Vision Of Unity Research Articles

‘Satis est — Necesse est’

The task of the current paper is to compare two important, ecclesiological documents to each other, namely, the document The Church of Jesus Christ (cjc, 1994) of the Leuenberg Church Fellowship to the Faith and Order document The Church: Towards a Common Vision (ctcv, 2012). The first one, cjc, outlines an ecclesiology of one, specific confessional church family and church fellowship, in a geographical area. ctcv, on the other hand, reflects the global situation, and seeks to express convergence between churches living in very different societies and cultural spheres. By comparing the two documents, this paper explores themes such as church as a community of Saints, the Leuenberg methodology of unity, legitimate diversity, apostolic succession and requirements for unity. The paper argues that the Leuenberg model of ‘reconciled diversity’ could be understood as a step and a practical tool on the way to the full, visible unity, which, according to ctcv, is the ultimate goal of the ecumenical movement.

Langston Hughes and Performing Transnational Presence: Scottsboro Limited and Harvest

Theatre revealed shifts between movements black modernism of 1920s and 1930s. As Langston Hughes recalls his autobiography Big Sea (1940) the 1920's were years of Manhattan's black Renaissance.... [T]he musical revue, Shuffle Along ... gave a scintillating send-off to vogue Manhattan, which reached its peak just before crash of 1929, crash sent ... all rolling down hill toward Works Progress Administration. (1) Hughes wrote Scottsboro Limited (1931) just before visiting Soviet Union. Hughes co-authored Harvest with Ella Winter and Ann Hawkins shortly after returning to United States but left play unfinished 1934. Both scripts provoke politically while experimenting theatrical forms to aestheticize narratives of recent upheaval United States. Following Hughes's markers for what he calls that vogue, Scottsboro Limited and Harvest fall chronologically between Shuffle Along (1921) and plays of WPA's Federal Theatre Project (1935-39). These plays remain powerful indicators of a transitional cultural moment which Soviet drama was also vogue. Attending to these plays reasserts theatre as a ubiquitous and influential medium 1930s cultures of United States. Analysis of these plays participates debates on status of transnational modernism at large, while clarifying a crucial element of Hughes's exchange with Soviet culture missing from recent literary studies. Internationally renowned as a poet, Langston Hughes has received renewed critical attention recent years with valuable research on transnational characteristics of his life, poetry, autobiography, and short stories. (2) Theatre, however, has received relatively little attention this critical revival, despite its centrality to Hughes's broad cultural consumption and to his literary work (as is evident from assessments of his biographers and from his correspondence with Carl Van Vechten). This essay reads Hughes's plays Scottsboro Limited and Harvest as theatrical representations of prisoners and workers specific to US contexts mirror Soviet-dominated internationalist film, journalistic theatre, and pageants. Hughes's 1930s participation a transnational aesthetic community of theatrical innovation devoted to developing proletarian theatre remains under-researched. His plays from period embody collaboration and emotional commitment across national lines. Hughes's travel supported circulation and translation of his works journals such as Soviet International Literature (with publications multiple languages) and many Spanish-language journals such as Contemporaneos, Sur, Revista de La Habana, El Diario de la Marina, Cristol, and El Mono Azul. (3) I argue Hughes's work revises Soviet cinematic and theatrical conventions, and these aesthetic choices affirm internationalism. Hughes modifies Soviet forms an act of international exchange, echoing Soviet calls for revolution, while challenging Comintern's Black Belt Nation Thesis and its implications for his poetics. (4) Hughes ends article Moscow: In a Land Where There Is No Jim Crow for International Literature with an English translation of Russian poem KINSHIR (5) For Hughes, Julian Anisimov's poem claims kinship in art between The Russian and Negro through the blood of Pushkin with a vision of unity between cultural nationalities in International. (6) Hughes's work and travel enacted an internationalism dialogue with Anisimov's vision, but Hughes resisted Moscow's authority within ideology of Soviet Internationalism as worldwide communist revolution. Still, Hughes celebrates impression Moscow there are no color bars, and very nature of Soviet system can never admit any sort of discriminatory racial separation, or setting apart from general worker's life of Negroes or any other minority group. …

Karl Barth and the Importance of Thinking Theologically within the Nicene Faith

This article argues that if Catholic and Protestant theologians, prompted by the Holy Spirit, allowed their common faith in God as confessed in the Nicene Creed to shape their thinking and action, this could lead to more visible unity between them. Relying on Barth, the article suggests that the oneness, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity of the church can be understood best in faith that allows the unique object of faith, namely God incarnate in Christ and active in his Spirit, to dictate one’s understanding. Such thinking will avoid the pluralist tendency to eviscerate Christ’s uniqueness and attempts to equate church unity with aspects of the church’s visible existence. These approaches tend to undermine the importance of faith in recognizing that such unity means union with Christ through the Spirit such that it cannot be equated with or perceived by examining only its historical existence in itself and in relation to other communities of faith.

Toward a Common Vision of the Church: Will It Fly?

Perhaps the two most significant ecumenical documents since the Second Vatican Council's Decree on Ecumenism are the 1982 Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (BEM) (1) text World Council Churches (WCC) and the 1999 Lutheran-Roman Catholic Joint Declaration on the Doctrine Justification. (2) Now, the WCC has added its statement, The Church: Common Vision (TCTCV). (3) A Historical Note at the conclusion the document points out that this text is of the same status and character (4) as its earlier BEM text. In this essay I will examine briefly the TCTCV text, then make some ecclesiological observations on the text, consider some obstacles to common ecclesial vision, and raise the question global church. Finally, I will ask how we might be able to move forward. I. The Text The history the Faith and Order text, TCTCV, is complicated. While not as long in gestation as BEM, the antecedents to the statement on the church include the churches' official responses to BEM; the reflections the WCC's Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order in 1993 at Santiago de Compostela, Spain, on Towards Koinonia in Faith, Life, and Witness; and new ecumenical study on the church, its nature and mission, launched by the Faith and Order Plenary Commission in 1989 and published in 1998 as the provisional text, The Nature and Purpose the Church: A Stage on the Way to Common Statement. (5) Responses to this text noted that it did not address teaching authority and that the topic mission was underdeveloped. The next draft, The Nature and Mission the was presented to the 2006 WCC Assembly at Porto Alegre, Brazil. In successive chapters, it addressed the church as communion and its mission as servant the reign God; the relation between the local church and all the churches; the elements necessary for communion between churches, such as apostolic faith, baptism, eucharist, ministry, episkope, councils, and synods, as well as primacy and authority; and the church's service to the world. This revised text was then sent to the churches and other ecclesial groups for their responses. From this point the Plenary Commission Faith and Order began preparing what became the final text, in the process integrating more clearly the earlier material on baptism, eucharist, and ministry into its view what was essential to the life the church. The final text was presented to the Faith and Order Standing Commission, meeting in Penang, Malaysia, on June 21, 2012, where it was unanimously approved as convergence (not consensus) statement with the title, TCTCV. John Gibaut says it represents not blueprint but a vision what the Church could be in its theological self-understanding, life, and mission. (6) Interspersed throughout the text are paragraphs in italics lifting up specific issues where divisions remain, designed to encourage further reflection. In September, 2012, the Central Committee the WCC received the text and commended it to the member churches for their study and responses. (7) The Introduction points out that the text is structured in terms four ecclesiological issues, the church's essentially missionary origin, understanding it as communion, its growth toward the reign God, and its relation to the world. I will summarize these briefly as origin, nature, growth, and relation to the world, then make some summary observations on its ecclesiology. A. Chapter I: Origin The church finds its origin in relation to God's plan for creation, manifested in the incarnation and paschal mystery Christ and Christ's proclamation the gospel the reign God. Jesus sent forth the apostles as witnesses, empowering them with the Spirit to make disciples, to teach, and to be community witness. Thus, the church cannot be understood apart from the saving activity the Trinity. From the New Testament period Christian unity has been important for both the mission and nature the church, visible unity that requires that the churches be able to recognize in one another what the Nicaea-Constantinople Creed calls the one, holy, catholic, apostolic Church, noting that such recognition may call for changes in doctrine, practice, and ministry within any given community. …

Reflections on The Church : Towards a Common Vision

Church: Towards Common Vision (TCTCV) is introduced us with the aim to serve the churches as they call one another visible unity in one faith and one Eucharistic fellowship, expressed in worship and common life in Christ, through witness and service the world, and advance towards unity in order the world may believe. (1) In this, it is convergence document show far Christian communities have come in their common understanding of the (2) By this, its two objectives are renewal and theological agreement on the (3) As such, it gives me hope for the oikumene is the global church. That stated, it gives me pause reflect upon how it will give hope the church in Southern California. First, our assignment as panelists is react this text. Given time limitations, I can choose only few theses really caught my attention from among all of its salient points. For one thing, it affirms the church is in God's design in order God's people are equipped and sent out for the missio Dei, the mission of In this, it reaffirms the church is the creatura verbi, gift of the word of God, centred and grounded in the Gospel, the proclamation of the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, Son of the Father. (4) I am Lutheran--at least, primarily so--hence, statements such as these, which uphold the church is God's action, not ours, warm my Lutheran heart. Another thesis struck me is the emphasis this text places upon diversity in the church, both legitimate and illegitimate. I deeply appreciate its distinction that, on the one hand, Legitimate diversity is not accidental the life of the Christian community but is rather an aspect of its catholicity, quality reflects the fact it is part of the Father's design salvation in Christ be incarnational and thus 'take flesh' among the various peoples whom the Gospel is proclaimed. (5) On the other hand, illegitimate diversity arises when [t]he essential catholicity of the Church is undermined when cultural and other differences are allowed develop into division. (6) Still another thesis caught my eye is the affirmation that the Church is not merely the sum of individual believers among themselves but, rather, a communion in the Triune God and, at the same time, communion whose members partake together in the life and mission of God ..., who, as Trinity, is the source and focus of all communion. Thus the Church is both divine and human reality. (7) From this, it follows in the Church in its various forms and levels, must be distinguished from mere power. (8) Having served for over three decades as pastor in mainline Protestantism, I know well the pitfalls of regarding the congregation as human enterprise, with planning processes, focus groups, and the like. Over and above all that, I have hope the church will be renewed by reaffirming instead comes from God the Father through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit; as such it reflects the holiness of God. (9) But, herein lies challenge. text claims there is widespread agreement the Church is called proclaim, in each generation, the faith once for all entrusted the saints ... and remain steadfast in the teaching first handed on by the apostles. Faith is evoked by the Word of God, inspired by the grace of the Holy Spirit, attested in Scripture and transmitted through the living tradition of the Church. It is confessed in worship, life, service and mission. (10) How is this defined? The sources of authority recognized in varying degrees by the churches such as Scripture, Tradition, worship, councils and synods, also reflect the holiness of the Triune Such authority is recognized wherever the truth which leads holiness is expressed and the holiness of God is voiced 'from the lips of children and infants. …

Panel Presentation on The Church : Towards a Common Vision

Father Alexi Smith, Chairperson the Southern California Ecumenical Commission, asked panelists in what ways we agree with the document the World Council Churches (WCC) Faith and Order Commission, The Church: Towards a Common Vision (TCTCV) (1) and whether there are areas with which we disagree. I thank Father Alexi for his friendship and support in the monthly meetings the Southern California Faith and Order Commission, where I am able to share a perspective as a representative the Christian Science Church. Before commenting on the document specifically, a story from 1 Kings 18 Elijah and his work to eliminate the Baal prophets came to mind as I was preparing for this panel. I realized that regardless our affiliation with various communions, we come together at this conference (and in the spirit koinonia) to fight together the Baal prophets today--whether secularism, materialism, nationalism, etc.--with the Christian values we all hold dear. This is the spirit ecumenism that the North American Academy Ecumenists (NAAE) and TCTCV represent. Points Agreement As for areas agreement, Christians have two foundational points on which we unite: the primacy the scriptures, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. TCTCV launches its sixty-nine points on the first these platforms, the scriptures. It lays an unmistakable biblical foundation with its introductory statement, For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and we were all made to drink one Spirit. (2) Were Paul with us today, he might have amended his comments to describe the one body as having Catholic or Orthodox, Lutherans or Christian Scientists, yet we could still each bear witness, regardless religious affiliation, to drinking of one Spirit. By its many scriptural quotations throughout the sixty-nine paragraphs, we are constantly reminded this common source for our guidance and inspiration. A second way the document contributes to our quest for Christian unity is by articulating the overall mission the church. By highlighting koinonia, or communion (as Paragraph 1 defines it), (3) we are reminded that all are made in God's image and likeness, (4) with the inherent ability to our unity first with God and then, because the Creator, with each other as the Almighty's offspring and thus, our brothers and sisters. This is, in fact, the mission the church--to bring this healing perspective to a world sorely in need. Paragraph 2 builds on this mission and witness by explaining how we are all empowered by the Holy Spirit to follow in the Master's footsteps healing, by being a community witnesses, worshipers, and disciples. These are such fundamental reminders our individual and collective mission as Christians. (5) Koinonia has many meanings, but, in the context Christian unity, perhaps one the strongest is the friendship communion with those differing faith communities. Because we are in this fundamental relationship with each other--provided by God--relationships are being developed with mutual regard, advanced by ecumenical encounter. (6) As stated in the 1982 WCC Faith and Order document, Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, consensus is that experience life and articulation faith necessary to realize and maintain the church's visible unity, rooted in the communion built on Jesus Christ and the witness the apostles. (7) We appreciate how the adaptability Paul's preaching was emphasized in the document, such as the way the Apostle used the Athenians' own philosophers when speaking at Mars Hill. (8) This indicates the ongoing need for sharing the Good News with tremendous diversity. Likewise, in Paragraph 12, we are reminded that the church has always, from its earliest days, had great variety in its worship practices, communion rituals, and ecclesiological insights found in the twenty-seven books the New Testament. …

The Church: Towards a Common Vision

The Church: Towards a Common Vision John St-Helier Gibaut (bio) Keywords church, ecclesiology, ecumenism, World Council of Churches, renewal, Christian unity Part I. Toward Theological Convergence A. Introduction: North American Contexts My thanks to Professor Mitzi Budde for her invitation to present The Church: Towards a Common Vision (TCTCV).1 Presenting this particular text to a Canadian and American2 audience is especially important for me, because what I present here is the culmination of what I left Canada to do seven years ago. My sense of Canadian—if not North American—identity has been shaped by being out of this context in this time. As a Canadian at the World Council of Churches (WCC), I am constantly caught off guard by assumptions from my own context that call me to step back, to be mindful of the diverse ecumenical contexts from which we all come, and to name some ways that our particular region might be ahead of other parts of the world and have something to share,3 as well as other ways in which we might lag behind and have something to receive.4 Both Canada and the United States have their particular histories of living ecumenically, going back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Great Awakenings are an American phenomenon. The First Amendment [End Page 216] of the U.S. Constitution, with its clear distinction between church and state, cannot be reduced to Enlightenment ideology. It was an American way of dealing with the colonial experience of divided churches by ensuring that no one church is “established,” leaving the others as disadvantaged “dissenters.”5 In Canada, the granting of religious liberties to Roman Catholics in the 1770’s6 was not recognized in Great Britain for another seventy years. This is not the place to rehearse the background of North American ecumenical contexts. I would simply like to underscore that our histories and our particular ecumenical struggles and achievements are different from the European experience of living with a divided Christianity, and they are distinct from other colonial and post-colonial experiences of Christian disunity, not to mention Middle Eastern, Slavic, and other contexts, which are even more diverse. The experiences of estranged churches in North America are different, depending on which side of the border one lives, and they differ in various regions of both countries. B. Introduction to Faith and Order Before I begin any presentation on the work of Faith and Order, I have found it worthwhile to explain the very language of “faith and order,” which can easily be misunderstood, especially in English-speaking contexts, particularly in North America, and even among the most ecumenically minded. I note that the Canadian Council of Churches’ Faith and Order Commission became the “Faith and Witness Commission.” The words “Director of Faith and Order” and “Commission on Faith and Order” for many people conjure up visions of theology police. At the end of 2007, when I left Saint Paul University, a pontifical university, a colleague asked me in all seriousness whether I was going to be the “new Cardinal Ratzinger of the WCC”! Faith and Order is something entirely different. It is not the Congregation [End Page 217] for the Doctrine of the Faith for the WCC; our Roman Catholic equivalent and major partner is the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Since the goal of the ecumenical movement is to recover the visible unity of Christ’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, there needs to be a space to discuss the issues that divided Christians and keep us apart. That is what Faith and Order has provided for over eighty years: a forum to dialogue about divisive issues of the “faith” and the “ordering” of the churches. By “faith” I mean doctrine: what we believe about God, the Trinity, the person of Jesus Christ, the Bible, salvation, the sacraments, ministries, or the nature of the church. By “order” I mean the structure of the church. How are churches ordered or organized? Is it the local congregation served by its minister of word and sacrament? Or, is it a diocese with a bishop? What is the relationship between and among the...

Sectarianism and the Search for Visible Catholicity: Lessons from John Nevin and Richard Hooker

Although from its outset, Protestantism has defined the essence of the church primarily by its invisible attributes (for example, its hidden identity in Christ, to whom it is united by faith, Protestants have often felt compelled to give clearer visible definition to the church) to distinguish it from sects or false churches. Unfortunately, such a quest for visible criteria of catholicity has often tended to reproduce a sectarian mentality, in which these visible boundary markers become not signs, but grounds, of the church’s union with Christ. In this article, I analyze how this process unfolded in the thought of nineteenth-century Mercersburg theologian John Williamson Nevin. Beginning with a sharp critique of sectarianism, he sought more and more for visible criteria of church unity that would exclude sects, and ended by rejecting Protestant ecclesiology altogether. I then turn to sixteenth-century English theologian Richard Hooker for resources that might help us avoid this impasse: namely, a critique of sectarianism that maintains a clear distinction between the church’s justification and its sanctification. The church’s hidden unity with Christ falls under the former heading; its quest for historic forms of visible unity under the latter.

Transforming Renewal through a Charismatic-Catholic Encounter

Pentecostal-charismatic involvement in the ecumenical movement has grown over the last 50 years and with it the ecumenical focus on the work of the Holy Spirit. As Pentecostals and charismatics have become more positive about ecumenical involvement, others have sensed problems growing within ecumenical discussions with the goal of visible unity moving further away. One way being pioneered in this context is that of “receptive ecumenism” seen as a transformational process of growth enabled by the Holy Spirit. In charismatic terms this is can be seen as a movement that seeks renewal through engagement with other Christian traditions. This article seeks to explore how charismatic renewal might learn from engagement with monastic renewal in the Roman Catholic Tradition. In particular it engages with significant leaders in these traditions: David Watson and Thomas Merton. The question addressed in the paper will be: “What can the charismatic tradition, represented by Watson, appropriately learn with integrity from the Roman Catholic tradition, represented by Merton?” The theme of renewal is a broad one that covers all aspects of existence in the church and world. Yet renewal is rooted in the initiatives of the triune God and there is thus a theological heart that will provide a focus for this article. We will first outline Watson’s understanding of God in renewal and then compare this to that of Merton, so as to see what might be learned. Hence this article seeks to explore the challenges that remain to be explored in the charismatic understanding of renewal through an ecumenical engagement across disciplines of study that are not often brought together.

Reading Paul in post-Lutheran Sweden

This article brings a contextual approach to Paul and Christian origins. By suggesting a way to re-imagine Paul in the context of a disestablished Lutheran church in a post-Lutheran and post-homogenous Swedish society, the article strives to contribute to contemporary Lutheran theology as well as to the understanding of Swedish identity. Even if the relevancy of this relatively new social context might seem obvious, it is far from obvious how it affects a Lutheran self-understanding. This emerging context, it is argued, challenges Lutherans to revisit the writer that meant most to Luther: Paul. Beginning with the Tübingen school, the article shows how Pauline scholarship has been characterized by a problematic contrasting between Jewish particularism and Pauline universalism. A similar contrasting, it is further shown, can be found in the so called New perspective on Paul. With special attention to the Pauline vision of unity in Christ (Gal 3:28) the article strives to move beyond the New perspective. By proposing a re-imagining of Jewishness as an open ethnic category, I suggest that Paul and Christian origins could be re-conceptualized in a way that is Lutheran, but that is also sensitive to issues of ethnic difference, margins, and belonging in contemporary Sweden.

The Grand Work of Fiction: The Detail as Narrative

AbstractA practising architect and Professor at the University of Virginia School of Architecture, Edward Ford is the leading expert on the architectural detail and the author of three seminal books on the subject. Here Ford explains that, though the decision ‘to abstract or to articulate’ architecture ‘may be largely subconscious’, it is never ‘arbitrary’. For ‘in the well‐designed building, it is done in the service of the creation of a larger narrative, a unity of vision’.

'En vue de plus tard ou de jamais': Poetic Community in Stephane Mallarme's Tombeaux

In 1891 Stephane Mallarme described his view of the widening rift between poets and modern society: ‘Pour moi, le cas d’un poete, en cette societe qui ne lui permet pas de vivre, c’est le cas d’un homme qui s’isole pour sculpter son propre tombeau.’ This article reads Mallarme’s three tombeaux — ‘Le Tombeau d’Edgar Poe’, ‘Le Tombeau de Charles Baudelaire’, and ‘Tombeau’ (for Verlaine) — as responses to this perceived rupture and isolation. These poems establish a community of poets around the departed, distinct from the society in which Mallarme felt the poet no longer had a place. Mallarme’s tombeaux can thus be understood in connection with his involvement in the construction of other poetic communities, such as his role in founding La Societe internationale des poetes, as well as with the modest tombeau revival of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Understanding this historical moment as an interregnum, the poet developed a concept of poetic fraternity that, he hoped, could serve as a model for sociability more broadly in the future. This article emphasizes the commonalities that link the tombeaux to one another and to Mallarme’s notion of community, using close readings to analyse the unique visions of poetic community each poem presents.

How Islamic is al-Qaeda? The politics of Pan-Islam and the challenge of modernisation

This article investigates the contested ideology of al-Qaeda through an analysis of Osama bin Ladin’s writings and public statements issued between 1994 and 2011, set in relation to the development of Islamic thought and changing socio-political realities in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Challenging popular conceptions of Wahhabism and the “Salafi jihad”, it reveals an idealistic, Pan-Islamic sentiment at the core of his messages that is not based on the main schools of Islamic theology, but is the result of a crisis of meaning of Islam in the modern world. Both before and after the death of al-Qaeda’s iconic leader, the continuing process of religious, political and intellectual fragmentation of the Muslim world has led to bin Ladin’s vision for unity being replaced by local factions and individuals pursuing their own agendas in the name of al-Qaeda and Islam.

Preface

Preface

The Challenge of Promoting Professionalism Through Medical Ethics and Humanities Education

Given recent emphasis on professionalism training in medical schools by accrediting organizations, medical ethics and humanities educators need to develop a comprehensive understanding of this emphasis. To achieve this, the Project to Rebalance and Integrate Medical Education (PRIME) II Workshop (May 2011) enlisted representatives of the three major accreditation organizations to join with a national expert panel of medical educators in ethics, history, literature, and the visual arts. PRIME II faculty engaged in a dialogue on the future of professionalism in medical education. The authors present three overarching themes that resulted from the PRIME II discussions: transformation, question everything, and unity of vision and purpose.The first theme highlights that education toward professionalism requires transformational change, whereby medical ethics and humanities educators would make explicit the centrality of professionalism to the formation of physicians. The second theme emphasizes that the flourishing of professionalism must be based on first addressing the dysfunctional aspects of the current system of health care delivery and financing that undermine the goals of medical education. The third theme focuses on how ethics and humanities educators must have unity of vision and purpose in order to collaborate and identify how their disciplines advance professionalism. These themes should help shape discussions of the future of medical ethics and humanities teaching.The authors argue that improvement of the ethics and humanities-based knowledge, skills, and conduct that fosters professionalism should enhance patient care and be evaluated for its distinctive contributions to educational processes aimed at producing this outcome.

A vision of unity from a Catholic perspective

Looking at the vision of unity from the perspective of the Catholic Church three questions arise: (1) What is the Catholic Church's ultimate ecumenical goal? (2) What should unity in practice look like? and (3) How can it be achieved? If the Church is understood rather as a sacramental entity than an institution, the ‘Christ mystery’ in the Eucharist releases and demands communion in the apostolic faith, the sacraments and a ministry serving the two. The intra-Catholic elements of the interdependence of eucharistic and ecclesial communion, ministry and church, Church universal and particular churches constitute the parameters for a still imperfect communio of denominational churches which could become local churches in the full sense of the word. In this model of ‘ecumenical’ communio ecclesiology the papal ministry is conceived of as being at the centre of unity and collegiality rather than merely having juridical tasks for the governing of the Church.

‘Unreal worlds meeting’? Realism and illusion in ecumenical dialogue

One aspect of the chilly climate of ecumenism at the present time is the idea that theological dialogue between the major Christian traditions is basically a pointless exercise in self-deception. This article considers this criticism and weighs the extent to which the churches are already united, while being, in some cases, divided where it matters most – at the Lord’s Table. It restates the ‘Faith and Order’ vision of full visible unity as an imperative of the gospel, briefly indicating how it may be pursued with realism and integrity.

COUNTERING THE COUNTERFACTUAL: JOANNA BAILLIE's METRICAL LEGENDS OF EXALTED CHARACTERS (1821) AND THE PARATEXTS OF HISTORY

This essay considers Joanna Baillie's intense and ongoing concern about the flexibility of distinctions between history and fiction, focusing in particular on her rejection of counterfactual narratives in Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters (1821). It is argued that the dense scholarly apparatus of prefaces, endnotes and appendices attached to the volume represents an attempt to banish romance and contingency from the literary text, while ultimately offering an insight into the complex nature of historiographical practice by undermining the very factual stability and unity of vision that the legends seek to project. The generic, epistemological and methodological ambiguities within Metrical Legends also point to a broader tension in Romantic women's writing between promoting “female” values and emulating “masculine” discourses, which itself mirrors the Romantics’ wider preoccupation with the increasing division between literary and non-literary discourses at the end of the eighteenth century.

The Church as Mission in Its Very Life

Introductory RemarksIs there a relation between Church and mission? And if there is, how are mission and Church related? Does the Church have a mission or even several missions? Or is the Church essentially mission? Is it mission in its very life? These are the core questions of the following study text that constitutes the contribution of the Working Group on Mission and Ecclesiology of CWME, from which the new Mission Statement's chapter on the Church drew. To address these questions means to embark on a twofold agenda: It means to approach mission from the angle of the life of and the reflection on the Church, and it also means to tackle ecumenical ecclesiology from a mission perspective.The present text grew out of further reflections on the study paper on theme 8 of the Edinburgh 2010 study process “Towards Common Witness to Christ Today: Mission and Visible Unity of the Church” (published in IRM 99.1 [2010] 86–106). The insights gathered in the following paper are part of an ongoing process that seeks to take into account the constantly changing contexts of mission and Church. Already on the face of it, the macro‐context shows two opposing trends: on the one hand, an increasing secularization of society, and at the same time, on the other, the emerging of new and rapidly growing religious movements. The present text limits itself to stating and briefly analyzing some factors of the continuously changing ecclesial landscape that is created by these trends of the macro‐context. This approach presumes that the Church is not merely a free‐floating, ultra‐mundane entity. It is of an “incarnational” nature. It exists in the midst of differing particular contexts in this world. The methodological option of starting from the contemporary contexts and challenges to world Christianity today and of evaluating the impacts they have on contemporary mission offers a fresh view on long‐debated issues in missiology and ecclesiology.In its search for solutions to these contemporary challenges, the text argues that theologically it is impossible to separate Church and mission. The missio Dei concept, which affirms the priority of the triune God's sending activity, continues to provide the fundamental basis for both, an ecumenical missiology and an ecclesiology from a mission point of view. “The missionary intention of God is the raison d'être of the Church,” the text states in no. 32. This Church (with a capital C) is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church we confess in the creed. The Church can also be called “apostolic” in the sense that Christians are “sent”, since they are invited by God to become “part‐takers” in God's mission (nos. 24 and 26). The second chapter is therefore called “Common Witness: That the World May Believe”. It addresses the insight that a lack of unity is detrimental to the witness and mission of the Church. This insight, which is already highlighted in John 17:21, was prophetically spelled out for the modern ecumenical movement by the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh. From an ecclesiological point of view, the core question is how our confessional churches embody this one Church or how they are otherwise related to it. From a mission point of view, the witness of the one Church of Jesus Christ in the world needs to be a common witness despite the divisions and fractions that split the Church and hinder mission. This common witness stipulates criteria of discernment. And a mission‐centred ecclesiology has to ask: What structures and features in our churches further our common witness to God's mission? What features and structures hinder it? When answering these questions, the role of the Holy Spirit in mediating between unity and diversity needs to be taken into account. At the same time, the goal of full visible unity is reaffirmed by asking, How does unity become visible? Is this only and exclusively possible by common structures, or can it also, and perhaps more genuinely, be achieved by common service and witness to the mission of God?The third and last chapter addresses “Visions and Hopes” in the light of God's mission of healing, reconciliation and hope. Hope pervades the new missionary spirituality. Hope also motivates conversion as turning together to God. This new concentration on the aspect of hope accounts for the fact that, in view of the constantly changing ecclesial landscape and the flowing contexts of mission, it is impossible to name just one overall solution that would last at least for some of the coming decades. But “hope” stands for the confidence that, with the help of God for the Church, there will never be a lack of ingenious solutions in the time to come and that God's vineyard will never be without workers who will happily join in the common witness to God's mission. Annemarie C. MAYER

OP ’N MESPUNT. DIE ONTVANGS VAN JOHANNES CALVYN IN DIE DENKE VAN WILLIE JONKER

This paper, originally read as the fourth Willie Jonker commemoration lecture (October 2009), explores how the central tenets of Jonker’s theology have been fundamentally shaped by John Calvin. It is argued that Jonker’s very understanding of Reformed theology is derived from Calvin. Furthermore, on three issues, Calvin plays an important role: Jonker’s insistence on the visible unity of the church, the importance of social ethics, and the church as the people of God superseding the ethnic notion of a volkskerk. The paper concludes with a list of contemporary theological and ethical issues that may be addressed from the Calvin-Jonker line of thinking.