Notes from Travels in Europe . . .

“RECONCILED DIVERSITY” IN GENEVA

This series, extended over several issues, will be drawn from my journey to Europe in December of 1974. The purpose was to attend a conference of the secretaries of the World Confessional Families, an organization of substantial ecumenical interests. These people have been engaging in bilateral dialogues at national, international, and world levels, and they were meeting to evaluate these conversations. The bilaterals have matched the Lutherans with the Orthodox, the Old Catholic with the Roman Catholic, the Congregational with the Presbyterian, and the Disciples with the Roman Catholic, to name but a few. Some of the questions discussed are the meaning of Sola Scriptura (the Word alone) for today, the nature and communication of grace, role of the church, authority, mixed marriages, the ministry, and baptism. Interestingly enough, the Roman Catholics have been most active in these conversations, conducting dialogues with most everyone.

I was in Geneva at the invitation of the World Convention of Churches of Christ, which has been involved in the WCF for years, but mostly in the person of Disciples. This year they wanted someone from both the “direct support” folk (Independent Christian Church) and the “anti organ” groups, so they invited Prof. Robert Fife of Milligan College and me. This reflects an effort on the part of the WCCC to include all of the Restoration persuasions in its concerns. Disciples present in Geneva were W. B. Blakemore, dean of Disciples Divinity House, University of Chicago and president of the WCCC; Allan Lee, general secretary of WCCC, which now has its headquarters in Dallas; and Paul Crow, president of the Disciples’ Council on Christian Unity.

But my trip included more than Geneva. Since European journeys are few and far between for me, I thought this might be my last chance to visit “Campbell country” in Scotland and Ireland. So on my return trip I scheduled Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland and Balleymena, Market Hill, Richhill, and Ahorey in North Ireland, all related to the Campbells in one way or another. This meant contact with a lot of interesting people, whether missionaries in Scotland, the pastor of the old Ahorey church (where Thomas Campbell ministered), or the rank and file I met on land, sea and air. And the Lord, as he always does, provided surprises for me along the way, and his abundant mercies attended me amidst the difficulties that every persistent traveler has.

So I shall be telling my story, not only this one about Geneva, but in succeeding installments under such titles as “Our Roots in Scotland,” “A Grim Night in North Ireland” (this one will sober you!), and “My Pilgrimage to Ahorey.” If you’ll go along with us, we’ll try to make it interesting and informative.

There were about 35 participants in the Geneva conference. These included bishops, archbishops, metropolitans, canons, and protopresbyters among the high clergy of several churches, along with theologians, professors, and agency secretaries. Churches represented ranged all the way from Orthodox (Russian and Greek) and Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Methodist to the Disciples, Mennonite, Seventh Day Adventist and the Salvation Army. Our chairman was Bishop John Howe of the Church of England. When I told him that I had read about him in the American press as the probable choice for the next Archbishop of Canterbury, he modestly insisted that I must not believe the American press.

In both ecclesiastical and ecumenical terms I was impressed with the calibre of representation. From the Vatican was the secretary for promoting Christian unity; the Archbishop of Canterbury sent his foreign affairs secretary; the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church was on hand; the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople was present. Represented also was the World Council of Churches, the Institute for Ecumenical Research, the Anglican Consultative Council, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, and the Friends World Committee for Consultation. And, the closest thing to us, the World Convention of Churches of Christ.

I was impressed that men of this calibre would take several days from their busy lives to carry on serious discussion about Christian unity. I admire pioneers, and this is what these bilateral efforts have been, pioneering ventures into Christian unity. Quite independent of the World Council of Churches (and viewed by some as competitive to the Council), these World Confessional Families have dared to take ecumenical concerns beyond the sacrosanct confines of high brow ecclesiastical chambers to the regional, national, and international levels for bilateral conversations. The bilaterals have not been exactly “grassroots,” but they are in that direction. When I suggested to Prof. Nils Ehrenstrom, a world authority in ecumenicity, that my own experience led me to believe that the Holy Spirit does more with us in terms of creating oneness when we gather at the grassroots level, he explained that some of the bilateral conversations had included the rank and file believers. But he defended the work of the WCF on the grounds that research is important, which reaches beyond the capacity of the rank and file. And it must be granted that a large depository of research material is available in our quest for unity through such agencies as Faith and Order and the Institute of Ecumenical Research.

These people make it evident that they mean business when they speak of “a fellowship which draws its life from the promise and gift of the Holy Spirit, gathering together the people of God. It is a fellowship nourished by the written word of God. It flows from the one baptism. It is vivified by the Eucharist, the heart of Christian communion.” And they can hardly be faulted for saying: “A fundamental insight of the ecumenical movement is an acceptance of one another not only as individuals but also in our different traditions and confessions. Here too we need prayer to give us the humility and spiritual realism to acknowledge the extent to which we need each other in apprehending and proclaiming the inexhaustible mystery of Christ.” And cannot we all see a need for such a spirit as: “It is only by learning and sharing beyond our own boundaries, and by accepting correction from each other, that we can grow into the fulness of the truth of Christ.”

They laid down a new dimension to the nature of dialogue: “Dialogue implies listening together which evokes a modification of personal conviction and confession. No partner in dialogue can escape this.” This means that those in dialogue realize that they have something to learn from each other. By its very nature it tends to modify personal conviction, for each participant is brought into “a new mutual awareness of truth which in turn qualifies and gives new dimensions to initial starting points.” Such an idea would be threatening to a lot of our people, but we are hardly ready for real dialogue until we realize that we have a great deal to learn from others, as well as some truths to share that we may understand better than others.

I was most impressed with their ideas on reconciliation, which they centered in the work of God through Christ and applied to the imperative of unity. “Such an understanding of reconciliation in Christ commits all of us to the task of thinking through, confessing and living out together our common understanding of Christ and His Gospel. The churches are therefore summoned to witness to Christ together at every level of man’s life—culturally, socially, ethically—in the context of the realities of today.”

It is in this context that they talk about reconciled diversity. a concept that surely gets close to describing unity in the scriptures. They observe that unity can never be a matter of uniformity of theology or culture, for to insist upon a uniform pattern is to deny the multiplicity of the gifts of the Spirit and the manifold variety of creation and history. Reconciled diversity acknowledges that the things which unite are greater than those that separate. That we are going to be different from each other is evident enough. It is a question of whether we are willing to yield to the Spirit in such a way that the differences that we have allowed to separate us will give way to reconciliation—reconciled diversity.

That their view of unity is essentially Christian and not simply humanitarian is evident in this statement: “We are agreed in the conviction that the unity of the Church is given primarily in the life and work, death and resurrection, of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that the gift of unity in Christ cannot be had unless it is appropriated by our sharing in His dying and rising and by our realization of the common life in the Body of Christ.”

Denominational heritages themselves are legitimate, say the WCFs, insofar as the one faith explicates itself in history in a variety of expressions. They concede that denominational heritages have sometimes preserved errors, but when the existing differences lose their divisive character a vision of unity emerges which has the character of reconciled diversity. So, they avow, unity and fellowship among the churches do not require uniformity of faith and order, but can and must encompass a plurality or diversity of convictions and traditions. Loyalty to a particular church background and ecumenical commitment are no contradiction, they add.

They had considerable discussion over the nature of unity and union, some seeing them as synonymous, others as having an important distinction. Unity is general and union is specific, or the first is qualitative and the latter quantitative. Unity is that conciliar oneness that exists when people see themselves as children of God and accept each other as brothers. Union is when they are able to activate this in some common expression.

Some of my own impressions, noted in my diary as we proceeded, would probably impress no one. I felt that, despite their claims to the contrary, their idea of unity was closely tied to organic forms. The bilaterals are of little value if they do not move toward a union of churches. My own view is that unity is more personal and individual than that. Even in a maze of theological differences and varied ecclesiastical forms people can be one in Jesus in that they reach out and accept each other as such - in spite of the theologians!

Too, they left the impression that the differences must somehow be worked out, which is the task for the theologians, while I would say that differences of some description will always be with us and that the Spirit’s unity can be realized in spite of them. This is where their term “reconciled diversity” has special meaning. Surely all the issues do not have to be settled before unity and fellowship can be appreciated.

My prejudices force me to add that I doubt if the clergy, high or low, can really do a great deal toward Christian unity. The clergy may have divided the church, but I question its ability to heal. There is an ecumenical movement going on that many of these people are not in a position to realize. It takes the form of their own people in prayer groups, cottage meetings and the like, along with that great spiritual surge that is cutting across all sectarian lines. Such ones care little for all the theological gobbledegook that concerns some ecumenists. But Jesus they know, and for his sake they reach out to claim all as brothers that God acknowledges as children. It doesn’t take a lot of theological savvy to do that.

So mine is a rather simple view. Amidst all the talk in Geneva I kept saying to myself, “Is it really all this difficult?” But at the same time I rejoice that these discussions take place, for surely the Spirit can and does work at many levels in realizing God’s eventual purpose for all His children. Yet I am convinced that any findings on the part of the clergy will have to filter down to the rank and file for implementation if it proves to be of any value. Unity is every believer’s business.

Bob Fife and I got out on the town just a little. We saw the likes of the new United Nations building and the Ecumenical Center which houses the World Council of Churches. And we moved somewhat among the Genevans, visiting a chapel where John Knox once pastored and the cathedral where John Calvin held forth. In recalling Calvin’s theocracy in Geneva we had something less than the ideal standard for the unity our conference sought. But in mid-city we listened to youth as they sang and preached about Jesus on a downtown corner. The joy in their faces and the urgency of those who lifted up the Christ is indelibly fixed in my mind, and I am left thinking that what they were doing is both the way to unity and the purpose of unity. All of which was quite apart from theology and theologians, and who knows, they may hardly have heard of the World Council or the World Confessional Families.—the Editor