The One Church and Reunion Movements

Abstract

The desire the will of Christ, manifested in His prayer that they all may be one, be speedily accomplished has been repeated so often by the Vicars of Christ, all efforts sincerely directed towards its fulfilment are worthy of study. The present strivings of those separated from the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church are briefly summarized in this comment. Currently the desire for unity is concretised in the creation of a World Council of Churches. This venture, a new departure in the. ecumenical movement, was recommended by the Edinburgh and Oxford Conferences of 1938. Its establishment is an attempt to show the fundamental oneness of the member churches in the ecumenical movement. While the Council manifests the unity already achieved, it admits it is far from the goal sought. The constitution of the World Council was drafted at Utrecht. The Council consists of a general assembly of 450 which is to meet every five years, a central committee which meets annually, and commissions for study in the fields where common action is not yet possible. The new factors which this Council introduces in the movement are: (1) It is a movement of the churches. Formerly, churches chose representatives and sent them to conferences. Now they are in an organization directly, with continuous relations and direct responsibility for the ecumenical task. The admission is made there has been ignorance of what the Church is, and an effort is being made to learn anew the nature and functions of the Church. The Church is now recognized as the form of life which God ordained for His children. And the Church sought is a concrete, organized Church, not an abstraction. (2) The Council acknowledges the interdependence of unity in faith and order and cooperation in life and work. For if Christians act as one body, without being one body, and do not ask why they are not one body, confusion is inevitable. A common conception of truth must be the foundation for common activity. It is interesting to note how the elements in the philosophic definition of a society are implicit in the explanation of the new factors which the