Exploring Ecumenism

Called to be God's Holy People

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This is part of a series of posts based on the Churches Together in England publication one light: one world.  If you click on the link you will find the biblical texts.  This post of the same name covers the purpose of this series.

1 Corinthians 1: 2 - 3

The image of Christendom haunts our ecumenical conversations because, whilst many of us long for unity, we dread the idea of a single institutional church. 

Perhaps in the second half of the last century, when the British churches were enthusiastic for unity, Christendom was a distant historical memory.  Today, many movements are suspicious of unity schemes.  Radical Christian movements see Christendom as an aberrant form of Christianity and seek church structures that resist it.  I suppose radical Islam, at least as it is represented in the Western media, also reminds some Christians of the dangers of theocracy.

I share these suspicions.  I don't see any value in a future where we are subject to a single institution.  I have always understood holy obedience, not as obedience to institutional power, who justify their actions through claiming God's support, but as listening and discerning the will of God.

Paul is writing to the church in Corinth, a church which is prone to delusions of power.  Paul doesn't build them up in terms of authority.  Their unity is through Jesus Christ and their calling is as one community amongst many.

They are defined as church not through a single coherent church structure but with reference to their calling and the many other communities who share their calling.

The key to unity has to be in mutual recognition and solidarity, not through the imposition of a single universal church structure.

Related articles

• The Holy Nation (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• Harmony in Diversity (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)

The Holy Nation

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This is part of a series of posts based on the Churches Together in England publication one light: one world.  If you click on the link you will find the biblical texts.  This post of the same name covers the purpose of this series.

1 Peter 2:9 - 10

Once again we have the image of Christians as a nation.  I suppose, despite our differences, nationhood implies we're all one at base.  But it equally could mean we're separated from others because we are a nation and they are not a part of it.

Christendom is still an idea active in the minds of some Christians, often unconsciously.  It was a time when the Christian faith was a nation.  Or at least Christendom was the basic idea behind the nations of Europe. 

This passage is larded with grandiose ideas - we're not only a holy nation but also a chosen nation and a royal priesthood.  I hope the author meant these terms ironically, although they have often been taken as a literal justification for the status quo of the wealthy.

I suspect the author was saying to a weak and despised community, 'Look, it might seem you're the dregs but actually you have been called to be like kings.  Don't let the kings of this world tell you otherwise.  Glory in your poor status, knowing you have been called by God.'

This is a call to humility, not a reason for priests to lord it over the rest of humanity.

A Great Nation

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This is part of a series of posts based on the Churches Together in England publication one light: one world.  If you click on the link you will find the biblical texts.  This post of the same name covers the purpose of this series.

Genesis 12:1-3

It is difficult to believe many people in the modern West see themselves as children of Abraham.  The story goes, he is not only father of the Jews but also (directly through Ishmael) of Muslims and (indirectly) of Christians.

I suppose this passage is here to make the point that we are all of one nation.  But the very concept of nation implies there are other nations.  Can this be read as divisive, as well as implying the unity of all Christians?  Certainly insisting that we're all part of the same nation will cut little mustard in the entrenched conflicts around the world.

We are it seems divided according to whether we bless or curse Abraham.  The final clause however says, in Abraham all families of the earth shall be blessed.  Perhaps there is a glimpse here of the final Oikoumene.

I can see the logic but I must confess I am indifferent to this line of argument.  Christians are one in the Spirit, in our recognition of Jesus Christ and in our hope that ultimately all shall be reconciled in Christ.  Abraham seems a little superflous to me although I appreciate others might disagree.  Perhaps it is a helpful text where there are conflicts between Christians, Jews and Muslims?

To God be the Glory

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This is part of a series of posts based on the Churches Together in England publication one light: one world.  If you click on the link you will find the biblical texts.  This post of the same name covers the purpose of this series.

Romans 11: 33-36

In this passage Paul builds upon what it means to love God.  The Good News is God's Kingdom is present in the here and now.  Paul can hear God's call to the whole of creation to explore God's riches, wisdom and knowledge.

But these things are just out of reach.  Who has known the mind of the Lord?  The question invites a positive answer but implies no-one can quite give such an answer.  It is this longing that draws on not only the churches, but the whole of humanity and indeed the whole of creation.

What we learn from modern cosmology is the whole creation is itself a response to God.  Evolution is matter's way of responding to God.  Against the constraints of entropy, life responds in ever more ordered ways.

One final point about this sequence of posts about the creation.  My purpose has been to make a theological point.  I have not attempted to prove God has a role in evolution.  What I'm suggesting  evolution itself is a response to God.  It is not that every individual aspires to know God but individuals are themselves a response to God.  It is not terribly important whether scientists agree with theologians on this point.  It will always be possible to understand evolution from both atheistic and theistic perspectives. 

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• It Was Very Good (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• The Lord Encompasses All (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• The World Belongs to the Lord (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)

God Loved the World so Much

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This is part of a series of posts based on the Churches Together in England publication one light: one world.  If you click on the link you will find the biblical texts.  This post of the same name covers the purpose of this series.

John 3:16

Whenever I see the word 'perish', I think of a state somewhere between life and death; a sort of undead state.  Remember where Jesus warns his disciples, those who live by the sword will perish by the sword?  Perish here means the act of using the sword erodes the moral person; we become driven by something which is not of God and so might as well be dead.  To perish is to give up on life.

To long for God's Kingdom is to choose life.  It is to choose to enter into dialogue with God, to respond to God's questions, to embrace the pain of being alive.  It is ultimately, the most difficult thing of all, to learn to love.

God's example to us is in God's love for the world.  The God we saw challenging the world in Isaiah is the God we find loving the world and suffering for the world.

Somehow the churches are called to join in on this enterprise of love.  This means to share in God's pain as well as God's love.  We learn to do this and experience unity through our divisions; the ways in which we are challenged to love one another despite our differences.

All of Creation Waits with Eager Longing

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This is part of a series of posts based on the Churches Together in England publication one light: one world.  If you click on the link you will find the biblical texts.  This post of the same name covers the purpose of this series.

Romans 8:19-23

Why evolution?  Why not create everything by design?  An answer is in this text.  We can see a purpose for evolution in this text.  All creation, living and non-living, strains towards God and is in some pain as it does so. 

Once again we are with the Oikoumene.  It is as if creation knows there has to be more than its immediate experience.

Our experience of modern cosmology is one of ultimate futility.  All things will come to an end.  Eventually, not only our own sun but all stars will burn out.  Creation will return to a soup of energy free chaotic matter.

But there is hope this creation is somehow a stepping stone to something else, it is as if the whole of creation is moving towards not death but new life.

We sometimes hear of the second coming, the belief that Jesus will return and put an end to all things.  This is sometimes known as eschatology.  Some people say the unity of the church is something we will discover at the end time; unity is eschatological.

But the thing that distinguishes life from death is its dynamic, life changes into more and more complex forms.  To give birth is to bring about new life.  Perhaps the eschaton is not so much unity as a new and reconciled life, increasingly diverse?

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• one light: one world (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• The Lord Encompasses All (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• It Was Very Good (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• Harmony in Diversity (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)

Good News for All Nations

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This is part of a series of posts based on the Churches Together in England publication one light: one world.  If you click on the link you will find the biblical texts.  This post of the same name covers the purpose of this series.

Matthew 24: 14

In my last post I wrote of things evolving in order to respond to God's call.  In what sense are we asked to respond to God's call?  It is not merely recognising God's role in creation; to recognise God's role is to submit to God's rule.

Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God.  Once again we need to see this as an opportunity to respond to God's challenge rather than submit to control.  We need to be highly suspicious of those who argue the Kingdom is like an earthly Kingdom, only bigger with scarier punishments.  This sort of argument merely masks their own lust for power.

It is obvious as we read the Gospels, Jesus is ironic in his use of the word Kingdom.  This Kingdom is one where the powerful serve the powerless.  We are invited to compare it with the Kingdoms we experience on earth.  There would be little point in doing so if God's Kingdom is essentially business as usual for despots.

This is why the Kingdom is good news and needs to be proclaimed across the whole world.  It would not be good news if this were a proclamation of business as usual.

Matthew is of course aware of how unlikely radical obedience to God will be.  Once it has been proclaimed to all nations, the end will come.  The end appears to have been indefinitely postponed!

The World Belongs to the Lord

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This is part of a series of posts based on the Churches Together in England publication one light: one world.  If you click on the link you will find the biblical texts.  This post of the same name covers the purpose of this series.

Psalm 24: 1-2

It is interesting to compare the first line in the NRSV version with the paraphrase in Churches' Together in England's title (above).  'The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it'.  The word 'belongs' implies ownership, as if the world is God's property.  To say the earth is the Lord's implies it is the Lord's in the sense that a work of art is the artist's.  If I buy a Picasso it is mine but the painting is still his.

One point I have made many times is, ecumenism is a part of the wider Oikoumene, which stands for the reconciliation of all things to God.  The world is God's and God calls to all created things.  Evolution is their response to God's call.

In what sense is this world God's?  There's not a lot to go on in this particular text.  The focus is not on God designing animals and plants but in setting the parameters of seas and rivers.  Perhaps the image is of God the theatre owner, who maintains the theatre in order that others might put on plays?  There might be a tendency to forget the theatre owner's work at the final curtain.

The Lord Encompasses All

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This is part of a series of posts based on the Churches Together in England publication one light: one world.  If you click on the link you will find the biblical texts.  This post of the same name covers the purpose of this series.

Isaiah 40: 21-26

This is about God's power and yet it is interesting to look at how it is exercised. 

Before I do that, it is important to remember the writers of this text had a different cosmology to the Newtonian one most of us cling to despite the massive changes that have taken place in physics over the last century, sometimes referred to as quantum mechanics.

These changes in cosmology are not necessarily a problem.  They have happened before during the history of Christianity and do not invalidate the main points of the Jewish and Christian faiths. 

At first glance, in this passage we have an all powerful God who exercises power over creation.  But look closer, there is nothing about design - God sits above, stretches the heavens, makes rulers as nothing, brings out the host, numbers them.  Just about anything but design.

This powerful God certainly interacts with creation, sometimes in ways which might not be welcomed.  But this is not a God who is in control. 

God lays the foundations; creates the environment in which creation evolves.  God asks questions of God's creation.  They are rhetorical questions, that draw attention to God.  God is saying, don't lose yourself in creation, can't you see there is more to it than your immediate environment? 

It is a call to transcend where we are and seek something else entirely.  Is this the same call heard by atoms and molecules as they form the first life?  The same call as that heard by single cells as they become multi-cellular? 

The call is to know God.  Things evolve, according to our modern cosmology, in order to discover God.

Similar questions are asked of human beings and various faith traditions have evolved to help those who will listen encounter God. 

It Was Very Good

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This is part of a series of posts based on the Churches Together in England publication one light: one world.  If you click on the link you will find the biblical texts.  This post of the same name covers the purpose of this series.

Genesis 1:26-31

I have written a great deal in this blog about evolution and there is more to come!  If we understand conversation to be a primary act, then we need to see it in all things; the conversations between churches are but one example. 

The views of creationists and neo-Darwinians focus on the idea of design. I find this a static and unhelpful understanding of evolution.  Design implies the sort of effort a human being puts into making a watch.  It has a purpose and designs for watches (or bicycles or cars or computers) are largely convergent, we soon learn what works and so continue to design along similar lines.  When we look at the design of a watch we see geometrical shapes, which we cannot see anywhere in a kitten, for example.

I prefer to think in terms of a conversation.  Evolution is an ongoing conversation at many levels between living organisms and their environment.  The theist might wish to add to that conversations between God and the material world.  I've no time to explore this further but will return to it in the future I am sure.

Verse 31, seems to be evidence of this.  God speaks earlier in the narrative and now God sees the effects of his words; how has creation responded?  If God were the all-powerful designer, as neo-Darwinists seem to imagine, why would God need to look?  Creation would be perfect because it had been designed by a perfect designer.  These words 'it was very good' seem to be God's judgement on a creation that is not essentially predictable because it has freedom to grow and develop in its own way.

We are in danger of thinking God has a design for the church.  But if the liberation of the Holy Spirit is real there cannot be a design; we are free to develop our relationships as we see fit.  The spirit calls us to base relationships on love and they grow out of love not some heavenly prescribed design