in retrospect, come as surprise to realize how short-lived

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was the ecumenical spring in the few years after Vatican II. Nor, given the superficial analysis of the relationship of reason and faith in the Enlightenment (especially by theologians!), should the turn toward a postmodern suspicion of universal claims have come as a surprise. No historian, of course, could have predicted the student revolts of 1968 or the way postmodern epistemologics would one day sweep the intellectual landscape. But perhaps the astute theologian, properly grounded in the tradition, could see the specifically theological roots of the ecumenical pathos. And this, 1 hold, is what Bakhasar has done. But his example also teaches that this "return to the Catholic particular" need not entail any diminishment of ecumenical zeal or humility. Quite the contrary. As his own dialogue with Karl Barth shows, a specifically Christian sobriety in the face of church divisions also entails a specifically Christian zeal to overcome them. For as Geoffrey Wainwright says so well: Severely put: the reality of the Gospel itself is called into question by disunity among Christians, and a fortiori the reality of the church which claims to have been brought into being by the Gospel. In an extreme case: can the church proclaim and transmit a gift it shows no sign of possessing?18 NOTES

1. It would far exceed the limits and the purpose of this essay to try to prove such a claim, but for an indication of the rich ecumenical implications throughout the body of his writings I refer the reader to Wainwright's recent collection of essays, Worship with One Accord. 2. There is considerable irony in this recent rejection of the universal in favor of the local and particular, for at the outset of modernity it was Christianity's very particularity in history that was the sticking point that seemed to make the Christian message so difficult to believe: if faith in revelation was necessary for salvation, why was only one segment of humanity the recipient of it? This was why Enlightenment thinkers either rejected revelation outright, like Voltaire, or, like Locke, interpreted it as merely a pedagogical confirmation of what reason would eventually realize in any event. So burning was this issue and for so long that it even came to have its own shorthand moniker: the so-called "scandal of particularity." German philosophy of religion from Kant until well after Hegel can be seen as an extended attempt to subsume this particularity into the category of the universal ("religion within the limits of reason alone," the "subsumption [Aufhebung] of theology byphilosophy," etc). But with Nietzsche's biting critique of the notion of "truth" as a neutral recognition of a universal norm, a new temper begins to affect the European mind, eventually leading to the postmodern celebration of particularity. Of course it took some time for this shift to become widely influential, and in the following paragraphs I shall use the year 1968 as a useful threshold marking the sudden emergence of postmodernism as a world force. 3. Cologne: Verlag Jakob Hegner, 1951. English translation: The Theology of Karl Earth: Exposition and Interpretation, trans. Edward T. Oakes, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992); abbreviated henceforth as Earth. 4. Balthasar's shorter writings, the so-called Buchlein, also kept up this polemical edge, for example, Der antiromische Affekt (which literally means "The Anti-Roman Complex" but which was translated into English as The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church), Kathalisch (translated as In the Fullness of Faith: On the Centrality of the Distinctively Catholic) and Eine Kleine Fibelfiir verunsicherte Laien (A Short Primer for Unsettled Laymen). These books were published in 1974, 1975, and 1980, respectively.

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5. Henri de Lubac, Memoire sur I'occasion de mes ecrits (Namur: Culture et ve'rite, 1989), 189. 6. Schleifung der Bastionen: von der Kirche in dieser Zeit (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1952). Translated as Razing the Bastions: On the Church in this Age (San Francisco: Ignatius, I993)7. A vivid account of these parlous times is available in Joseph A. Komonchak, "Theology and Culture at Mid-Century: The Example of Henri de Lubac," Theological Studies 51/4 (December 1990): 579-602. 8. Or, as Balthasar phrased it with considerably more diffidence: "It seems that everything we have said so far will once more [have to] be called into question if we confront the apparently so simple and direct words of the decree of the First Vatican Council: 'Holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the origin and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason from the things he has made'" (Barth, 302; Balthasar's emphasis). But perhaps even more galling to certain Roman churchmen was Balthasar's scathing attack on the triumphalist attitude, best seen in this polemic: "Such condescending attitudes are to be found not only among the stubborn and rigid revanchists who think that time has suddenly stood still for them because, after all, everything necessary has already been thought and said with such exhaustive sufficiency that nothing new need be generated even to the end of the world. But such smugness is also to be found among many of the most nimble and agile minds; these are controversialists who can fight with all the weapons of the opponents, can get inside the skin of anyone and know how to use any philosophical system. Through such skill they think that they have thus already attained superiority. Faced with such a debater, who can so nimbly penetrate, distinguish, and classify his opponent before he has even begun to open his mouth, is it any wonder that the Protestant representative would lose his sense of humor? We might well ask ourselves whether such a representative of the cause of Catholic universality truly realizes what division in the Church means: the yawning chasm over which no dialectical or analogical method can leap, the bloody wound that cannot be healed with the plaster of theological formulae" (ibid., 11). For Balthasar's attempt to reconcile Humani Generis with Barth's attack on natural theology, see ibid., 344. It should be noted here that the Holy Office opened a file on Balthasar in 1952, meaning that he was under a fairly inactive or low-temperature investigation for potential heresy; nothing came of it, but the file was not closed until after Vatican II. 9. Barth, 37; my emphasis. 10. Ibid., 34. 11. Trans. Sister Mary Theresilde Skerry (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1983). 12. "Christology and Ecclesial Obedience," Explorations in Theology, vol. IV. Spirit and Institution, trans. Edward T. Oakes, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995), 139. 13. Hans Urs von Balthasar, "The Church as the Presence of Christ," New Elucidations, trans. Sister Mary Theresilde Skerry (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986), 94-95; my emphasis; translation slightly altered. 14. Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Short Primer for Unsettled Laymen, trans. Sister Mary Theresilde Skerry (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1985), 118; Balthasar's emphasis; translation slightly altered. 15. Ibid., 119. 16. One thinks in this context of Erasmus's dream that every plowman and milkmaid have a copy of the vernacular New Testament as a personal possession; hardly a radical proposal, but often, especially in Counter-Reformation Spain, the mere possession of a vernacular Bible was sufficient to initiate proceedings for heresy. 17. Balthasar, A Short Primer, 119-20.1 presume that Geoffrey Wainwright would sympathize with this stance, at least at the formal level. In any event, that is the conclusion I

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draw from his avowal: "I myself now reject a totally 'open communion,' allegedly practiced on missionary grounds. . . . The identity of the celebrating church . . . has to be preserved. I also reject promiscuous intercommunion among individual Christians or the separate communities to which they belong; for that is to minimize the gravity of unrepented continuing divisions" (One Accord, 177-78). Implicit in these asseverations is the realization that sometimes the enthusiasts for ecumenism can do more harm than good—a view also held most emphatically by Balthasar: "It is very difficult to bring about insight into the necessity of abandoned elements in the case of non-Catholics, since they look upon the Catholic 'surplus' as not merely unevangelical, dispensable and leading to abuses but above all as outdated anyway by modern secularization. Enlightened exegesis contributes to the support of this opinion by claiming that it can show the secondary character of many Catholic 'excrescences,' and Catholic exegesis has a worrisome tendency toward such supposed proofs. . . . Relying on this apparent consensus, clerics above all are seeking today, in highspirited carelessness, to realize 'ecumenism from below' by practices in their liturgies which lack every internal theological basis and external official permission. . . . The unity envisioned by the ones who push forward in this way is much too cheap and superficial to correspond to the comprehensive fullness of divine revelation" (Short Primer, 120-21). 18. One Accord, 164.

CHAPTER 21

THE CHALLENGE OF CONVINCING UNBELIEVERS THAT THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD

Michael Bame Bame

During the past five decades or so, some biblical critics have made remorseless efforts to refute the orthodox claim that the Holy Scriptures are the inspired word of God. Their arguments have, however, had little impact on the fundamental role the Scriptures play in the life of the Church. Today, as ever before, the Scriptures remain the source from which the Church derives her preaching, teaching, and doctrine. Conservatives, liberals, and fundamentalists equally turn to the Scriptures to find support for their particular interpretation of the Christian faith. To illustrate this point, let us imagine that on a given Sunday morning a minister, on mounting the pulpit, takes the liberty to read a passage from a science textbook dealing with the most recent scientific discoveries. He then expounds on the benefits humankind will soon reap from them. In conclusion, he argues that these discoveries, being the result of a methodical use by human beings of the God-given faculty of reason, are proof of how divine providence works through human agents. A nonChristian present at this worship service might go home deeply impressed with the minister's knowledge of current issues in science. But members of the congregation, who know what Christian worship service is all about, would, on the contrary, strongly disapprove of what had taken place. Some of them, no doubt, would accost their minister at the close of the service and issue a reminder that the time allocated for the sermon is supposed to be used to preach God's word. Across denominational and ideological lines, Christians today still hold the Scriptures as the solid foundation for the teaching and preaching ministries of the Church. However, if what the Church teaches and preaches is to be considered true and having its origin in God, it would have to be shown that the Scriptures from which this teaching and preaching are derived are also true and also have their origin in God. In exercising her teaching and preaching ministries, the Church carries the additional burden of making the true nature of the Scriptures known. She has to explain to her listeners (both supporters and detractors) in what way the Scrip241

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tures differ from other books: whether it is simply by their subject matter, or whether they have a distinctive feature that sets them over against any other document written by human beings. The faith that is inspired in human beings if the Scriptures are known to come from God differs qualitatively from that which they might have were the Scriptures merely an expression of human wisdom. Furthermore, were the Scriptures solely the work of human beings, our faith and salvation would be seen as resting on human wisdom rather than on God's power. What the Scriptures themselves teach on this matter is that our "faith does not rest on human wisdom but on God's power" (1 Cor. 2:5). The attitude of unbelievers who do not accept the Scriptures as God's word is, after all, a reasonable one. It is quite logical that persons who do not believe in the reality of God should also not believe in any such thing as God's word. The Church has ignored this fact in most of the arguments she puts forward to convince unbelievers of the divine origin of the Scriptures. She has often resorted to the Scriptures as a final authority simply because they are believed to be God's word without offering any proof. If her arguments are to be considered as reasonable, she would first have to show that the Scriptures from which she derives her doctrine are inspired by God and, as such, are trustworthy—especially in matters that concern our salvation. How do we go about carrying out this task? The first step is to avoid some common pitfalls—two of which will be mentioned as examples. First, we can be tempted to cite the names of some great figures in history— Newton, Kepler, Pascal, Leibniz, and many others—who never doubted the divine inspiration of the Scriptures. Using such persons as examples, it can then be argued that if reason were sufficient grounds for rejecting the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, no intellectual worthy of the name would ever consider believing in the Scriptures as God's word. But, as the matter stands, many of them have done so and many continue to do so. Yet this approach to the problem is unfruitful; it involves an argumentum ad hominem that could just as easily be used by those who do not consider the Scriptures to be the word of God. The unbeliever could point out that the belief of these individuals often rested on something besides pure reason. One could cite Pascal as a case in point; for him, religious truths are demonstrable not by reason but by the sensation of the heart. 1 Second, we could resort to a purely dogmatic assertion of the teachings of the Scriptures. This way of going about the problem doesn't work even when we are dealing with persons who have some degree of belief in God. The missionaries who brought the Gospel to Africa failed to realize how far-reaching this fact was. Though most of the Africans they preached to had some form of belief in a transcendent God, they nevertheless were considered as having inferior minds that could not think in logical categories. Naturally, these missionaries thought their goal could be attained simply by paraphrasing and reasserting what the Scriptures contained. But, as the following example shows, they were greatly mistaken. They left many unanswered questions in the minds of their hearers and ended up with so-called "converts" who neither understood nor actually believed what they professed. In a provocative poem entitled From the Mouth of Which River?, Okot p'Bitek, an East African poet and leading critic of Christianity in Africa, uses the critical

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recollections of a young African girl to highlight the absurdity of trying to communicate the teaching of the Scriptures, even to so-called primitive peoples, on the basis of unproven assumptions. Lawino, as she is called, laments the manner in which missionaries preached and taught the Christian faith to her people. After preaching, missionaries never gave room to their audience to ask questions about what had been taught. As a result, what they taught was hardly ever understood. Her mind was particularly baffled by what the missionaries taught about the creation of the world. They described God as the "Moulder of skyland (i.e., heaven) and the earth." To make sense of this doctrine, Lawino resorted to an analogy of the potter with which she was familiar. My mother was a well-known potter, She moulded large pots, . . . She dug the clay From the mouth of the Oyitimo River The place was well-known to potters. The hunchback [scil. God], Where did he get the clay, For moulding things ... When skyland was not yet there And earth was not yet moulded Nor the stars Nor the moon When there was nothing Where did the hunchback live?. . . And when the hunchback Was digging the clay Where did he stand? And when he brought home The clay for moulding things Where did he put the clay?2

In simple straightforward language, using the thought-forms of her cultural context, Lawino succeeds in raising the theological question of biblical anthropomorphism. If (as probably did happen) she relapsed into the animistic beliefs from which the missionaries were seeking to rescue her, she seemed to have every good reason for doing so. If we expect to convince unbelievers that what the Scriptures teach comes from God and reveals the way of salvation, we should begin by finding out why they do not consider them to be the word of God. Why Unbelievers Do Not Accept the Scriptures The attitude of unbelievers to the Scriptures is a consequence of their conception of the world—a conception that makes more sense to them than the one found in the Scriptures. It does not usually stem from a critical study of the Scriptures (as one might suppose), although the supposed incongruities in the Scriptures are sometimes cited to uphold their views. As examples, we can cite three alternative con-

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ceptions of the world. The first is Copernicus's heliocentric theory of the universe; the second, which is closely related to it, is Giordano Bruno's theory of the infinity of the universe and the multiplicity of worlds; and the third, Darwin's theory of evolution. Nicolas Copernicus rejected the geocentric view of the solar system in which the earth was assigned a central position. He argued that the sun was at the center, with the earth and other planets revolving around it. Bruno went further than Copernicus in his views about the universe. Whereas in Copernicus's theory, the universe was still regarded as finite and having a sphere of fixed stars, Bruno saw the universe as infinite, and he postulated the existence of a multiplicity of universes.3 So long as the universe was thought of as being finite, it was easy to conceive a sphere beyond it where God, its causal beginning, could be located. With Bruno's theory, the idea of a "beyond" becomes meaningless, and the dividing line between the created world and its creator completely disappears.4 Darwin saw living organisms as moving from simpler to more complex forms by means of natural laws inherent in their structure. The living world was not a static reality created spontaneously once and for all as described in the Scriptures. On the basis of this theory (which was thought to provide a true picture of reality), biblical statements describing the beginning and end of the living world were considered mythological. These examples, like many others that: could be cited, reveal some of the ideas that have played an important part in shaping the unbeliever's attitude toward Scripture. What they have in common is the discovery of a truth that is thought to be at variance with what the Scriptures teach. It is on the basis of this truth that many unbelievers (and some believers) question the claim that the Scriptures are God's word. Since the new truth they have discovered conforms with the norms of reason, they would rather believe in it than in the Scriptures. This choice is sometimes made at the cost of what many religious persons consider to be of greatest value—namely, inner peace. However, serious-minded unbelievers are willing to sacrifice this peace on the altar of truth. The reply a certain Russian scientist once gave to Father Girault's question (as to whether his system of thought had provided him with the answers to the problems that arise from life) speaks for itself: I do not want to hide from you that often I do experience a deep disquiet. . . because I ask myself questions to which science has just now no answers . . . but I'd much rather .stay in my disquiet and in science, which is looking for truth, than give myself an artificial consolation, blinding myself with religion like an opium.5

Persons who take this stance on the issue of truth deserve our admiration. They are worthy (if perhaps unwitting) disciples of the One who said, "I was born and came into the world for this one purpose, to speak about the truth" (John 18:3 7b). How then can we convince unbelievers of the truth about the Scriptures, which they reject in the name of another truth—a truth that they judge worthy of belief and of far greater value? Should we argue, as has often been done even in some of the most liberal and sophisticated theological circles today, that the Scriptures arc not concerned with the how but with the why of things? Some have hoped that by making this distinction, it would become evident that no conflict exists between

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the Scriptures and science (since they differ in the questions they seek to answer). Or, instead of trying to make this distinction, one could put forward sufficient evidence showing that, on closer examination, biblical and scientific statements do agree in matters of fact. For example, some have argued that the six days of creation, as recounted in Genesis, do (as a matter of fact) correspond to the six geological ages, and that the order of events in Genesis is the same as the order attested by paleontology. Finally, one could adopt the liberal approach of trimming off all the myths and superstitions contained in the Scriptures in order to get to the heart of its message—the one thing that matters and that we need to know, namely, living a life of faith that is open existentially to the future. These various approaches do have their merits. However, they do not come to terms with the specific objection raised by the discovery of a universe that is unbounded in time and space. They presuppose the existence of God who by nature is beyond space and time and who acts or does not act in history. Moreover, they all seem to assume that the status of the Scriptures as the word of God can be upheld by harmonizing their content with scientific statements of fact. But to what extent is this really possible? Let us pause to consider why we claim that the Scriptures are God's word. Is it because they harmonize with scientific statements (or because we want them to)? If we succeeded in establishing this harmony, some fundamentalists might thereby find strong reason for upholding the divine inspiration of the Scriptures. They might contend that people living several thousands years back couldn't have known what scientists have discovered of late had it not been divinely revealed to them. At first glance, this might seem to be a good method of upholding belief in the Scriptures as God's word. But on closer examination, we should realize that this argument is also logically untenable, since it actually presupposes belief in God. Were this belief not presupposed, one would have to offer an explanation of this harmony that could prove either or both of two things, neither of which has much to commend it: (a) that the people who wrote the Scriptures had just as much information as the contemporary scientist, or (b) that they acquired their knowledge through other means not available to science today. Thus, despite the intuitive appeal of attempts to harmonize scientific and theological statements, they do not get us very far. They cannot prove the divine inspiration of the Scriptures to the unbeliever; nor can the absence of such harmony provide sufficient grounds for rejecting the Scriptures. Accordingly, there is very little to be gained by the efforts made by either fundamentalists to harmonize biblical affirmations with scientific statements, or by unbelievers who argue that the absence of this harmony shows that the Scriptures are not the word of God. What arguments can we then put forward to show that the Scriptures are the word of God?

Encounter with the Divine: The Truth-Context of Scripture The reality of God, which the Scriptures as a whole seek to convey, transcends the Scriptures themselves. The Scriptures are the outcome of the human encounter with God, who is transcendent by nature. For this reason, the human-divine en-

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counter precedes the Scriptures in time and overrides them in terms of their cognitive function. This encounter constitutes what we might call the truth-context of the Scriptures. The Church has often lost sight of this fact. As a result, she has given prior importance to the Scriptures and considered them rather as the context within which the human-divine encounter is given meaning. It has therefore been difficult to find appropriate grounds for a fruitful dialogue with the unbeliever. If we started off by affirming a historical and logical sequence in which priority was given to the human-divine encounter, unbelievers might find it easier to understand our claims about the Scriptures, and to give these claims some thought. Persons who have had this encounter are most likely to admit that an experience grows out of it and has been recorded somewhere—in the Scriptures, for example. Such persons would go a step further to admit that in this living and personal encounter a dialogue does take place in whatever form—either mentally (as in a telepathic communication) or audibly (as in ordinary human conversation). One would also concede that the Scriptures do contain records of these dialogues and some of the divine words that were spoken6 during the encounter. If the truth-context of the Scriptures is to be found in this encounter, then it cannot at the same time be found in the Scriptures themselves. Consequently, a critical study of the Scriptures will be of little help in determining their true nature—namely, as pointing to a transcendent reality from which they derive. Without this reality, there would be no Scriptures as we know them—even those parts that relate the human response in the dialogues and the historical events that resulted from them. Without running any risk of succumbing to anachronistic interpretations, we can safely conclude that had these encounters and dialogues not taken place, no human beings would have been led to talk about God's word, in whatever form. Though the context of the Reformers was different from ours, their teaching on the source of our knowledge of Scripture as God's word is of some relevance to our purpose. The Reformers were of the opinion that truth about the Scriptures as God's written word could be established in the human heart but not by human authority or argument; this knowledge was given solely by the Holy Spirit. Through the Holy Spirit, human beings could encounter God and enter into a direct dialogue with God: for the Holy Spirit is God. Luther uses the Magnificat to make this point clear. According to Luther, the Magnificat comes from God (even though it is spoken by Mary), for its true source is the Holy Spirit. For this reason, we can understand its meaning only when we are enlightened by the Holy Spirit. To understand this holy canticle, it must be noted that the Virgin Mary was speaking after having had a personal experience in which the Holy Spirit enlightened and taught her. For no one can understand God and God's Word, without having been enlightened immediately by the Holy Spirit.7 By way of underscoring the importance of this internal conviction given by the Holy Spirit, Luther goes on to say: "All must believe within themselves that it is the Word of God, and in their heart of hearts acknowledge the Bible as true, even if an angel from heaven preaches the contrary."8

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To Luther, then, the Word of God is neither a rational nor a linguistic concept, though it is encountered in these forms in the Scriptures. It is something that can be felt and tasted in our inner selves. This experience is indispensable for those who wish to know whether or not the Scriptures are the word of God. You must be the pupils of Christ, not of Luther. Neither is it enough to say Luther, Peter, or Paul has said this or that: rather you should feel Christ in you and experience within you that it is the Word of God, even if the whole world is up against you. As long as you have not experienced this feeling, you have not tasted the Word of God.9

Calvin's position is not different from Luther's, but he goes a little further in systematizing the primordial role the Holy Spirit plays in providing knowledge of the Scriptures as God's Word. Calvin's God is one who speaks and uses the divine word as a medium of self-revelation. This is evident throughout the Scriptures, where God is revealed as Creator and Savior through the divinely spoken Word. The words that God has spoken in these creative and redemptive acts are found in the Scriptures. But how can the reader of today, to whom these words were not directly spoken, know that they are not merely human words but God's words? Calvin holds that it is by the inward illumination and testimony of the Holy Spirit that the we come to know that the Scriptures are the word of God. Let this point therefore stand: that those whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture indeed is self-authenticated; hence, it is not right to subject it to proof and reasoning. And the certainty it deserves with us, it attains by the testimony of the Spirit. For even if it wins reverence for itself by its own majesty, it seriously affects us only when it is sealed in our hearts through the Spirit. Therefore illumined by his power, we believe neither by our own nor by anyone else's judgment that Scripture is from God; but above human judgment we affirm with certainty . . . that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of human beings.10

Since the objective encounter with God takes place not in the Scriptures but beyond them, the reality of God has to be experienced before the Scriptures are known to be God's word. This, however, does not exclude the possibility that the Scriptures themselves could be instrumental in bringing this experience about. If God reveals Godself in the creation of the universe and the history of salvation through the divinely spoken Word, and if the Bible contains written accounts of that Word, could reading the Bible not bring about the human-divine encounter and a dialogue between human beings and God? Paul states in Romans that faith comes from listening to God's word: "Therefore, faith is born of what we hear and what we hear comes through preaching Christ" (Rom. 10:17). On the strength of this affirmation, we may argue that listening to or reading God's word could bring about an experience of God in the mind and heart of the listener or reader. This experience, triggered by the Scriptures, will in itself constitute convincing evidence that the Scriptures are God's word. The experience of Max Dauthendey, an Australian philosopher, provides some positive evidence for the truth of this apparently paradoxical statement. While in

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the South Seas, he was cut off from his homeland by the outbreak of World War I. In the morning of June 30, 1917, he had a remarkable experience, which he noted down in his diary: This morning, after reading the fiftieth and sixtieth Psalms of David, I realized something. I realized that there is a Personal God. Three weeks before my fiftieth birthday I received this revelation, which since I was twenty—thirty years long—I had been worrying over, doubting, pursuing and striving for. . . . The whole of life is a festal procession ordered by God, and at the head of the line there goes God Himself as a Personal God.11

Though the writer does not say so unequivocally, most readers can hardly doubt that after this experience—an experience that was brought about by reading the Scriptures—he no longer doubted the Scriptures as God's word.

Postscript: Are the Scriptures in Their Entirety God's Word? In saying that the Scriptures are God's word, we are in no way implying that all that is in them was spoken by God. Anyone who has read through the Scriptures would have discovered that some portions are quotations of the comments of human beings and of the devil; consider, for example, the description of Israel's murmurings in the desert (e.g., Num. 11:4-5), or Satan's discussion of Job's fate (Job 1:9-11). How can we reconcile the divine inspiration of the Scriptures as a whole (cf. 1 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:21) with the fact that it contains passages that have human, or even demonic, origins? Could we also attribute these passages to the inspiration of God's Spirit? The authors of the New Testament were doubtlessly conversant with the fact that the Scriptures also contained passages that were quotations of sinful human beings or of the devil. Nevertheless, they believed that the Scriptures as a whole—including these passages—were inspired by God. How can we maintain this view of the Scriptures? To answer this question, we would have to take into account one other important fact about the composition of the Scriptures. There are passages in the Scriptures where the author claims that the order to write them came from God and which, therefore, should be considered as indirectly inspired by God (Exod. 17:14; Num. 33:2). In some cases, such as 1 Samuel 10:25, the order to write does not come from God; instead, after the text is composed, it is deposited before God for approval. This is an act of divine canonization by which God claims ownership of the text and gives it a divine authority. We could, in this light, claim that the authors of the Scriptures were inspired by God to include passages where human beings and the devil speak in view of their pedagogic, moral, and spiritual importance. In reading them, believers would acquire the knowledge they need to differentiate between words that arc divine and those that are of human or demonic origin. In this sense, it can still be said that the Scriptures in their totality are inspired by God and are rightly called "the Word of God."

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NOTES

1. Blaise Pascal, Pensees, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd, 1966), 154. 2. Okot p'Bitek, Song of Lawino, SongofOcol (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1972), 133-35. 3. See also Karl Heim, God Transcendent (London: Nisbet and Co. Ltd., 1935), 30-35. 4. The geocentric conception of the universe having been ruled out, it became impossible to uphold the description of any event based on it (such as we find in Joshua 10:1214 or Psalm 19:5-7). In the first text, Joshua is said to have commanded the sun and moon to stand still in the skies so that he could end the war he was fighting against the Amorites. An unbeliever who holds a heliocentric conception of the universe on reading this passage will naturally question any claim that the Scriptures are God's word. He expects God who is supposed to be the creator of the universe to have an exact view of the structure of the universe and how it functions. If it is true that these are God's words, then God must be less than human, at any rate in his knowledge of the universe. Some Christian scientists have attempted to explain these passages in terms that would make them harmonize with the heliocentric theory. Galileo, for example, held that when the sun was said to have stood still and did not move, what actually happened was that the earth stopped revolving on its axis (Cf. R. Hooykaas, Religion and the Rise of Modern Science [Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1984], 125). Other scientists, such as Philip van Lansbergen and Johannes Kepler, used the accommodation theory to explain these passages. In their thinking, biblical statements were framed in the language that could easily be understood by people of the time. The author of these passages knew more about the universe than they literally reveal (ibid., 122-23). Most unbelievers and liberal theologians consider these arguments as mere rationalizations. 5. Cited by Martin Jarnett-Kerr, The Secular Promise (London: SCM Press, 1964), 46. 6. The word spoken has been put in italics to indicate that it is not being used literally, though I have no problem with it being used literally. Given our firm belief in the incarnation, we should not find it hard to think that God can speak with a human voice and thus be understood by human beings, or that God can do this without vocal organs such as we human beings possess. In any case, the word is not being used in a merely metaphorical sense, as though God's spoken word was but a metaphor of the human word. Indeed, given that human beings are created in the divine image, the reverse is actually the case: the human word and voice are metaphors of the divine word and voice. That God's spoken word remains a perplexing mystery to the human mind does not mean that a real event does not take place in the divine-human context—an event which both is, and yet transcends, the historical. The following quotation from Abraham Heschel should more than clarify this point: '"God spoke.' Is it to be taken symbolically? He did not speak, yet was it as if He did? The truth is that what is literally true to us is a metaphor compared with what is metaphorically real to God. A thousand years to us are a day to him. And when applied to him our mightiest words are feeble understatements. And yet, that 'God spoke' is not a symbol. A symbol does not raise the world out of nothing. Nor does a symbol call a bible into being. The speech of God is not less but more than literally real." (The Prophet [New York and Evanston: Harper and Row Publishers, 1962], 180). 7. Martin Luther, cited by Henry Strohl, La Pensee de la Reforme (Neuchatel: Delachaux et Niestle, 1951), 57. 8. Martin Luther, cited by Kemper Fullerton, Luther's Doctrine and Criticism of Scripture, in Bibliotheca Sacra, vol. LXIII (1906) 15, translation slightly altered.

250 9.

CHURCH, WORLD, MISSION Ibid.

10. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminister, 1967), 1:80, translation slightly altered. 11. Cited by Karl Heim, Christian faith and Natural Science (London: SCM Press, 1953), 217—18. John Wesley's experience at Aldersgate, which one might be tempted to cite as an example, doesn't quite fit the present context—given that he already believed in the Scriptures as God's word long before he had the experience. However, it is worth noting that a far-reaching experience erupted in him as he listened to the text of Scripture being read. Whatever doubts might still have lingered in his mind about the divine nature of the Scriptures vanished from his mind as he felt his "heart strangely warmed."

CHAPTER 22

METHODIST IDENTITY AND ECUMENICAL PERSPECTIVE

Walter F. Klaiber

I The ecumenical future of Methodism in Europe is still open. On the one hand, I there are many visible signs of increased unity. The British Conference is making another attempt to come into a closer relationship to the Church of England.1 Most of the "daughters" of British Methodism on the continent have found their way into Church unions (with the exception of the Methodist Church in Portugal, which recently became autonomous). In the last ten years, United Methodist Churches in Germany, Austria, Norway, and Sweden have come into full communion with the Lutheran, Reformed, and United Churches of their countries.2 On this basis, all Methodist Churches in Europe became, in 1997, members of the Leuenberg Church Fellowship,3 a loose alliance of Lutheran, Reformed, and United Churches based on the Leuenberg Concordat. But on the other hand, when we look at ecumenical life on the practical level, we have to admit that—although there is in principle an agreement on communion in faith and sacramental life—communion in mission is rather weak. One of the strange features of ecumenical life in Europe is that in Great Britain, where there is still no defined communion between the Anglican and Methodist Churches,4 there are hundreds of "Local Ecumenical Partnerships"5—whereas in Germany, where we have full communion between the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland and the Methodist Church, there are only two or three such partnerships. What should the next steps for ecumenical partnership in Europe be? And, is there a viable middle way between merger and permanent separation?

Ready to Die in Order to Live? At the end of his classic book Methodism, Rupert E. Davies considers the future prospect of Methodism by speaking first about its "central position in Christendom."6 But then he puts the crucial question: "What is its future?" In the book's first edition, as well as its most recent one (30 years later), he mentions four possibilities: 251

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• "It may be content to remain much as it is." This will not exclude improvements in worship or the techniques of evangelism or the sharing in cooperative enterprises with other churches; but even if the continuing erosion of the Church could be stopped, "its effect on the world outside its walls may become less and less." • "It may unite with the United Reformed Church."7 But although "there is great sympathy on many matters between Methodists and other Free Churchmen . . . such a union might continue into indefinite future the lamentable division of English non-Catholics into Anglican and Free Church." • "It may unite with the other Methodist Churches to form a World Methodist Church." But although "this would certainly lead to a great evangelistic drive and bring Methodist resources together into a very powerful whole . . . it would cut off Methodists in all countries from their Christian neighbors . . . and it would be the enemy of the larger ecumenical movement." « "It may continue to pray and wait and work for a union in this country which would include the Church of England. This might well mean a long period of frustrated expectation . . . but the desired haven might be worth a long and arduous voyage, for in the truly national Church that would thus emerge Methodist worship, order and fellowship would be continued and developed, Methodist minds would be open to ideas and influences not so far available to them and Methodists would be able to pass on to others what the Holy Spirit has taught to them. The Mission to the Nation would at last begin." Davies then asks which of these "is most likely to put the spiritual resources of Methodism and the gifts of the Holy Spirit that have come to it at the disposal of the whole Church and the whole world?" Careful readers should be able to guess which choice Davies considers the only possible and reasonable one. If there were any doubt, in the first edition of his book he added a last question: "Is the Methodist Church prepared if necessary, to die in order to live?"8 This question is deeply rooted in the spirit of the Gospel; and in the ecumenical struggles of our time, it is still worth serious consideration. But is there really hope for life after denominational death? If we look into the history of Church unions in which Methodists have taken part, the prospects do not seem encouraging. Dr. Michel Weyer, a French-speaking Methodist teaching in Germany, was invited to Belgium to speak at an ecumenical event on Methodism. Until 1969 there had been a Methodist Church in Belgium; it had then merged into the Eglise Protestante Unie de Belgique. Now, thirty years later, no one was left to represent the Methodist tradition. And therefore a Roman Catholic bishop asked Dr. Weyer: "Is it still the ecumenical strategy of Methodism to dissolve itself in order to make national Church unions possible?"9 This may be regarded as an extreme example, since the Methodist Church in Belgium was very small. But consider another case: since 1925 there has been a United Church of Canada; and there is still a Presbyterian Church there, because not all of the Presbyterians joined the United Church. But one will find few traces of Methodist heritage in Canada today.10 1 fear that this is symptomatic of the situation, not only in the United Church of Canada but: in many other United Churches as well.11

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What would be the crucial signs for the resurrection of Methodist life in a nondenominational form? What would be the distinguishing marks of a Methodist identity that is still alive in a United Church, even when most external distinctive features of its denominational existence have vanished?

An Evangelical Order in a Truly Catholic Church In 1742, rather early in the beginnings of the Methodist movement, John Wesley felt obliged to describe "The Character of a Methodist."12 Here he stated that "the distinguishing marks of a Methodist are not his opinions of any sort,"13 thus denying the importance of any classical denominational "identity markers" for Methodism. Rather, "a Methodist is one who has 'the love of God set abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given on to him'; one who 'loves the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul and with all his mind, and with all his strength.'"14 Wesley then offers a thorough biblical exposition of this statement, explaining his view of the basic meaning of (and the indissoluble correlation between) justification and sanctification by faith alone. This description of the "Character of a Methodist" corresponds exactly to the definition that Wesley gives for the raison d'etre of the Methodist movement: You have nothing to do but to save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in this work. And go always, not only to those that want you, but to those that want you most. Observe: it is not your business to preach so many times, and to take care of this or that society; but to save as many souls as you can; to bring as many sinners as you possibly can to repentance, and with all your power to build them up in that holiness without which they cannot see the Lord.15

And at the very beginning of the Minutes from the first Conferences we read: "What may we reasonably believe to be God's design in raising up the preachers called Methodists? Not to form any new sect: but to reform the Nation, particularly the Church; and to spread scriptural holiness over the land."16 And toward the end of his life, Wesley wrote: "I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe nor America. But I am afraid, lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case, unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out."17 Methodism, as it was designed by the Wesleys, did not claim to be "the Church" and did not want to become a sect. It was—as Albert Outler has aptly put it—an "enterprise of saving and maturing souls in the Christian life."18 Outler also described the historical problem that arose out of this attitude: "It was the problem of how to be an evangelical order (or society) within a 'catholic' (or quasi-catholic) Church, which steadfastly refused to sponsor or even to sanction their order and their enterprise."19 Because this problem turned out to be insoluble, "Methodism in the 19th Century evolved from an evangelical order in a catholic (or quasicatholic) Church into a low-church Protestant denomination."20 But Methodism was not designed to be a denomination among others. "Methodism's unique ecclesiological pattern was really designed to function best within an encompassing envi-

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ronment of catholicity (by which I mean what the word meant originally: the effectual and universal Christian community)."21 Thus, if Methodism is to fulfill this original function, it will not only have to undertake an assessment of its own identity; it will also have to find an ecumenical community within which it can live out its call to "proclamation, nurture and service." Therefore Outler concludes that Methodists "need a catholic Church within which to function as a proper evangelical order of witness and worship, discipline and nurture."22 This gives Methodism a double ecumenical task: To work toward the renewal of true catholicity within Christianity, and to assess its own limited but important role within the mission of the whole Church. What could this mean for the Methodist Churches in Europe, in view of their special ecumenical situation?

The Tension between Catholic Inclusiveness and Methodist Identity Most Methodist Churches in Europe live within the territory of larger "established Churches"—mostly former State Churches that still hold to their claim to be Volkskirchen (Churches for all people or for the whole nation). In some regions (such as Scandinavia, Southern Germany, or Poland), 90 percent of the population are still nominal members of these Churches. However, very often most do not participate actively in the life of the Church. Where the majority Churches are Roman Catholic (as in Poland) or Orthodox (as in Bulgaria and Russia), relationships with the Methodist Church are not very friendly. Where the majority Churches are Protestant, their relationships have greatly improved in recent years; and many of these Churches are now in full communion of word and sacrament with the Methodist Churches in their countries. As I have already mentioned, this does not necessarily mean that there is a close cooperation in the missionary and pastoral work on the local level—at least not in continental Europe (even though it was here that a principal theological agreement was solemnly celebrated). What are the reasons for this inconsistency? First, the problem of the disparity in size and number should not be underestimated. The small Methodist Churches may well have the impression that if they come too close to their partners, they will be overcome by the greater gravitational pull and swallowed up as a kind of quantite negligeable. They are not very eager to join any Church union in which, at a later time, it would take a very careful analysis to reveal even trace elements of Methodism. A much more serious obstacle for closer cooperation—even in those regions where Methodism is fairly strong—is the "territorial sovereignty" of the established Church (the so-called Landeskirche) over all protestant Christians in its area. The constitutions of these Churches reveal quite clearly that the Landeskirchen see themselves as Volkskirchen, which means that they claim to represent the Church of Christ in a certain area. . . . The consequences of this way of seeing themselves appear especially in the legal provisions for membership, the fundamental base of which is the "territorial principle" [Territorialprinzip]. It means that the Landeskirche regards as its member everyone who is baptized in any Protestant Church, who resides in the area of the Landeskirche, and who has not

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expressly resigned his or her membership or gone over to another Church. Therefore there is no need of an expressed or tacit confirmation of membership.23

It goes without saying that such a hegemonic notion of membership makes cooperation rather difficult. If most of the people almost automatically belong to one of the ecumenical partners, it is difficult for the other partner to do missionary work without being accused of proselytizing. It becomes even more difficult the closer the partners come together. Some Methodists have already received notification from the Lutheran Church tax office that, because the Methodist Church joined the Leuenberg Fellowship, they are now obliged to pay the Church tax! There is open controversy over how to settle this question.24 Although this is not explicitly stated, the agreement seems to be intended primarily to deal with the relationship between Churches within different geographical areas, and is not of much help in those situations where jurisdictions overlap. Of course, at least in Central Europe, it is acknowledged that there are no longer closed ecclesiastical territories where only one denomination is "the Church." All Churches are called to be "in mission" among the people with whom they live. But there is still discussion on the question: "Who is a Christian?" In Germany the Volkskirche has discovered a new species of Christians: the socalled treuen Kirchenfernen (those who are "faithfully distant" from the Church).25 These are the people who still use the services of the Church for certain rites de passage (baptism, confirmation, wedding, or funeral), who go to Church at least on Christmas Eve, pay their Church taxes, and have no intention of leaving the Church—even though they have a very distant relationship to most of the core values of Christian teaching and belief. According to a report on Evangelism from the Baden Landeskirche, these so-called treuen Kirchenfernen see themselves as believers and are, in their own self-assessment, not lesser Christians. They consider it sufficient for their faith journey to intersect with the work of the Church and the message of the Gospel only on selected occasions. They are in contact with their Church and assist it in fulfilling its task, even though they do not take part in the life of a local congregation. The Volkskirche is able to respect such a decision. Its missionary strength comes from not prescribing how its members must live their faith in relationship to the Church.26

Although I would not challenge everything that is said in this passage, it clearly goes against many central Methodist convictions. We need only remind ourselves of two famous statements of John Wesley: "None is a true Christian till he experiences it"27 and "The Gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social: no holiness but social holiness."28 It is obvious that, for Wesley and his movement, to be a Christian unquestionably includes a personal belief and a life lived in an accountable relationship with other Christians. But his movement was inclusive enough to overcome the danger of being sectarian. The only condition required for those who desired admission into Methodist Societies was "a desire to flee from the wrath to come, to be saved from their sins."29 Here we touch the heart of the question: Is it possible to be "an evangelical order in a catholic Church"? If the evangelical order takes seriously what it believes to

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be the essence of salvation, it will always be in tension with a Church whose catholicity lies in the inclusion of as many people as possible. The Roman Catholic Church gives a much better theological frame for its "orders"; the status perfectionis is clearly different from (and higher than) the order of ordinary lay people, whose salvation is guaranteed by membership in the Church.30 So there is much less cause for conflict than in the case of Methodism, which sees Christian perfection as the goal of salvation. Wesley never clearly solved the problems created by this tension between his soteriology and his ecclesiology. But in his sermon "Of the Church," he obviously was not ready to allow the call for inclusiveness of the Church to be played off against the challenge to holiness for every member in the Church. This leads even Outler to remark, that "here, as elsewhere, Wesley echoes what might be called Montanist views, without embarrassment or apology."31 But Outler also says about this synthesis "that its ecumenical significance has yet to be fully appreciated," because it may lead us beyond the fruitless dichotomy between "Church" and "Sect."32 Models of Closer Cooperation The original model for Methodists working within the boundaries of a larger Church was a connection of societies within the national Church. Eventually, this model failed—not only in the United States (where a national Church never existed) but also in England, soon after John Wesley's death. Nevertheless, the model was never totally abandoned. The first Methodist groups in Germany, begun in Wurttemberg in 1833 through the work of Gottlob Muller, were organized as societies within the Evangelische Landeskirche of Wurttemberg. 33 Muller was against any kind of separation; only in 1873 did the Wesleyanische Methodisten-Gemdnschaft take the decisive step to become a Free Church. The Evangelical Association in Germany was, from the start, unclear about the ecclesiastical shape of its work.34 Only the Methodist Episcopal Church was determined from the outset to establish a Free Church in Germany. Parallel to the emergence of Methodist Free Churches, an association of pietistic societies within the Lutheran Church was formed; it still has a place in German Church life today. It sprang from roots similar to those of Methodist missionary work in Europe (especially the work of evangelists like Finney and Moody) and the Holiness Movement around Robert Pearsal Smith and Hannah Whitall.35 The establishment of these Landeskirchlichen Gemeimchaften was particularly promoted by some theologians in order to protect the Church against the "Methodist danger."36 There were similar but independent developments in Sweden and Norway, where this movement gained great influence in the life of the Church.37 In Germany, the picture is more ambivalent. Under the umbrella of the established Church, and without suspicion of being a sect, these societies have developed a remarkable strength in numbers (about five times more than the United Methodist Church) but live in a very strange relationship with the official Church— and are often paralyzed by their antagonism against ecumenism and modern theology. Their ecumenical engagement is with the Evangelical Alliance, but their

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attitude toward other members of the Christian family is often less inclusive than that of most Free Churches. Thus, despite its intuitive appeal, the model of "societies within an established state Church" seems not to be a suitable model for "an evangelical order within a catholic Church." There is another model of cooperation in Europe. In Switzerland in 1922, the Methodist Episcopal Church became a member of the Schweizer Evangelischer Kirchenbund (the Swiss Federation of Protestant Churches). This federation was established in 1920 by the Swiss reformed Kantonskirchen (the equivalent to the German Landeskirchen). One year later, three Reformed Free Churches joined as well.38 The Swiss Federation of Protestant Churches never carried the kind of weight and influence held by the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, but it is the Swiss equivalent. It is quite remarkable that, for more than 75 years, it has also included the Methodist Church. Today, it seems amazing that, in 1922, the admission of the Methodists into membership was voted on without any discussion or prior theological talks. Their inclusion established a clear and reliable ecumenical relationship; but as far as an outsider can see, it did not create more intensive or fruitful cooperation on the local level than we have in Germany.39 Nevertheless, the question has arisen as to whether such an associate membership could be a model for a closer cooperation between the Protestant Churches in Germany and the United Methodist Church. If we have full communion in word, sacrament, and order, communion in the mission of the Church has to find its practical expression as well. But, as we have seen, there are some theological and nontheological factors that make such cooperation difficult. We had hoped that the experiences in the former East Germany, where all Churches were minority Churches, would help to overcome the old differences between Volkskirchen and Free Churches. But in the first phase after reunification, we saw a restoration of the structures of the Volkskirche. This will certainly not be the last stage of our common history. I am sure that the so called volkskirchliche Doppelstrategie 40 — that is, an inclusive outreach to as many people as possible, and new forms of evangelism that invite people to a life with God—can be developed in a way that the catholicity of a Volkskirche and the evangelical emphasis of a Free Church are no longer irreconcilable differences. This will open the way for an organic union of close cooperation, perhaps under the umbrella of a federation of Protestant Churches.

Some Forward-Looking Thoughts I want to conclude with some thoughts that will seek to develop a synthesis of Methodist identity and ecumenical perspective.41 The history of Methodist influence and effectiveness has never been limited to the history of the planting and growth of specifically Methodist Churches. Rather, it has always been a fertilization of common ground of Christian mission. Methodist work must therefore be evaluated not only according to the usual parameters of denominational growth but also according to the support, promotion, and encouragement of the common mission of the whole Church of Christ.

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For the same reason, our ecumenical efforts are never an end in themselves. The mission of the Church is the driving force behind all endeavors toward unity among Christian Churches. We should be very self-critical with respect to the motives of our ecumenical business. Administrative or political improvements are not enough— nor is the prospect of increased power for a new and greater denomination. The responsibility of Methodism is to hold constantly before the eyes of the whole Church the vision of mission. This responsibility can be discharged in two ways. In some parts of the world it will mean that Methodism must press on urgently toward full organic unity with other branches of the Christian Church. In other areas Methodism can best sustain its witness to mission in cooperative separate existence within their Church catholic.42

Mission in the name of Jesus Christ must always be done in light of the whole body of Christ—never merely out of the self-interest of one denomination. The mission that has been entrusted to the Methodist movement is the message of the creative power of God's love. That is the Gospel perspective that binds together justification and sanctification in the life of the individual and produces fruit that combines personal and social holiness. It has often been said that this concept of grace has made Methodism a good catalyst for ecumenical talks, building a bridge between Rome and Geneva or Wittenberg, and even between East and West.43 But Methodist theology is only effective as "practical divinity"—as a spiritual experience that is lived out in faith, hope, and love. We owe our fellow Christians a clear and reasoned account of what Methodists believe. But Methodist identity has its ultimate foundation not only in its doctrine, and certainly not in a special truth that nobody else can claim, but in the correspondence of doctrine and discipline. Our ecumenical challenge is to live this identity in a deep and open relationship with other Christians. Wesley's call "to reform the nation, especially the Church" as the goal of the work for scriptural holiness is not limited to the eighteenth-century versions of the English state and the Church of England. Rather, it sets the agenda for Methodist work and life as long as Methodism exists. The society in which we live, and the Church catholic in which we believe and for which we struggle, are the field of work to which we are called. Of course we are not the only ones who have ideas about how the Church should be reformed. Ecumenical life has to be a mutual learning experience. But a Methodism that has preserved its identity ought to have a vision for the whole Church and for its mission. Where we have lost this vision, we have placed at risk not only our ecumenical engagement, but also our life as Church. For the Europe of the new millennium, it may be important that Methodism, by its very nature, is not a national Church.44 The Central Conferences of the United Methodist Church have experienced the global nature of their Church not so much as American imperialism but rather as a challenge in times of dangerous nationalism—and as a great help in times of need. Perhaps the claim to be a global Church sounds too triumphalistic; but in a time of rising nationalism and tribalism, the Church desperately needs to be an "interconnected" Church, beyond all borders. This quest is a genuine part of the Methodist legacy.

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NOTES

1. Commitment to Mission and Unity, Report of the Informal Conversations between the Methodist Church and the Church of England (Peterborough: Church House Publishing and Methodist Publishing House, 1996). 2. The texts of these agreements are collected in Cornelia Nussberger, ed., Wachsende Kirchengemeinschaft. Gesprdche und Vereinbarungen zwischen evangelischen Kirchen in Europa. Texte der Evangelischen Arbeitsstelle Okumene Schweiz 16 (Bern, 1992), 62-123. See also Fellowship of Grace. Report from the Conversations between Church of Norway and the United Methodist Church in Norway. Final Report and Proposal for an Agreement (Oslo, 1994). 3. The text of the agreement was published in Wachsende Gemeinscha/t in Zeugnis und Dienst. Reformatorische Kirchen in Europa. Texte der 4. Voiiversammlung der Leuenberger Kirchengemeinschaft in Wien, 3.-10, Mai 1994, hrsg. Wilhelm Huffmeier und Christine-Ruth Muller, (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Otto Lembeck, 1995), 167-73, 2594. But see Mary Tanner's description of a number of "signs of hope" in this regard, in her contribution to the present volume (chapter 23). 5. Compare Commitment to Mission and Unity, 25: there are 455 Local Ecumenical Partnerships between Methodists and Anglicans, 362 between Methodists and members of the United Reformed Church, and 212 between Anglicans and the URC. 6. Rupert E. Davies, Methodism, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1963); 3d edition (London: Epworth, 1994), 185f 7. The first edition has "with other free churches" (207). 8. Davies, Methodism, ist edition, 208. 9. In an unpublished paper delivered at the International Consultation in Vienna, March 31-April 5, 1998: "Welche Einheit streben wir als EmK an?" This paper provides also many other helpful insights into the subject of this chapter. 10. Cf. N. Keith Clifford, "Kanada," Theologische Realenzyklopddie 17 (1988): 558-60; more accurate is John Webster Grant, "Kanada," Ewngelisches Kirchenlexikon, 3d ed., II (1989): 928-33. 11. The exception is the Uniting Church of Australia, where the Methodist heritage is still valued and cherished. See Norman Young's discussion in chapter 8 in this volume. 12. The Works of John Wesley, vol. 9: The Methodist Societies, ed. Rupert E. Davies (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989), 32. 13. Ibid., 33. 14. Ibid., 35. 15. "Minutes of the Several Conversations," Q 26.11, in The Works of John Wesley, 3d edition (London: Thomas Jackson, 1829-31; reprinted 1984), 8:310. 16. Ibid., Q. 3, 8:299. 17. Works of John Wesley, 13:258. 18. Albert C. Outlet, "Do Methodists Have a Doctrine of the Church?" in Thomas C. Oden and Leicester R. Longden, eds., The Wesleyan Theological Heritage. Essays of Albert C. Outler (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991), 211-26; here, 219. 19. Ibid., 213. 20. Ibid., 220. 21. Ibid., 225. 22. Ibid., 226. 23. Gerd Heinrich und Klaus Blaschke, Die Taufe, das Brot und das Evangelium, Grundlinien fur das kirchliche Handeln (Hamburg: Nordelbisches Kirchenamt, 1992), 112 (my translation). 24. Erhard Stiller, "Rechtliche Aspekte und Konsequenzen der Leuenberger Konkordie," Zeitschri/t fur Evangelisches Kirchenrecht 40 (1995): 181-216, esp. 2i2f.; Friedrich-Otto

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Scharbau, "Leuenberg. Theologische und kirchenrechtliche Folgerungen," Zeitschrift fur Evangelisches Kirchenrecht 40 (1995): 320-44. 25. Klaus Engelhardt, ed., Fremde Heimat Kirche. Die dritte EKD-Erhebung uber Kirchenmitgliedschaft (Gutersloh: Giitersloher Verlagshaus, 1997). 26. Fur den Glauben werben Evangelisation in der Volkskirche und ihren Gemeinden. (Karlsruhe: Evangelische Landeskirchc in Baden, 1996), 10 (my translation). 27. Letter to "John Smith," 30 December 1745, in The Works of John Wesley (Abingdon edition), 26:182. 28. Preface to "Hymns and Sacred Poems," in The Works of John Wesley (Thomas Jackson edition), 14:321. 29. "The Nature, Design and General Rules of the United Societies" (1743), in The Works of John Wesley (Abingdon edition), 9:70. 30. Fairy von Lilienfeld, "Monchlumll," Theologische Realenzyklopadie 23 (1994): 17480. See also Wainwright, Methodists in Dialogue, 2if, 105-106. 31. Albert C. Outlet, ed., John Wesley: A Representative Collection of His Writings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 316, in a footnote to Sermon 74 (1785) "Of the Church," where Wesley says: "None that is under the power of anger or pride, no lover of the world—in word none that is dead to God—can be a member of his Church." In his edition of this sermon in the Abingdon edition of the Works, Outlet says: "This is ... an unstable blend of Anglican and Anabaptist ecclesiologies" (3:46). 32. Outlet, Works of John Wesley (Abingdon edition), 3:46. For the impossibility of applying to Methodism Tioeltsch's distinction between Church and sect, see Outler, "Methodism in the World Christian Community," in Oden and Longden, eds., The Wesleyan Theological Heritage, 241-50; here, 245; see also Walter Klaiber, "Volkskirche und Freikirche— eine fruchtbare Spannung im Protestantismus," in Udo Hahn, ed., Der Glaube hat Zukunft (Moers: Brendow-Verlag, 1991), 158-66. 33. Cf. Karl Heinz Voigt, "Die Methodistenkirche in Deutschland," in Karl Steckel and C. Ernst Sommer, eds., Geschichte der Evangelisch-methodistischen Kirche (Stuttgart: Christliches Verlagshaus, 1982), 85f; Karl Heinz Voigt, "Die Wesleyanische MethodistenGemeinschaft in Deuschland. Einc Skizze ihrer Geschichte unter besonderer Beriicksichtigung ihrer Kirchwerdung," Beilrage zur Geschichte der Evangelisch-methodistischen Kirche, 7 (Stuttgart, 1978). 34. Paul Wuthrich, "Die Evangelische Gemeinschaft im deutschsprachigen Europa," in Steckel and Sommer, eds., Geschichte der Evangelisch-methodistischen Kirche, 152-60. 35. Joachim Cochlovius, "Gemeinschaftsbewegung," Theologische Realenzyklopadie 12 (1984): 355-68; Jorg Ohlemacher, "Gemeinschaftsbewegung," Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon, 3d ed., 2 (1989): 77-81. 36. Cf. Theodor Christlieb, Zur methodistischen Fragen in Deutschland (Bonn, 1882); Karl Heinz Voigt, "Methodistische Evangelisation im volkskirchlichen Kontext," EmK-heute 29 (Stuttgart, 1979), 58-59. 37. Cf. Andreas Aarflot, "Norwegen," Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon, 3d ed. (1992), 3:78996; Goran Goranson, "Schweden," in ibid., 4:143—49. 38. Cf. 75 Jahre Methodistisch-Reformierte Kirchengemdnschaft im SEK, 1922-1997 (Bern: Schweizer Evangelischer Kirchenbund, 1997). 39. It should be mentioned that in Germany the Moravians are associate members of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland. They are also associate members of the Federation of Free Churches, thus expressing their midway position. This very position may tend to restrict their work to overseeing existing local congregations, managing their well-developed educational institutions, and caring for those members who live in the diaspora. 40. Vercinigte Evangelisch-Lutherischc Kirche in Deutschland, Zur Entwicklung von

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Kirchenmitgliedschaft—Aspekte einer missionarischen Doppelstrategie Texte aus der VELKD 21 (1982); Christseingestalten. Eine Studie zum Wegder Kirche, ed. Kirchenamt im Auftrag des Rates der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (Giitersloh: Giitersloher Verlagshaus, 1986). 41. I owe much to the works of Albert Outler, whose insights still are relevant; compare Albert Outler, That the World May Believe: A Study of Christian Unity, Joint Commission on Education and Cultivation, Board of Missions of the Methodist Church, 1966; and his articles cited above. See also Wainwright, Methodists in Dialogue, esp. 33f; 277-85. 42. Alan Walker, "Summoned to Mission," in P. M. Minus, Jr., ed., Methodism's Destiny in an Ecumenical Age (Nashville: Abingdon, 1969), 193-208; here, 196-97. 43. Cf. inter alia Albert C. Outler, "Methodism's Theological Heritage: A Study in Perspective," in Oden and Longden, eds., The Wesleyan Theological Heritage, 189-210. 44. Cf. the different statements on the global and the national level of our ecumenical endeavor in Minus, ed., Methodism's Destiny in a Ecumenical Age—especially articles by Bishop Ensley (71-89), Jose Miguez-Bonino (90-107), and D.T. Niles (130-43).

CHAPTER 23

ANGLICAN-METHODIST RELATIONS

Signs of Hope Mary Tanner

After the failures in Anglican-Methodist relations in the 1970s and early 1980s, the decade since the 1988 Lambeth Conference has seen significant achievements in relations between these two Churches. The work of the first International Commission published its report, Sharing in the Apostolic Communion, in 1996.1 Anglicans and Methodists have come closer together in southern Africa as a result of the work of the Church Unity Commission. In the United States, both Churches are involved in the Consultation on Church Union (COCU) and in Scotland they are partners in the Scottish Churches' Initiative for Church Unity (SCIFU). In England and Ireland there are bilateral conversations, and in Wales both Churches are involved in proposals for the establishment of an ecumenical bishop in Wales. Geoffrey Wainwright has contributed much to the new stage reached in Anglican-Methodist relations and to the promise that lies ahead for the early years of the next millennium. He has done so through his scholarly writings, his contribution as one of the major drafters of Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, his membership of the Roman Catholic-Methodist dialogue, and, certainly not least of all, his membership in the Anglican-Methodist International Commission. This essay is written in recognition of Geoffrey Wainwright's outstanding contribution to ecumenical theology in general, to Anglican-Methodist relations in particular, and in gratitude for our friendship and shared work over many years. While developments in Anglican-Methodist relations are taking place in many parts of the world, what is happening in England necessarily has a very special place due to the provenance of Methodism. Anglicans and Methodists share centuries of common history as part of the Western Catholic and Reformed traditions lived out in England. Methodism started as a movement within the Church of England; both John and Charles Wesley and other early Methodist leaders were priests of the Church of England; and, as is often commented, John Wesley himself never intended that the Methodist Society should be separated from the Church of En262

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gland. Developments in England in the last four years give confident hope that the reconciliation of these two Churches lies in the not-too-distant future. First, the events of the last four years show that there is among Methodists and Anglicans in England a renewed desire, even a passion, for unity. In the light of the Church of England's negative response both to the Anglican-Methodist scheme of the 1960s and the Covenanting Proposals of the early 1980s, it was a generous and promising sign when in 1994 the General Purposes Committee of the Methodist Church invited the Council for Christian Unity of the Church of England to "a new exploration of possible closer unity." The invitation to "preliminary informal talks" was understandably cautious. It was, nevertheless, clear that the concern for unity on the part of the Methodist Church was stronger than any bitterness over past rejection. The same desire for unity was echoed in the positive response to the invitation that came from the Church of England. When the informal conversations in 1996 suggested moving toward formal conversations, forty-two out of the forty-three dioceses in England affirmed that the time was right for such a move. Many of the responses expressed impatience with the lack of progress toward unity in England, and local congregations complained of a lack of episcopal leadership. The imperative for unity was driven by a demand for a credibility in mission. In the General Synod of the Church of England in November 1997, the archbishops of Canterbury and York gave a strong lead to go forward toward formal conversations. The overwhelming vote in favor of moving forward defeated those few voices that claimed that disunity within the Church of England herself made uniting with it impossible, and that to pursue unity would be to divert resources from mission. Other voices thought that a bilateral dialogue between Anglicans and Methodists would deny the closeness with other ecumenical partners. The most perplexing contribution came from the view that ecumenism is about downsizing—two shop fronts in a town becoming one, and thus an opportunity for mission lost. But the overwhelming view was of support for formal conversations. The Methodist Conference, meeting eight months later in July 1998, showed the same overwhelming desire to enter formal conversations, overcoming the anxiety of some that the position of women in the ministry of oversight might be compromised. The invitation to informal conversations by the Methodist Church, the positive response of the Church of England, and the responses of both Churches to proposals to enter more deeply into the unity process have revealed a widespread dissatisfaction with disunity and a determination to move on for the sake of the credibility of mission—and in faithful response to the prayer of Christ that his disciples might be one. A second sign of promise for the future is an emerging shared understanding of what sort of unity the two Churches are committed to working for. The invitation issued by the Methodist Church in 1994 was for informal conversations to explore whether the two Churches did in fact share a common goal of visible unity. The implication was that it was no good setting out on formal conversations if at the outset there was not some agreement on what God was calling the Churches to become together. The portrait of visible unity offered in the report of the informal conversations, Commitment to Mission and Unity, is not a monolithic, hierarchi-

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cally structured united Church, imposed from the top down.2 It is a vision of God's gift of God's own life, experienced and lived out in a life of belonging to one another because all belong to God and live within the orbit of trinitarian life. It is the sort of shared life that is already experienced in the best of Local Ecumenical Partnerships, wherein people have come to know what it is to be "all in one place," where it makes no sense to ask "Are you a Methodist?" or "Are you an Anglican?" It is a life beyond Methodism, beyond Anglicanism. The understanding of visible unity offered by the informal conversations is not one of strait-jacketed uniformity: "Unity in Christ does not exist despite and in opposition to diversity but is given with and in diversity."3 At the same time it is clearly stated that there are limits—tolerable limits—to diversity, if communion once established is to be maintained in the face of challenges to faith, order, and moral teaching. There will always be a challenge to hold together through conflict, tension, and difference as the community of faith discerns together God's will for the Church, living in the highest degree of communion possible even when communion is threatened—and never again saying "I have no need of you." The common faith and the sacraments of baptism and eucharist sustain and give life to the community, a common ministry provides leadership, and conciliar structures hold the communion together as the community discerns, articulates, and receives truth. The picture of visible unity offered by the informal conversations is of a diverse, struggling, dynamic community of Christians sustained by the gracious gifts of Word and sacraments, ministry and ordered life, holding together and responding to the challenges of the contemporary world, serving one another and caring for the world's needs as the Gospel is proclaimed in word and in deed. Behind all that is said about visible unity lies the conviction that it does matter how people see Christians living together and witnessing together in the places where they live and work, and that it does matter that the nation hears Christians speak together in response to the challenges of today's world. There is promise in the portrait of unity that Anglicans and Methodists in England have claimed together, with its affirmation of diversity, its emphasis on the tolerable limits to diversity, its conviction that challenge, conflict, and tension will always be a part of the life of the Church, and its call for constant repentance and renewal. There is promise in a shared understanding of visible unity requiring a common life of grace, in shared faith, sacraments, ministry, and conciliar structures. The picture of visible unity extends beyond the unity of Anglicans and Methodists in England; the common faith, sacraments, and ministry are bonds that unite the Church in every place and every age. Visible unity between Methodists and Anglicans in England is only a stage on the way to that full, visible unity that is to be realized with the whole Christian family. Third, the report Commitment to Mission and Unity offers much hope, both explicitly and implicitly, about the ordained ministry and episcopal oversight. In the past it has been difficult to achieve consensus in these areas. The report assumes that a threefold ministry will serve a united Church. It invokes not Anglican precedent or source but Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, the multilateral agreed statement: "The threefold ministry of bishop, presbyter and deacon may serve today as an expression of the unity we seek and also as a means of achieving it."4 The report

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makes clear that in affirming a threefold ministry it does not wish to impose any one particular pattern or expression of it. Developments are taking place in both Churches in regard to the diaconate. The Church of England, in some dioceses, ordains to a permanent diaconate as well as continuing to hold it as a stage on the way to ordination to the presbyterate. The Methodist Church has also in recent years ordained to a permanent diaconate. Both Churches are currently engaged in exploring the future of the diaconate together. On the matter of episcopacy, the question is not whether a united Church requires a personal ministry of oversight, but rather: what kind of bishops? Again the report records agreement by quoting not Anglican sources on the episcopate but Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry: Bishops preach the Word, preside at the sacraments, and administer discipline in such a way as to be representative pastoral ministers of oversight, continuity and unity in the Church. They have pastoral oversight of the area to which they are called. They serve the apostolicity and unity of the Church's teaching, worship and sacramental life. They have responsibility for leadership in the Church and its mission. They relate the Christian community in their area to the wider Church, and the universal Church to their community. They, in communion with the presbyters and deacons and the whole community, are responsible for the orderly transfer of ministerial authority in the Church.5

The report makes its own comment on this multilateral ecumenical text, emphasizing the relational character of the bishop's office that is exercised "in, with and among" the community. It goes on to say that the office should not be overburdened with bureaucratic demands, and that it requires an appropriate lifestyle and a pastoral demeanor. Here are challenges for both Anglicans and Methodists if they are to work out together a common pattern of episcopacy. Re-formation and re-renewal are needed in both Churches and the promise is that this is more likely to happen together than in separation. There is agreement that a ministry of oversight [Eniakonn|] is a fundamental characteristic of the Church's unity equipping the Church for mission and service: "a common ministry of oversight episcope . . . enables the Church at all levels to guard and interpret the apostolic faith, to take decisions and teach authoritatively, to share goods and to bear effective witness in the world."6 The ministry of oversight will be exercised in personal, collegial, and communal ways. Again, the report avoids language that belongs to either tradition, preferring the common ecumenical language of Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry. The basic agreement is that, for both Anglicans and Methodists, visible unity entails a ministry of oversight, exercised in a personal and individual way, by persons together (collegially) and by a body representative of the whole people (communally). The report goes further. Oversight is to be exercised at all levels of the Church's life: at local, national, regional and global levels. Pressed to its logical conclusion, this implies that visible unity requires a personal focus of unity at the world level. What Commitment to Mission and Unity has to say about the personal, collegial, and communal exercise of oversight again contains challenges for both Churches in England. Together the Churches are to reconsider the ways in which the minis-

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try of oversight is currently exercised, as well as the balance among these three aspects of oversight. The report also raises questions of how a united AnglicanMethodist Church in England would relate to the two world communions. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the personal focus of unity, the Lambeth Conference (established in 1867) is the collegial gathering, and the Anglican Consultative Council (established in 1971) is the communal gathering for Anglicans at a world level. These structures of oversight hold provinces of the Anglican Communion in an interdependent life. The World Methodist Council (established in 1881) similarly plays a function of linking Methodists around the world together, even if its role is not developed. What the report makes clear is that if Anglicans and Methodists in England were to come together, this would inevitably have implications for their relationship to both world communions. This agreement on the ordained ministry—the ministry of ETUCTKOnn exercised in personal, collegial, and communal ways, as described in Commitment to Mission and Unity and now endorsed by the two Churches—is encouraging, not least of all because it is expressed in such a way that the future is not envisaged as one Church absorbing the other or of forcing one particular expression of ministry upon the other. The report offers challenges to both Churches at one and the same time as they move toward a life of unity, served by a common ministry. The report offers a hopeful explication of apostolic succession that is essential for the coming together of two Churches, one of which holds that the historic episcopate is necessary for the visible unity of the Church. Apostolic succession is understood as carried by the life of the whole community, living in fidelity to the apostles' faith and witness. Apostolic succession is not interpreted in a narrow sense of residing in the tactile succession of bishops laying hands on bishops in unbroken succession. The report sees that the fidelity of the Church to the apostolic faith and mission is served by a ministry "in intended continuity" with the ministry of the apostles. Such continuity reflects, first, Christ's faithfulness to the Church, and second, the Church's intention to remain faithful to the apostles' teaching and ministry. A ministry in the historic succession is required for unity, but historic continuity in the ministry is not a guarantee of any Church's fidelity. It witnesses rather to the promise of Christ to be with the Church and to the Church's intention to be faithful. It does not, and cannot, guarantee the faithfulness of the Church. Historic episcopal succession is thus a "sign" that Commitment to Mission and Unity understands as a characteristic of a united Church.7 A fourth sign of hope for the next stage of Anglican-Methodist relations in England is that what is proposed for the next step on the way to visible unity is realistic, modest, and attainable. The informal conversations realistically identified ten areas on which greater understanding would be needed on the way to visible unity. The most difficult and seemingly intractable issue concerns the role of women in the ministry of personal oversight. In the Methodist Church in England women exercise a ministry of personal oversight as district chairmen and are eligible to serve as president of conference. Legislation in the Church of England, however, excludes women from being consecrated as bishops. Although there are women bishops in three Anglican provinces, the position in the Church of England is clear. In a presidential statement to the General Synod in November 1988,

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Archbishop Robert Runcie set out the position that women bishops may not carry out an episcopal ministry within the Church of England, and any clergy person, male or female, ordained by a woman bishop is not permitted to officiate either as a deacon or as a priest in the Church of England.8 Moreover, in the Church of England it is recognized that to be in favor of women's ordination or to be opposed to it are both positions held with integrity. This major difference between Anglicans and Methodists in England posed the most intractable issue for the informal conversations. The Methodist participants were clear that, while they could contemplate taking on episcopacy, they could not contemplate limiting the ministry of personal oversight to men alone. At the same time the Church of England is formally committed to living with difference on the matter of women's ordination in an ongoing process of discernment, with the possibility that this inclusive ordering of the ministry may not be the rnind of Christ for the Church for all time. The strength of the proposals put forward by the informal conversations, and accepted by both Churches, is that they take full account of this major difference. What is proposed is a realistic first step that should be aimed at on the way to full reconciliation of Churches and ministries. In a first stage, formal conversations should be set up to produce a Common Statement, including a description of the visible unity that both Churches seek, a description of what both Churches would expect to be in place before they could affirm that "the unity Christ gives" has become fully visible to the two Churches and to the world. The Common Statement would also explore in greater depth some of the remaining issues where more detailed progress is needed—in particular how a common ministry of oversight would be exercised in the service of visible unity. As part of a Common Statement the formal conversations will provide a solemn and binding declaration to be made by each Church. The declaration would do two things that Anglicans and Methodists have never done before. Both Churches would formally and publicly repent of separation, and, second, acknowledge each other's Churches publicly as Churches in which the Word of God is authentically preached and the sacraments duly administered. They would acknowledge each other's baptized members and each other's ordained ministers as given by God as instruments of grace. These acknowledgments would serve as the basis for formal and binding commitments to act together, to share ministries, including the ministry of oversight, and wherever possible to take decisions together and to go on facing outstanding differences together. The promise of this modest, attainable, and open-ended proposal for a first stage is that it would provide a common explicit ecclesiological agreement never expressed before, in order to support intensified sharing in ministry and mission. What is enjoyed where there are local covenants would extend throughout both Churches at all levels of life and action. The formal agreement would provide a secure basis for many practical initiatives at local, diocesan, and national levels as well as a firm foundation for a further step toward reconciliation. The secretary to the Methodist Conference has written: Some no doubt would like the proposals to go further and are impatient with what appears to be slow progress. Others may be relieved that we are not moving faster,

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because they will have doubts or conscientious objections. ... It is better to make progress where we can than to hold back until everything can be resolved or to rush ahead too fast and stumble.9

A fifth sign of hope for the future is that this bilateral advance is held firmly within a multilateral context. It is not an exclusive move between the two Churches. In 1994 when the Methodist Church issued the invitation to the Church of England to engage in informal conversations, the invitation began by asking for "the understanding and encouragement of our sister churches of Churches Together in England for a new exploration of possible closer unity between Methodism and the Church of England."10 Before either Church responded to the proposals of the informal conversations, the reactions of ecumenical partners were asked for.11 The Moravian Church, which is already in a committed partnership with the Church of England through the Fetter Lane Agreement, welcomed the resumption of Anglican-Methodist initiatives. 12 The Baptist Union of Great Britain came to the view that it was right for the Church of England and the Methodists to go ahead in a bilateral conversation. The United Reformed Church reported to the General Synod of the Church of England that, although for some in their Church it would have made better sense to enter a trilateral conversation, nevertheless the United Reformed Church supports formal bilateral conversations with a parallel informal trilateral conversation. The Roman Catholic Church's response expressed the view that it is right for Anglicans and Methodists in England to enter formal conversations, providing there is a concern to maintain coherence and consistency with the international agreements between the Roman Catholic Church and the Methodist Churches and the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. It might well be right to forge ahead with Anglican-Methodist unity if that seems attainable at an earlier stage. . . . The Anglican-Roman Catholic and the Methodist—Roman Catholic re-union could (under God) be on a slower track, as long as all round consistency is kept fully in the foreground, and Anglican-Methodist negotiations take place in the presence of, and in the prayerful support of, their ecumenical partners.13

When formal bilateral conversations begin in 1999, all of these Churches will be active participants around the table. There will be, through correspondence and meetings, regular contact with Anglican-Methodist initiatives in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Responses will be sought from the German Churches that are linked with the Church of England in the Meissen Agreement, and with the Nordic and Baltic Lutheran Churches that, with the Anglican Churches of Britain and Ireland, are part of the Porvoo Communion. The Methodist Church, as part of the Leuenberg family, will share the progress and results of the conversations with those Churches. The ecumenical openness of this particular bilateral dialogue is a hopeful sign for the wider ecumenical movement. More advance is likely with the Church of England and the Methodist Church, with a specificity of agenda that springs from the particular history of these two Churches, when these two Churches seek to move

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forward in the presence of, and with the active support and participation of, four other Churches. Finally: through the vote of the General Synod of the Church of England and of the Methodist Conference, Anglicans and Methodists have not only committed themselves to conversations involving a few delegated representatives; they have committed themselves from this point on to a plan to grow together in fellowship in every way that is now possible. They have committed themselves to share in worship; to pray for and with each other; to extend the number of formal Local Ecumenical Partnerships wherever Anglicans and Methodists live in the same area; to rationalize the use of buildings; to cooperate and share resources at deanery and circuit levels; to deploy ministers more effectively in rural areas; to exchange the experience of women in ordained ministry as well as the experience of living with two recognizably different positions on the matter of women's ordination; to strengthen joint processes for selecting and training clergy; and, wherever possible, to make joint appointments. None of these things needs to wait upon formal conversations. It is, however, important that such practical steps involving many people accompany formal conversations, and that they provide a context in which a new step is taken and a Common Statement is agreed upon in the years ahead. I have pointed to five "signs of hope": the renewed desire for unity, the emerging common understanding of the visible unity that God is calling these two Churches to live, the agreements on ordained ministry, the concern to hold this bilateral advance within the multilateral context, and the determination to create a firm foundation in shared living. These signs suggest that, early in the next millennium, Anglicans and Methodists will grow together and be a more credible witness to the life of communion that God intends for the Church and for the whole of humanity. What is proposed in England is one regional development. The proposals of the International Anglican-Methodist Commission set out in Sharing in the Apostolic Communion, which were affirmed at the Methodist World Conference in 1997 and welcomed at the Lambeth Conference in 1998, support this regional move and encourage similar developments in other parts of the world. This is expressed in Resolution IV. 17 of the Lambeth Conference, which invites member Churches of the Anglican Communion to develop agreements of acknowledgment that (i) both churches belong to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church of Jesus Christ and participate in the apostolic mission of the whole people of God; (ii) in the churches of our two Communions the Word of God is authentically preached, the sacraments duly administered; (iii) our churches share in the common confession and heritage of the apostolic faith. The Resolution goes on to encourage ways of celebrating agreements of mutual acknowledgment and then to move on beyond that to the reconciliation of Churches and within that the reconciliation of ordained ministries and structures for common decision making.

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All of this contributes to the sense of great promise for Anglican-Methodist relations in the near future, not only in England but in other places in the world as well. To these and other hopeful signs of promise in Christian ecumenism, Geoffrey Wainwright has made, and will no doubt continue to make, an outstanding contribution. NOTES 1. Sharing in the Apostolic Communion, The Report of the Anglican-Methodist International Commission, 1996. 2. Commitment to Mission and Unity, Report of the Informal Conversations between the Methodist Church and the Church of England (London: Church House Publishing and Methodist Publishing House, 1996), 5-7. 3. Ibid., para. n.

4. BEM, M 22. 5. BEM, M 29. 6. Commitment to Mission and Unity, para. 10 (d). 7. Ibid., para. 27. 8. Report of Proceedings of the General Synod of the Church of England 19/3 (1988): 699705. 9. B. Beck, The Methodist Recorder, 22 February 1998. 10. Commitment to Mission and Unity, 3. 11. Towards a Response to Commitment to Mission and Unity, General Synod Paper 1266, 10-13. 12. The Fetter Lane Common Statement: Towards Visible Unity between the Church of England and the Moravian Church in Great Britain and Ireland, CCU Occasional Paper No. 5 (Cromwell Press: 1996). 13. Towards a Response, para. 22.

CHAPTER 24

SPIRITUALITY, WORSHIP, CONFESSION, AND CHURCH UNITY

A Story from South Africa Dirk J. Smit

I We met in 1981 at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Professor Wain' wright spent almost a whole day as my host, showing me around and talking theology. Grateful and impressed, I immediately bought and read Doxology.1 In 1984 I spent a three-month sabbatical with him in Durham. He invited me to give a public lecture on the (then Draft) Confession of Belhar of the (then) Dutch Reformed Mission Church of South Africa. Since then he has, through his writings, constantly accompanied, instructed, and inspired me and many of my colleagues, friends, and students.2 Since I have not had the opportunity to spend more time in his company, discussing theology, this is perhaps an opportunity to continue with the story of Belhar,3 indicating where he has inspired and assisted us since then, without his knowledge. It is a long story. In a way, it started with the eucharist. In 1855 white worshipers in a rural Dutch Reformed congregation refused to share the Lord's Supper with colored believers. In 1857 the Synod decided that it was "preferable and Scriptural" that all believers shared the same worship and the same congregation, but where these measures, "as a result of the weakness of some," obstructed the Christian cause, "Christian privileges could be enjoyed in separate buildings and even separate institutions." The "weakness of some" soon became the norm. In 1881 a separate "church" or denomination, the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, was established for colored people, and during the twentieth century several others would follow, all divided according to race or ethnicity. Although they all belonged to the so-called "Dutch Reformed Church family," almost without any structural or visible unity, white believers in the (white) Dutch Reformed Church were gradually made to believe that having separate Churches for each nation (volkskerke) was the norm, according to Scripture and the divine will. This church policy of separate Churches would later form the religious roots of the ideology and, since 1948, the official political policy of apartheid. The story is, obviously, much longer and much more complicated than this. However, there is no denying that Christian faith also formed an integral part. The DRC 271

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increasingly appealed to the government to introduce apartheid laws, and "Scriptural proofs" legitimated the ideology. The decades after 1948 saw increasing opposition against the apartheid policy, ideology, and theology in Church circles, both inside South Africa and in the ecumenical movement. In 1982, at the Ottawa meeting of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, eight representatives from the so-called "daughter churches" in the DRC-family refused to participate in the official eucharist, claiming that it would be false to do so in an ecumenical context while they were excluded from the eucharist in the DRC back in South Africa. After a long debate, the WARC declared a status confessions. Receiving the report from their delegates, the DRMC also declared a status confessionis regarding the theological legitimation of apartheid. According to them, the issues were no longer adiaphora; a moment of truth had arrived. The Synod decided that they owed it to their own members, and to whoever might be interested, to explain why they now claimed—after decades of theological controversy and debate—that the truth of the Gospel itself was at stake. The Confession of Belhar was born; and four years later, it was officially accepted as a confession of the DRMC.4 It will immediately be clear why Geoffrey Wainwright's theology was so relevant to our situation. We were facing the challenges of ecumenism on a small scale but in a very dramatic form. The issues at stake were theological, ecclesiological, and sacramental. They dealt with worship, faith, order, and life, and their complex interrelationships. It was a clear case of "the sad reality" of the Church divided—and the division reached back into the heart of the Lord's supper itself. How does one address these divisions if the understandings of the sacrament and the doctrine of the Church itself were the root causes and not the potential for a way forward? In this essay I shall briefly indicate ways in which Wainwright's work encouraged us— and specifically, how it helped us to answer three questions: What should we strive for? Why should we do this? and How could we possibly hope to do this?

The "What": Unity-in-Truth There can be no doubt at all about Wainwright's vision and his own calling and commitment. He wants to serve the unity of the Church. "For all my adult life I have been engaged in the cause for Christian unity. . . . To the realization of that vision I devote my theological energies," he explains.5 The divisions in the church should not be regarded as innocent. The notion of the one continuing visible and complete body of Christ challenges the insufficiency of any invisibilist, spiritualistic understanding of the Church, according to which all 'true believers' are assumed to be one, even if they live institutionally and sacramentally isolated lives. . . . The alternative to visible unity is not spiritual unity; it is visible disunity, which is a counter-witness to the gospel of reconciliation. , . . [This] should prevent Protestants from acquiescing in any (f)actual brokenness of the body of Christ. It should be a spur to efforts for the healing of the fractures. 6

Elsewhere he writes: "Although it is true that institutional unity would be a mere facade without spiritual unity, it is also true that the alternative to visible unity is

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not spiritual unity but visible disunity. Bodies that are not seen to be united are seen to be disunited."7 Indeed, "so much of the world still remains in us that even our eucharists may be disfigured; participation in the Lord's Supper, without an authentic Christian community underlying it, becomes an exercise in make-believe."8 These divisions contradict the identity of the Church. This identity is constituted and demonstrated specifically in baptism and the eucharist. "The sacraments are the place where the church discovers and rediscovers its own identity."9 Time and again he quotes BEM approvingly to underline this point; similarly, he quotes Mary Tanner's remark that "It is in the eucharist that the Church is most truly at home with God, and learns to know most truly who she is."10 This makes the divisions within the Church such a sad reality. The "normality" of the Church is radically called into question: The division of the churches is a counter-testimony to the Gospel of reconciliation. Severely put: the reality of the Gospel itself is called into question by disunity among Christians, and a fortiori the reality of the Church which claims to have been brought into being by the Gospel. In an extreme case: can the church proclaim and transmit a gift it shows no sign of possessing? The Donatist question would re-emerge: can it truly be the Lord's baptism and supper that are being celebrated here?11

This is tragic, since the eucharist is (supposed to be) "the divinely given sacrament of unity, the medicine for our divisions." This makes reconciliation between the divided Churches so crucially important, including reconciliation on doctrinal and ecclesial issues, like baptism, eucharist, and ministry; reconciliation in social organization and life; reconciliation between Christians, between denominations, and between traditions; and reconciliation in the liturgical assemblies. The unity must become visible. To be sure, "a purely institutional unity would never be sufficient, (because) faith, hope, and charity are profound realities that exceed their visible expression,"12 but it is an indispensable precondition for true unity. Ecumenical dialogue teaches that there is "need for an institutional embodiment of the Church" and "an ecclesiology shaped in a time of division cannot be expected to be entirely satisfactory."13 Why is reconciliation and visible unity between the divided Churches so important? For several reasons—foremost among which are the mission of the Church, the calling to proclaim the Gospel, and therefore the credibility, the integrity, of the Church. "The cause of unity which ecumenical dialogue subserves has, at the very least, the purpose of removing those divisions among Christians that are a counter-testimony to the gospel of reconciliation."14 "Worship is intimately connected with doctrine, discipline, social organization, ethical conduct, charitable action, testimony to Christ. In all these areas, discord must give way to harmony if the Gospel of reconciliation is to be gratefully received and effectively witnessed to."15 For ecumenism, "restoration of Christian unity was necessary not only for the practical purposes of cooperation in missionary work but, more profoundly, for the sake of a more credible witness to the Gospel of reconciliation. If the Churches could not demonstrate unity among themselves, how could they testify to the reconciliation of the world to God?"16

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Extremely important in Wainwright's vision is the fact that this visible unity must be based on truth. "We can praise God together only in truth; and this doxological unity-ill-truth must take visible shape."17 His commitment is to what he calls "classical ecumenism," which has always been concerned for unity in the content of the faith as it comes to expression in Scripture and Tradition.18 His own commitment to the work of Faith and Order is a living example of this fundamental concern, as well as his years of involvement in bilateral and multilateral dialogues. He describes the Apostolic Faith Study as based on "the entire concern for authentic Christian unity in the truth of the gospel."19 That is why dogmatic interests are so vital. Mutual recognition and reconciliation is impossible without a measure of agreement. He uses a plethora of expressions to raise questions concerning truth, normativity, and criteria.20 Of course, these expressions are controversial and these distinctions difficult. What was "doctrine" for the Calvinists, Wesley demoted as "opinion"!21 Geoffrey Wainwright is well aware of the problem: "The precise distribution of particular items between essential doctrine and variable opinion is itself open to debate."22 He therefore carefully discusses the debate on "fundamental agreements" and "basic differences," the difference between "center" and "periphery," and the importance of "the hermeneutics of dogma," but with contents that "should remain self-identical to the one divine Truth kept by the Church and existing outside and beyond history."23 Perhaps this emphasis on truth is the result of what he calls "the Methodist principle of doctrinal responsibility": Wesley's own magnanimity regarding theological "opinions" was limited to those that did not "strike at the root of Christianity."24 Wesley's sermon on "Catholic Spirit" does not merely breathe a generous spirit but also affirms "catholic substance."25 "To speak the truth in love" is a Pauline and Wesleyan motto for dialogue, and both elements are important.26 In this spirit, Wainwright shows critical appreciation for Lindbeck's discussion of doctrine as rules and RitschPs use of the notion of implicit axioms. And it is on the basis of these convictions that he is so critical of "liberal Protestantism," some forms of "postmodernism," and recent attempts to create new language for God, in spite of his often remarkable openness to diverse positions, viewpoints, and movements. Not everything goes. In fact, according to Wainwright, the Church may today be facing new forms of apostasy; the truth of the Gospel, as expressed in the ancient trinitarian creeds, may again be at stake. Incompatible with true ecumenical dialogue is "a pure unbounded pluralism that assumes the various positions to be either incommensurable or all without epistemic significance or salutary importance."27 The point is: "Agreement 'in the faith' is required for visible unity." 28 Where does one find this truth? Wainwright repeatedly addresses issues concerning the "authorities" or "sources" of Scripture, tradition, experience, and reason. His respect for the Scriptures is obvious, although he is in no way naive with respect to the difficulties concerning responsible interpretation. He obviously appreciates the fact that Wesley called himself "a man of one Book," although that constituted "not so much the boundary of his reading as the center of gravity in his thinking."29 Of particular interest is his respect for Tradition, to be distinguished from traditions, and his careful and informative discussions of the carriers, patterns, functions, and limitations of traditions. He is only too aware that confessions can be-

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come confessionalism, dividing the Church. He wants more theological attention to be given to the nature of tradition, and particularly to the maintenance of the Church in the apostolic faith. He also deals at length with the sources of experience, including issues of culture and contextuality, leading to a very helpful notion of "assimilative tradition," as well as reason, but acknowledges that "it is in those areas that the challenge of modernity is usually first encountered," so that it becomes necessary "to look at Scripture and tradition, for those are the inherited resources upon which Christianity must draw if it is to retain its historic identity."30 In short, although he certainly does not favor any simplistic or naive answer to the question of truth, he is not willing to give up the notion either. He is committed to the vision of Christian identity, however problematic it may be. This calls for the extremely difficult, but not impossible, task of discernment. The "Why": Created to Praise But why is this search for visible unity, based on the truth of the Gospel, so important? Again Wainwright's answer seems to be clear. Because we are called to praise the Triune God, together with, and as part of, all creation. Our whole existence is toward God: ad majorem Dei gloriam. That is why doxology is so important, and why "it is no accident that the twentieth-century liturgical and ecumenical movements have gone hand in hand."31 The final vision is one of worship with one accord. Worship is the locus of theology. Theology is "Churchly reflection." The Church is first and foremost a worshiping community. However, our ultimate purpose is not only that we praise God with our hearts but that our lives are lived to the praise of God. "Praise is a linguistic act with an ontological basis and consequences: That we may be to the praise of God's glory' is how the hymn in Ephesians 1:3-14 puts it."32 Worship, doctrine, and life belong together. "Common confession of the faith is needed for united worship, life and mission. Made both before God and before humankind, coram Deo and coram hominibus, confession is at once doxological, evangelistic, and ethical, in intention and scope."33 He approvingly refers to the Orthodox "liturgy after the Liturgy." Although he does not often write about ethics (and politics), there can be no doubt about the importance of these relationships in his theology. One could even "write a systematic theology from the perspective of ethics."34 Thus "the lex orandi and the lex credendi remain incomplete without a corresponding lex bene operandi."35 This relationship between worship and ethics is repeatedly underlined in his work. Our delight and our duty are intertwined—albeit in complex ways. Prayer and work belong together, as "the works of piety" and "the works of mercy."36 The more visible the fruits of the Spirit, the more persuasive the preaching and the teaching. The "euchological and the ethical are subsumed in a single doxology."37 '"Right worship' can only occur where Christians are united in faith and life."38 And, conversely, "corporate worship is where the lives and belief of the Christian people are shaped."39 And the eucharist, in particular, serves as a paradigm for Christian life and ethics, for our "discernment and action." In the important "Eucharist and/as ethics" he discusses this at length. The eucharist "allows us to learn, absorb, and extend

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the values of God's kingdom." "The eucharistic paradigm points us in the right direction (of justice, peace, and joy): it sets the vector within which the difficult concrete decisions and actions of everyday life have to be taken and performed if they are to be authentically Christian; it excludes the choices which fall out of the range indicated by the values of the kingdom there expressed in symbolic form."40 BEM demonstrates this integral connection in powerful ways. "Our common baptism constitutes a call to the Churches to overcome their divisions and visibly manifest their fellowship" (B 6). "The inability of the Churches . . . has given dramatic visibility to the broken witness of the Church. The readiness of the Churches in some places and times to allow differences of sex, race, or social status to divide the body of Christ has further called into question genuine baptismal unity of the Christian community (Gal.3:27-28) and has seriously compromised its witness" (B 6). Concerning the Lord's supper it becomes even more serious. In fact, our own salvation is called into question, says Wainwright. The eucharistic celebration demands reconciliation and sharing among all those regarded as brothers and sisters in the one family of God and is a constant challenge in the search for appropriate relationships in social, economic, and political life.. . . All kinds of injustice, separation and lack of freedom are radically challenged when we share in the body and blood of Christ. . . . We are placed under continual judgment by the persistence of unjust relationships of all kinds in our society, the manifold divisions on account of human pride, material interest and power politics and, above all, the obstinacy of unjustifiable confessional oppositions within the body of Christ." (E 20)

(An earlier draft—according to him—said our lack of reconciliation "makes a mockery" of the eucharist.41) The Faith and Order study of the Nicene Creed also shows this "strong awareness that the apostolic faith has to be explicated in relation to the challenges—perennial and contemporary—that it faces," and that "doctrinal affirmations (should) relate to ethical problems. Thus the project is linked to other ecumenical concerns for peace, justice, and the integrity of creation."42

The "How": Spirituality, Worship, Confession But how is this vision of the visible Church, on the basis of truth, praising the Triune God through its celebrations, its structure, and the transformed lives of its members, to be achieved? More specifically, how can it be achieved in circumstances like ours, where our faith, and even the Lord's supper itself, has in fact divided us? Does Wainwright's work provide concrete, practical suggestions? Now the answer becomes more difficult. He does not spell out a program of action. We have, however, in an eclectic way, been informed and inspired by at least three fundamental convictions emanating from his writings, namely his description of ecumenical spirituality, his acknowledgment of the effective nature of common worship, and his proposals on the role of mutual confession. First: His essay on ecumenical spirituality has been very instructive. "The spirituality of the ecumenical movement has been, perhaps above all, a spirituality of meeting." 43 We have often used the description that he quotes from Dom Lambert

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Beauduin: "In order to unite with one another, we must love one another; in order to love one another, we must know one another; in order to know one another, we must go and meet one another."44 This takes place through practices like prayer for and then with one another, friendship, mixed marriages, informal associations, common Bible study, mission, service, interchurch aid—in short, different forms of Kowrovia.45 In these different forms of meeting, an indispensable instrument for the ecumenical movement is dialogue, often starting with "strangers beginning to meet." He describes five "conditions of travel" on the voyage toward unity: "choice of companions" (it is impossible to dodge the awkward interlocutor), accepting "different starting points," the "search for a common language," and the necessity of "re-reading the guides" (Scripture and Tradition); he concludes with the question, "ships that pass in the night?"—dealing with different models of unity.46 In his own contributions to bilateral and multilateral dialogues he shows a remarkable ability to look in different directions at the same time, to respect the different positions, and, if at all possible, to argue from the diverse viewpoints at the same time. It is always necessary to take the "mutual suspicion" seriously; and "to understand a controversy, it is often helpful to see what each party fears about the implications and consequences of the other's position,"47 He often reminds readers of the primacy of love over truth. He quotes John Wesley's Letter to a Roman Catholic, and pleads for "a dialogue of truth" and "a dialogue of love" to be mutually informative.48 What is needed is "the profounder process of reception," in which not merely documents and texts are recognized and affirmed but their guidance and implications—"for worship, educational, ethical, and spiritual life and witness" (that is, for the people behind these documents and texts)—are recognized, affirmed, and received.49 Second: Wainwright also taught us, especially in his earlier writings, that a specific form of meeting, namely common worship, and particularly intercommunion, need not only signify the end of the process of church unity but can in fact help to effect it; that it can be instrumental on the way toward unity. This is one way, among others, in which the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi can function. Believers who worship together, albeit only occasionally, could perhaps also begin to believe together, truly to see one another. In his later work he seems to be more hesitant in this regard50 and seems to put more emphasis on the signifying function of common worship. However, he still often makes use of contemporary social theory to remind us that "worship practices should—in the delicate relationship between signifying what is already the case and effecting what is still to be—both reflect the existing degree of unity and further it."51 Third: In three recent essays52 he has made concrete and instructive proposals concerning mutual confession of guilt and celebration of forgiveness in situations of division and conflict between churches. Several—for us—burning and sensitive questions are raised, and he offers moving quotations and inspiring comments and suggestions (e.g., liturgical proposals for services of reconciliation, "when the dogmatic conditions have been satisfied"). Indeed, when faced with the question of how "a constitutive service of reconciliation between divided Christian communities" could take place, "profound ecclesiologial presuppositions" are laid bare. Can "a" Church be penitent? Who may act for the Church? Are all parties equally "guilty"

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and "responsible"—given chat faults rarely if ever reside with a single party?53 Who confesses and who gives forgiveness to whom? How can the all-important healing take place, through the Spirit?54 How does "the reconciliation of memories" take place? And he reiterates that agreement on the basis of truth is extremely important: "The churches have indeed begun to show regret, and even express penitence, for the divisions among Christians, but they will not be ready to enact reconciliation among themselves unless and until they have managed to settle those matters pertaining to the truth of the Gospel that have hitherto—either as the cause or as the effect of a division—been considered church-dividing." And part of the ecumenical exercise itself is "to discern what unity in faith, order, and life is necessary and sufficient for eucharistic communion." Concluding Remarks: The Rest of the Story The story of Belhar since 1982 is an ambiguous one. On the one hand, it is a wonderful story of unity and reconciliation. It powerfully united the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, in itself deeply divided at the time. It brought a new sense of identity, purpose, and mission. It also united the DRMC with the large Dutch Reformed Church in Africa, the member Church of the family for "Africans," and led to the formation of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA)—uniting, because the process was not completed without the white DRC. The new Church Order of the URCSA was a deliberate attempt to make the ecclesiology of Belhar visible. Over many years, first in the DRMC and then in the URCSA, Belhar has been "received" and appropriated through teflection and discussion, catechesis, teaching and preaching, liturgy, prayers and songs, Bible studies, and sharing. With the white DRC, however, not much progress has been made. In fact, the status of Belhar as a confessional document in a possibly united Church has—seemingly—become a major stumbling block. For the DRC, Belhar is simply an additional and unnecessary confessional document; and they do not want the URCSA to bring it into church unity negotiations. For the URCSA, Belhar confesses the content of faith—the only common basis on which church unity with the DRC could become possible, in the light of our painful past. Perhaps we have not taken Wainwright's three suggestions seriously enough. We have not really met one another, on all levels—continuously, and with enthusiasm—in order to come to know one another and love one another. We do not yet regularly share common worship, or common celebrations of the Lord's supper. And we have certainly not reached the moment for a liturgical confession of guilt and a mutual prayer for one another, that we may be forgiven and healed. Perhaps we have not taken "the primacy of love" seriously enough. But this essay is not intended to solve any of the wide range of intricate problems touched on. It merely wants to demonstrate our deep appreciation to the honoree, by showing that his writings are being read and discussed in faraway corners of the world, including Africa, whence comes some of his hope for the future of the Church.55 We may all hope for the truth of the Russian Orthodox dictum that he is so fond of quoting: "The walls of separation do not reach up to heaven."56 And we may hope, also, that the day will come when we share the kind of liturgy

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of reconciliation he proposes, the concelebrated eucharist, ad majorem Dei gloriam. In this hope he has encouraged and inspired us. And "since we are not so naive as to think that the hard work of study, writing, and negotiation, necessary as these are, will of themselves achieve the desired unity of Christians in a single fellowship or worship and mission," we also continue prating—with him—for "Christian unity and for the world to which the Gospel is to be preached."57 To a real teacher, a doctor of the one Church: Congratulations! Geoffrey, the peace of God!58 NOTES 1. I particularly enjoyed his broad knowledge of systematic theology, both historically and internationally, including work in different languages. Through the years his regular discussions of systematic theological work from the European continent in Expository Times remained a constant reminder of this impressive knowledge and critical judgment. And it was wonderful to meet someone who could discuss, with equal authority, Basil, Barth, Barrington, and Boycott. (The only thing that might have tempted him away from the vocation of systematic theologian would have been the chance to captain Yorkshire and England in cricket.) 2. Many South African postgraduate students (especially from the universities of Western Cape and Stellenbosch) and ministers have studied his work. He is often quoted in local scholarly work. A master's thesis has been written on his ecumenical methodology. He has played a major role in the present interest in the use of lectionaries in local, Reformed, and ecumenical circles, which may perhaps be one of the most important recent developments in local Church circles. 3. The text of the 1982 Draft of the Confession of Belhar, together with the official Accompanying Letter, can be found in G. D. Cloete and D. J. Smit, A Moment of Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), with essays discussing the background and the content. Since then, many other publications, including reports of Church negotiations, ecclesial studies, dissertations, and books have been published dealing with Belhar, but since this is not the focus of the present essay, they are not included here. 4. In a short preface, appealing to Reformed ecclesiology as it is found in the Heidelberg Catechism, they confessed their faith "in the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who gathers, protects, and cares for his Church by his Word and Spirit." In a short conclusion, in the style of the Confessio Belgica and the Barmen Declaration, they confessed that they are called to obedience to the Triune God. In three articles they doxologically confessed their faith in the God who unites the Church and calls it to make this unity visible in many ways; who reconciles believers with Godself and with one another through the lifegiving Word and Spirit, and calls believers to practice this reconciliation; and who is in a special way the God of the destitute, the poor, and the wronged, and calls the Church to be witnesses of this compassionate justice. 5. One Accord, 273. 6. Methodists in Dialogue, 180. 7. One Accord, 178. 8. Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. Sr. Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1973), quoted in One Accord, 209. 9. One Accord, 106. 10. Mary Tanner, "The Unity of the Church and the Renewal of the Human Community," Mid-Stream 23/1 (1984): 38-50, quoted in One Accord, 176. 11. One Accord, 164. 12. Methodists in Dialogue, 33.

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13. Ibid., 68 and 48. 14. Ibid., 34. 15. One Accord, vii-viii. 16. Ibid., 1. 17. Ecumenical Moment, 3. 18. As expressed, for example, in One Accord, 273. 19. Methodists in Dialogue, 18. 20. Such as: "Fides quae creditur," "the very heart of Christianity," "identity in the apostolic message," "proclamation of the true gospel," "a marrow of the Christian truth," a "living core," "the main branches of Christian doctrine," "substantial heritage," "the authentic Tradition," and "the great tenets of the Church's belief." 21. Methodists in Dialogue, 61, 233-36. 22. GW 164c:375. 23. Methodists in Dialogue, 183. 24. Ibid., 9; see also 231—36. 25. Ibid., 33, 192. 26. Ibid., 3; see also Eucharist and Eschatology, 143. 27. Methodists in Dialogue, 31. 28. Ibid., 194. 29. Ibid., 101. 30. Ibid., 124. 31. One Accord, 61. 32. GW 81:35. 33. See Methodists in Dialogue, 194; 201-2. 34. GW 53:92. 35. Dictionary, 604. In several local publications, I have made similar arguments, using the expressions lex vivendi and lex convivendi. 36. See Methodists in Dialogue, 89—108. 37. Ibid., 99. 38. One Accord, 1. 39. Ibid., 127. 40. Ibid., 210-13. My Reformed colleague A. P. Phillips wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Lord's Supper as paradigm for Christian ethics. 41. Ibid., 163. 42. Methodists in Dialogue, 194. 43. GW 943:542. 44. Ibid. 45. See GW 94a. 46. One. Accord, 71-75. 47. Methodists in Dialogue, 157; see also 57-72, 115-20, 143-88. 48. Ibid., 13. 49. One Accord, 80. 50. In One Accord (177-78), he distinguishes "four broad positions": "1. I myself now reject a totally 'open communion,' allegedly practiced on missionary grounds. . . , The identity of the celebrating church has to be preserved. 2. I also reject promiscuous intercommunion among individual Christians or the separate communities to which they belong; for that is to minimize the gravity of unrepented continuing divisions. ... 3. In my opinion, however, there do come points at which, short of the achievement of the envisaged full unity towards which they are praying and working, ecclesial communities that: are converging in faith, order and life may practice intercommunion. They will do so both in

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order to celebrate the measure of unity already reached and in order to gain strength for future progress. 4. Nevertheless, I respect the stricter view that no eucharistic communion should be enjoyed before some kind of qualitatively complete unity in faith, order and life has already been attained." 51. One Accord, viii. 52. In one essay (GW 108), he addresses issues concerning "the confession of guilt and reconciliation between the churches." A second essay (GW 109) again focuses on possibilities for "reconciliation of divided churches as a witness to the gospel." A third essay (GW 171) discusses the theme of ecumenical reconciliation with specific reference to the Irish conflict. All three are very helpful and inspiring for our own situation. 53. "But who is the offending party?. . . Certainly, hindsight usually reveals that the fault in any division—even though truth may have been at stake in a matter of doctrinal conflict—did not reside on one side alone. Even though one side rather than the other may somehow be 'proved right' in a matter of faith, the responsibility for the disruption will usually have been complex—and shared" (One Accord, 192). He finds "perhaps a hint" in James 5:16, a text that has indeed played a major role in our own dealings with this extremely difficult and emotional issue. 54. He wants "to strengthen the pneumatological dimension of the reconciliation of the churches" (One Accord, 175). A lack of interest in this dimension also forms the basis of his critical remarks concerning Jungel's ecclesiology. In Belhar, faith in the power of the life-giving Word and Spirit also plays a crucial role. 55. Methodists in Dialogue, 260; see also One Accord, 72. 56. For example, Methodists in Dialogue, 249; GW 94a:548. 57. One Accord, 14. 58. See the comment on the meaning of the name Geoffrey in ibid., 93.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WORKS OF GEOFFREY WAINWRIGHT

This chronologically ordered list includes all Professor Wainwright's scholarly publications, with the exception of book reviews. It does not include foreignlanguage versions of items that first appeared in English, unless the translation was actually an adaptation. In the case of writings originally in French, German, or Italian, the citations take that form; if an English translation later appeared, that reference is also given. Throughout the present volume, Professor Wainwright's articles and essays are cited by the abbreviation GW and the corresponding number in this list, plus page number(s)—e.g., GW 144g:374—75. Books written entirely by Professor Wainwright are cited according to the short titles listed here; the full title of each, as well as publication data of its most recent edition, may be found at the corresponding entry number: Christian Initiation (3) Doxology (45) The Ecumenical Moment (61) Eucharist and Eschatology (49)

For Our Salvation (192) Methodists in Dialogue (179) One Accord (193)

1 "The Baptismal Eucharist Before Nicaea" in Studia Liturgica 4 (1965): 9-36. 2 "The Need for a Methodist Service for the Admission of Infants to the Catechumenate" in London Quarterly and Holborn Review (January 1968): 51- 60. 3 Christian Initiation, Ecumenical Studies in History No. 10 (London: Lutterworth, and Richmond, Va.: John Knox, 1969), 108 pp. [see also 14]. 4 "Culte et culture: 1'africanisation de la liturgie dans une perspective theologique" in Fiambeau 21 (February 1969): 11-22. 5 "Quelques principes sous-jaccnts au catholicisme romain" in Flambeau 22 (May 1969): 75-84. 6 "L'intercommunion, signe et issue dc 1'impasse occumenique" in Nouvelle Revue Theologique 92 (1970): 1037-54. 283

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7 "Scripture and Tradition: a Systematic Sketch" in Church Quarterly 3 (1970-71): 1728. 8 Eucharist and Eschatology (London: Epworth Press, 1971), third impression 1978, 238 pp. [see also 49]. 9 "Dieu est-il a l'oeuvre hors des limites ecclesiastiques?" in Flambeau 29 (February 1971): 18-25. 10 "Les sacrements" in Manuel de Theologie pratique (Yaounde: Editions CLE, 1971): 5772. 11 "Theological Reflections on The Catechism concerning the Prophet Simon Kimbangu' of 1970" in Orita 5 (1971): 18-35. 12 "The Localization of Worship" in Studia Liturgica 8 (1971-72): 26-41. 13 "The Risks and Possibilities of Liturgical Reform" in Studia Liturgica 8 (1971-72): 6580. 14 Le bapteme, acces a I'eglise (Yaounde: Editions CLE, 1972), 136 pp. [adaptation of 3]. 15 "The Anglican / Roman Catholic Statement on the Eucharist" in The Clergy Review 57 (1972): 258-60. 16 "La theologie systematique en Grande-Bretagne" in Etudes theologiques et religieuses 47 (1972): 431-52. 17 "La theologie protestante allemande aux XIXe et XXe siecles: faut-il l'etudier en Afrique?" in Flambeau 36 (November 1972): 220-37. 18 "Autour de la notion de civilisation chretienne" in Revue de Theologie et de Philosophie 22 (1972): 413-30. 19 "Mt. xxii. 11—13: une controverse primitive sur 1'admission a la sainte cene" in E. A. Livingstone, ed., Studia Evangelica VI, Texte und Untersuchungen, 112 (Berlin: Akademie-Veiiag, 1973), 595-98. 20 "Developpements baptismaux depuis 1967" in Etudes theologiques et religieuses 49 (1974): 67-9321 "The Rites and Ceremonies of Christian. Initiation: Developments in the Past" in Studia Liturgica 10 (1974): 2-24. 22 "The 1973 Anglican / Roman Catholic Statement on the Ministry and Ordination: a Methodist Comment" in The Clergy Review 59 (1974): 205-11. 23 "The Ecclesiological Significance of Interchurch Marriage" in M. Hurley, ed., Beyond Tolerance (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1975), 104-9. 24 "Mary in Relation to the Doctrinal and Spiritual Emphases of Methodism" in One in Christ n (1975): 121-44 [revised in 61]. 25 "The New Testament as Canon" in Scottish Journal of Theology 28 (1975): 551-71. 26 "The Methodist Service Book 1975" in Epwarth Review (January 1976): 110-18. 27 "The Eucharist as an Ecumenical Sacrament of Reconciliation and Renewal" in Studia Liturgica n (1976): 1-18 [revised in 61]. 28 "The Nature of the Eucharistic Prayer" in Studia Liturgica 11 (1976): 208-11. 29 "Revolution and Quietism: Two Political Attitudes in Theological Perspective" in Scottish Journal of Theology 29 (1976): 535-55 [revised in 61]. 30 "Recent Thinking on Christian Beliefs: Baptism and the Eucharist" in Expository Times 88 (1976-77): 132-37. 31 "Christian Worship and Western Culture" in Studia Liturgica 12 (1977): 20-33; and in Epworth Review, September 1977, 102-15. 32 "Authority in the Church: a Methodist Comment" in One in Christ 13 (1977): 195— 200. 33 "Christian Initiation in the Ecumenical Movement" in Studia Lilurgica 12 (1977): 6786 [revised in 6 1 ] ,

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34 "Recent Foreign Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times 89 (197778): 40-46. 35 Co-editor, with C. Jones and E. Yarnold, The Study of Liturgy (London: SPCK; New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), including (a) "The periods of liturgical history," 33-38; (b) "Recent eucharistic revision," 280-88; (c) "The language of worship," 46573; (d) "The understanding of liturgy in the light of its history," 495-509 [cf. 153 for revised edition, 1992]. 36 "Conciliarity and Eucharist" in One in Christ 14 (1978)130-49; in Midstream 17 (1978): 135-53; and in Churches in Conciliar Fellowship! (Conference of European Churches, occasional paper 10), Geneva, 1978, 74-96 [revised in 61]. 37 "Recent Foreign Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times go (197879): 87-93. 38 "Growing into One Eucharistic Fellowship" in Midstream 18 (1979): 63-67. 39 "In Praise of God" in Worship 53 (1979): 496-511. 40 "Recent Foreign Theological Literature: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times 91 (1979-80): 211-17. 41 "On Church Extension" in Expository Times 91 (1979-80): 247-50. 42 "Some theological aspects of ordination" in Studio Litwrgica 13 (1979): 125-52 = W. Vos and G. Wainwright, eds., Ordination Rites Past And Present (Rotterdam: Liturgical Ecumenical Center, 1980), 125-52 [revised in 61]. 43 "Is Christianity Credible?" in Epworth Review, January 1980, 52-58; and in D. Stacey, ed., Is Christianity Credible? (London: Epworth Press, 1981), 73-81. 44 "Sacramental Time" in J. M. Turner, ed., Queen's Essays (Birmingham: The Queen's College, 1980), 157-73; and in Studia Liturgica 14 (1982): 135-46 = W. Vos and G. Wainwright, eds., Liturgical Time (Rotterdam: Liturgical Ecumenical Center, 1982), 135-46 [revised in 61]. 45 Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine And Life. A Systematic Theology (London: Epworth Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 609 pp. [see also 71]. 46 "Today's Word for Today: Eberhard Jiingel" in Expository Times 92 (1980-81): 1313547 "Recent Foreign Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times 92 (198081): 166-71. 48 "Towards God" in Union Seminary Quarterly Review: Inaugural Addresses, vol. 36 supplementary issue, 1981, 12-23. 49 Eucharist and Eschatology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 246 pp. [new edition of 8, with further material]. 50 "Christian Initiation: Development, Dismemberment, Reintegration" in D. C. Brockopp et al., eds., Christian Initiation: Refcom of Water and the Spirit, (Valparaiso, Ind.: Institute of Liturgical Studies, 1981), 31-57. 51 "II rinnovamento liturgico nelle chiese delPAmerica del nord" in Rivista Liturgica 68 (1981): 400-412 [original publication in translation]. 52 "Recent Foreign Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times 93 (198182): 200-205. 53 "Systematic Theologies Written and Unwritten" in Epworth Review (January 1982): 8792. 54 "E pluribus unum: Questions of Unity and Diversity on the Ecumenical and Liturgical Scene in the U.S.A." in Communio Sanctorum: melanges offerts ajean-Jacques von Allmen (Geneve: Labor et Fides, 1982), 291—305. 55 '"Son of God' in Liturgical Doxologies" in E. Schillebeeckx and J. B. Metz, eds., Jesus, Son of God? = Concilium 153 (March 1982): 49-54.

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56 "Between God and World: Worship and Mission" in K. Stevenson, ed., Liturgy Reshaped (London: SPCK, 1982), 94-108 [revised in 61]. 57 "Der Gottesdienst als 'Locus Theologicus', oder: Der Gottesdienst als Quelle undThema der Theologie" in Kerygma und Dogma 28 (1982): 248-58. 58 "The Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church" in Greek Orthodox Theological Review 27 (1982): 441-53 [revised in 61]. 59 "Recent Foreign Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times 94 (198283): 232-37. 60 "Methodism's Ecclesial Location and Ecumenical Vocation" in One in Christ 19(1983): 104-34; and in M. D. Meeks, ed., The Future of the Methodist Theological Traditions (Nashville: Abingdon, 1985), 93-129 [revised in 61]. 61 The Ecumenical Moment: Crisis and Opportunity for the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 263 pp. [the title essay is followed by revisions of 58, 33, 27, 36, 42, 44, 56, 29, 24, and 60]. 62 "Reconciliation in ministry" in M. Thurian, ed., Ecumenical Perspectives on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Geneva: WCC, 1983), 129—39. 63 "Eschatology" in G. S. Wakefield, ed., A Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, (London: SCM Press, 1983) = The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983), 135-37. 64 (a) "Adoration" in A. Richardson and J. Bowden, eds., A New Dictionary of Christian Theology, (London: SCM Press, 1983) = The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983), 6; (b) "Pentecost," 436f.; (c) "Proclamation," 47of.; (d) "Rapture," 485; (e) "Sanctification," 521. 65 "Preaching as Worship" in Greek Orthodox Theological Review 28 (1983): 325- 36 [abbreviated version in R. Lischer, ed., Theories of Preaching: Selected Readings in the Homiletical Tradition (Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1987), 353-63]. 66 "The Sermon and the Liturgy" in Greek Orthodox Theological Review 28 (1983): 33749 67 "Ekklesiologische Ansatze bei Luther und bei Wesley" in P. Manns and H. Meyer, eds., Okumenische Erschliessung Martin Luthers (Paderborn: Bonifatius; Frankfurt am Main: Otto Lembeck, 1983), 173-83 [cf. 72; and 179, chapter 5]. 68 "A Language in Which We Speak to God" in Worship 57 (1983): 309-21. 69 Co-editor, with M. Thurian, Baptism and Eucharist: Ecumenical Convergence in Celebration (Geneva: WCC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983). 70 "Recent Continental Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times 95 (198384): 239-44. 71 Doxology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984) [paperback edition of 45, with minor corrections]. 72 "Ecclesiological Tendencies in Luther and Wesley" in P. Manns and H. Meyer, eds., Luther's Ecumenical Significance (Philadelphia: Fortress Press; New York: Paulist Press, 1984, 139-49 [translation of 67; cf. 179, chapter 5]. 73 "La confession et les confessions: vers 1'unite confessionnelle et confessante des chretiens" in Irenikon 57 (1984): 5-26. 74 "The Great Sunday of the New Creation" in Dialog 23 (1984): 88-92. 75 "Is the Reformation Over?" in Theological Students Fellowship Bulletin (May-June 1984): 2-576 "Sacraments and Christian Unity" in Association of Presbyterian Church Educators Advocate (August 1984): if. 77 "Reception of ''Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry' and the Apostolic Faith study" in Journal of Ecumenical Studies 21 (1984): 71-82; and in], Gros, cd., The Search for Visible Unity: Baptism, Eucharist, Ministry (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1984), 71-82.

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78 "Sacramental Theology and the World Church" in Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 39 (1984): 69-83 [reprinted in 193]. 79 "Theological Table Talk: Liturgy and Poetry" in Theology Today 41 (1984-85): 4535780 "Recent Continental Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times 96 (1984-85): 266-71. 81 "The Praise of God in the Theological Reflection of the Church" in Interpretation 39 (1985): 34-4582 "La priere eucharistique, lieu eschatologique" in A. M. Triacca and A. Pistoia, eds,, Eschatologie et liturgie (Rome: CLV Edizioni Liturgiche, 1985), 312-29. 83 "Theology as Churchly Reflection" in T. W. Jennings, ed., The Vocation of the Theologian (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 9-24. 84 "Focus on Worship" in R. Keeley, ed., Chhtianity: A World Faith (Tring, U.K.: Lion, 1985), 123-28. 85 "Images of Baptism" in Reformed Liturgy and Music 19 (1985): 171-73. 86 "Weltkirche und Sakramenteritheologie" in Theologische Quartalschrift 165 (1985): 266-81. 87 "Divided by a Common Language? A Comparison and Contrast of Recent Liturgical Revision in the United Kingdom and the United States" in The Church Service Society Record (Edinburgh) 12 (Winter 1985): 3-16 [corrected, expanded versions in 104 and 105; updated in 193]. 88 "Gottesdienst: systematisch-theologisch" in Theolagische Realenzyklopadie, vol. 14 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1985), 85-93. 89 "Recent Continental Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times 97 (1985-86): 267-72. 90 "Abendmahlsgemeinschaft" in E. Fahlbusch and others, eds., Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon, vol. 1 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck &. Ruprecht, 1986), 29-32. 91 "The Assurance of Faith: a Methodist Approach to the Question Raised by the Roman Catholic Doctrine of Infallibility" in One in Christ 22 (1986): 44-61 [reprinted in 179]. 92 "Theology of Worship" in J. G. Davies, ed., A New Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship (London: SCM Press, 1986) = The New Westminster Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 505-7. 93 "The Lima Text in the History of Faith and Order" in Studia Liturgica 16 (1986): 6-21 = G. Wainwright, ed., Baptism, Eucharist And Ministry: a Liturgical Appraisal of The Lima Text (Rotterdam: Liturgical Ecumenical Center, 1986), 6-21 [updated in 193]. 94 Co-editor, with C. Jones, and E. Yarnold, The Study of Spirituality (London: SPCK; New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), including (a) "Ecumenical spirituality," 540-48; (b) "Types of spirituality," 592-605. 95 "Ad maiorem Dei gloriam," in D. K. McKim, ed., How Karl Barth Changed My Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 178-81. 96 "Der Sonntag zwischen Schopfung, Erlosung und Vollendung" in A. M. Altermatt and T. A. Schnitker, eds., Der Sonntag: Anspruch, Wirklichkeit, Gestalt (Wiirzburg: Echter Verlag, 1986), 163-74 [original publication in translation]. 97 "Bemerkungen aus Amerika zu Dietrich Ritschls 'Logik der Theologie'" in Evangelische Theologie 46 (1986): 555-61 [original publication in translation; cf. 132]. 98 "Trinitarian Worship" in The New Mercersburg Review 2 (Autumn 1986): 3-11 [revised in 152, which is reprinted in 193]. 99 "Praying for Kings: the Place of Human Rulers in the Divine Plan of Salvation" in Ex Auditu 2 (1986): 117-27 [corrected version in 193]. 100 "Recent Continental Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times 98 (1986-87): 333-38.

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101 "Berengar of Tours" in M. Eliade, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 112f. 102 "Christian Spirituality" in M. Eliade, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 3 (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 452-60. 103 "The Lord's Prayer" in M. Eliade, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 9 (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 26f. 104 Divided by a Common Language? A Comparison and Contrast of Recent Liturgical Revision in the United Kingdom and the United States—and what about Australia? The Austin James Memorial Lecture for 1985. (Melbourne: Ecumenical Liturgical Centre, no date [=1987]), 15 pp. [see also 87 and 105; updated in 193]. 105 "Divided by a Common Language? A Comparison and Contrast of Recent Liturgical Revision in the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Australia" in Studia Liturgica 17 (1987): 241-55 = W. Vos, ed., Gratios Agamus: An Ecumenical Collection of Essays on the Liturgy and its Implications (Rotterdam: Liturgical Ecumenical Center Trust, 1987), 241—55 [see also 87 and 104; updated in 193]. 106 Geoffrey Wainwright on Wesley and Calvin: Sources for Theology, Liturgy and Spirituality (Melbourne: Uniting Church Press, 1987), 70 pp. 107 "Confession of Fault and Reconciliation Between the Churches" in M. Collins and D. Power, eds., The Fate of Confession = Concilium 190 (1987): 117-126. 108 "Ecumenical Dimensions of George Lindbeck's 'Nature of Doctrine'" in Modern Theology 4 (1987-88): 121-32 [reprinted in R. Gill, ed., Readings in Modern Theology: Britain and America, (London: SPCK; Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 213-24]. 109 "The Reconciliation of Divided Churches: a Witness to the Gospel" in Studia Liturgica 18 (1988): 75-95 [updated in 193]. no "Eucharist and/as Ethics" in Worship 62 (1988): 123-38 [reprinted in 193]. in "Gottesdienst in den U. S. A." in E. Fahlbusch and others, eds., Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon, vol. 2 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988) [1989], 280-82. 112 "Christian Doctrine / Systematic Theology" in P. Avis, ed., The Threshold of Theology, (Basingstoke: Marshall Pickering, 1988), 54-84. 03 "Preaching Around the Calendar" in C.W. Burger and others, eds., Sermon Guides for Preaching in Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 1-12 [from uncorrected proofs]. 114 "Beginning with Easter" in The Reformed Journal 38/3 (March 1988): 13-17 [partly corrected but unannotated version of 113]. 115 "Foreword" to Apostolic Faith in America, ed. Thaddeus D. Horgan (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), vii-ix. 116 "Baptism Once and for AH" in Sacramental Life 1/4 (1988): 7-12. 117 "Perfect Salvation in the Teaching of Wesley and Calvin" in Reformed World 40/2 (June 1988): 898-909 [corrected version in 179]. 118 "The Sacraments in Wesleyan Perspective" in Doxology 5 (1988): 5-20 [reprinted in 193]119 "Pannenberg's Ecumenism" in Carl E. Braaten and Philip Clayton, eds., The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988), 207-23. 120 "Word and Sacrament in the Churches' Responses to the Lima Text" in One in Christ 24 (1988): 304-27. 121 Editor, Keeping the Faith: Essays to Mark the Centenary of "Lux Mundi" (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988; London: SPCK, 1989), including (a) "Preface," xix-xxv; (b) "The last things," 341-70. 122 "Recent Continental Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times too (1988-89): 91-96.

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123 "Rain Stopped Play? The Anglican Communion at Lambeth 1988" in Midstream 28 (1989): 193-99124 "From Pluralism Towards Catholicity? The United Methodist Church after the General Conference of 1988" in This World 25 (Spring 1989): 109-18; and [accurately] in The Asbury Theological Journal 44 (1989): 17-27. 125 "The Eucharist in the Churches' Responses to the Lima Text" in One in Christ 25 (1989): 53-74126 "Einheit der Verschiedenen: Die nachsten Schritte in der Geschichte des Lima- Textes" in Evangelische Kommentare 22/8 (1989): 17-18 [original publication in translation]. 127 "Recent Continental Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times 101 (1989-90): 148-53128 "Ostersonntag—15.4. 1990: 1.Korinther 15,19-28" in Gottinger Predigt' Meditationen 44 (1989—90): 208—14. 129 (a) "Ecumenical Movement" in Daniel G. Reid et al., eds., Dictionary of Christianity in America (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity Press, 1990), 375-77; also (b) "Ecumenism," 377130 "Why Wesley Was a Trinitarian" in The Drew Gateway 59/2 (Spring 1990): 26-43 [reprinted in 179]. 131 "Uniting what was Never Divided: The Next Steps for Lutherans and Methodists" in Diaiog 29 (1990): 107-10 [reprinted in 179]. 132 "Bemerkungen aus Amerika zu Dietrich Ritschls 'Logik der Theologie'" in W. Huber and others, eds., Implizite Axiome: Tiefstrukturen des Denkens und Handelns. Dietrich Ritschi gewidmet (Munich: Kaiser, 1990), 218-28 [expanded version of 97]. 133 "Methodism and the Apostolic Faith" in M. D. Meeks, ed., What Should Methodists Teach? (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 101-17, 154f. [reprinted in 179]. 134 "Catherine Winkworth—'Konigin der Ubersetzerinnen' deutscher Kirchenlieder" in T. Berger and A. Gerhards, eds., Liturgie und Frauenfrage. Ein Beitrag zur Frauenforschung aus liturgiewissenschaftlicher Sicht (St. Ottilien: EOS-Verlag, 1990), 289-305. 135 "Doctrine, Liturgy and" in Peter E. Fink, ed., The New Dictionary of Sacramental Wor ship, (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1990), 349-58. 136 (a) "Lux Mundi" in E. Fahlbusch and others, eds., Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck &Ruprecht, vol. 3 (1990) [1992], 229-31; (b) "Methodismus," 391-95137 "Recent Continental Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times 102 (1990-91) 332-37. 138 "Doctrine, Opinions, and Christian Unity: a Wesleyan and Methodist perspective" in ]. A. Burgess, ed., In Search of Christian Unity: Basic Consensus/Basic Differences (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 193-99 [reprinted in 179]. 139 "The End of All Ecclesiastical Order" in One in Christ 27 (1991): 34-48 [reprinted in 179!140 "Quasimodogeniti: Apostelgeschichte 2,42-47: Gottesdienst—Glaube—Gemeinschaft" inK.- P. Jorns, ed., Karwoche, Osterzeit, Pfingsten, Trinitatis: Predigtmeditationen zu Textreihen aus Johannes und der Apostelgeschichte, Gottinger Predigtmeditationen, Beiheft 3 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), 113-20. 141 "In Favour of a Perichoretic and Peripatetic Episcopate—Perhaps . . . " in H. Meyer, ed., Gemeinsamer Glaube und Strukturen der Gemeinschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Otto Lembeck, 1991), 198-207. 142 "Renewal as a Trinitarian and Traditional Event" in Lexington Theological Quarterly 25 (1991): 117-24. 143 "Worship According to Wesley" in Australian Journal of Liturgy 3 (1991): 5-20.

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144 Co-editor, with N. Lossky et al, Dictionary of The Ecumenical Movement (Geneva: WCC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 1196 pp., including (a) "Anglican-Methodist relations," 21-2; (b) "Canon," 115-118; (c) "Church," 159-67; (d) "Church discipline," 179-81; (e) "Dialogue, multilateral," 291-93; (f) "Easter," 309-10; (g) "Eucharist," 374-77; (h) "Federalism," 418; (i) "God," 435-38; (j) "Intercommunion," 518-20 [reprinted as 150]; (k) "Lex orandi, lex credendi," 600-604; (1) "Magisterium," 645; (m) "MethodistOrthodox relations," 672; (n) "Methodist-Reformed dialogue," 672-73; (o) "MethodistRoman Catholic dialogue," 673-75; (p) "Pentecost," 791; (q) "Scripture," 909; (r) "Uniqueness of Christ," 1030-31; (s) "Universalism," 1049. 145 "The Doctrine of the Trinity: Where the Church Stands or Falls" in Interpretation 45 (I991)-' 117-32146 '"Sent to Disciple All Mankind': a Wesleyan and Biblical Theology of Mission" in Dean S. Gilliland, ed., The World Forever Our Parish (Lexington, Ky.: Bristol Books, 1991), 157-69 [corrected version in 179]. 147 "Religiose Sprache und sakrale Symbole in einer sakularisierten Welt" in Karl Christian Felmy and others, eds., Kirchen im Kontext unterschiedlicher Kulturen: Aufdem Weg ins dritte Jahrtausend (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), 119-33. 148 "Wesley and the Communion of Saints" in One in Christ 27 (1991): 332-45 [reprinted in 179]. 149 "Renewing Worship: The Recovery of Classical Patterns" in Theology Today 48 (199192): 45-55 [reprinted in 193]. 150 "Towards Eucharistic Fellowship" in The Ecumenical Review 44 (1992): 6—9 [reprint of 144 (j)]. 151 "Sacraments/Sacramental Theology" in D. Musser and J. L. Price, eds., A New Hand' book of Christian Theology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992), 421—28. 152 "Trinitarian Worship" in Alvin F. Kimel, ed., Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 209-21 [revision of 98; reprinted in 193]. 153 Co-editor, with C. Jones, E. Yarnold, and P. Bradshaw, The Study of Liturgy (1992) [thoroughly revised edition of 37, including (a), 61-67; (W, 328-38; (c), 519-28; and (d), revised as "The continuing tradition of the church," 547-62]. 154 "The Church as Communion: a Methodist Response" [to a Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith] in Catholic International 3/16 (1-30 September 1992), 769-71. 155 "Apostolic Tradition as a Theme in Ecumenical Dialogue" in Annagret Freund et al., eds., Tmgende Tradition: Festschrift fur Martin Seils ium 65. Geburtstag, (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1992), 157-71. 156 "Book Study: 'Ecumenism in Transition: A Paradigm Shift in the Ecumenical Movement?' [K. Raiser]" in Midstream 31 (1992): 169-73. 157 (a) "Lehre und Meinungen. Notwendige Obereinstimmungen und zulassige Unterschiede aus wesleyanischer und methodistischer Sicht" in A. Birmele and H. Meyer, eds., Grundkansens—Grunddifferenz (Frankfurt am Main: Lembeck; Paderborn: Bonifatius, 1992), 155-67 [original publication in translation]; (b) "Lokalisierungsversuch einer moglichen Grunddifferenz: Stellungnahmen einzelner Theologen: Geoffrey Wainwright—methodistisch,", 279-83 [revised English text in 179, as "Ecclesial Identity: Basic Agreements and Basic Differences"]. 158 '"Bible et Liturgie': Danielou's work revisited" in Studia Liturgica 22 (1992): 154-62 [reprinted in 193]. 159 "Recent Continental Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times 104 (1992-93): 362-66.

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160 "The Roman Catholic Response to 'Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry': the Ecclesiological Dimension" in M. Downey and R. Fragomeni, eds., A Promise of Presence: Studies in Honor of David N. Power, O.M.I., (Washington, D.C.: The Pastoral Press, 1993), 187-206. 161 "Roman Catholic-Methodist Dialogue: a Silver Jubilee", in Oliver Rafferty, ed., Reconciliation: Essays in honour of Michael Hurley (Dublin: Columba Press, 1993), 53-79 [corrected and updated in 179]. 162 "Faith and Order Within or Without the World Council of Churches" in Ecumenical Review 45 (1993): 118-21. 163 (a) "Holiness" in B. M. Metzger and M. D. Coogan, eds., The Oxford Companion to the Bible, (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 285-86; (b) "Worship," 819-10. 164 (a) "Liturgy and Doctrine" in A. E. McGrath, ed., The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 339-44; (b) "Methodism," 373-76; (c) "Method in Theology," 369-73. 165 "Reason and Religion: A Wesleyan Analogue to Grundtvig on Modernity and the Christian Tradition" in A. M. Allchin, D. Jasper, J. H. Schjorring and K. Stevenson, eds., Heritage and Prophecy: Grundtvig and the English-Speaking World (Aarhus: Universitetsforlag, 1993; Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1994), 191-214 [reprinted in 179]. 166 "Where Liturgy and Ecumenism Embrace" in Euntes Docete (Krakow: Papieska Akademia Teologiczna, 1993), 190-203 [slightly revised in 193]. 167 "Patristic Themes in the Wesley Brothers' 'Hymns on the Lord's Supper'" in Persona si Comniune, memorial volume for Fr. Dumitru Staniloae (Sibiu, Romania: Editura Arhiepiscopiei Ortodoxe, 1993), 608-26 [revised and expanded in 175]. 168 "Recent Continental Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times 105 (1993-94): 368-71. 169 "The Church as a Worshipping Community" in Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology 3 (1994): 56-67 [reprinted in 193]. 170 "Tradition as a Liturgical Act" in Kenneth Hagen, ed., The Quadrilog: Tradition and the Future of Ecumenism. Essays in Honor of George H. Tavard (College ville: Liturgical Press, 1994), 129-46 [reprinted in 193]. 171 "Ecumenism and Reconciliation" in M. Hurley, ed., Reconciliation in Religion and Society (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1994), 72-88 [reprinted in 193]. 172 "Church and Sacrament(s)" in J. B. Webster, ed., The Possibilities of Theology: Studies in the Theology of Eberhard Jungel in his Sixtieth Year (Edinburgh: T. &. T. Clark, 1994), 90-105. 173 (a) "Wesley, Charles" in R. F. Glover, ed., The Hymnal 1982 Companion, volume 2 (1994), 657-659; (b) "Wesley, John," 660-62. 174 "Words" entries on seventeen hymns by Charles Wesley in R. F. Glover, ed., The Hymnal 1982 Companion, vols. 3A and 3B (New York: The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1994) (#6 "Christ, whose glory fills the skies," 8-10; #49 "Come, let us with our Lord arise," 88-90; #57 "Lo! He comes with clouds descending," 106-9; #66 "Come, thou long-expected Jesus," 123-24; #87 "Hark! the herald angels sing," 166-68; #188 "Love's redeeming work is done," 383-85; #214 "Hail the day that sees him rise," 43335; #300 "Glory, love, and praise, and honor," 575; #481 "Rejoice, the Lord is King," 905-7; #493 "O for a thousand tongues to sing," 924-28; #526 "Let saints on earth in concert sing," 985-86; #535 "Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim," 999-1000; #548 "Soldiers of Christ, arise," 1016-17; #638 "Come, O thou Traveler unknown," 1166; #65 7 "Love divine, all loves excelling," 1203-4; #699 "Jesus, Lover of my soul," 1306-7; #704 "O thou who earnest from above," 1316-17).

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175 '"Our Elder Brethren Join': the Wesleys' Hymns on the Lord's Supper and the Patristic Revival in England" in Proceedings of the Charles Wesley Society I (1994): 5-31 [cf. 167]. 176 "The Orthodox Role in the Ecumenical Movement: a Protestant Perception" in N. M. Vaporis, ed., Rightly Teaching the Word of Your Truth: Studies in Faith and Culture, Church and Scriptures, Fathers and Worship, Hellenism and the Contemporary Scene. In Honor of His Eminence Archbishop lakovos. (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1995), 127-32 [corrected version in 179]. 177 "Systematisch-theologische Grundlegung" in H.-C. Schmidt-Lauber and K.-H. Bieritz, eds., Handbuch der Liturgik: Liturgiewissenschaft in Theologie und Praxis der Kirche (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt; Gdttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), 72-95. 178 "Geoffrey Wainwright" in G. R. Evans, L. F. Fuchs and D. C. Kessler, eds., Encounters for Unity (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1995), 203-7. 179 Methodists in Dialogue (Nashville: Abingdon/Kingswood, 1995), 340 pp. [contains, in more or less revised versions, 67/72, 91, 117, 130, 131, 133, 138, 139, 146, 148, 157(b), 161, 165, 175, 184, 186, and three new chapters: "Methodists in dialogue," "Methodists respond to BEM," and "Continuing a Methodist voice"]. 180 "Introduction" in Hymns on the Lord's Supper by John and Charles Wesley: A Facsimile of the First Edition (Bristol: Felix Farley, 1745) (Madison, N.J.: The Charles Wesley Society, 1995), v—xiv. 181 "Towards an Ecumenical Hermeneutic: How Can All Christians Read the Scriptures Together?" in Gregorianum 76 (1995): 639-62. 182 "Do Methodists (Think They) Stand in the Apostolic Tradition?" in Bulletin of the Centra pro Unione, Rome 48 (Fall 1995): 9-14; and in Ecumenical Trends 25/7 (JulyAugust 1996): 8-14. 183 "Recent Continental Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times 107 (1995-96): 14-19. 184 "Ora et labora: Benedictines and Wesleyans at Prayer and at Work" in Asbury Theological Journal 50 (1995)/2 and 51 (i996)/1, 95-113 [reprinted in 179]. 185 (a) "Spiritualitat: Europaisch-mcditerrane Spiritualitat" in E. Fahlbusch and others, eds., Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon, vol. 4 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 405-12; (b) "Taufe: Geschichte und Theologie," 665-74. 186 "Tradition and the Spirit of Faith in a Methodist Perspective" in Bradley Nassif, ed., New Perspectives on Historical Theology: Essays in Memory of John Meyendorff (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 45-69 [reprinted in 179]. 187 "Back to the Future" in Miroslav Volf and others, eds., The Future of Theology: Essays in Honor of jurgen Moltmann (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 89-97. 188 "Methodism through the Lens of Lima" in K. B. Westerfleld Tucker, ed., The Sunday Service of the Methodists: Studies in Honor of James F. White, (Nashville: Abingdon/ Kingswood, 1996), 305-22, 388-90. 189 "The Hymnal Between Confessional Particularity and Ecumenical Openness" in Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Hymnologie: Bulletin 24 (1996): 31-56. 190 Co-editor, with Karen Westerfield Tucker, Soli Deo Gloria: Essays to Recognize the Life's Work of Wiebe Vos = StudiaLiturgica 26/2 (1996): including (a) "Wiebe Vos: ecumenical liturgist," 145-48. 191 "Recent Continental Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times 108 (1996-97): 13-19. 192 For Our Salvation: Two Approaches to the Work of Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; London: SPCK, 1997), 186 pp. 193 Worship with One Accord: Where Liturgy and Ecumenism Embrace (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 276 pp. [contains, in more or less revised versions, 78, 87/

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194 195

196 197

198 199 200 201

202

203

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104/105, 93, 98/152, 99, 109, no, 118, 148, 158, 166, 169, 170, 171, and one new chapter: "Canons, cultures, and the ecumenically correct"]. "The Holy Spirit" in Colin Gunton, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 273-96. "From Word and/or Sacrament to 'Verbum Caro' = 'Mysterium Fidei': lessons learned from the 'BEM' process" in Patrick Lyons, ed., Parola e sacramento (Roma: Ponteficio Ateneo S. Anselmo, 1997), 141-75. "The Twentieth-century Ecumenical Movement: the Continuing Legacy" in Midstream 36(1997): 119-37(a) "Baptism, baptismal rites" in R. P. Martin and P. H. Davids, eds., Dictionary of the Later New Testament and its Developments (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 112-25; (b) "Lord's Supper, love feast," 686-94. "Recent Continental Theology: Historical and Systematic" in Expository Times 109 (1997-98): 48-53"Methodisme" in Jean-Yves Lacoste, ed., Dictionnaire critique de theologie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998), 723-26. "The Ecumenical Rediscovery of the Trinity" in One in Christ 34 (1998): 95-124. "Is Episcopal Succession a Matter of Dogma for Anglicans? The Evidence of Some Recent Dialogues" in C. Podmore, ed., Community, Unity, Communion: Essays in Honour of Mary Tanner (London: Church House Publishing, 1998), 164-79. "Methodist-Roman Catholic: Introductory Note" in W.G. Rusch and ]. Gros, eds., Deepening Communion: International Ecumenical Documents with Roman Catholic Participation (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1998), 233f "Babel, Barbary, and the Word Made Flesh: Liturgy and the Redemption of the World," in Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal 3/3 (1998): 5-14.

FORTHCOMING WORKS

204 "Rechtfertigung: lutherisch oder katholisch? Uberlegungen eines methodistischen Wechselwahlers" in Kerygma und Dogma 45 (1999). 205 "The Gift Which He on One Bestows, We All Delight to Prove': A Possible Methodist Approach to a Ministry of Primacy in the Circulation of Love and Truth" in James F. Puglisi, ed., Petrine Ministry and the Unity of the Church: "Toward a Patient and Fraternal Dialogue": A Symposium Celebrating the 1 ooth Anniversary of the Foundation of the Society of the Atonement, Rome, December 4-6, 1997 (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, Michael Glazier, 1999), 59-82. 206 Co-editor, Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, thoroughly revised edition of 144, including revisions of (a) through (s), and new contributions (t) "Christmas," and (u) '"Ut unum sint' [papal encyclical]." 207 Nine articles ("Assurance," "Baptism," "Ecumenical movement," "Eucharist," "Faith and Order," "Jiingel, Eberhard," "Methodist thought," "Newbigin, Lesslie," "Wesley, John and Charles") in Adrian Hastings, ed., The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press). 208 Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press).

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CONTRIBUTORS AND EDITORS

MICHAEL BAME BAME is dean of the faculty of evangelical theology and professor of systematic theology at the University of Cameroon in Yaounde. He is the author of four books on various aspects of dogmatic theology and Christian spirituality, including Death and Everlasting Life (All Africa Conference of Churches, 1994). FRANS JOZEF VAN BEECK has been a Jesuit since 1948 and a priest since 1963. From 1985 until 1998 he was John Cardinal Cody Professor of theology at Loyola University Chicago, where he now teaches as a senior professor. He is completing volume II/4 of a work-inprogress: God Encountered: A Contemporary Catholic Systematic Theology (Liturgical Press, 1989-). BRUNO BURKI is Professeur Titulaire of liturgy at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and a Reformed pastor serving in Neuchatel. From 1969-79 he taught at the University of Cameroon. His most recent article, an ecumenical assessment of ordination in Switzerland, appears in Jahrbuch fur Liturgik und Hymnologie (1998). PHILIP w. BUTIN is pastor of Shepherd of the Valley Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and teaches theology and church history in the Ecumenical Institute for Ministry. His Ph.D. dissertation, written under Geoffrey Wainwright, was published as Revelation, Redemption, and Response: Calvin's Trinitarian Understanding of the DivineHuman Relationship (Oxford, 1995). TERESA BERGER is associate professor of ecumenical theology at the Divinity School of Duke University. Her interests lie at the intersection of ecumenical, liturgical, and feminist perspectives. Her most recent book is Women's Ways of Worship: Gender Analysis and Liturgical History (Liturgical Press, 1999). ROBERT CATHEY, a minister of the Presbyterian Church, is associate professor of theology at McCormick Theological Seminary. He wrote his Ph.D. dissertation under Geoffrey Wainwright at Duke University. He is cofounder of the Society for Scriptural Reasoning, an interfaith group engaged in philosophical and theological reflection on scriptural texts. He is working on a book on trinitarian doctrine and truth-claims. RICHARD CLUTTERBUCK is principal of the West of England Ministerial Training Course. He trained for the ministry at the Queen's College, Birmingham, where Geoffrey Wainwright was among his teachers. His doctorate was on the development of doctrine, and he is currently working on a book on the Methodist doctrinal tradition. 295

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C O N T R I B U T O R S AND EDITORS

DAVID s, CUNNINGHAM is associate professor of theology and ethics at Seabury-West' ern Theological Seminary. His Ph.D. dissertation, written under Geoffrey Wainwright, was published as Faithful Persuasion: In Aid of a Rhetoric of Christian Theology (Notre Dame, 1991). His most recent book is These Three Are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology (Blackwell, 1998). RALPH DEL COLLE is assistant professor of theology at Marquette University. His areas of concentration are Christology, pneumatology, trinitarian theology, and the theology of grace. Geoffrey Wainwright was a member of his doctoral committee; his dissertation was published as Christ and the Spirit: Spirit-Christology in Trinitarian Perspective (Oxford, 1994). GUNTHER GASSMANN was the director of the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches from 1984 to 1994. Since his retirement he has served as a visiting professor at Lutheran Theological Seminary (Gettysburg), the universities of Tartu (Estonia) and Rostock (Germany), and elsewhere. His latest book is Introduction to the Lutheran Confessions (Fortress, 1999). EBERHARD JUNGEL is professor of systematic theology and philosophy at the University of Tubingen. His publications include Gottes Sein ist im Werden and Gott als Geheimnis der Welt (Mohr, 1965 and 1977; ET 1975 and 1983), and four major collections of theological essays (Kaiser, 1972, 1980, 1982, and 1990), many of which appear in translated collections (Westminster, 1986; T & T. Clark, 1989 and 1994). JAMES F. KAY, a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), is Joe R. Engle Associate Professor of Homiletics and Liturgies at Princeton Theological Seminary. The editor of The Princeton Seminary Bulletin and author of numerous publications, he gave the 1997 Warrack Lecture in St. Andrews, Scotland. WALTER KLAIBER is bishop of the United Methodist Church in Germany. He served as lecturer in New Testament Theology and dean of the UMC seminary in Reutlingen for 18 years. His most recent books are Ruf und Antwort and Gelebte Gnade (Christliches Verlagshaus, 1990 and 1993). The former was translated into English as Call and Response (Abingdon, 1997); a translation of the latter is in preparation. LUCAS LAMADRID is assistant professor of philosophy and theology and assistant dean of students at Bellarmine College. He wrote his Ph.D. dissertation under Geoffrey Wainwright at Duke University, and has published articles on systematic theology, hermcneutics, and recent Roman Catholic thought. He is currently writing a book on John Henry Newman's philosophy of education. NICHOLAS LOSSKY is professor of English intellectual history at the University of ParisNanterre, and professor of church history at the Orthodox Theological Institute of St. Sergius. He also directs the Institut superior d'etudes oecumeniques at the Catholic Institute in Paris. He is the author of Lancelot Andrewes: lepredicateur (1555-1626) (Cerf, 1986; ET, Oxford, 1991). EDWARD T. OAKES, s.j., is associate professor of religious studies at Regis University in Denver. He wrote his doctoral dissertation at Union Theological Seminary; Geoffrey Wainwright was his initial director and a member of his committee. He is the author of Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Continuum, 1995), the translator of three of Balthasar's books, and the editor of his German Essays on Religion (Continuum, 1994). DAVID N. POWER, a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, is Shakespeare Caldwell-Duval Professor of systematic theology at the Catholic University of America, where he has taught since 1977. He has published widely in systematic and sacramental theology, and is currently working on a book that develops a hermeneutical approach to sacramental traditions and celebration. DIETRICH RITSCHL is professor of theology at the University of Heidelberg and director of the Ecumenical Institute there. A Presbyterian minister, he has also worked in his ria-

CONTRIBUTORS AND EDITORS

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tive Switzerland, and in Scotland and the United States; and he has served as a visiting professor in Australia, Italy, and elsewhere. He has published widely in the fields of systematic theology and medical ethics. RICHARD SCHAEFFLER served until his retirement as professor at the University of Bochum. He is the author of sixteen books on the philosophy of history, philosophy of religion, and theological epistemology, most recently Erfahrung ah Dialog mit der Wirklichkeit and Religionsphilosophie, 2d edition (Alber, 1995 and 1997). DIRK J. SMIT is senior professor of Christian studies at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. His work focuses on Reformed theology, Church unity, and political theology. He is the author of a number of scholarly and popular works in the fields of dogmatics, ethics, hermeneutics, and preaching. BYRON STUHLMAN is rector of Grace Episcopal Church, Waterville, New York. His Ph.D. dissertation, written under Geoffrey Wainwright at Duke University, was published as two books: Redeeming the Time: An Historical and Theological Study of the Church's Rule of Prayer (Church Hymnal, 1992) and Occasions of Grace (Church Publishing, 1995). MARY TANNER is general secretary of the Church of England's Council for Christian Unity. She has served on ARCIC and other ecumenical commissions, and since 1991 has been moderator of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. She taught Hebrew and Old Testament at Hull and Bristol Universities and has contributed to many books and journals on ecumenism. GEORGE TAVARD, a member of the Augustinians of the Assumption since 1943, is professor emeritus of theology at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio and has served distinguished professorships at Marquette University, the Catholic University of America, and elsewhere. A prolific author, his latest book is The Thousand Faces of the Virgin Mary (Liturgical, 1996). DAVID TRIPP is pastor of Salem United Methodist Church, Bremen, Indiana, and adjunct faculty member (in liturgies and United Methodist studies) at the Associated United Biblical Seminary. He was previously a circuit minister in the British Methodist Church. He has published in various periods of liturgical history, including the Covenant Service. KAREN WESTERFIELD TUCKER, a United Methodist elder, is assistant professor of liturgical studies at the Divinity School of Duke University. An assistant editor of Studia Liturgica, she commissioned and compiled The Sunday Service of the Methodists (Kingswood, 1996), and is currently writing a history of American Methodist worship for Oxford University Press. TELFORD WORK is a teaching pastor at Christian Assembly (Foursquare Pentecostal) in Eagle Rock, California, and has served on the visiting faculty at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is currently completing his doctoral dissertation, "Living and Active: A Trinitarian Theology of Scripture," at Duke University under Geoffrey Wainwright. NORMAN YPOUNG is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology and Fellow of Queen's College, University of Melbourne. He has served on many ecumenical dialogues and headed the Methodist negotiations in the founding of the Uniting Church in Australia. His publications include History and Existential Theology (Westminster, 1969) and Creator, Creation and Faith (Collins, 1976).

INDEX OF NAMES

Abercombie, Nigel, 7 Ackermann, Denise, 230 Alberigo, G., 134 Alexander, Cecil Frances, 51, 54 Allchin, A. M., 32 Allmen, Jean-Jacques von, 82, 93, 135 Althaus, Paul, 178 Ambrose of Milan, St., 41, 53 Anderson, George, 163 Andrewes, Lancelot, 26, 29, 31 Anicet, Pope, 127 Anselm of Canterbury, St., 25 Aquinas. See Thomas Aquinas, St. Aristotle, 36, 38, 180 Arius, 41, 53 Arranz, Miguel, 93 Athanasius the Great, St., 53 Augustine of Hippo, St., 19, 29, 52-54, 70, 73-74, 181 Austin, J. L., 38 Badr, Habib, 167 Balthasar, Hans Urs von, xxii—xxiii, 231-40 Bam, Brigalia Hlophe, 224 Banana, Canaan, 141 Bardaisan, 41 Barna, George, 182, 194 Barot, Madeleine, 223 Barth, Karl, xxii, 23, 71—73, 102, 170, 173, 178, 181, 232-34, 237-39, 279 Bartholomew of Constantinople, Ecumenical Patriarch, 128 Basil of Caesarea, St., 20, 54, 88, 102, 105, 279 Bate, H. N., 229 Battles, Ford Lewis, 74, 77, 187, 250 Baumker, Wilhelm, 54 Beauduin, Dom Lambert, 276—77

Beck, B., 270 Beck, Edmund, 53 Bediako, Kwame, 142, 147 Benedict of Nursia, St., 88 Berger, Peter, 174 Berkhof, Louis, 183, 194 Berthold von Regensburg, 42, 54 Best, Thomas F., 23, 230 Birmele, Andre, 125, 208 Bishop, Edmund, 4, 7 Blaschke, Klaus, 259 Bliss, Kathleen, 223, 227, 229 Bloesch, Donald, 174 Boethius, 177, 180 Boff, Leonardo, 203, 205 Bonafede, M., 135 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 22 Boogaart, Thomas A., 115 Borelli, John, 125 Bosch, David, 140, 141, 146 Boswell, John, 93 Bouyer, Louis, 92—93 Bowden, John, 146 Bowmer, John C., 113 Bracknell, C. W., 114 Bradshaw, Paul F., 115 Brandner, Tobias, 230 Bretall, Robert W., 105 Bright, Bill, 194 Brightman, F. E., 114 Brown, Dale W., 168, 174 Brown, Neil, 230 Brown, Raymond E., 195 Brummer, Vincent, 77 Brunner, Peter, 82, 93 Bruno, Giordano, 244 Bubcr, Martin, 38 Bucer, Martin, 107, 110-12, 114-15 298

INDEX OF NAMES

Buddha, 234 Buhler, Pierre, 134 Bulgakov, Sergei, 94 Bultmann, Rudolf, 101-2, 105 Bunting, Jabez, 106 Burger, J. D., 134 Burgess, Joseph, 163 Burkhalter, Carmen, 134 Burns, Paul, 205 Butler, John F., 3, 7 Calvin, John, xxii, 19, 43—44, 54, 73—74, 77, 96, 131-32, 155, 161, 189, 190, 205, 247, 250 Capelle, Bernard, 53 Carile, Sergio, 113 Cartwright, Michael, 173, 194 Casel, Dom Odo, 92 Cavert, Twila McCrea, 223 Chakko, Sarah, 223 Champion, Pierre, 162 Charlesworth, James Hamilton, 53 Chemnitz, Martin, 118 Chopp, Rebecca, 230 Christlieb, Theodor, 260 Chung Hyun Kyung, 224 Clark, Elizabeth A., 93 Clausnitzer, Tobias, 47 Clement of Alexandria, 142 Clifford, N. Keith, 259 Cloete, G. D., 279 Cochlovius, Joachim, 260 Cochrane, Charles, 197 Conant, Newton C., 114 Congar, Yves, 232—33 Cope, Brian E., 230 Copernicus, Nicolas, 244 Courvoisier, Jacques, 115 Cranmer, Thomas, 110-11, 115 Crossan, John Dominic, 147 Cullmann, Oscar, 72 Dallen, James, 94 Damaskinos, Metropolitan, 128 Danielou, Jean, 233 Darwin, Charles, 244 Dauthendey, Max, 247 David, 51, 248 Davies, Rupert E., 251, 252, 259 Dayton, Donald W., 193-94 De Clerck, Paul, 22, 115 De Lubac, Henri, 232—33, 239 Deletra, D., 54 Descartes, Rene, 141 Diognetus, 40, 53

299

Dionysius the Areopagite. See PseudoDionysius Dix, Dom Gregory, 85 Dixon, James, 114 Dixon, Richard Watson, 114 Dodd, C. H., 194 Donnelly, Jessica L., 173 Dubied, Pierre-Luigi, 135 Dudley-Smith, Timothy, 44 Dunkle, William F., 114 Duns Scotus, John, 154—55 Dupre, Louis, 33—34, 38 Duval, A., 134 Eagleson, John, 279 Eck, Diana, 171-72, 174 Eckhart, Meister, 34, 38 Edwards, Jonathan, 141 Eldridge, John, 173 Eldridge, Lizzie, 173 Eliot, T. S., 37 Emory, Robert, 114 Engelhardt, Klaus, 260 Ensley, F. Gerald, 261 Entwhistle, Joseph, 114 Ephraem the Syrian, St., 53 Erasmus, 239 Erickson, John H., 125 Eusebius of Caesarea, 53 Evagrius Ponticus, 27 Farley, Edward, 77 Farley, Wendy, 77 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 234 Fink, Peter E., 92 Fisch, Thomas, 93 Fisher, J. D. C., 94 Fitzgerald, Sally, 39 Fleet, W. Fletcher, 93 Florovsky, George, 28 Foster, Stephen, 136 Friedman, Jonathan, 147 Fullerton, Kemper, 249 Galileo, 249 Gardner, Lucy, 223 Garrett, John, 146 Gaudemet, Jean, 134 Geertz, Clifford, 146 George, A. Raymond, 4, 7, 95, 99, 104, 105, 113 Gilkey, Langdon, 77, 174 Goranson, Goran, 260 Gordon, Arthur, 113 Gore, Charles, 106, 113

300

INDEX OF NAMES

Gorle, James, 54 Grabner, John D., 113 Graham, Billy, 186, 194 Grant, John Webster, 259 Grayston, Kenneth, 115 Gregory of Nazianzus, St., 25, 31-32 Grenz, Stanley, 194 Grey, Mary, 230 Grindal, Gracia, 50 Gunton, Colin, 77, 190, 194, 195 Gusmer, Charles W., 94 Gutierrez, Gustavo, 173, 174, 279 Gy, Pierre-Marie, 115 Haag, Martine, 135 Hageman, Howard G., 47 Hahn, Udo, 260 Halifax, Lord, 128 Hammann, Gottfried, 135 Hanssens, Jean Michel, 115 Hansson, Mats J., 77 Hating, Bernard, 174 Harmon, Nolan B., 114 Hauerwas, Stanley, r46, 164-65, 170-71, 173-74 Haussling, Angelus, O.S.B., 4 Havea, John, 146 Hegel, G. W. F., 180, 238 Heim, Karl, 249, 250 Heinrich, Gerd, 259 Heinzelmann, Gertrud, 229 Heller, Dagmar, 23 Heron, Alasdair I. C., 189, 194 Herzel, Susannah, 229 Heschel, Abraham, 82, 93, 249 Hickman, Frank S., 115 Hippolytus, St., 53 Hodge, Charles, 184, 194 Hodges, H. A., 98 Hollenweger, Walter, 143, 147 Hooker, Richard, 29 Hooykaas, R., 249 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 37 Hiiffmeier, Wilhelm, 259 Hulme, Paul, 114 Hume, Basil, 102-3, 105 Hus, Jan, 94 Hybels, William, 186 Ignatius of Antioch, St., 6 Indo, Caridad, 279 Irenaeus of Lyon, St., 13, 29, 72, 127, 236 Jaki, Stanley, 235 James, Henry, 37

James, Mary Allen, 222 Jarnett-Kerr, Martin, 249 Jeffery, R. M. C., 7 Jenson, Robert, 12, 16-18, 22-23 John Chrysostom, St., 27, 93 John XXIII, Pope, 221 Johnston, Robert K., 193, 194 Jungmann, Joseph Andreas, 115 Kant, Immanuel, 238 Kaufman, Gordon, 75 Kavanagh, Aidan, 22 Keble, John, 50-51, 54 Kegley, Charles W., 105 Kelbley, Charles, 173 Kepler, Johannes, 242, 249 Kesich, Lydia, 94 Kierkegaard, Soren, 180 Kilvert, Francis, 7 Kinnamon, Michael, 230 Klockener, Martin, 130 Koch, Kurt, 134 Kohl, Margaret, 205 Kohler, Edouard, 134 Komonchak, Joseph A., 239 Krailsheimer, A. J., 249 Lathrop, Gordon, 23 Latukefu, Sione, 146 Lawson, Albert Brown, 113-14 Leete, Frederick DeLand, 114 Legrand, Herve, 135 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 242 Leith, John H., 12, 14-16, 22—23 Lenhardt, L., 115 Leo the Great, St., 81 Leo XIII, Pope, 128 Leuenberger, Robert, 135 Lcvinas, Emmanuel, 38 Li, Peter, 44 Lilienfeld, Fairy von, 260 Lindbeck, George, 70, 274 Locke, John, 141, 238 Lombard, Peter, 34 Longdan, Leicester R., 259-61 Lossky, Vladimir, xix, 25, 28, 31—32 Luther, Martin, 45, 46, 50, 96-97, 152, 155, 157, 159-61, 179, 246, 247, 249 Macquarrie, John, 174 Marcel, Gabriel, 77, 105 Martimort, A. G., 93 Maskell, William, 54 Maxwell, William D., 54 May, Melanie A., 229-30

INDEX OF NAMES

McClendon, James Wm., 146, 188-89, 191, 194-95 McEnroy, Carmel Elizabeth, 229 McGrath, Alister, 12-13, 18, 22 Mclntyre, John, 22 McNeill, John T., 250 Mcquiban, T., 7 Meister Eckhart. See Eckhart Metz, Johann-Baptist, 174 Meyendorff, John, 26, 31 Meyer, Harding, 135 Micraelius, J., 180 Miguez-Bonino, Jose, 261 Milbank, John, 174 Min Hock Lim, Philip, 54 Minus, P. M., Jr., 261 Moltmann, Jurgen, 137, 146, 166, 173-74, 201, 203, 205 Montgomery, Helen Barrett, 222 Morse, Christopher, 12, 18-20, 22, 23 Mouw, Richard J., 193, 195 Mowbray, David, 49 Muhammed, 194, 234 Miiller, Christine-Ruth, 259 Muller, Gottlob, 256 Murphy, Austin, 163 Murray, John Courtney, 232 Newbigin, Lesslie, xxii, 171, 188—89, 194— 206, 230 Newman, John Henry, 140, 146, 237 Newton, Isaac, 242 Niebuhr, H. Richard, 146, 164-74, 194 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 174 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 238 Niles, D. T., 261 Nissiotis, Nikos, 3 Nocent, Adrien, 93 Norgren, William A., 125 Nuelsen, John L, 113 Nussberger, Cornelia, 259 O'Connor, Flannery, 37 Oden, Thomas, 12—13, 18, 22, 259—61 Ogden, Schubert, 77 Ohlemacher, Jorg, 260 Okot p'Bitek, 242—43, 249 Origen, 6 Osborn, G., 54 Ostervald, Jean-Frederic, 128, 134 Outler, Albert C., 114, 253-54, 256, 259-61 Palmer, William, 112, 115 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, 22, 178, 180—81, 207, 217

301

Parvey, Constance F., 230 Pascal, Blaise, 242, 249 Paul of Samosata, 41 Paul the Apostle, St., 53, 56, 57, 93, 97, 144-45, 170, I92, 195, 247 Peabody, Lucy, 222 Peale, Norman Vincent, 113 Peterson, P. A., 114 Peterson, Valerie, 54 Pfeiffer, Franz, 54 Philip van Lansbergen, 249 Phillips, A. P., 280 Pidoux, Pierre, 54 Pike, James, 69-70 Pius IX, Pope, 157 Pius XII, Pope, 24, 105, 233 Plato, 176-77 Plomer, William, 7 Plotinus, 176-77 Polycarp of Smyrna, St., 127 Power, Joseph, 100 Prenter, Regin, 22 Prestige, G. Leonard, 113 Prior, Randall, 146 Prosper of Aquitaine, St., 2, 19, 20, 22 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, 25, 34, 41, 53. Puglisi, Giacomo, 135 Quasten, Johannes, 53 Quere, Ralph W., 115 Quillian, Joseph D., Jr., 114 Rahner, Karl, xxii, 171 Raiser, Konrad, 196—97, 200—205, 230 Rasmusson, Arne, 174 Redeker, Martin, 181 Regan, Hilary, 173, 174 Ricoeur, Paul, 173 Robinson, N. H. G., 58 Roelvink, Henrik, O.F.M., 125 Routley, Erik, 54 Ruether, Rosemary Radford, 174 Runcie, Robert, 267 Rusch, William G., 125 Russell, Letty, 195 Rutherford, Richard, 94 Ruusbroec, Jan, 34, 38 Sanders, E. P., 147 Sarot, Marcel, 77 Schaap, David P., 54 Scharbau, Friedrich-Otto, 259—60 Schleiermacher, F. D. E., 137, 177, 187, 207, 234

302

INDEX OF NAMES

Schlink, Edmund, 22 Schmemann, Alexander, 82, 84—85, 93 Schreiter, Robert J., 146, 230 Schroder, Rudolf Alexander, 46 Schwobel, Christoph, 75, 77 Scriven, Charles, 165, 169-70, 173-74 Semmons, B. L., 113 Shorter, Aylward, 146 Sicard, Damien, 94 Simeon the New Theologian, St., 25 Simmons, Thomas Frederick, 54 Skerry, Mary Theresilde, 239 Smith, Robert Pearsal, 256 Sommer, C. Ernst, 260 Speyr, Adrienne von, 233 Srawley, James Herbert, 4, 7 Stacey, David, 112, 115 Stassen, Glen H., 173-74 Stead, G. Christopher, 53 Steckcl, Karl, 260 Stevenson, Kenneth, 93 Stiller, Erhard, 259 Stone, Samuel J., 51-52, 54 Stortz, Martha Ellen, 115 Strickland, W. P., 114 Strohl, Henry, 249 Sugirtharajah, R. S., 141, 147 Swete, Henry Barclay, 4 Szabo, Istvan, 77 Taft, Robert, 53, 93 Taliai, Helen, 146 Talley, Thomas, 94 Tanner, Kathryn, 166, 171, 173-74 Tanner, Mary, 259, 273, 279 Tatian, 142 Tauler, John, 34, 38 Tertullian, 142, 144 Thierry, J. J., 53 Thomas Aquinas, St., 29, 33-34, 153, 155, 178 Thurian, Max, 128, 135 Tillich, Paul, xxii, 100-101, 105, 137, 207 Tjorhom, Ola, 125 Tolkien, J. R. R., 115 Toon, Peter, 115 Torrance, Alan J., 173-74 Tracy, David, 70, 137 Traitler, Reinhild, 229 Troelrsch, Ernst, 189, 260 Turner, John Muncey, 7

Valyi Nagy, Ervin, 77 van den Brink, Gijsbert, 77 van den Brom, Luco, 77 Van Buren, Paul, 69 van't Spijker, Willem 115 Vanhoozer, Kevin, 204 Vischer, Lukas, 217 Visser't Hooft, W. A., 204, 229 Voigt, Karl Heinz, 260 Volf, Miroslav, 187-88, 191, 194-95 Voltaire, 238 Wainwright, Geoffrey, xix—xxiv, 3—7, 11— 12, 21-25, 37) 41, 55, 64, 69-71, 9596, 99, 104—5, 110, 116, 129, 135, 138-39, 144, 162, 164—74, 182, 200, 204,

207—8, 2 2 1 , 229-32, 238—39,

260-62, 270-72, 274, 276—78

Walker, Alan, 261 Watkin-Jones, Howard, 4, 7 Webb, Pauline, 229 Welgel, Gustav, 232 Went, John S., 125 Wesley, Charles, 5, 29, 31, 48, 54, 96, 102, 104, 111, 136, 161, 163, 253, 262 Wesley, John, xxii, 7, 29, 54, 77, 96—98, 104—5, 107—8, 111, 113—14, 136, 141, 160-63,251,253.255-56, 25860, 262, 274, 277 Weyer, Michel, 252 Whaling, Frank, 163 Whitaker, E. C., 93, 114 Whitall, Hannah, 256 White, James F. 114 White, Vernon, 75 Wightman, W. M., 114 Wiles, Maurice, 12, 22-23, 75, 77 Willaime, Jean-Paul, 135 Williams, Raymond, 166, 173 Willimon, William H., 164—65, 173—74 Wilson, R. A., 146 Winkworth, Catherine, 47 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 37 Wood, Harold, 146 Wright, G. Ernest, 77 Wright, N. T., 147 Wuthrich, Paul, 260 Yeager, D. M., 173 Yoder, John Howard, 164—70, 173, 194 Zernov, Nicholas, 98 Zwingli, Ulrich, 155

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

absolution, 89, 152 act(ion)s of God, xxii, 72, 75, 97, 145, 202 adoptive brotherhood, 87, 91, 93 African Methodist Episcopal Church, 107 Adelphopoiesis. See adoptive brotherhood Aix-la-Chapelle, Council of, 42 Aldersgate experience (Wesley), 161, 250 Amsterdam (WCC Assembly), 223, 226 Anabaptist Christianity, 6, 155, 164-65, 169—71, 174, 260; see also Baptist Christianity anamnesis, 92, 102, 211 Anglican Christianity, 3—4, 6, 29, 32, 47, 96, 104, 106-7, 111-I2, 115, 11925, 128-29, 136, 159, 208, 217, 22324, 251-52, 260, 264-66, 268-69 Anglican-Lutheran relations, 121-23 Anglican-Methodist relations, 262-70 Anglican-Orthodox relations, 119, 125 Anglican—Roman Catholic relations, 159, 217 anointing, 86, 88—91, 94 apartheid, 271-72 apophaticism, xix, xxi, 33-35, 38, 172 apostles, 2, 13, 14, 41, 118, 156, 266 Apostles' Creed, 41—54; see also Nicene Creed apostolic: faith, 5, 121, 123, 214-17, 26566, 274—76; mission, 17, 123, 269; succession, 121—26, 128, 130, 133, 156, 237, 266; tradition, 17—18, 116— 18, 123—25, 156, 212 Arius, Arianism, xxii, 24, 41, 53 assurance of faith, 75, 151—63, 247 authority, 12, 17-18, 88, 124, 133, 157, 159—61, 198, 202, 242, 246, 248, 265

Balamand Confession, 121 baptism, 5, 14, 15, 17, 18, 23, 27, 31, 42, 51, 84—86, 89—92, 97, 100, 103, 117—18, 120, 123—24, 135, 138, 143, 164, 184—85, 186, 188, 190—92, 209—12, 217, 254—55, 262, 264—65, 267, 273, 276; of infants, 14—15, 18, 164 Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Lima document), 100, 105, 130—31, 135, 138, 209-12, 216-17, 262, 264-65, 270, 273, 276 Baptist Christianity, 6, 129, 174, 186, 188, 189, 191-92, 194, 222, 268 Barmen Declaration, 72, 202, 279 Belhar Declaration, 271-81 belief: the act of believing (fides qua creditur), 14-16, 18-20, 36, 40-41, 52, 58, 70-71, 11I-I2, 137, 153, 158, 187, 191, 199, 207, 212, 237— 38, 241-50, 258, 279; belief(s) of the Church (fides quae creditur), 15—19, 21, 24—26, 29—30, 40—41, 48—49, 52— 53, 101-2, 108, 111, 118, 134, 13943. 153, 157-59, 182, 202, 207-9, 215-16, 235, 241-50, 264-66, 27176; see also lex credendi Bible, 5, 15, 25, 70, 72, 75-76, 95, 109, 114, 141, 142, 168, 182—83, 185, 239, 241, 246—47, 249, 277—78; see also Scripture biblical interpretation, 13, 76, 144 bilateral dialogues, xxiii, 116, 118, 120, 151, 158, 207-8, 262—63, 268-69, 274> 277; see also ecumenical dialogues; multilateral dialogues; and under specific denominational headings

303

304

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

bishop(s). See episcopacy blessing, 6, 83—93 Boole of Common Prayer, 50-51, 69, 81-86, 90—93, 96, 98, 104, 106, 114, 136 British Methodist Church, 99, 112 Byzantine Christianity, 31, 83, 87, 89—91, 93—94; see also Eastern Orthodox Christianity Canberra (WCC Assembly), 217, 224, 227 Cappadocian Fathers, 34, 201, 205 catechesis, 42, 44, 51, 278 catechism(s), 48, 50, 51, 77, 92, 100, 279 Catholic(s). See Anglican Christianity; catholicity of the Church; Eastern Orthodox Christianity; Roman Catholic Christianity catholicity of the Church, 12, 18, 28, 44, 120, 128-35, !36~44, 173, 230, 254, 256-57 celibacy, 86-88, 91, 93 certainty. See assurance of faith charity, 5, 153, 155, 273 Christ, xix-xxiv, 14-16, 19, 21, 24, 27-31, 37, 44-47, 49-53. 57. 63, 70-73, 75 76, 82-85, 87, 89, 92-93, 97-104, 107, 109-12, 117-26, 130-33, 13839, 142-47, 152—74, 180, 182—204, 206, 208-15, 217, 227, 230, 232—37, 239, 247, 254-58, 263-67, 269, 27273, 276; see also christology, crucifixion, resurrection Christ and Culture (Niebuhr), 164—74, 194 Christian teaching, xix, 11—14, 16, 18—22, 139, 156, 255 Christian theology, xix, 4, 14-15, 22, 144, 146, 182; see also dogrna(tics); systematic theology christocentrism, 190, 197, 200, 203, 233, 236-37 christology, 31, 41, 84, 111, 165, 167, 174, 183, 190, 192, 203, 206-9, 212, 215, 234, 237 church(es), 41—42, 51—54, 70—73, 81-94, 101-4, 116-26, 131, 134, 137-46, 156—74, 182-95, 196—204, 212—16, 221-33, 235-42, 251-80; as mystery, 213, 235; mission, 16, 197-98; practice(s), 13, 15; unity of, 196, 277-78; see also authority; ecclesiology; ecumenism; tradition; and under specific denominations Church of England, 96, 251-52, 258, 26270; see also Anglican Christianity Church of South India, 99, 196, 204

common confession, 5, 209, 215, 217, 269 communion, xx—xxii, 5, 26—28, 31, 45, 83, 85, 88, 89, 95-100, 102-3, 105, 11628, 133, 138, 184, 187—88, 191, 194, 207—9, 211—15, 227. 240, 251, 254, 257, 262, 264—66, 268-70, 278, 280— 81 community, 3—6, 13—21, 27—31, 43, 53, 55, 59-64, 85-88, 91, 94, 101, 107, 113, 116-18, 121-22, 138-39, 142, 144, 160, 162, 170-71, 174, 178, 182-83, 188—94, 198-99, 201, 211—14, 224, 226—30, 237, 240, 254, 256, 260, 264-66, 273—80 concelebration. See eucharist; intercommunion confession of faith, 26, 156, 209 confirmation, 27, 86, 89, 94, 238, 255 congregation(s), xix, 6, 7, 15, 19—20, 41—42, 45, 49, 53-54, 112, 136, 187-88, 197, 200, 241, 255, 260, 263, 271; see also local church(es) Congregational Christianity, 6, 99, 107; see also specific denominations consecration, 85, 90, 93, 98, 101 contemplation, 25, 37, 185 contextuality, 136—44, 275 conversion, 4, 15, 85, 92, 109—10, 112, 117, 120-21, 124, 143, 184, 191-92, 199 Counter-Reformation, 160, 232, 237, 239; see also Trent, Council of creation, 19, 28, 48, 52, 57, 62, 71, 75-76, 84, 92, 98, 101, 117, 137, 142, 145, 178-79, 196-98, 201, 211-16, 224, 243-47, 275-76 creator, 33, 70, 82, 96, 98, 112, 172, 207—8, 244, 247, 249 creed(s), 5, 17, 41-54, 71, 73, 89-91, 145, 169, 209, 215-17, 237, 274, 276; see also Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed crucifixion, cross of Christ, 45, 82, 90-92, 97, 100, 137, 146, 211—15 culture, 3, 14, 36, 85-88, 90, 92, 136-47, 164-74, 185, 194, 197, 199, 200, 226, 231, 239, 275 daily office, 40, 42, 81, 93 deacon(s). See diaconate death, 46-48, 65, 70-71, 76, 82, 88-89, 9192, 109, 120, 161, 179-80, 209, 215; of Jesus, 71, 98-99, 120, 126, 158, 167, 203, 210, 212; see also crucifixion, cross of Christ; suffering Decalogue, 42, 51 deification, 29, 73, 77, 137

INDEX OF SUBJECTS denomination(s), 4, 96, 108-10, 185, 188, 221—22, 225—29, 232, 241, 252-53, 255, 257—58, 271, 273; see also specific denominations determinism, 73, 74, 166 development, of doctrine, xxiii, 11—13, 140, 202, 235-37; of practices, 96, 140 diaconate, no, 127-29, 132, 156, 192-93, 195, 264-67 diakonia, 27, 193; see also diaconate dialogue, as method, 14, 52, 59-64, 199; see also bilateral dialogues; ecumenical dialogues; interfaith dialogue; and specific denominations disciple(ship), 31, 94, 99, 108, 116—18, 120— 21, 145, 162, 165, 167, 169—70, 184, 185, 188, 191-92, 199, 210, 244, 263 discipline, 3, 15, 109-111, 114, 191, 253, 254, 258, 265, 273 diversity, 28, 30, 122, 171, 192, 197, 22628, 264 doctrine, xix-xxiv, 6, 11-24, 31, 40-41, 45, 49, 52-53. 69-70, 77, 107-11, 114, 1 1 7 — 1 9 , 122, 123, 137, 138, 141—43, 146,

149, 152, 154—62, 172, 183,

184,

192, 194,

226,

241-43, 249, 253, 258, 259,

208, 210, 215,

2l6,

272-75, 280-81; see also systematic theology; and specific doctrines, e.g., Christ, Holy Spirit, Trinity dogma(tics), 5, 15, 17—19, 22, 25—26, 31, 37, 72, 157, 160-61, 223, 242, 274, 277; see also Christian theology; systematic theology doxology, xix-xxiv, 5, 7, 11, 20-23, 31, 40, 48. 52-53, 55-71, 73, 75, 77, 139, 144, 162—66, 170, 173—74, 207, 230, 271, 274—75; see also glorification, praise dualism, 141, 197, 228 Dutch Reformed Church, 271-72, 278 Eastern Orthodox Christianity, 26—31, 69, 93-94, 98, no, 139, 165; see also Byzantine Christianity ecclesial communion, 117—20, 211 ecclesiology, xxii, 111, 113, 122, 125, 160, 168-70, 183—94, 196, 197, 201, 203, 208, 210, 212, 214, 216, 225-26, 228, 234-36, 253, 256, 267, 272-73, 278—79, 281; see also church; ecumenism; and under specific denominations ecumenical council(s), 28, 157; see also under specific councils

305

ecumenical dialogue(s), 99-102, 121, 132, 151, 207-17, 228, 231-38, 273-74; see also bilateral dialogues; and under specific denominations ecumenical movement, xxiii, 24, 188, 196— 97, 200-201, 203, 208-9, 217, 22227, 229-30, 252, 268, 272, 276-77 ecumenical statement(s), 118, 125, 138, 208-9, 216, 265 ecumenical theology, xxii-xxiv, 138, 204, 231, 232, 262 ecumenism, xxi, xxiii, 103, 121, 125-28, 130-35, 138, 146, 170, 189, 192, 196, 201-5, 208, 217, 222-27, 230, 232, 233, 236, 240, 256, 263, 270, 272-74 Edinburgh (WCC Assembly), 209, 222 election, 71, 184, 187, 198, 235 Enlightenment, 140, 141, 202, 210, 234, 238 episcopacy, 86, 112, 115, 117, 119, 121—24, 127—28, 134, 152, 154—62, 264-67 episcopal, ordination, 124; oversight, 224, 263—67; succession, 117, 123, 266 (see also apostolic succession) Episcopal Church (USA), 86, 107, 114, 123, 256, 257; see also Anglican Christianity eschatology, xxi, 3, 5, 21, 34, 55, 65-66, 7576, 82, 84, 87, 101, 119, 147, 172, 175-81, 183, 192, 195-96, 215—16, 245, 260, 280 eternal life, 89, 92, 175-81, 209, 211 eternity, 46-47, 175—80 ethics, xx-xxiv, 12, 23, 36, 38, 73, 77, 140, 143, 165-73, 214, 216, 237, 273-77, 280 eucharist, xx, xxiii, 3, 5, 17, 21, 40—41, 55, 81-85, 88-93, 98-105, 116-26, 127, 130, 134-35, 138, 144-45, 147, 156, 185,

191-92, 194, 209, 211-12, 217,

262, 264, 265, 271-76, 279-81; see also communion; Lord's Supper eucharistic prayer, 83, 90, 99, 145; see also anamnesis Evangelical Congregational Church, 107 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 123 Evangelical Methodist Church, 107 Evangelical United Brethren Church, 107 evangelicalism, xxii, 183-84, 186-87, 19195 Evangelische Kirche, 107, 251, 256-57, 260 Evangelism. See conversion; mission; proclamation Evanston (WCC Assembly), 223

306

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

evil, 74, 77, 196, 201, 212 exegesis, 13, 21, 42, 76, 118, 240; see also Bible; Scripture faith. See belief; justification Faith and Order (WCC), xix, xxiii, 5, 23, 73, 75, 105, 111-12, 114, 123, 128, 130-31, 135, 135, 138, 207-17, 22324, 229, 274-76 Father, 7, 17—18, 20, 26—28, 30—31, 37-38, 42, 44-45, 47, 49, 51-53, 70, 76, 83, 84, 87, 91, 99, 116-20, 138, 160, 192, 197—200, 202, 215, 231, 244, 279 feminism, xxiii, 6, 138—39, 174, 221—30 feminist theology, 139, 222-30 First Vatican Council, 157—58, 160, 233 forgiveness of sins, 71, 137, 151-52, 211, 215 formation, 13, 42, 52, 71, 86, 129, 265, 278; see also discipline Fourth Lateran Council, 33 free church(es), 108—9, 114, 187, 188, 252, 256-57, 259-60 Free Methodist Church, 107 Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga, 136, 137 full communion, 117, 121—25, 251, 254, 257 future. See eschatology gay/lesbian issues, 19—20, 139, 174, 226-27 glorification, glory, 6, 34, 35, 55—59, 62, 63, 65-68, 70, 180, 187, 216; see also doxology; praise God. See acts of God; Christ; Father; Holy Spirit; trinity; will of God; Word of God Gospel, 6, 16—19, 23, 26—28, 85, 87, 88, 90— 92, 95, 97, 110, 111, 120, 121, 123, 124, 139, 143, 145, 146, 159, 168, 169, 174, 193, 198-200, 202-5, 209, 211-12, 217, 225, 226, 237-38, 242, 252, 255, 258, 264, 272-75, 278-81 grace, 6, 16, 17, 28, 29, 41, 48, 49, 56-58, 68, 81, 82, 92-94, 96, 97, 100, 105, 108, 109, 112, 117, 124, 128-34, 151—57, 162, 184—86, 188, 190-91, 199, 207, 209—11, 213—14, 217, 228, 258-59, 264, 267 Harare (WCC Assembly), 229 healing, 49, 88-89, 94, 197, 212, 226, 273, 278 heresy, 24, 239 hcrmeneutic(s), xxi, 14 -16, 21, 76, 138, 140-41, r66, 172, 208, 274

hierarchy, 18, 41, 53, 155—58, 187, 189, 263-64 Hinduism, 171-72, 200, 232 holiness, 6-7, 45, 49, 88, 92, 96, 117, 162, 188, 253, 255-58; see also sanctification Holy Spirit, xix, 4, 7, 17—18, 20, 26—31, 40, 42, 46—47, 50, 52—54, 82—83, 88, 91—92, 99—100, 102, 110, 112, 116-19, 138, 158-61, 175-79, 183-84, 188, 192, 194, 198-99, 203, 206—7, 212, 214—15, 224, 236, 246—47, 252, 279 Homosexuality. See gay/lesbian issues hope, 19, 50, 54, 71, 75-76, 95, 103, 15253- 155-56, 162, 165, 171, 195, 199200, 212—13, 216, 252, 258, 262—64, 266, 268, 272—73, 278—79 household(s), 86-88, 92-93; as ecclesial metaphor, xxiii, 6, 116, 122, 188, 195, 197, 204-5, 223, 227, 230, 251; see also upbuilding of the community hymn(s), xx, xxiii, 5-6, 15, 23, 29-32, 4054, 58, 95, 102, 105, 136, 163, 170, 275 icons, 28 imposition of hands. See laying on of hands incarnation, 28, 31, 101, 137, 143, 152, 200, 203, 215, 249 incorporation, 85, 189, 210; see also baptism inculturation, xxi, 143, 146, 188; see also culture infallibility, xxii, 6, 151, 157-62 infant baptism. See baptism intercommunion, 127, 128, 134, 240, 277, 280; see also eucharist interfaith dialogue, xxi, 168, 172, 205, 246— 47 interpretation, xxiii, 13, 17, 18, 21, 52, 70, 74—77, 109, 137, 144, 146, 169, 206, 211, 216, 236, 238, 241, 246, 274 Islam, 185, 194, 205, 232 Israel, 70, 71, 76, 82, 98, 142-44, 170, 248 Jesus. See Christ; christology Jews, Judaism, 63, 86, 137, 142-44, 147, 232 justification, 26, 93, 98, 118-19, 123, 125, 142, 151-63, 184, 187, 190-192, 209, 215, 217, 253, 258 kcrygma, 119, 194, 209 Kingdom of God. See Reign of God koinonia, xxiii, 23, 102-3, 116-26, 138, 197, 205, 208, 214, 277

INDEX OF SUBJECTS laity, 88, 96, 129, 132, 185, 227, 256 Lambeth (conference of Anglican bishops), 262, 266, 269 Laodicea, Council of, 41 Lausanne (WCC Assembly), 208, 223 law of belief. See lex credendi law of prayer. See lex orandi laying on of hands, 86, 90, 106-9,112,115, 124, 130-31, 133 lesbian(s). See gay/lesbian issues lex credendi, xx—xxiv, 2, 9, 11—23, 24, 30, 40-41, 52, 69, 275, 277 lex orandi, xx—xxiv, 9, 11—23, 24, 30, 69, 134, 275, 277 liberation theologies, 199, 225, 226 Lima (WCC Assembly), 5, 105, 130, 209; see also Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry Liturgical Movement, 7, 81, 82 liturgy, xx—xxiv, 3—7, 11—24, 27, 29—31, 33, 40-44, 50-51, 54, 71, 79, 81-99, 107—15, 122, 127, 130—34, 136—37, I4O-42, 145, 164-65, 170-71, 174,

207, 212, 222, 273—78; see also doxology, praise, worship local church(es), 4, 96, 119, 120, 122, 138, 185, 279; see also congregation(s) lordship of Christ, 73, 77, 196, 198, 201-3 Lord's Supper, 96—98, 118, 120, 124—25, 191-92, 194, 271-73, 276, 278, 280; see also eucharist Lumen Gentium (Vatican II), xxiv, 158, 235 Lund (WCC Assembly), 103, 209 Lutheran Christianity, xx, 6, 44, 46-47, 50, 82, 115, 118-25, 158-59, 163, 2079, 217, 251, 255—56, 268 Lutheran-Roman Catholic relations, 158, 163, 208, 217 magisterium, 18, 156, 193, 236 mariology, 151, 232, 237 marriage, 19—20, 86—88, 90, 93, 108 Marxism, 72—73, 76, 166, 173 Mary, Blessed Virgin, 45, 49, 145, 160, 237, 246 mass, 19, 42, 44—45, 54, 97, 158; see also eucharist, sacrifice means of grace, 97, 105, 199, 209; see also sacrament(s) metaphor(s), 37-39, 71, 75, 199, 249 metanoia. See repentance Methodist Christianity, xxiii, 3—7, 21, 29, 32, 54, 95-99, 102, 104-14, 116-17, 119, 121, 123—25, 136, 141, 146, 160, 162, 165, 171, 251—70, 274

307

Methodist Book of Worship, 107-8 Methodist Episcopal Church, 107, 114, 25657 Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 107, 114 Methodist Protestant Church, 107 Methodist—Roman Catholic relations, 116, 125, 262 ministry, 17, 27, 106—14, 117—24, 127—35, 174, 182-86, 192, 210-12, 263-69, 273; see also diaconate; episcopal; ordination; presbyteriate; priesthood mission, of Christ and the Spirit, 116, 152, 209, 215; of the church, 6, 16-17, 44, 112, 117, 123, 141, 183-85, 197-204, 208, 214, 254, 257-59, 273-79; see also missionary work missionary work, 93, 107, 140, 182, 184-85, 192, 195-96, 198, 200-201, 203-4, 206,

212, 222, 240, 251-52, 254-57,

263—67, 273, 280 Missionary Methodist Church of America, 107

modernism, 107, 147, 165, 235 modernity, 140, 141, 233, 238, 275 monasticism, 86, 88 Montreal (WCC Assembly), 209 Moravian Christianity, 260, 268, 270 multilateral dialogues, 207, 216, 264-65, 268-69, 274, 277 music, 30, 40-54, 137, 166; see also hymn(s); song(s) mutual recognition, 117, 122, 124, 127-31, 138, 215, 274 mystery, 25-31, 33-37, 81, 92, 104-5, 119, 122, 125—26, 198, 213—14, 235, 249 narrative(s), 97, 137, 141, 143-45, 172, 187, 191, 193, 222—23, 228 natural theology, 233, 239 negative theology. See apophaticism neo-Anabaptist Christianity, 164, 165, 16971 neo-orthodoxy, 165 New Testament, 15, 28, 40-41, 83, 86-87, 90, 97, 101, 105, 109, 116, 118, 133, 143-44. 159, 167, 170, 172, 174, 188, 191, 195, 235, 239, 248 Nicea, First Council of, 127, 145; Second Council of, 28 Nicene(-Constantinopolitan) Creed, 41, 44-47, 53, 215, 217, 276 nonviolence, 168—69 nouvelle theologie, 233

308

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

obedience, 6, 16, 48, 71, 96, 100, 110-12, 118, 120, 160, 167, 199, 213, 235, 239, 279; see also discipline oikoumene. See household(s) Old Catholic Christianity, 129 Old Testament, 235, 236 ordination, xx, 4, 20, 88, 106—15, 123-25, 127-35, 156, 186, 212, 224-25, 265, 267, 269; of women, 224, 267, 269 ordo salutis, 48, 182—95 Orthodox Church. See Eastern Orthodox Christianity Orthodox—Roman Catholic relations, 119 Ottawa (WCC Assembly), 272 papal, authority, 22, 157-61; doctrines, 232; infallibility, 6, 151, 157-61; primacy, 122, 138, 160 parachurch, 183-86, 192-93 paradox, 37, 103, 137, 139 particularity, 122, 138—47, 231—38 pastor, 115, 128-25; see also presbyter(iate), priest(hood) penance, 88, 94, 190 Pentecostal Christianity, 119, 121, 182 Pentecostal—Roman Catholic relations, 119—20 people of God, xix, 159, 168, 201, 235, 269; see also church perichoresis, 179, 198 phenomenology, 5, 81—82, 91 pluralism, 166, 171—72, 184, 196, 201, 204— 5, 274 politics, xxi, 72—74, 77, 136, 141, 165, 172— 74, 188—89, 192, 198, 201—2, 226, 258, 271, 275—76 pope(s), 24, 81, 105, 155, 157-58, 161, 221, 233; see also papal Porvoo Statement, 119, 120, 122—26, 268 postliberal theology, xxiii, 164-65, 169-71 postmodern theology, 165 postmodernity, 141 praise, xix-xxii, xxiv, 5, 11, 16, 17, 21, 29, 35, 40, 48, 53-67, 69-72, 75-76, 96, 145, 171, 208-9, 274-76; see also doxology; liturgy; prayer; worship praxis, xxi, 42, 142, 230 prayer, xix-xxiv, 2, 5-6, 11-17, 19-31, 36, 41, 50-53, 60, 69, 81-93, 95-99. 101, 104, 106-14, 117-18, 127, 13334, 136, 145, 168, 170, 185, 192, 199, 209, 222, 231-32, 252, 263, 269, 275, 277-80 Prayer Book. .See Book of Common Prayer

prayers of the people, 15, 20, 90—91 preaching. See proclamation predestination, 19, 73, 153, 158, 184 presbyter(iate), 88, 104, 106, 119, 128, 26465; see also pastor; priest Presbyterian Christianity, 15, 97—99, 164, 204, 222, 223, 252 priest(hood), 42, 82-83, 87, 97, 108, 113, 115, 121, 127-29, 134, 156, 187—88, 190, 194, 262, 267 priesthood of all believers, 113, 187—88 Primitive Methodist Church, no proclamation, preaching, 3—5, 16—17, 19, 49, 52, 71, 77, 91, 97, 100-101, 106, 110—12, 120—21, 123, 154, 160, 168, 185-86, 192, 194, 211-12, 214, 233, 238, 241, 243, 246-47, 253, 265, 273. 275, 278 Protestant Christianity, xx, xxiv, 4-5, 11— 15, 21-22, 43, 47, 97, 102, 104, 107, 114, 121, 128—35, 138, 151, 154—58, 165, 182-94, 197, 203, 209, 223, 226, 232-34, 237, 239, 252-54, 257, 273; see also Reformation; and under specific Protestant denominations providence, 72, 73, 155, 241 Radical Reformation, xxiii, 187; see also Anabaptist Christianity; Baptist Christianity reception (of the faith), 31, 88, 108, 13940, 142-44, 224, 271, 277; see also transmission reconciliation, 5, 84, 86, 88, 90-94, 100, 102, 118, 121, 135, 145, 170, 21315, 263, 267, 269, 273-79, 281 redemption, xx, 84, 97, 100, 205, 207, 215, 234 Reformation, xxiii, 3, 12, 15—16, 43, 45, 81, 92, 94, 96, 111, 115, 125, 151, 15456, 160, 162, 183, 187, 190, 232-39, 246; see also Protestant Christianity Reformed Christianity, xxii, 6, 15, 23, 44, 47, 69, 82, 94, 97, 99, 111, 127-35, 164, 183, 201, 236, 251-52, 257259, 262, 268, 271-72, 278-80 reformers, 15, 81, 92, 94, 96, 151, 154—156, 162, 234, 246 Reign of God, 6, 71, 76, 83-85, 91-92, 120, 199, 205, 213, 214, 276 remembrance, 83-85, 97; see also anamnesis renewal, xxi, 5, 42, 89-90, 98, 101, 107, 145,

l68,

l86,

186,

207,

210,

212-

14, 217, 230, 254, 264-65, 279 repentance, 103, 117, 120-21, 124, 168, 170, 185, 192, 253, 264

INDEX OF SUBJECTS resurrection, 28, 70-71, 98-99, 103, 120, 126, 167, 203, 209-15, 253 revelation, xxii, 5, 13-14, 25-30, 77, 15360, 172, 175, 183, 199, 205, 209, 214, 234-38, 247-48 righteousness, 49, 71, 76, 96—97, 162 rite(s), xx, 12-21, 41, 81-82, 85-94, 10615, 122, 145, 185, 191, 255 ritual(s), 82, 84-92, 98, 109, 112, 114-15, 139 ritual action(s), 84-86, 89-91 Roman Catholic Christianity, xxii, 6, 12, 14, 22, 94-95, 100-105, 116-22, 124-25, 138, 151, 157-59, 161-63, 183, 188-90, 194, 203, 208-9, 217, 221, 223, 228, 231—33, 235, 237, 240, 252—56, 268, 277 royal priesthood, 82—83, 194 sacrament(s), 3, 5, 7, 16, 27, 73, 81-102, 104, 106, 110-12, 116-17, 119-26, 130, 144, 153, 156, 183-86, 189-92, 194, 199, 207-12, 254, 257, 264-65, 272—73; see also means of grace; sign(s); and under specific sacraments sacrifice, 31, 97, 100, 121, 131, 156, 211, 215; of the mass, 97, 100 saints, 21, 25-26, 42, 45, 49, 51, 117, 119, 145, 209 salvation, xxiv, 6—7, 25—31, 47—48, 52, 97— 103, 151—61, 171—72, 177, 180, 182— 94, 197—200, 207—17, 237—38, 242— 43, 247, 256, 276; see also soteriology salvation history, 72, 197, 200, 216 same-sex unions, 87, 93 sanctification, 6, 81—82, 84, 109—10, 155, 184, 187, 191—92, 209-11, 215, 253, 258; see also holiness Scholasticism, 15, 132, 182 Scripture, xx, xxii, 5, 12-18, 21, 23, 26, 41, 52, 74, 83, 96-97, 107-11, 118, 137, 140, 142, 155-56, 161-62, 188, 193, 197, 209, 235-36, 244-50, 253, 258, 271, 274—77; and tradition, 18, 142, 155-56, 209, 236, 274-77; see also Bible Second Council of Nicea. See Nicea, Second Council of Second Vatican Council, xix, 92, 100, 1023, 121, 126, 135, 158, 161, 221, 223, 229, 232-36, 238-39; see also Lumen Gentium sect(arianism), 138, 253, 256, 260 sexuality, 20, 88

309

sign(s), of eschatological hope, 170, 195, 199; of God's action, 52, 132-33; of the cross, 90; of unity, 123, 145, 200, 262—70; prophetic, 213—14; sacramental, 100—102, 104, 120, 123-24, 140, 153, 186, 190, 210; symbols and, 36, 83, 100—102, 136, 157, 249 sin, 7, 38, 45, 48-50, 71, 75, 83, 88-89, 92, 97, 110, 120, 124, 137, 151-61, 167, 185, 190, 209-11, 215, 225, 236, 248, 253, 255 sister churches, 121-24, 268 Son (of God), xx, 7, 17-18, 20, 24, 28, 3031 34, 38, 42-53, 75-76, 91, 98, 115—20, 127, 129—34, 138, 167, 175, 178—79, 192, 198, 200, 205, 207, 215, 279 song(s), xxiii, 29, 40-41, 52—54, 70, 73, 76, 136, 278, 249 soteriology, xxii—xxiv, 26, 183—93, 207—16, 256; see also salvation Southern Methodist Church, 107 sovereignty, 198, 201, 209 speech-acts, 57—59 story, 15, 41, 70, 113, 141, 143, 170-71, 186, 229, 271, 278; see also narrative suffering, 49, 74, 88-92, 197, 210, 215 symbol(s). See creed(s); signs(s) Syrian Orthodox Christianity, 223; see also Eastern Orthodox Christianity systematic theology, xix—xxiv, 4—5, 11—23, 69, 73, 112, 182—89, 193—95, 275, 279; see also dogma(tics); Christian theology teaching office. See magisterium television, 166, 184—85 thanksgiving, xxi, 20, 23, 35, 40, 53, 73, 8384, 98-99, 214; see also eucharist; prayer theology. See Christian theology; dogmatic theology; systematic theology threefold ministry, 264-65; see also diaconate; episcopate; presbyter(iate); priest(hood) Toledo, Council of, 41 Torah, 70—71 tradition, Christian (variously "the tradition," "the great tradition"), xxxxiii, 13, 34-37, 41, 128-30, 133, 136, 139, 141-42, 156, 167, 184, 189, 201—2, 216, 234, 237—38; see also apostolic tradition

3IO

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

transmission (of the faith), 13, 42, 57, 6468, 130, 133, 137-44, 212; see also reception Trent, Council of, 14, 151—62, 190, 194, 235 trinity, xx-xxii, 3, 5-6, 12, 16, 18, 22-25, 28, 31-34, 38, 41-42, 46-53, 70-71, 75, 77, 84, 92, 99, 108, 113, 117-20, 122-25, 138, 167, 178-79, 194, 196206, 210-16, 237, 264, 274—76, 279; see also Father; Floly Spirit; Son triurnphalism, 234—35, 258 truth, 26-27, 31, 37—38, 40, 75, 122, 138— 39, 143, 145, 154-55, 158-61, 168, 171-73, 202-5, 212-13, 217, 235, 244-49, 258, 264, 272, 274-81 unbelief, 18, 185, 242-49 unction. See anointing united/uniting church(es), 95-99, 104-5, 146, 251-53, 259, 264-66, 278 United Methodist Church(es), 107, no, 113—14, 171, 251, 256—59 United Methodist Free Churches, 108, 109, 114 Uniting Church in Australia, 97, 99, 104 upbuilding of the community, 55—68; see also household Uppsala (WCC Assembly), 223

vernacular, 42—43, 239 via negativa, xxi violence, 169, 203, 224, 226 visible Church, 156, 184, 186, 191—92, 276 WCC. See Faith and Order; World Council of Churches; and the locations of specific assemblies Wesleyan Christianity, 6, 48, 54, 106—10, 113-14, 136-37, 185, 188, 259-61, 274; see also Methodist Christianity will of God, 74, 103, 112, 213, 264 women's ordination. See ordination Word. See Christ; praise; revelation; Word of God Word of God, 26—28, 75-76, 83, 106, 109, 118, 120, 192, 202, 214, 241-43, 244-50, 267, 269 World Council of Churches, 3, 23, 72—75, 123, 128, 130, 135, 146, 172, 196, 203-4, 207—17, 223—30; see also Faith and Order; and the locations of specific assemblies World Methodist Council, 5, 160, 266 worship, xix—xxiv, 3, 5—7, 11—16, 18—23, 31-35. 51-54. 69-71, 81-84, 92-99, 101,

107—9, 111, 114—15, 117, I2O—

22, 136—39, 144—45, 162, 165, 170— 72, 174, 182,

Vatican Councils. See First Vatican Council; Second Vatican Council Verbum mentis (et oris), 59-63

2OO, 238,

241,

184—86, 190,

195, 199—

252, 254, 265,

269,

271-72, 275-79; see also doxology; liturgy; praise; prayer

INDEX OF SCRIPTURAL CITATIONS

Genesis Generally, 75, 245 4:12, 175 Exodus 15, 70. 73, 76 17:14, 248 34:29, 56 Numbers 11:4—5, 248 33:2, 248 Joshua 10:12-14, 249 24:2, 57 1 Samuel 10:25, 248 2 Chronicles 6:1,38 Job 1:9—11, 248 Psalms 19:5-7, 249 22:4, 56 29:9, 35 103:22, 57 Ecclesiastes 9:1. 153 Isaiah 6:3. 35, 56 6:4, 56 Amos 5:23, 52 Sirach 43:27-30, 35 Matthew 6:6, 29 18:20, 26, 29-30, 187

19:3-9, 93 19:10-12, 93 26:28, 211 26:30, 40 Mark 6:7, 93 14:26, 40 Luke 2:13—14, 40 John 1, 117-19, 170 1:3, 118-19 3:5, 210 3:16, 216 6:51-58, 211

10, 134 14:26, 25 l6:I3, 25 17:21, 27, 225, 231 18:37, 244

Acts 2:42, 118 6:2-4, 192-93 8:1-40, 193 10, 49, 143 10:34-43, 143 10:38, 49 11, 143, 193 11:19-30, 193 15, 143 15:19-20, 143 Romans 1:23, 57 3: 23, 57 6:3 — 5,

2IO

8:26-27, 21

8:30, 57

311

10:9, 40 10:14-15, 191 10:15, 62 10:17, 247 12:1, 195 12:2, 60 12:4-8, 195 15:5-6, 53 1 Corinthians 6:11, 210 7, 19, 93 10, 118 10:1-2, 210 10:15-17, 119 10:16, 118 11:2, 40 11:23-26, 144 11-14, 192 12:4, 26 12:13, 210 13:9-10, 30 14:26, 40 2 Corinthians Generally, 145

4:6, 56 Galatians 3:27-28, 210, 276 Ephesians 1:3-!4. 275 4:13, 28 5:14, 210 5:18-20, 40 5:21-6:9, 93 5:22-23, 19 Philippians 2:5-11, 40

312

INDEX OF SCRIPTURAL CITATIONS

Colossians 1, 170 2:12, 210 3:16-17, 40 2 Thessalonians 2:15, 40 3:6, 40 1 Timothy 2:1-2, 21 3:16, 40, 248 4:4-5, 83 5:22,

112

Titus 3:5,

210

Hebrews 12:1, 26 13:8, 30 James Generally, 88 5:16, 281 1 Peter 2:5, 26, 28 3:2O—2I, 2IO

2 Peter 1:4, 28, 31 1:21, 248 1 John 1:1—13, 117 1:3, 118-19 Revelation 4:8-11, 35 5:9-13. 35