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.