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In modern Church history, the first two decades of the twentieth
century are considered as the dawn of a new and promising period in
Church relations.
The repeated initiatives of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate for reconciliation and cooperation (1902, 1904, 1920), the
call of the World Missionary Conference of Edinburgh for a common
Christian witness in the world (1910), the formation of the World
Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches
(1914), as well as the Preparatory Conferences of the “Faith and Order”
and “Life and Work” movements in process of formation (1920), marked a
new beginning in Church relations and constituted praiseworthy attempts
to abandon past practices and lay the foundations of the ecumenical
movement. A movement understood as an effort of Churches and many
committed Christians to overcome past quarrels, to find new denominators
for the Churches’ common witness and service to the world and thus to
prepare the conditions which would facilitate the restoration of their
unity.
It should be stressed, however, that although the term “Ecumenical
Movement” was used for the first time in the 1920’s in order to define
this encouraging development in inter-church relations, the idea of
ecumenism per se, is not a recent development in the life of the Church.
On the contrary, it could be stated that ecumenism has been at the very
centre of the Church’s pastoral ministry since apostolic times.
It was frequently remarked that modern ecumenism emerged from within
the Protestant world, as the outcome of its internal situation and in an
endeavour to seek solutions to the existing problems confronting the
Churches of the Reformation in their daily life and witness. This
argument is valid to a great extent. Because, no doubt, the mobilisation
at the beginning of this century of Protestant and Anglican ecumenical
pioneers such as Charles Brent, William Temple, J.H. Oldham, Nathan
Soderblom, Robert Gardiner and many others, was prompted by their
consciousness that the Churches of the Reformation which, over the
years, had taken different directions, (in spite of their belonging to
the same historical roots and theological tradition), they presented an
incoherent image of Protestantism. It was precisely because of this
fragmentation that these ecumenical leaders attempted to reunite the
multitude of Protestant denominations, at least on the basis of a common
ecclesiological understanding.
It would be incorrect, however, to attribute the paternity of
ecumenism to the Protestant and Anglican world alone. It is a fact that
the history of the ecumenical movement, and more particularly of the
WCC, is very closely linked with the Orthodox Church. Moreover, it
should be remembered that the first concrete proposal to establish a
“Koinonia of Churches” was made by an Orthodox Church, namely the
Ecumenical Patriarchate which, with its well known 1920 Encyclical
advocated that the coming together of the Churches and their fellowship
and cooperation were not excluded by the doctrinal differences existing
between them. As W.A. Visser’t Hooft once pointed out “the Church of
Constantinople rung the bell of our assembling, for she was among the
first in modern history to remind us with its 1920 Encyclical that world
Christendom would be disobedient to the will of its Lord and Saviour if
it did not seek to manifest in the world the unity of the people of God
and of the Body of Christ”.
Ecumenism both as a theological challenge and as an expression of
Orthodox willingness for Christian unity was experienced in our Church
during the 1st, 5th, 11th and 16th centuries. It re-emerged at the
beginning of the twentieth century when the Ecumenical Patriarchate took
its afore- mentioned initiative, in order to foster cooperation and
promote unity. This initiative was favourably welcomed by many
Protestant Churches and denominations which, confronted with their own
chaotic separations, tried to unite and thus give a common witness to
the world.
The WCC was founded in 1948 after the merging of “Faith and Order”
and “Life and Work”, the two major components of the early ecumenical
movement, in the 1920’s. The interest manifested immediately in this
movement by almost all local Orthodox Churches (with the noticeable
absence of the Orthodox Church of Russia, then under persecution) and
the pioneering role played by Constantinople in the genesis of this
movement and in the foundation of the WCC are well known. Certainly the
positive presence and constructive witness in it of many Orthodox
hierarchs and university professors during the first forty years of our
century, was neither symptomatic nor a part of any particular “Church
strategy”. As Leo Zander once remarked, this presence expressed the
conviction of the Orthodox Church that her participation in the
ecumenical movement would have a determining importance for the future.
The Third Preconciliar Panorthodox Conference (1986) solemnly
declared that the Orthodox Church, having full conscience of her
responsibility for achieving Christian unity, is engaged today in
theological dialogues with other Churches and Denominations, with the
ultimate aim to restore Christian unity “in love and in the right
belief”. And referring more particularly to the Orthodox involvement in
the WCC, this Preconciliar Conference expressed the profound conviction
that the Orthodox Church holds a central place in any matter relating to
the promotion of Christian unity, and consequently she is entrusted
with the mission and duty to transmit in all its fulness, the truth
which is contained in Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition and which gives
to the Church her universal character. This was the praxis of the
Orthodox Church throughout history. It remained the same when the
contemporary ecumenical movement emerged at the beginning of our century
and took shape in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The Orthodox Church maintained
active involvement because she considered this movement to be a means
of reconciliation par excellence, a privileged forum of encounter and
cooperation, and a useful platform for mutual acquaintance and
appreciation, in the way towards unity.
It should be admitted, however, that the Orthodox presence in the WCC
has often been problematic, both for the WCC and the Orthodox Churches
themselves. On the one hand, the non-homogeneity of the Churches and
denominations participating in the Council, the diverging theological
and ecclesiological positions of the interlocutors, the problematics of
the ecumenical movement, the methodology of the WCC and on the other,
the specificity of Orthodox ecclesiology and theology, the Orthodox
vision of the world, and some historical misgivings vis-a-vis Western
Christendom are the main factors which make relations complicated and at
times difficult indeed.
This very fact was clearly demonstrated many times and more recently
during the world ecumenical Conferences of San Antonio (May 1989), at
Seoul (March 1990) and particularly at the Seventh Assembly of the WCC
in Canberra (February 1991). When Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox
delegates, during the deliberations of this Assembly, perceived a
growing departure from the biblically-based Christian understanding of:
a) the Trinitarian God, b) salvation, c) the “Good News” of the Gospel,
d) human beings created in the image and likeness of God and e) the
Church, they felt compelled to resume the pre-New Delhi practice, and of
presenting a paper with some “Reflections”, which in fact constituted a
“separate document”.
The Orthodox reaction in Canberra was prompted not only by the
ambiguous presentation of the main theme on the Holy Spirit by Prof.
Chung, a South Korean theologian, but also by the the tendencies of some
ecumenical partners, who appeared to favour the broadening of the WCC’s
aims in the direction of relations with other religions. Hence,
consistent with the decades-old ecumenical policy of their Churches, the
Orthodox delegates reiterated in the afore- mentioned document the
unflagging Orthodox position that the main aim of the WCC should be the
restoration of Christian unity, understood as full ecclesial unity in
doctrinal teaching, sacramental life and polity. Furthermore , they
pointed out that the tendency (as demonstrated by Prof. Chung’s key-note
address) to substitute a “private” spirit, the spirit of the world or
other spirits, for the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and
rests in the Son, constituted a distortion of the Christian faith.
This is whyc they urged the WCC not to allow itself to succumb to
extremist tendencies, such as that of the Korean theologian. Finally,
with regard to the relationships of the WCC with other living faiths,
the Orthodox in Canberra stressed that “the Orthodox having a long and
living experience with members of other religions, respect the humanity
of others and encourage, wherever possible and appropriate, peaceful
relations and cooperation in areas of mutual concern.
But this cannot mean that Christian Churches, acting through WCC
agencies, should be compromised in their central Christian commitments.
The Orthodox hold that any syncretistic accommodation in WCC activities
is inappropriate and contradicts the central affirmations and goals of
the ecumenical endeavour (…). The dialogue with other religions ought
not to compromise the identity of the WCC as a council of Christian
Churches, as it serves to broaden the understanding of the member
Churches regarding the variety of religious and non-religious stances in
the world today and in promoting dialogue between Christians and
members of other religions”.
During the ongoing discussions, both within and outside the WCC,
about the present state of the ecumenical movement and of the WCC, it
was correctly stated that the vision of the Council is multifaceted,
pursued within an increasingly pluralistic context. Indeed, the Council
functions within a complex reality. Oppression, poverty, illiteracy,
militarism, uprootedness, destruction of the environment, and many other
factors that together make up the endless anguish of humankind today,
is the milieu for its mission. Hence the need felt by the Council and
its member Churches to initiate programmes in various areas of human
need. In this attempt to meet human need and alleviate suffering,
however, the Council must not lose sight of its own nature or
limitations. In the course of the debate on the future of the WCC it is
frequently stated that unity should not be understood as unity of the
Churches alone, but of the entire human community, for “the oikoumene is
the whole inhabited earth, not just the Christian part of it”.
Interestingly enough, a similar challenge had to be faced just a few
years after the Amsterdam Assembly. W. A. Visser’t Hooft reminds us that
many people, unhappy over the “churchly” character which the ecumenical
movement took after the formation of the WCC, began questioning whether
the original meaning of oikoumene, in terms of “the whole inhabited
world” should not become the true focus of the movement. They wanted it
to be genuinely concerned “with the world rather than with the Church”.
Later on, and along the same lines, it was further pointed out that
the ecumenical movement ought to be concerned with unity and peace among
people and not only with the unity of the Church, for the unity of the
Church and the unity of humankind are inseparable.
The recent debate however, although reasserting the above overall
concept, has gone much further by suggesting a reassessment of the
validity of our present-day theological framework, based on the claim of
a Christocentric universalism, because of the consideration that “the
emergent plurality of contextual theologies obliges the ecumenical
movement to open itself to a genuine dialogue of cultures, faiths and
ideologies”. Indeed, as Paul F. Knitter remarks, a growing number of
Christian theologians today are seriously questioning the finality or
definitive normativity of both Christ and Christianity; they are of the
view that traditional Christology constitutes an obstacle to dialogue
with other living faiths. Most of these theologians have come to this
conclusion as a result of their practical experience of dialogue with
other religions. Scholars such as Raymond Panikkar and Stanley Samartha,
for example, consider that no one religion alone has “the monopoly of
the fundamental religious fact, or that no religion, including
Christianity, can claim finality”.
Here lies, in my opinion, the fundamental difficulty that the two
major partners of the WCC, namely Orthodox East and very large parts of
the Protestant West (wherever this “East” and “West” are geographically
located!) – are going to face in redefining the nature of the WCC and
drawing the boundaries of the “oikoumene” within which the Council is
called to serve.
As Nikos Nissiotis once pointed out, the ecumenical movement has to
be understood as the dynamic process of mutual exchange by the Churches
of their charismata, in the fulfillment of their common calling by God
to be the channels of his grace for the whole world, in the name of
Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. The confession of our faith
in the Triune God, contained in the constitutional basis of the WCC and
our affirmation that “the visible unity in one faith and in one
Eucharist fellowship” is sought “in order that the world may believe”,
express precisely this fundamental principle and provide the framework
in which the Council should exist and operate.
Yet more than ever the very term ecumenical movement and its nature
are mainly interpreted by many circles of the Protestant “West” in the
perspective of our relations to the world or of our dialogue with other
faiths and/or ideologies. This development demonstrates that the roots
of our disunity are much deeper than our historical estrangement or our
experience of isolation up until recent times. The difference is of a
religious and doctrinal character.
Metropolitan John of Pergamon remarks that very often the oikoumene
is assumed to be the sum of the different cultures and nations and
peoples that make up the inhabited world, a synthesis of the variety of
faiths and religions which exist and operate, paying little attention to
another reality. Namely that “the oikoumene is also a matter of
bringing together different Christians, different visions of the
future”, that “the catholicity of the Church is not simply a matter of
bringing together existing cultures and nations in their present state
of concerns”, but a matter of uniting “historical identities and
traditions, so that they may be transcended in the unity of the body of
Christ”.
It should be kept in mind that unity and catholicity are synonymous,
pointing to the distinctive act of God in history and in the world, in
order to unite humankind through the miracle of Pentecost, brought about
by God’s Spirit, the Paraclete. Certainly it is our belief that “the
spirit blows where it chooses” (John 3, 8) and knows no limitations. It
is also our belief, however, that the Holy Spirit “acts through what he
establishes, the Church, as his own pivotal event in world history,
marking by his act the new era which is breaking out into history and
pointing to the final end and fulfillment of it at the end of the time”.
The Spirit was sent in order to guide us “into all the truth” (John 16,
13), to make manifest Christ’s Lordship and to mark the beginning of
the Church. This fundamental biblical affirmation is of paramount
importance in any debate over the unity of Church and the unity of
humankind.
Unity is to be understood as a conciliar life, not in any juridical
sense, but in the sense of a real communion. Unity is a harmony in
Christ among members within the Church and also among Churches. And it
is precisely the achievement of this harmony which should be at the
centre of any ecumenical debate. Churches which, in spite of their
common roots and heritage, are unable so far to unite, cannot
realistically cherish the ambition of bringing together all of
humankind, belonging as it does to so many different cultures and
beliefs. Orthodox witness to the world will be credible and effective
only when divided Christendom achieves its unity and is seen as the
unbroken Body of Christ.
Keeping in mind the present state of our divisions, it would not be
inappropriate to say that, even if the space in which the WCC moves and
acts is the oikoumene – the whole inhabited earth – the ecumenical
movement, the major institutional expression of which is the World
Council of Churches, is above all a movement seeking to manifest the
fundamental unity and universality of the Church of Christ, trying to
bring divided Christendom into one faith and into one eucharistic
fellowship, so that the world may believe.
In this perspective, the continued study carried by Faith and Order
on the Churches’ common understanding of the Apostolic Faith as
expressed in the Nicean-Constantinopolitan Creed, and most particularly
the outcome of the Fifth World Conference of Faith and Order
(Compostela, August 1993) on the crucial theme “Towards koinonia in
faith, life and witness”, undoubtedly constitute an important stage in
the Churches’ journey towards their unity and koinonia. A koinonia,
which, God permitting, will one day enable them to confess again
together the common Apostolic faith for the sake of the world.
Grand Protopresbyter Georges Tsetsis heads the Ecumenical Patriarchate Delegation at the World Council of Churches in Geneva.
posted March 31, 1997
