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Focus of Unity: Ultimate and Penultimate Goals of the Christian Movement1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
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Ecumenical myopia?
As a participant in the interchurch scene for many years I have become increasingly conscious of a phenomenon which I can best describe as ‘ecumenical myopia’. Myopia means short sightedness, and what I am thinking about is the tendency for ecumenical vision to fall short of its true objective: the lines of sight converge to a focus too soon, and from then on — as my schoolboy physics tells me — they cross each other and diverge in different directions into an obscure and unfocussed blur.
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- Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1997
References
2 For John R. Mott's slogan and book The Evangelisation of the World in this Generation, see Bosch, David, Transforming Mission, Orbis, 1991, pp. 337 ff.Google Scholar
3 See, e.g., Badenas, Robert, Christ the End of the Law, JSOT Press, Sheffield, 1985Google Scholar. Few of the commentators seem interested in the meaning of telos here. Most assume (cp A.H.McNeile, T.H.Robinson, David Hill, John Fenton, W.F.Allbright and C.S.Mann, R.H.Gundry, G.N.Stanton, H. Huebner in Balz & Schneider Exegetical Dictionary of the NT) that it simply means ‘end’. Badenas gives strong general support for telos as goal, purpose, though he too takes it to mean simply ‘end’ in Mt 24:14. However his analysis of the use of the word in biblical and cognate literature leads him to the conclusion that its basic connotations are ‘primarily directive, purposive and completive, not temporal’ and that ‘the prevailing connotations are more telcological than terminal’ (pp 80, 81).
4 It is interesting to note how the word — and even the idea — of mission has been deprived of its ‘evangelical’ (i.e.gospel-sharing) content. It has either been downgraded to describe the human — and at the worst, proselytising — efforts of ‘missionaries’, who in turn have been made figures of fun; or has been restricted to work for social justice. Today every corporate enterprise has its ‘statement of mission’. The Churches, however, sometimes seem to be in retreat from giving the term its full Christological and Trinitarian content. In a comparable way, even the apostles have been deprived of the missionary aspect of their ministry, and the adjective ‘apostolic’ has become limited to describing the person and the office rather than the function of mission. We need to recover an understanding of mission as the mission of the Triune God, not our mission, though we are privileged to share in it.
5 ed. André Birmelé, Flemming Feinert-Jensen, Harding Meyer, Elisabeth Parmentier, Michael Root, Yacob Tesfai.
6 Para 69.
7 cf. Zizioulas, John in On the Way to Fuller Koinonia,Santiago Faith & Order conference report, ed. Best and Gassmann, WCC,1994, p. 110Google Scholar, ‘Communion… is the fabric not only of the goal but also of the way towards the goal. If we share nothing already, we cannot hope ever to share everything. And if we wish to move in the right direction, we must never lose sight of the final goal.’
8 A classic, if intemperate, attack on unity as an end in itself, may be found in Ian Henderson's Power without Glory, Hutchinson, 1967. The object of his attack was what he saw as cultural Anglicanism working through Church union schemes linked to the historic episcopate. (I owe this reference to Professor James Haire, Brisbane.)
9 The whole content of this Nicodemus passage is Trinitarian.
10 ‘Focus’ in this use is a very English term, though ‘foyer’ is used in a similar sense in French.
11 BEM, Ministry, para 8.
12 John 3:30.
13 Barth, CD IV/3 (Eng) p.836 footnote.
14 ibid. I am indebted to James Haire, Brisbane, for these references.
15 cf. my article ‘Bishops for All?’, in Search, (Church of Ireland) Vol.10, Part 2, Winter 1987, p.92Google Scholar.
16 Throughout this paper I treat the ‘Christological focus’ as the point of entry, for us, into the koinonia of the Trinity.
17 1 Cor.15:45; Rev.1:17; 2:8; 22:13.1 owe this point to Caird, G.B., The Revelation of St John the Divine, Black's NT Commentaries, 1966, p.226Google Scholar.
18 ARCIC I, Ministry, para 7 and passim.
19 cf. Schillebeeckx, Edward, Ministry: a Case for Change, SCM, 1980, chap IIGoogle Scholar.
20 See, for example Zizioulas, John, Being as Communion, SVS Press, 1985Google Scholar; Gunton, Colin, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, T&T Clark, 1991Google Scholar; TheForgotten Trinity, Vols. 1–3, BCC/CCBI, 1991; and the report of the Santiago Faith & Order Conference, On the Way to Fuller Koinonia.
21 George Herbert, 1593 – 1633.
22 cf. Farrer, Austin, The Glass of Vision, Dacre Press, 1948Google Scholar. Farrer, quoting 1 Cor. 13:12 ‘Now we see through a glass darkly’ makes his book of this title a study of ‘the sense of metaphysical philosophy, the sense of scriptural revelation, and the sense of poetry’.
23 Anon, Latin 7th or 8th century, tr J.M.Neale, 1818–66.
24 Santiago report, pp 107, 108.
25 cf. Hick, John, ‘The needed Copernican revolution … involves a shift from the dogma that Christianity is at the centre to the realisation that it is God who is at the centre, and that all the religions of mankind, including our own, serve and revolve around him.’ God and the Universe of Faiths, Font paperbacks, 1977, p.131Google Scholar.
26 cf. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, The Meaning and End of Religion, SPCK, 1978, chap 7Google Scholar.
27 The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, ed John Hick and Paul Knitter, Orbis/SCM, 1987.
28 op.cit. p 215.
29 ibid.
30 Compare the Faith & Order process leading up to the report Confessing the One Faith: an Ecumenical Explication of the Apostolic Faith as it is confessed in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381), WCC, 1991.
31 cf. Lindbeck, George, The Nature of Doctrine, Westminster Press, 1984, p.134Google Scholar, ‘the vitality of western societies may well depend in the long run on the culture-forming power of the biblical outlook in its intratextual, untranslatable specificity. Theology should therefore resist the clamor of the religiously interested public for what is currently fashionable and immediately intelligible… The ultimate test in this as in other areas is performance.’
32 See for example Ward, Keith, A Vision to Pursue: beyond the Crisis in Christianity, SCM, 1991Google Scholar, esp. chap.16 ‘Christian Vedanta’. Ward's understanding of a Christian Vedanta is very different, e.g. from that of Fakirbhai, Dhanjibhai, for which see my Introduction to Indian Christian Theology, 2nd edn, CLS, Madras, 1975, pp.213 ffGoogle Scholar, and also my Khristadvaita: a Theology for India, CLS, Madras, 1977, passimGoogle Scholar.
33 Toward a Renewed Understanding of Ecumenism: A Study Document by the Inter-Church Inter-Faith Committee of the United Church of Canada for discussion and response, 1993.
34 op. cit. p.2.
35 op. cit. p.1.
36 op. cit. p.2.
37 op. cit. p.7.
38 op. cit. p.3.
39 op. cit. p.8.
40 op. cit. pp.4, 5, 7.
41 op. cit. p.2.
42 The word sundiakonos (fellow-servant) occurs in Clement of Alexandria (536) and ecclesiastical Greek and is parallel to the sundoulos (fellow-slave) of the NT, e.g. Col. 4:7.
43 op. cit. p.4.
44 ibid.
45 I deliberately put the issue this way, rather than merely saying that pneumatology has displaced Christology. For this raises the issue of ‘spirituality’ in Christian life and theology today. There are three major dangers in what has become a very widespread movement in the Churches.
1. Emphasis on the Spirit can be used to marginalise Christ. The name of Jesus can cause offence, while the term ‘spirit’ is widely acceptable. Little attention is paid to the Pauline teaching that the distinguishing mark of the Spirit is that it is the ‘Spirit of Christ’ (Rom. 8:9)
2. ‘Spirit’ in this context can often mean the spirituality of the human spirit, either understood to be autonomous, or else identical with the ‘supreme’ Spirit. Compare the Hindu identification of the jivatman (human spirit) with the Paramatman (supreme Spirit - Brahman)
3. ‘Spirituality’ can also fall victim to a Platonic dualism, which pushes our spirituality into an ethereal, ‘spiritual’ world, detached from the earthy world of ordinary human life. Spirituality then becomes a retreat from the world, and in effect a denial of the incarnation.
The only corrective is the placing of ‘spirituality’ firmly in a Trinitarian context.
46 cf. Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 16, ‘Those also can attain to everlasting salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and, moved by grace, strive by their deeds to do his will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.’
47 op. cit. p.5.
48 op. cit. p.7.
49 Compare the Westminster Shorter Catechism (1648), question 1, ‘Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.’
50 Moltmann, Jürgen, The Trinity and the Kingdom, SCM, 1981, p.222Google Scholar. Moltmann also writes, ‘If through the experience of the Spirit men and women in their physical nature become God's temple (1 Cor. 6:13 ff), then they are anticipating the glory in which the whole world will become the temple of the triune God’, op.cit. p.212.
51 For a magisterial survey of the theology of mission (including the convergence towards a common understanding) see Bosch, David, Transforming Mission, Orbis, 1991Google Scholar, and on a more historical level, Yates, Timothy, Christian Mission in the 20th Century, Cambridge, 1994Google Scholar. For a useful collection of documents, see Scherer, James A. and Berens, Stephen B., New Directions in Mission and Evangelism, Basic Statements 1974–1991, Orbis, 1992Google Scholar.
52 Compare Evang. Nunt.para 8, ‘Only the Kingdom therefore is absolute, and it makes everything else relative.’ Also para 9: the Church ‘exists in order to evangelise’.
53 Para 15, ‘In the fulfilment of its vocation, the Church is called to announce Good News in Jesus Christ, forgiveness, hope, a new heaven and a new earth; to denounce powers and principalities, sin and injustice; to console the widows and orphans, healing, restoring the broken-hearted; and to celebrate life in the midst of death.’
54 ‘God's preferential option for the poor’ (Puebla Conference of Latin American Bishops, 1979) is quoted.
55 Para 34.
56 Para 39.
57 Para 21.
58 Para 39. But compare also Barth's statement, ‘The purpose of missions is to make themselves superfluous’, CD IV/3 p.876. Cross-cultural missions must — as soon as possible — hand over the task of witness to the local eucharistic community.
59 Para 41.
60 Para 42.
61 ibid.
62 Para 47, from Your Kingdom Come,report of the World Conference on Mission and Evangelism,Melbourne,1980, WCC, p.204Google Scholar.
63 Para 1.
64 Para 23.
65 International Review of Mission, Oct.1982, p.455.
66 Even when the telos is accomplished and — according to Paul in 1 Cor.15:24 ff — Christ hands over the Kingdom to God the Father, and the Son himself is subjected to God who is all in all, God still is the Father, still is characterised by relationship, communion, koinonia. cf. Colin Gunton, op. cit. p. 166, ‘Here, however, the priority of the Father is not ontological but economic… It is as truly divine to be the obedient self-giving Son as it is to be the Father who sends and the Spirit who renews and perfects. Only by virtue of the particularity and relatedness of all three is God God.’
67 Cf. my Introduction to Indian Christian Theology, pp. 58–85 on Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya.
68 See Hillman, Eugene, The Wider Ecumenism: Anonymous Christianity and the Church, Burns Oates, London 1968Google Scholar.
69 Compare the work of Cantwell Smith, Hick, Knitter, Driver, Ward already cited.
70 Compare the Canadian document Towards a Renewed Understanding of Ecumenism, p.9, ‘We may interpret Peter's claim that there is salvation in no other name but the name of Jesus as meaning that salvation always entails having the same Spirit as that which was in Jesus… It would not be true to Jesus' own faith to exclude anyone but himself and his followers from the saving activity of God.’ Compare also Ariarajah, Wesley, The Bible and People of other Faiths, WCC, 1987, p.22Google Scholar: Jesus ‘never seems to suggest that he is the mediator, much less the only mediator, between God and the human person. He seems to identify himself more with the suffering servant of Isaiah’.
71 Santiago report p.193.
72 Compare Newbigin's, Lesslie plea for a focus which will ‘help the whole Church to bring the whole gospel to the whole world by helping each local eucharistic community to be faithful to the gospel’, A Word in Season, Eerdmans, 1994, p.200Google Scholar.