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Director's Address NJG 02 Director’s Address Faith and Order from Today into Tomorrow (Director’s Address) I. China, Contextuality and Visible Unity As the WCC Commission on Faith and Order meets for the first time in mainland China, we remember with gratitude the witness of Alopen and other Assyrian Christians of the 7th century to what was then called in China the “Luminous Religion”, until Assyrian Christianity virtually disappeared under persecution centuries later; we remember the witness of Franciscan friars; the enlightened and inculturated ministry of the Jesuits; and the work of Orthodox missionaries, some of them later recognised as martyrs. We remember the witness of the first Protestant missionaries early in the 19th century and their concern for the translation of Scriptures, without losing sight of the tragic connection between the Protestant presence in China, colonialism, and the tragedy of opium addiction. The secular history of Christianity in China has been a history marked by fascination for this civilisation; by attempts at Western colonisation; by the search for an autonomous Chinese Christianity; and by much suffering. It imposes respect rather than quick judgement. Almost one hundred years ago, in May 1922, the Chinese Protestant churches held in Shanghai a National Christian Conference attended by one thousand people, half of them foreign missionaries, half of them Chinese. The theme of the conference was “The Chinese Church”. A “massive volume” published for the occasion was titled The Christian Occupation of China1. The Conference issued a message called “The United Church”. We Chinese Christians who represent the various leading denominations, the Conference message read, “express our regret that we are divided by the denominationalism which comes from the West”2. We are not unaware of the diverse gifts through the denominations that have been used by God for the enrichment of the Church, the message goes on to say. And it adds: “Yet we recognise fully that denominationalism is based upon differences the historical significance of which, however real and vital to the missionaries from the West, are not shared by us Chinese. Therefore, denominationalism, instead of being a source of inspiration has been and is a source of confusion, bewilderment, and inefficiency.”3 Five years later, during the First World Conference on Faith and Order, held in Lausanne, Switzerland, the poet, musician and theologian Liu Tingfang or Timothy Tingfang Lew (1891- 1947) opened a public lecture on mission and unity by quoting precisely the message of the 1922 Shanghai conference. Since 1922, Liu Tingfang noted in 1927, “the necessity for Christian unity 1 K.S. Latourette, “Ecumenical Bearings of the Missionary Movement…” in R. Rouse & S. Neil (eds), History of the Ecumenical Movement 1517-1948, London, SPCK, 1953, p. 377-387. 2 T. Tingfang Lew, “The Necessity of Unity”, in H.N. Bate (ed.), Faith and Order: Proceedings of the World Conference – Lausanne 3-21 August 1927, New York, George H. Doran, 1927, p. 495. F&O Digital: https://archive.org/details/faithandorderpapersdigitaledition, wccfops1.066. 3 Ib. p. 496. 1 NJG 02 Director’s Address has become even greater than before”4. He gave three reasons for the need for Christian unity in China. The first was the magnitude of the work of evangelisation. The second was the nature of Christian work in China: It is the glory of the Christian gospel, that it has been presented to China not “as a mere system of philosophical thought or a mere set of theological doctrines or a mere system of ecclesiasticism”, he contends, but “as a life of service”5. The third was the rise of nationalism that challenged Christianity: “Christianity is being looked upon with grave suspicion at this moment in China because, while it professes to teach love and unity, it is divided against itself. (…) Only a united Church can meet such a challenge.”6 Against this background it is understandable that large sectors of Chinese Christianity have pursued since those early days of the 20th century a way of being church in China which is indigenous, post-denominational, Scriptural and diaconal; a way of being church which is also self- supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing. Since the early 1980s, this attempt has been embodied particularly by the work of the China Christian Council, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, and the Amity Foundation, the three of them pioneered after the mid-1970s by the ecumenical theologian and Anglican Bishop K. H. Ting or Ding Guangxun (1915-2012)7. II. Faith and Order from Today into Tomorrow It is in this context, in which the inculturation of the gospel and the concern for Christian unity have been less a matter of theologians’ controversy than an issue of survival of human beings as illustrated by the anti-colonial Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901), that the WCC Commission on Faith and Order is meeting during these days, after meeting in 2017 in the context that made manifest the connection between the integrity of the faith and the resistance to racism and apartheid. We are gathered in Nanjing in order to serve theologically the churches as they call each other – or should call each other – to visible unity in Eucharistic fellowship8; we are gathered in Nanjing in order to review the work accomplished after Pretoria and to discern in consensus the steps that the three study groups should take between now and 2021 in order to present to our churches the results of our work in ways that are owned by all of us and that may lead them to grow in their real though imperfect communion. If we take full responsibility for the work that we are doing, we will most probably recognise ourselves in its results in the near future. Ecclesiology How can we continue to deepen and to share what our divided churches hold in common about the nature and mission of the One Church in history, on the one hand, while at the same time broadening this ecclesiological dialogue by taking more and more into ecumenical theological 4 Ib. p. 496. 5 Ib. p. 496. 6 Ib. p. 497. 7 K.H. Ting, A Chinese Contribution to Ecumenical Theology, Geneva, WCC, 2002. 8 Faith and Order By-laws, §3.1. 2 NJG 02 Director’s Address consideration the ecclesiologies that undergird evolving ways of being church that emerged particularly during the 20th century and have transformed the face of global Christianity, on the other hand? This long question has the merit of pointing to the two ongoing projects of Study Group 2 on Ecclesiology and of underlining their interconnection. I’m referring to the work on the responses to The Church: Towards a Common Vision (TCTCV) and, secondly, to the work on understandings of being church that emerged especially during the last century and continue to gain momentum around the world these days. The two projects are held together by the importance of the Faith and Order focus on “ecumenical ecclesiology” for the growth in fellowship of the churches that we represent. This long question suggests that Faith and Order should not consider that the conclusion of its work on the responses to The Church: Towards a Common Vision (TCTCV) marks the end of the focus on ecclesiology first proposed in 19879, embraced by the plenary commission in 198910 and implemented in 199411, immediately after the World Conference held in Compostela in 1993 and also under the influence of its theme and findings12. The programmatic focus on ecclesiology should continue first and above all because if it is true that the theological and practical search for the manifestation of the One Church in history is not fully coextensive to the agenda of the ecumenical movement, it is equally true that the former lies at the heart of the latter. In other words, that the making visible of God’s gift of unity to the Church lies at the heart of the search for the wholeness of the inhabited earth, the oikoumene, and that these two cannot be separated. Ecumenicity as we practice it in Faith and Order is essentially ecclesiological but the manifestation of the One Church and its witness in history to the ongoing recapitulation of all things in and by the head of the Body are also eschatological. They are in and for the world, “for us and for our salvation”. The programmatic focus on ecclesiology should continue, secondly, because the case for the centrality of koinonia in God’s design for the world made manifest in Christ is one of the gifts of the ecumenical movement to a globalised Christianity sometimes too tempted by a Jesus or a Holy Spirit individualistic religion of individual prosperity that engenders market-based or utilitarian visions of the Church. Against this background, a Trinitarian-based communion ecclesiology is a contemporary correlative to the Paulin teaching that “where sin increased, grace abounded all the 9 Faith and Order, Minutes of the Meeting of the Standing Commission, Geneva, WCC, 1987, p. 96. F&O Paper 141. F & O Digital: https://archive.org/details/faithandorderpapersdigitaledition, wccfops2.148. 10 Thomas F. Best (ed.), Faith and Order 1985-1989: The Commission Meeting at Budapest 1989. Geneva, WCC, 1990, p. 202-219, F&O Paper 148. F&O Digital: https://archive.org/details/faithandorderpapersdigitaledition. wccfops2.155. 11 For a chronological overview of the study on ecclesiology see my paper “The Making of an Ecumenical Text: An Introduction to The Church: Towards a Common Vision”, https://bossey.academia.edu/OdairPedrosoMateus. 12 Thomas F. Best & G. Gassmann (eds), On the Way to Fuller Koinonia, Geneva, WCC, 1994, F&O Paper 166. F&O Digital: https://archive.org/details/faithandorderpapersdigitaledition, wccfops2.173.
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