Lukas Vischer: some personal reminiscences.

Wainwright, Geoffrey

It was at a forum on bilateral dialogues--facilitated by Faith and Order --that on 11 March 2008, I learned of the passing of Lukas Vischer, and many memories returned. Some of these I now recall as a personal, rather than a professional, tribute to the character and work of a man whose contributions to the ecumenical movement were numberless and ranged far beyond those with which I am familiar.

My first encounter with Lukas Vischer occurred at the meeting of the plenary commission of Faith and Order held at Aarhus, Denmark, in August 1964. I had been nominated to attend as a "youth delegate" by my mentor Raymond George, who said that the privilege of making such a nomination came round to him--as a commission member--every one hundred years. Still in his thirties, Lukas Vischer was at that time research secretary of Faith and Order and known, among other things, for his brilliant observer's reports from the Second Vatican Council. Excitement carried over to Aarhus from the Fourth World Conference on Faith and Order that had taken place at Montreal a year earlier. My own interests focused on "Scripture, Tradition and traditions" and on "Worship and the oneness of the church of Christ". Happily I was placed in the study group on "Eucharist" at Aarhus, and the discussions there stimulated me towards what became my doctoral dissertation at the University of Geneva, eventually published as Eucharist and Eschatology. After several years of missionary service in Cameroon, I was appointed to the plenary commission of Faith and Order following the WCC Nairobi Assembly of 1975 and immediately became engaged in the final rounds of work towards what would become "the Lima text" of 1982, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Faith and Order Paper No. 111: "BEM"). That was the period of my closest collaboration with Lukas, who served as director of Faith and Order from 1965 to 1979. The historical and theological insights afforded by Lukas, his courtesy and tact, his patience and efficiency, his linguistic sensitivity and drafting skills, all played an indispensable part in the achievement of what remains the most significant document produced by Faith and Order. The regular meetings of our "core group" often took place in Geneva, and we were invited by Lukas and Barbara into their home for hospitable evenings. I remember one occasion at least when Lukas with his flute joined Wolfhart Pannenberg at the piano.

From seeds sown at the Bangalore meeting of the plenary commission in 1978 would spring another project that took much longer to mature. On that occasion I served as chair of a bilingual group (English and French) on the theme of martyrdom within the study that was about to conclude in A Common Account of Hope. The work of our group found no more than a paragraph's place (the final one !) in the commission's document; but our longer report--"Witness unto Death"--made its way into Bangalore 1978: Sharing in One Hope (Faith and Order Paper No. 92), pp. 195-202. The theme of martyrdom was brought into ecumenical prominence by Pope John Paul II. Lukas Vischer became deeply involved in the plan for an ecumenical martyrology on the part of the monastic Communita di Bose in northern Italy. My last epistolary contact with him occurred in that connection. With characteristic generosity he sent me the draft of a study of his entitled "Prophets and Martyrs in the Memory of the Church" (see his Commemorating Witnesses and Martyrs of the Past: A Reformed Perspective, published in 2006 by the John Knox International Reformed Centre in Geneva as No. 17 in the "John Knox Series" of books that was one of Lukas's many creations).

The late 1970s saw Faith and Order begin what became "The Apostolic Faith Study", which eventually took as its basis the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. I belonged to the group working on the first article of the creed. Departing from a meeting in Kinshasa in 1986, I had my travel documents picked from my pocket at the airport; and when I landed in Geneva on a Friday afternoon, Swissair would not board me on the onward flight to New York, where I would have been refused entry in the absence of my "resident alien" card. By then, Lukas was in the employ of the Swiss Protestant Church Federation. I immediately got in touch with him, and he and Barbara graciously welcomed me into their home in Bern for the weekend until the diplomatic niceties could be solved at the American consulate and I could fly home to the United States on the Tuesday. Our contacts continued while Lukas, as a member of the advisory board, placed his unrivalled knowledge of people and events at our editorial disposal during the preparation of the Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, first published by the WCC in 1991.

A final reminiscence will take us back to the earliest days of Lukas Vischer's association with the World Council of Churches. In the 1990s I was writing my "theological life" of another major ecumenical figure of the twentieth century, Lesslie Newbigin. I asked Lukas for some details concerning the doings of the WCC in the early 1960s when its offices were still located in Route de Malagnou. The Vischers and the Newbigins were living on the same side of the city, and Lukas reported to me that Lesslie was much appreciated for his preaching in French in the informal congregation they set up for the new development of Les Palettes, even though it was not unknown for Lesslie to exhort people to have a sound liver (le foie) rather than a sound faith (La for). More seriously, Lukas informed me of how he himself as a new staff member had benefited--and thereby the entire cause of ecumenism--from Newbigin's conciliar savoir-faire at the New Delhi Assembly of the WCC in 1961:

 The New Delhi statement on "The Unity We Seek" was largely clue to
 Lesslie Newbigin's initiative. When I joined the staff, the draft
 statement was already being circulated. About one hundred
 theologians had been invited to offer their comments. My first
 assignment was to see the statement through the New Delhi assembly.
 I made a summary of the responses and suggested some changes of the
 text--very few because we were really eager to get Lesslie's draft
 accepted. It was at that time far from obvious that an agreement
 could be reached because many regarded the attempt as a departure
 from the principles laid down in the Toronto statement [of 1950].
 But the assembly section on unity was prepared to go ahead. Lesslie
 was busy in another section [on witness] and could not follow the
 debate. Suddenly, during one of the sessions, he appeared at my
 side. The text read at that time "to form a fully committed
 fellowship". Turn it please into "one fully committed fellowship",
 he whispered. I did so and nobody noticed the change. The New Delhi
 statement had an enormous impact throughout my years in Faith and
 Order.

So Lukas Vischer in a letter to me of January 16, 1998--which I treasure. (See Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life, Oxford University Press, New York, 2000, p.115).

Geoffrey Wainwright, an English Methodist, is a professor of Christian theology at the Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, USA. He is co-editor of the Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, a prolific author of works that includes "Embracing Purpose: Essays on God, the World and the Church" and has served as president of both Societas Liturgica and the American Theological Society.