The Goal of Ecumenism 2: The Visibility of the Church

This is the second in a sequence of posts based upon Chris James' blog post The Goal of Ecumenism: Why and how to be one .  The first of these posts is Why Are We Divided? 

Section III of the post, 'Ecumenism and the Visibility of the Church', explores the "the most hotly debated ecumenical question": should the church be one visible community or is its unity somehow invisible?  I summarise it below but it is better to read the section in James' post in full.

1. James explores the thinking of Stanley Grentz, a free church theologian who argues denominationalism emphasises the invisibility of the church and that visibility is inevitably sectarian as it must point to a particular visible church.   
2. James then turns to a Catholic view of visible unity.  This view recognises the baptism of other traditions but seeks a reunion within the Catholic Church and so in a way is similar to Grentz's position in its desire not to call its own ecclesiology into question.
3. Then James turns to the ecumenism of the World Council of Churches.  The WCC seeks a united church in a single communion.  It is this view that has given rise to the contrasting positions of full visible unity and reconciled diversity.  The latter is understood as the openness churches have to each other.  Newbigin is quoted as an advocate of the former although he seems to take a midway position, seeking for example interchangeability of ministers, which is somehow short of full institutional union.  His criticism of reconciled diversity is that it make intellectual agreement the basis of unity, which is a mistake because it overemphasises the importance of doctrinal agreement.

It seems to me the problem with both visible unity and reconciled diversity is they associate unity with structures.  Structures are of course closely associated with doctrine.  Broadly I agree with Newbigin that the spirit unifies churches and this does not necessarily imply full structural unity under one authority.

The choice we have at present, determined by the context we're in, is between either visibility or unity but not both.  When we engage in ecumenical work we make the full church visible but given the work is ecumenical the church cannot by definition be united as an organisational structure.  The alternative to structure is process.  It's the way we see things.  If we cannot be united in terms of structure, perhaps we can be united in our ecumenical processes.  First though, two points.

We fail, when we debate visible unity and reconciled diversity, to consider time.  Reconciled diversity views time as infinite and takes an apathetic approach to it.  To fail to be outraged by the divisions in the church and simply allow that as we're not killing each other any more (in the main) we're OK, is a parody of reconciled diversity but illustrates the problem.  I am impatient with the view that unity is invisible or spiritual; this is lazy theology and leads to faffing about.  Unity may be an eschatological reality, but so what? 

Visible unity on the other hand takes an amnesiac view of time.  Is it really credible that a fully united church would stay united?  In truth, as mentioned in my last post the church never has been united. 

My second point is to say conversation is as ever the process through which the full church is made visible.  The problem is conversations are seen not as the work of the people but of professional theologians. 

Conversations complete the church because as the traditions converse, each brings their unique contribution.  The real problem, underlying both apathy and amnesia, is xenophobia.  We fear each other and what we might bring to the conversations.  Our great task is to overcome multiple fears of the other and be strengthened by continually and visibly becoming the church.

Chris James raises a possible objection to this understanding of ecumenism.  They each (Pope John Paul II and the protestant theologian Grentz) wish to essentially recognise the genuine Christianity of other fellowships without being compelled to unite with them in any formal way.  They do not want their own ecclesiologies being called into question.    The purpose of ecumenical conversation is to call the practices of each participant into question.  Indeed Receptive Ecumenism  is an approach where the assumption is that each tradition receives from the others what it needs to be made complete.  Its wider purpose is to generate the mission of the church as a whole, from the traditions present in a particular neighbourhood.

The church's great strength is its diversity.  No positive good is done by denying this.  It is complete as the sum of its parts but is far more, even in this life, than that sum.