Exploring Ecumenism

God's Faithfulness Surrounds You

Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord,

your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones.

For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord?

Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord,

a God feared in the council of the holy ones,

great and awesome above all that are around him?

O Lord God of hosts,

who is as mighty as you, O Lord

Your faithfulness surrounds you.  (Psalm 89: 5-8)

This picks up from where I left off with the last reading.  The love of God is constant compared with human love.  To make a genuine effort to love your neighbour, depends upon the constant love of God.

The Psalmist emphasises the faithfulness of God.  The implication of these first three readings from one light: one world (see the links below) is that we derive our unity from the oneness of God, because we will let one another down and so we are dependent upon the constancy of God.

This does not necessarily imply our aim is for organisational unity between the churches.  It is God who is constant and we need that constancy because we are not constant.  Is it possible for humanity to be constant? 

The implication is that it is not.  The only thing we know is that we are not constant and therefore in need of God.  God's faithfulness implies reconciliation much more than it implies unity.

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Fine Nets and Stratagems

This paper by Monsignor Mark Langham, Fine Nets and Stratagems, is a well written summary of the position of the Roman Catholic Church, with respect to their ecumenical work in Britain.

The paper is divided into three parts and I will summarise  what Langham is saying and my reaction to it.

The Ecumenical Prayer

This summer I am preaching around my circuit about the Lord's Prayer.  There will be three services, it is a rich theme, which could probably support far more than three sermons but sometimes congregations need a break!  My main source is Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels by Kenneth E Bailey.

Bailey has been known to me as a writer for many years.  His analysis of the parable of the prodigal son impressed me during the mid-nineties when I was studying for my Masters in Applied Theology.  His access to Middle Eastern traditions brings rare insight to his writings.

His main focus for the words, Our Father, is upon the second word.  He goes into great detail and there's no point in dwelling on it here, except to observe the word translated in English as Father is universal.  I think we can properly see it as a celebration of oikoumene, understood as the reconciliation of all things, because it affirms God as Father of all people.

I am particularly interested in the first word, Our.  Bailey doesn't have much to say about it but what he does say is very interesting, page 100:

In conclusion the phrase in the prayer is "Our Father" not "My Father".  The Psalms have frequent reference to "my God", and the personal relationship between the God of the Bible and the individual believer must not be ignored.  Yet, as we will see, the Lord's Prayer affirms a family of God that has one Father, and this prayer includes all followers of Jesus in that family.

It may be simplistic to say, whilst God is Father of all, those who pray Our Father are part of God's family.  There are still many Christians who insist their tradition (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) is the one true church and that other Christians are lacking authenticity in some way.  But the family is all who say this prayer. 

I do not deny we are united by more than this one prayer.  However, we need to understand it is a statement of who we are and our collective relationship with God. 

These opening words tell us that when we raise the sword against anyone, we deny the image of God.  When we raise the sword against our fellow speakers of the prayer, we cut ourselves off from God's family.

Is Evolution Calvinist?

And so we arrive at Wesley's third great doctrine : Sanctification.  If Justification  is the decision to tread the narrow path between order and chaos; between license and morality, then Sanctification is how in practice we tread that path.  Sanctification is a lifelong journey; nothing like a life committed to one or the other of those so-called alternatives.

Wesley's theology is future-orientated.  For Calvinists, God is the all-powerful creator, who made the world, just so.  Everything was determined from the very beginning, down to who will and who will not be saved.  Their focus is on the past.

For Wesleyans, the future is more important.  From humanity's perspective, creation is incomplete.  The invitation is to contribute to the completion of God's creation.  This means all people can be saved.  Nothing is predestined. 

Justification and Imperialism

In my last post , I argued the Christian doctrine of Original Sin and the theory of evolution are entirely compatible.  This is something of an embarrassment because Augustine of Hippo's doctrine of original sin has encouraged so much Christian censoriousness.  He argued that the sin (of Adam and Eve) is communicated through the sex act and this has been enough to justify a fear of sex, damaging to the life of the church, including the position of women, who have been accused of the fall in much the same way as the Jews are accused of murdering Jesus.

Original sin is the first of Wesley's three great doctrines and so we need to look at the other two before we arrive at a final conclusion.  The next is Justification by faith. 

The Ichneumon Wasp

Williams goes on to quote another Australian colleague, who shares the national gift for chucking a bonzer phrase, on the Ichneumonid wasps, whose designer, if there was one, 'must have been a sadistic bastard'.  Darwin, although he visited Australia as a young man, expressed the same sentiment in staider, less antipodean terms: 'I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.'  (From: The Greatest Show on Earth  by Richard Dawkins, page 370)

This criticism of the Christian faith, boils down to the question: why does God allow suffering?  In this and the next two posts I will attempt a theological response.  I will show evolution is a threat not to the Christian faith but to some interpretations of it. 

Why is Cosmology Important for Ecumenists?

I want to return to the theme of science for a few posts.  (I will return to ecumenism's modern history; this diversion is to allow time to re-read Called to be One). 

I had a conversation the other day about Christian interpretations of evolution and it was suggested I should write down my ideas.  I'll start to do that in my next post.  But first, I aim to review how my thnking has moved on since I left this topic last summer. 

The Church of the East

One of the contributions Diarmaid MacCulloch has made through his book, A History of Christianity , is to make accessible, not only the broad sweep of Christian history but also those dimensions of history long forgotten by the modern churches.

One example of the latter is the impact of the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE).  MacCulloch provides a lucid account of what was a somewhat involved theological dispute.  It was about the nature of Jesus and whether he was of one nature (like water mixed with wine) or two natures (like water mixed with oil).  At the time, the disputes between these two views were exercising theologians throughout the eastern Mediterranean.

reBlog: What kind of Unity? and of Church?

This is an experimental post.  I found this blog a few days ago and thought it would be worth quoting from it and noticed the possibility of reblogging.  The post itself is another contribution to the debate about the future relationship between the Anglican and Roman Catholic communions.

Catholic Unity isn’t something humans create by obliterating others. God created it on Good Friday, and it’s inherent in the Unity of Christ. Is Christ divided? When Jesus prayed for Unity, did God say “no?” or did God decide that the effectiveness of the whole enterprise depends on ecclesiastical politics come right? Or did he say yes, create a spiritual unity by the death and resurrection of Jesus, clothe Jesus’ followers in it by baptism, and ask them to make sense of Unity, not as a goal on the distant horizon to be achieved by diplomacy or conquest, but a resource to be realised in an emergent way by faithfulness in a multiplanar reality we call “communion.” The submission required is necessary but mutual, not one-way. The obedience is primarily to God in Scripture, mediated through the whole life of all the baptised...bishopalan.blogspot.com, Bishop Alan’s Blog: What kind of Unity? and of Church?, Nov 2009

I recommend you read the whole article.

Elements of Mission 3: Morality

I illustrated a recent post  with Dore's engraving of Satan from Milton's Paradise Lost.  Why?  Because Satan was at the time of Jesus known as the angel of Rome.  His speciality was as upholder of the law.  He insisted upon total obedience.  I'm not at all sure how he mutated into the Hammer Horror monster of popular mythology.  The point is when we think about doctrine and morality we usually think in Satanic terms.  Once I know the truth, everyone else is by definition wrong.  We saw the consequences of this in the totalitarian regimes of the last century.  Christianity offers a radical alternative to these absolutes and this is what Radcliffe  was talking about at the CTE Forum  a few weeks ago.

He went on to describe how the media pressure church leaders to make statements on ethical issues and then take furious issue once they do.  For them morality is even worse than doctrine.  They expect churches to take moral stances.