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  • 标题:Building up the body of Christ: reflections on ecclesiology and ethics in the dialogue of faith and order.
  • 作者:Gibaut, John
  • 期刊名称:The Ecumenical Review
  • 印刷版ISSN:0013-0796
  • 出版年度:2013
  • 期号:October
  • 语种:English
  • 出版社:World Council of Churches
  • 摘要:At one level, this perception is accurate. As I know from my own Anglican context, there is today much more anxiety about the dividing positions on human sexuality than about the ecumenical issues of a generation ago, such as eucharistic sacrifice, the historic episcopate, or universal primacy. That there has been a shift in the ecumenical priorities for some churches--but not all--is undeniable; these churches today experience acutely the divisive consequences of moral disagreement, both within Christian communities and between them. Such a shift is seen in the studies and themes of the current ecumenical dialogues at both the bilateral and multilateral levels.
  • 关键词:Church;Ecumenical movement;Ethics

Building up the body of Christ: reflections on ecclesiology and ethics in the dialogue of faith and order.


Gibaut, John


A common perception in some sectors of the ecumenical movement today is that the classical theological agenda of the twentieth century around the faith and ordering of the divided churches has been supplanted in the early twenty-first century by the newer church-dividing issues on ethical questions.

At one level, this perception is accurate. As I know from my own Anglican context, there is today much more anxiety about the dividing positions on human sexuality than about the ecumenical issues of a generation ago, such as eucharistic sacrifice, the historic episcopate, or universal primacy. That there has been a shift in the ecumenical priorities for some churches--but not all--is undeniable; these churches today experience acutely the divisive consequences of moral disagreement, both within Christian communities and between them. Such a shift is seen in the studies and themes of the current ecumenical dialogues at both the bilateral and multilateral levels.

Yet to differentiate too categorically the doctrinal agenda from the ethical establishes a dualism as unhelpful (and as erroneous) as that between Faith and Order and Life and Work. From the long trajectory of Faith and Order reflection I will present some of the significant interactions between the classical doctrinal concerns and questions of morals and ethics. This particular trajectory, in which ethical issues have raised ecclesiological concerns, and in which ecclesiology in turn has raised ethical concerns, suggests that not only is it unhelpful to separate the doctrinal and ethical agendas, but in the end, such a neat division is not theologically possible.

The Faith and Order Commission has long had a mandate to address issues that divide the Church. For much of the past 80 years, that mandate has focused largely on theological issues related to ecclesiology, such as baptism, eucharist, ministry, and the articulation of the one apostolic faith. Yet there has also been significant attention paid to the ethical dimensions, especially around ecclesiology and ethics.

Church-dividing questions around moral issues are as old as doctrinal disagreement. Consider some of the divisions that erupted in early Christianity on moral disagreement that gave rise to separated Christian communities such as the Montanists, Novationists, Donatists, and other so-called rigorous sects. Doctrinal orthodoxy has historically been as important to Christian unity as ethical orthopraxis. In the course of the modern ecumenical movement, there have been many instances of moral issues becoming church-dividing. Some, but not all, have been related to human sexuality, such as artificial contraception, reproductive technology, abortion, remarriage of divorced persons, polygamy, and homosexuality. Others have been around race and caste, such as the struggle against apartheid, which was church-dividing within the Reformed and Lutheran families of churches, and within the fellowship of the World Council of Churches. Some have been economic, such as attitudes to globalization. Some disagreements have been around the use of science, such as stem cell research. Some have been about violence, such as the use of nuclear weapons. The historic peace churches from the sixteenth century continue to name theories and praxes around just war as church-dividing.

These questions have been part of the classic agenda of Faith and Order in a way that makes it difficult to distinguish categorically the ecclesiological questions from the ethical, and raises questions about the proposing or identifying today a preference for one or the other. In the long trajectory of Faith and Order reflection on ecclesiology and ethics there are three discernible phases. While precision in such matters is perhaps more arbitrary than historical, a convenient starting point for the first phase is the World Conference on Faith and Order in 1937; the second is the 1968 WCC Uppsala Assembly; the third begins at the 1993 Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order at Santiago de Compostela and continues to the present Faith and Order studies on ecclesiology, sources of authority, and moral discernment in the churches.

From Edinburgh 1937: "Non-Theological Factors"

On the eve of the Second World War, as Europe was already in the brink of deep divisions, the Second World Conference on Faith and Order met in the summer of 1937 from 3-18 August in Edinburgh, the site of the 1910 World Missionary Conference. Earlier during the same summer the second meeting of Life and Work was held in Oxford. The members at the Life and Work conference were deeply cognizant and critical of the impending violence the world was experiencing. Both movements that summer agreed to come together to form a "World Council of Churches," which from that year was in the process of formation.

The formative Faith and Order conference built on its 1927 predecessor, and dealt with the classical doctrinal questions such as grace and salvation, word and sacraments, scripture and tradition, ministry, the communion of saints, and ecclesiology. The overarching concern of the conference was to put this doctrinal agenda within the broader context of the unity of the Church.

The second World Conference, however, introduced other questions affecting the unity of the Church, namely the non-theological factors. The 1937 preparatory report, The Non-theological Factors in the Making and Unmaking of Church Union, (1) raised other issues that had to be kept in mind along with the doctrinal ones. The introduction to the report notes that the Faith and Order concern about "a true faith will have its corollary and consequence in works which follow naturally from it." (2) At the same time, the introduction continues, Life and Work was clear that it is hopeless "to elaborate the Christian ethic with direct reference to our own time, in neglect of those prior convictions which are its source and warrant." (3)

Included in the list of such non-theological factors were church-state relations, including differing experiences of the separation of church and state, and in the context of the 1930s, totalitarian conceptions of the state which are alien to notions of catholicity. Similarly, nationalism, national religion, and nationalizing Christianity were named, as well as divisions along lines of race, language, and class. The report also notes "varieties of ethical judgement":
 The mores of our Churches differ markedly. Habits and practices
 which are permitted in one Church are discouraged or prohibited in
 another Church. Such differences range all the way from varieties
 of manners to ethical disagreement upon matters which many hold to
 be of first importance in the Christian life ... We should not fail
 to mark the sharp disagreement as to birth control. We may cite the
 position taken by varying Churches upon divorce and the remarriage
 of divorced persons. We should not ignore the historic stand of the
 Society of Friends upon war. On many of these matters custom varies
 within a single communion, and much liberty is allowed ... When
 these manners and morals are made matters of conscience, becoming
 thus a part of the Christian ethic as a Church construes it,
 obvious differences between Churches emerge. So strongly do certain
 Churches feel upon these debated subjects that, despite substantial
 agreement with other Churches in matters of Faith and Order, it
 would be difficult to achieve unions which would carry
 whole-hearted consent. (4)


The stronger language of the preparatory report was not echoed in the Final Report of Edinburgh 1937, which referred to "Obstacles not restricted to 'Faith' and 'Order,'" (5) which are in part theological or ecclesiastical, but also sociological or political:
 These Churches are not conscious of any mutually exclusive
 doctrines. They are, however, kept apart by barriers of
 nationality, race, class, general culture, and more particularly,
 by slothful self-content and self-sufficiency. (6)


In categories that resonate with ethical disagreement in the early twenty-first century, Faith and Order in its formative phase named ethical questions as part of the agenda toward Christian unity, both in the social and political ethical crisis that was already looming in Europe but also on questions personal ethical issues in the daily lives of Christians, including church-dividing differences on questions of human sexuality.

From Uppsala 1968: "The Holy Spirit and the Catholicity of the Church"

From the 1960s the link between the doctrinal and ethical agenda for Faith and Order took a new direction, namely the insistence on the connection between ecclesiology and justice, evident in the 1968 WCC Assembly at Uppsala section report on "The Holy Spirit and the Catholicity of the Church." The Assembly report began as a working paper of the Commission on Faith and Order, (7) which later, at the request of the WCC, became an assembly report. A driving concern for Faith and Order was not to treat catholicity as a principle related solely to ecclesiology, but to connect it in the broadest to the fulfilment of God's mission in the world:
 Yet it is within this very world that God makes catholicity
 available to men through the ministry of Christ in his Church. The
 purpose of Christ is to bring people of all times, all races, of
 all places, of all conditions, into an organic and living unity in
 Christ by the Holy Spirit under the universal fatherhood of God.
 This unity is not solely external; it has a deeper, internal
 dimension, which is also expressed by the term "catholicity".
 Catholicity reaches its completion when what God has already begun
 in history is finally disclosed and fulfilled. (8)


As an ecclesiological principle, catholicity in "The Holy Spirit and the Catholicity of the Church" is manifested in worship, witness and in the service toward the realization of genuine humanity in terms of unity, and in the struggles against discrimination and injustice, such as racial or economic inequality. This breadth of understanding of catholicity linking the question for the unity of the Church with the unity of all humanity, associating in a fresh way the classic Faith and Order vision of Christian unity with the work of the Life and Work movement, and the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism. Not surprisingly, the 1968 Assembly is a landmark in ecumenical programme to combat racism within a theological perspective articulated in "The Holy Spirit and the Catholicity of the Church." In Faith and Order reflection, ethical questions such as racism were not cited as simply obstacles to unity; unity implied a commitment to engage in struggles against all injustice. This is an ethical demand and consequence of the Church's catholicity, rather than a series of issues that threatens its oneness. Consequently, it becomes impossible to refer ethical issues as "non-theological factors": they are acutely theological.

The years that followed the 1968 Assembly were significant for Faith and Order reflection on ecclesiology and ethics. The Faith and Order study project on the Unity of the Church and the Unity of Mankind was initiated in Lima in 1982 and carried out from 1984-89; its purpose was to examine ecclesiological self-understanding in light of the growing awareness of human interdependence. After a series of global consultations, the process culminated in the publication of the 1990 study document Church and World: The Unity of the Church and the Renewal of Human Community. (9) Here, renewal is understood as that which "seeks to heal and to transcend the limitations, ambiguities and destructive divisions of a world which is, theologically, fallen." (10) The text brings together the search for renewal with the search of renewal understood as social and political ethics, and treats the Church as a prophetic sign pointing toward the Kingdom of God.

Three years later the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order in 1993 at Santiago de Compostela affirmed the connection between ecclesiology and ethics in terms of corporate moral commitment to justice, peace and the integrity of creation. The report of section IV, "Called to Common Witness for a Renewed World," states:
 The Church is the community of people called by God who, though the
 Holy Spirit, are united with Jesus Christ and sent as his disciples
 to witness to and to participate in God's reconciliation, healing
 and transformation of creation. The Church's relation to Christ
 means that faith and community are matters of discipleship in the
 sense of moral commitment. The being and mission of the Church,
 therefore, are at stake in witness through proclamation and
 concrete actions for justice, peace and integrity of creation. This
 is a defining mark of koinonia and central to our understanding of
 ecclesiology. The urgency of these issues makes it manifest that
 our theological reflection on the proper unity of Christ's Church
 is inevitably linked to ethics. (11)


Engagement in political and environmental ethical struggles is a "mark" of the Church's koinonia and fundamental to its very identity, that is, ecclesiology.

Meanwhile, the study on The Unity of the Church and the Renewal of Human Community led to a series of intra-WCC consultations on ecclesiology and ethics involving Faith and Order (Unit I) and Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation (Unit III) from 1992-1996, leading to three published reports: "Costly Unity," "Costly Commitment," and "Costly Obedience." This study "sought to explore the link between what the church is and what the church does." (12) As the 1993 report "Costly Unity" says:
 Koinonia in relation to ethics does not mean in the first instance
 that the Christian community designs codes and rules; rather that
 it is a place where, along with the confession of faith and the
 celebration of the sacraments, and as an inseparable part of it,
 the gospel tradition is probed permanently for moral inspiration
 and insight, and where incessant moral counsel keeps the issues of
 humanity and world alive in the light of the gospel. As such the
 community is also essentially a place of comfort and support ... In
 all cases, koinonia implies an offer to all human being involved in
 moral struggles and in need of frameworks and perspectives. When
 the moral life of the Christian community is spoken of as witness,
 this is an essential aspect of it. (13)


In other words, in the report the ethical agenda was not seen as distinct or superseding classical Faith and Order reflection on ecclesiology, but integral to the whole life of the Church, including its worship, theology, witness and service. Significantly, the three reports were published together with supporting articles in 1997 under the title Ecclesiology and Ethics: Ecumenical Ethical Engagement, Moral Formation and the Nature of the Church. The consultations, reports, and the published volume marked another significant encounter between classical agendas of both the Faith and Order and the Life and Work streams within the WCC. They also, of course, point to the integration of ethics and ecclesiology.

At the same time that Faith and Order reflection was developing from Uppsala 1968, the commission was working on its so-called classical doctrinal agenda on baptism, eucharist, and ministry. That the two areas are held together and mutually informing is seen in the 1982 Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry.

Faith and Order reflection on Christian initiation in Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry contains a single, but noteworthy reference to the ethical implications inherent in Christian initiation. God's people "acknowledge that baptism, as a baptism into Christ's death, has ethical implications which not only call for personal sanctification, but also motivate Christians to strive for the realization of the will of God in all realms of life." (14) The same insistence on the relationship between baptism and ethics was reiterated by Commission on Faith and Order in its recent 2011 study text, One Baptism: Towards Mutual Recognition. (15)

Faith and Order has been much more thorough about identifying the links between ethics and the eucharist. An important feature of Faith and Order reflection on the eucharist and ethics is the nexus between both and eschatology. The eschatological and consequent ethical nature of the eucharist calls eucharistic communities to the radical transformation of the world. As the eucharistic section of Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry states so powerfully and unequivocally:
 All kinds of injustice, racism, separation and lack of freedom are
 radically challenged when we share in the body and blood of Christ.
 Through the eucharist the all-renewing grace of God penetrates and
 restores human personality and dignity. The eucharist involves the
 believer in the central event of the world's history. As
 participants in the eucharist, therefore, we prove ourselves
 inconsistent if we are not actively participating in this ongoing
 restoration of the world's situation and the human condition. The
 eucharist shows us that our behaviour is inconsistent in face of
 the reconciling presence of God in human history: we are placed
 under continual judgement by the persistence of unjust
 relationships of all kinds in our society, the manifold divisions
 on account of human pride, material interest and power politics
 and, above all, the obstinacy of unjustifiable confessional
 oppositions within the body of Christ. (16)


From Santiago de Compostela, 1993: "Whether Contentious Ethical Issues Need Be Church-Dividing"

The Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order in 1993 at Santiago de Compostela marks a "hinge" or "cardinal" moment in Faith and Order reflection on ecclesiology and ethics. It marks a culmination of the process that began in Uppsala in 1968 in terms of linking the agenda of ecclesiology with social and political ethics. At the same time, it also directed the Commission on Faith and Order to deal with a new series of ethical issues beyond those of justice, peace, and the integrity of creation, such as some of the questions named in the 1937 preparatory report on non-theological factors. Amongst its recommendations the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order proposed a study on ethics and ecclesiology,
 ... which should be directly linked to local experiences of the
 interconnectedness of faith and action and move between an
 investigation of the moral substance of traditions and the moral
 experience of the people of God today ... We further recommend that
 Faith and Order encourage the Joint Working Group between the WCC
 and the Roman Catholic Church, as well as various bilaterals, so
 seek clarity on whether contentious ethical issues need be
 church-dividing. (17)


The Fifth World Conference took place in a context in which many of the churches were facing fresh and often sharp divisions to their unity on moral debates, both internally and ecumenically. The ethical issues have been experienced as more controversial than the classical doctrinal questions. Consequently, Faith and Order began a study process on theological anthropology, which included questions on human sexuality. The results were in a study text published in 2005 as Christian Perspectives on Theological Anthropology. (18) The next stage began in 2006 when the Commission on Faith and Order initiated a study project on Moral Discernment in the Churches with three aims: first to claim the common ground Christians share in moral discernment; second to help churches understand how and why they often come to different conclusions; and third, to search together for ways to prevent the principled differences from becoming church-dividing. This study project uses case-studies of morally divisive issues of human sexuality, economics, and proselytism.

The cases-studies were first presented at the 2009 Plenary Commission on Faith and Order. All of the members of the commission were engaged in study and reflection on the studies, and the data gathered from the detailed reporting from group work on Moral Discernment became an important source of the reflection for the Standing Commission. There are plans for the case-studies to be further studied and responded to in different global contexts in the coming years. While this is a long term study, an initial report is anticipated for the 2013 WCC Assembly, with an eventual study text to be sent to the churches.

The most volatile of the present Faith and Order case-studies is that on human sexuality, which deals more specifically with the experience of moral discernment on homosexuality in the Anglican Communion, well aware that many other churches struggle with the same issue in one way or another. Questions around homosexuality are not new, but their effects today are more divisive than at any other time. They expose or even reopen unresolved issues of theological and biblical hermeneutics, sources of authority, and the relationship between gospel and culture. They are related to other dimensions of Christian faith, such as theological anthropology and soteriology.

Anecdotally, in the past four years whenever I have been invited to present the current work of Faith and Order, the study project that consistently receives the most interest is Moral Discernment in the Churches. For many of the audiences to whom I have spoken there is an appreciation that Faith and Order is dealing with ethical issues that affect the lives of the churches and their unity so intensely today. For other audiences, however, the interest in Moral Discernment is one of cautious apprehension with a clear preference for the classical doctrinal questions.

On the current agenda of the WCC's Commission on Faith and Order there are currently three study projects (in alphabetical order): Ecclesiology, Moral Discernment in the Churches, and Sources of Authority. The work on ecclesiology and sources of authority, which reflect the classical doctrinal agenda, has not had the attention (or the funding) received by Moral Discernment in the Churches. And yet the Commission on Faith and Order does not prioritize or separate the issues around Moral Discernment from the ecclesiological and hermeneutical questions raised in The Nature and Mission of the Church and in Sources of Authority. Moral issues are discerned within the Christian community; sources of authority are appealed to in such discernment; sources of authority belong to the self-understanding of the Christian community, that is, ecclesiology.

To suppose, however, that Moral Discernment in the Churches signals a departure from the classical agenda of Faith and Order, or to cite this study in evidence of the shift in priority between the doctrinal questions and the ethical issues facing the churches today, is to overlook the ways in which Faith and Order has characteristically upheld a creative balance between the two.

The same integration of ethical and doctrinal agendas continues to be reflected in Faith and Order work on ecclesiology. Building on the earlier work in the 1998 text The Nature and Purpose of the Church, and the 2005 Nature and Mission of the Church, the 2012 convergence text on ecclesiology, The Church: Towards a Common Vision, likewise holds ecclesiology and ethics closely together. In a paragraph that belongs to the tradition stemming from "The Holy Spirit and the Catholicity of the Church" and subsequent refection on ecclesiology and political ethics, The Church: Towards a Common Vision states:
 (66.) The Church is comprised of all socio-economic classes; both
 rich and poor are in need of the salvation that only God can
 provide. After the example of Jesus, the Church is called and
 empowered in a special way to share the lot of those who suffer and
 to care for the needy and the marginalized. The Church proclaims
 the words of hope and comfort of the Gospel, engages in works of
 compassion and mercy (cf. Luke 4:18-19) and is commissioned to heal
 and reconcile broken human relationships and to serve God in the
 ministry of reconciling those divided by hatred or estrangement
 (cf. 2 Cot. 5:18-21). Together with all people of goodwill, the
 Church seeks to care for creation, which groans to share in the
 freedom of the children of God (cf. Rom. 8:20-22), by opposing the
 abuse and destruction of the earth and participating in God's
 healing of broken relationships between creation and humanity. (19)


In the final chapter of The Church, entitled "The Church: In and for the World," the text addresses ecclesiology and ethics, linking the moral struggles of humankind with the moral choices of individual Christians and the churches:
 62. The ethics of Christians as disciples are rooted in God, the
 creator and revealer, and take shape as the community seeks to
 understand God's will within the various circumstances of time and
 place. The Church does not stand in isolation from the moral
 struggles of humankind as a whole. Together with the adherents of
 other religions as well as with all persons of good will,
 Christians must promote not only those individual moral values
 which are essential to the authentic realization of the human
 person but also the social values of justice, peace and the
 protection of the environment, since the message of the gospel
 extends to both the personal and the communal aspects of human
 existence. Thus koinonia includes not only the confession of the
 one faith and celebration of common worship, but also shared moral
 values, based upon the inspiration and insights of the gospel.
 Notwithstanding their current state of division, the churches have
 come so far in fellowship with one another that they are aware that
 what one does affects the life of others, and, in consequence, are
 increasingly conscious of the need to be accountable to each other
 with respect to their ethical reflections and decisions. As
 churches engage in mutual questioning and affirmation, they give
 expression to what they share in Christ. (20)


Here, The Church understands the Church--and its unity--as a moral community. Moral choices, both in the personal sphere but also in the public sphere, belong to the visible nature of the Church and its mission. It identifies koinonia or communion in morals to be as fundamental to authentic unity as doctrinal and sacramental issues.

The Church also takes into account both the historical and complex present-day experience of diverging ethical discernment as potentially church-dividing:
 63. While tensions about moral issues have always been a concern
 for the Church, in the world of today, philosophical, social and
 cultural developments have led to the rethinking of many moral
 norms, causing new conflicts over moral principles and ethical
 questions to affect the unity of the churches. At the same time,
 moral questions are related to Christian anthropology, and priority
 is given to the Gospel in evaluating new developments in moral
 thinking. Individual Christians and churches sometimes find
 themselves divided into opposing opinions about what principles of
 personal or collective morality are in harmony with the gospel of
 Jesus Christ. Moreover, some believe that moral questions are not
 of their nature "church-dividing," while others are firmly
 convinced that they are. (21)


The text then poses the following questions to the churches, drawing on the fruits of ecumenical dialogues, including Faith and Order's own work on moral discernment in the churches: (22)
 Ecumenical dialogue at the multilateral and bilateral levels has
 begun to sketch out some of the parameters of the significance of
 moral doctrine and practice for Christian unity. If present and
 future ecumenical dialogue is to serve both the mission and the
 unity of the Church, it is important that this dialogue explicitly
 address the challenges to convergence represented by contemporary
 moral issues. We invite the churches to explore these issues in a
 spirit of mutual attentiveness and support. How might the churches,
 guided by the Spirit, discern together what it means today to
 understand and live in fidelity to the teaching and attitude of
 Jesus? How can the churches, as they engage together in this task
 of discernment, offer appropriate models of discourse and wise
 counsel to the societies in which they are called to serve? (23)


As Faith and Order work on ecclesiology reflects ethical issues, so Faith and Order work on moral questions maintains its links with ecclesioloogy. From the outset, the 2013 study text on Moral Discernment in the Churches is clear about its ecclesiological character:
 1. Moral and ethical questions are closely linked with ecclesiology
 and are thus a matter of faith and order. They have been on the
 agenda of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of
 Churches since the early 1990s, when issues in the field of moral
 theology and ethics resulted in a new awareness of controversies in
 and between churches, some of which even threaten their unity. (24)


Moreover, divergent ecclesiologies are treated as possible underlying factors that lead to divergent ecclesial discernment on moral issues:
 66. Disagreement about moral issues is not inherently
 church-dividing. In fact, some moral issues allow for a diversity
 of responses without causing tensions between communities. However,
 sometimes it is the case that the way that one communion allows for
 diversity among its churches is in conflict with the way other
 communions understand the limits of diversity. This discrepancy may
 reveal ecclesiological differences that relate to authority and
 church structure. For instance, some communions may allow for a
 limited diversity, leaving it to (local) communities to find a
 response while accepting and respecting that other communities
 might arrive at another conclusion and thus act differently. In
 other circumstances, some issues will not allow for diversity,
 because it is held that these issues should not be decided by
 groups within a community; instead, a consensus across the whole
 church is required. These scenarios exist due to different intra
 and inter-church understandings of who has the responsibility and
 authority to decide. The range of acceptable divergence over moral
 issues differs across churches as it is indeed often tied to their
 ecclesiology. (25)


These sections from the study text, together with the citations from The Church: Towards a Common Vision, are reminiscent of the "varieties of ethical judgement" section in the 1937 report on The Non-theological Factors in the Making and Unmaking of Church Union. And yet, within the trajectory from 1968, ethical issues are as integral to the koinonia of the Church as are the issues of faith and order. In Faith and Order reflection, ethical issues are integrally related to the nature and mission of the Church.

Conclusion

When the visible unity of the Church in one faith and in one eucharistic fellowship is threatened, weakened or impeded, any church-dividing issue becomes ipso facto ecclesiological. That today ethical issues are serious concerns for the churches is clear. Questions of moral discernment are experienced as more acute than the more classic church-dividing questions around ecclesiology, Christian initiation, sacramental theology, and the ordering and ministries of the Church for many churches--but not for all.

Nevertheless, for Christians and their church-leaders or theologians to suggest that one set of questions has been, or ought to be replaced by another, creates false dichotomies that the long trajectory of Faith and Order refuses to bear. Here, the witness of the Life and Work and the Faith and Order meetings of the summer of 1937 is instructive: neither allowed a separation of the moral and the doctrinal, or the ethical from the ecclesiological agendas.

The quest for Christian unity is not an option but a Gospel imperative, as Olav Fykse Tveit, current general secretary of the WCC, frequently reminds us. As long as the churches remain divided on questions of faith, the ordering of the churches and on fundamental questions of ecclesiology, the doctrinal agenda has a valid and even compulsory place in ecumenical dialogue. In the reflection of Faith and Order, these questions have ethical dimensions. Current church-dividing ethical questions likewise have a valid and necessary place on the ecumenical agenda. Likewise, these issues have ecclesiological consequences. And so, as the churches respond to the acute ethical questions which also threaten their unity, the shift in agenda will be one of emphasis, rather than of kind.

The gifts of ecclesiology and ethics--and with them, the particular gifts of ecclesiologists and ethicists--need to be in a reciprocal and mutually informing dialogue, "for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of faith and of knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ" (Eph 4.12-13).

DOI: 10.1111/erev.12056

(1) The Non-theological Factors in the Making and Unmaking of Church Union, Report No. 3 Prepared by the Commission on the Church's Unity in Life and Worship (Commission IV) for the World Conference on Faith and Order Edinburgh, 1937 (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1937).

(2) Non-theological Factors, p. vii.

(3) Non-theological Factors, p. viii.

(4) Non-theological Factors, p. 22.

(5) In Lukas Vischer (ed.), A Documentary History of the Faith and Order Movement 1927-1963 (St. Louis, Missouri: The Bethany Press, 1963), p. 68.

(6) Vischer, Documentary History, p. 69.

(7) New Directions in Faith and Order: Bristol 1967, Faith and Order Paper No. 50 (Geneva: WCC. 1968), p. 86.

(8) "The Holy Spirit and the Catholicity of the Church," in the World Council of Churches, Uppsala 68 Speaks: Reports of the Sections (Geneva: WCC, 1968), p. 13.

(9) Church and World: The Unity, of the Church and the Renewal of Human Community,, Faith and Order Paper No. 151 (Geneva: WCC, 1990).

(10) Church and World, p. 4.

(11) Thomas F. Best and Gunther Gassmann (eds), On the Way to Fuller Koinonia: Official Report of the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order, Faith and Order Paper No. 166 (Geneva: WCC 1994), p. 259.

(12) Thomas F. Best and Martin Robra (eds), Ecclesiology and Ethics: Ecumenical Ethical Engagement, Moral Formation and the Nature of the Church (Geneva: WCC, 1997), p. viii.

(13) "Costly Unity" in Ecclesiology and Ethics, p. 19.

(14) Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper No. 111 (Geneva: WCC, 1982), p. 4.

(15) One Baptism; Towards Mutual Recognition, Faith and Order Paper No. 210 (Geneva: WCC, 2011), pp. 6-7.

(16) Eucharist 20, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, p. 14.

(17) Thomas F. Best and Gunther Gassmann (eds), On the Way to Fuller Koinonia: Official Report of the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order, Faith and Order Paper No. 166 (Geneva: WCC 1994), pp. 261-62.

(18) Christian Perspectives on Theological Anthropology, Faith and Order Paper No. 199 (Geneva: WCC, 2005).

(19) The Church: Towards a Common Vision. Faith and Order Paper No. 214 198 (Geneva: WCC, 2013), p. 37.

(20) The Church: Towards a Common Vision, p. 35.

(21) The Church: Towards a Common Vision, p. 35.

(22) For example, ARCIC II, "Life in Christ: Morals, Communion and the Church" (1993), in GA II, pp. 344-370; and the Joint Working Group of the WCC and the RCC, "The Ecumenical Dialogue on Moral Issues: Potential Sources of Common Witness or of Divisions" (1995), in GA II, 900-910. See also the Faith and Order study text on Moral Discernment in the Churches: a study text, Faith and Order Paper No. 215 (Geneva: WCC, 2013).

(23) The Church: Towards a Common Vision, pp. 35-36.

(24) Moral Discernment in the Churches: a study text, [section] 1.

(25) Moral Discernment in the Churches: a study text, [section] 66.

John Gibaut is Director of the Commission on Faith and Order, World Council of Churches.
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