The Church – Towards a Common Vision Faith and Order Paper No

1 The Church – Towards A Common Vision Faith and Order Paper No. 214 World Council of Churches 2013 A Response from the Faculty of Theology, Queen’s College, St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador The Rev. David N. Bell, D. Phil., Dean of Theology and Professor Michelle Rebidoux, Ph.D. Prepared under the auspices of the Rev. Dr. Alex Faseruk, Provost Historical Introduction The World Council of Churches was founded in 1948, though the real beginning of the Ecumenical Movement is probably to be seen in the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1910. Between 1910 and 1948, the ecumenical initiative was driven primarily by western Protestantism, but in 1920 the Ecumenical Patriarchate issued a remarkable encyclical addressed “Unto the Church of Christ Everywhere” which set out eleven ways in which a new rapprochement might be achieved. To this the Lambeth Conference of the same year responded with a similar call to Christian reunion and issued no less than thirty-one resolutions on the subject. By the time of the pontificate of John XXIII, the Ecumenical Movement was well underway, but the Second Vatican Council’s Decree of Ecumenism promulgated on 21 November 1964 by Paul VI broke new ground. We do not find here the old traditional call for the separated Churches to return to the true fold of Christ, but a different ecclesiology based on the idea of the Church as the People of God, already united by baptism and faith in Christ. The Decree was also drafted in a way that encouraged ecumenical dialogue, and it was welcomed by both Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I and Archbishop Michael Ramsey. Of those Churches separated from Rome, the chief place is given to the Eastern Orthodox Churches. What, then, of the Anglicans? They are included among those Communions or Ecclesial Communities (the Decree reserves the term Churches for Orthodox and Roman Catholic) which came into being “from the events which are usually referred to as ‘the Reformation’. As a result, many Communions, national or confessional, were separated from the Roman See. Among those in which Catholic traditions and institutions in part continue to exist, the Anglican Communion occupies a special place.”1 Ramsey was happy with this wording, and it sowed the seed for his official visit to Rome in 1966. He was also pleased with the language used in the document about the Church, the liturgy, and freedom of religion. The problem with the other Ecclesial Communities was (and still is) twofold: first, the very wide differences and disagreements they have among themselves, and second, their lack of an apostolic episcopate. This latter point is of prime importance, for what it 1 Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, 21 November 1964, §13, on the Vatican website <www.vatican.va>. 2 means (as Leo XIII pointed out in 1896 when he declared all Anglican orders null and void) is that if there is no valid episcopate, there are no valid priestly ordinations. And, if there are no valid priestly ordinations, there are no valid sacraments. Where, then, can we look to find a basis for reunion? The Decree suggests three areas: first, in the open confession of Jesus Christ as God and Lord and the sole Mediator between the Trinitarian God and the human race; second, in the love, veneration, and study of the Scriptures (in which the Decree admits that the Protestant communities excel), even though these separated Christians have a different view of the relationship of Scripture to the Tradition – the magisterium – of the Church; and third, in the sacrament of baptism, whenever it “is duly administered as Our Lord instituted it, and received with the right dispositions”.2 For baptism “establishes a sacramental bond of unity which links all who have been reborn by it.”3 This necessarily excludes all those who belong to the Society of Friends (the Quakers) and the Salvation Army, since they do not practice baptism. Such are the problems of ecumenism. Yet baptism, says the Decree, is only a beginning, a point of departure, leading to the Eucharist and “a complete participation in Eucharistic communion.” Here the document has to be delicate, for not one of the Ecclesial Communities which came out of the Reformation accept a real and substantial change in the nature of the bread and wine. There were, in fact, three differing views. First, there was the Lutheran view, which is often termed consubstantiation, though the word itself postdates Luther who spoke of “sacramental union.” In this case, after the consecration both the substance of the bread and wine and the substance of the body and blood of Christ are present together. A second view was that of the followers of Huldrych (or Ulrich) Zwingli and the leaders of the Radical Reformation, who maintained that no change at all took place in either the substance or accidents of the bread and wine. In other words, they were no more than symbols of the body and blood of Christ. A third view, somewhat in between the other two, was that held by John Calvin, and is often referred to as “dynamic presence” or “pneumatic presence”. Here again, no substantial change takes place, but Christ is present spiritually in the bread and the wine. In the Eucharist, therefore, there is a spiritual union between the soul of the believer and the spirit of Christ, but Christ is not taken substantially into the physical body of the believing communicant. This is also the view which appears in Article XXVIII of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, which states clearly that “The body of Christ is given, taken and eaten in the Supper only in a heavenly and spiritual manner. The means by which the body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is faith.” Such, then, were the views of those Ecclesial Communities with which the Decree on Ecumenism had to deal. It did so by saying, first, that in the view of the Roman Catholic Church something was lacking in their celebration of the Eucharist. It would have been dishonest to deny it. “We believe”, we read, “that they have not retained the proper reality of the Eucharistic mystery in its fullness, especially because of the absence of the sacrament of Orders.”4 Nevertheless, the ecumenical hand is still offered, for 2 Ibid., §§20-22. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., §22. 3 when they commemorate His death and resurrection in the Lord’s Supper, they profess that it signifies life in communion with Christ and look forward to His coming in glory. Therefore the teaching concerning the Lord’s Supper, the other sacraments, worship, the ministry of the Church, must be the subject of the dialogue.5 Such an ecumenical dialogue might begin, we are told, with discussions on the application of the Gospel message to moral questions, but – and here is a warning – the quest for ecumenical unity must not be undertaken superficially or with imprudent zeal. This can only harm any real advance toward unity, and if there is to be any ecumenical progress at all, it “must be fully and sincerely Catholic, that is to say, faithful to the truth which we have received from the apostles and the Fathers of the Church, in harmony with the faith which the Catholic Church has always professed.”6 That is a fair point, for any ecumenical pseudo-unity which is based merely on, let us say, a convergence of moral teachings without any consideration of the source of those teachings will be superficial at best. It cannot be denied that the Decree represented something new in the history of ecumenism. Gone was the aloof Roman Catholic isolationism of an earlier age, and John XXIII and Paul VI had opened a door. That there were restrictions as to how wide the door should be opened is only to be expected, but the fact that it was opened at all was worthy of note. We now read that “in certain special circumstances, such as the prescribed prayers ‘for unity’, and during ecumenical gatherings, it is allowable, indeed desirable that Catholics should join in prayer with their separated brethren,”7 and even though such occasions are to be controlled by the local bishop, the key words “indeed desirable” were a clear step forward. On the other hand, we also read that “it is only through Christ’s Catholic Church, which is ‘the all-embracing means of salvation’, that they can benefit fully from the means of salvation”,8 and the Decree does not – cannot – really reconcile its openness to ecumenical dialogue with the old traditional view of the Church of Rome as the One True Church. In the years following the Council, the quest for Christian reunion proceeded apace, but only between Churches of the same confessional families. Between, let us say, Orthodox and Presbyterians, or Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists, there was, effectively, no movement at all. Even between those confessions which had a substantial degree of overlap there were problems. Witness the failure of Archbishop Ramsey to bring about a reunion of Anglicans and Methodists. Why did the scheme fail? Because, said the Archbishop in a speech to the General Synod on 3 May 1972, the people who opposed it were of many different sorts: Some don’t like the scheme because it fails to be Catholic. Others don’t like it because it is too Catholic. Some don’t like it because they want more freedom for 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., §24. 7 Ibid., §8. 8 Ibid., §3. 4 the Spirit. Others don’t like it, and they are very many, because they don’t like change at all.9 What was true in 1972 is still, of course, true today.

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