Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada--Eastern Synod plugs Ecclesial Theology

Many thanks to the Eastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada for including this Ecclesial Theology blog in its listing of Season of Epiphany Worship Resources (in connection with observances of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity during Epiphany).

Mennonites, Lutherans, and Catholics to dialogue on baptism

I missed noticing this bit of promising ecumenical news posted back in August 2010 on Ecumenism in Canada, the web site of the Prairie Centre for Ecumenism in Saskatoon, regarding a new "trilateral" dialogue on baptism between the Mennonite World Conference, the Lutheran World Federation, and the Roman Catholic Church that will begin later this year. Thanks to Gerald Stover for bringing this to my attention. The text of the news brief follows.

Mennonites, Lutherans and Catholics to dialogue on baptism

A recent meeting of the executive committee of the Mennonite World Conference (MWC) was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from July 28 to August 4, 2010. Among other topics on the agenda for the meeting were proposals for two ecumenical dialogues, one with Seventh Day Adventists, and the other with Lutherans and Catholics.

After hearing positive and emotional reports from the MWC representatives who had just come from a Lutheran World Federation assembly in Stuttgart, Germany, at which Lutherans apologized for the legacy of the persecution of Anabaptists in the 16th century, the executive committee approved participation in two interchurch dialogues:

• bilateral conversations with the World Conference of Seventh Day Adventists on “lifestyles as Christians,” particularly the biblical understandings and practices of peace;

• tri-lateral conversations on baptism between the Lutheran World Federation, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity of the Catholic Church, and MWC.

Both dialogues will begin in 2011.

Representatives from Latin America, while approving, urged caution. “Given the reservations that some of our churches have, because of persecution from the Catholics in the past and statements which continue to this day, it’s very important that the objectives for dialogue be very clear,” said Edgardo Sanchez.

Larry Miller, general secretary of the MWC, noted that one reason for some interchurch conversations, such as those with both Catholics and Lutherans, is to talk about the past and memories of the past. “Because of our history, we Anabaptists have often seen ourselves as heirs of martyrs, and we need to come to terms with how that affects our view of the world,” he said. “We also need to see ourselves as members of the wider body of Christ, called to give an account of our convictions and practices, and to receive others as they do likewise.”

The Mennonite-Catholic dialogue produced a report entitled "Called Together to Be Peacemakers" in 2003. The central theme of this dialogue was the healing memories.

Posted: August 26, 2010

© 1995-2010, Ecumenism in Canada

Journal of Ecumenical Studies reviews Ecumenism Means You, Too

The most recent issue of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies (vol. 45, no. 4 [Fall 2010], p. 659) includes a review of my book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010) by Francis A. Sullivan, S.J. of Boston College (previously professor of ecclesiology and dean of the faculty of theology at the Gregorian University in Rome).

Since the site findarticles.com has already posted full text of the review, I'll do so here as well:

Steven R. Harmon, Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010. Pp. 120. $16.00, paper.

Harmon is well qualified to write about ecumenism, having lectured on it at two divinity schools and actively participated in it as a member of the delegations of the Baptist World Alliance to international theological conversations with the Anglican and Catholic churches. While aware of the reasons why many are discouraged by the slow progress of the ecumenical movement, Harmon bases his hope for its future on his conviction that many young Christian adults truly want the unity that Jesus wants for his church and will respond to the exhortation he addresses to them to become better informed about ecumenism and to take an active part in it. He tells them what they need to know about ecumenism and lists ten things they can do to promote the unity of the church. Among these are to pray for the unity of the church, especially with members of another church; to know their own tradition and commit themselves more deeply to it; to learn about another Christian tradition, almost as they might learn another language; to study Scripture with other Christians and join with them as advocates for peace and care for the environment. What makes his exhortation the more likely to appeal to the young adults he has in mind is the use he makes of the music of the Irish rock band "U2" to express the spirituality of ecumenism that he is convinced one can find in it, even if this was not their explicit intention. The book includes two useful appendices: an annotated bibliography of resources for ecumenical engagement and a glossary of key ecumenical terms.

Francis A Sullivan, S.J., Boston College, Newton, MA

COPYRIGHT 2010 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

Interested in Ecumenism Means You, Too? Order the book directly from Cascade Books or via Amazon.

"One baptism"--yet baptized into division

This is the eighth in a series of daily posts during this year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (January 18-25, 2011) offering brief reflections on the biblical basis for the quest for Christian unity. These reflections are drawn from the pages of Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010).

According to Ephesians 4:5, we share “one baptism.” There is only one baptism because when we are baptized, we are baptized into the body of Christ and not into a denomination or into a local church. Yet our baptisms are performed by local churches that identify with particular denominational traditions, so our baptisms are paradoxical: we are simultaneously baptized into the one body of Christ and into the current divisions of the church. One of the most pressing ecumenical issues today is the mutual recognition of one another’s baptisms. If there is only one baptism into the one body of Christ, then there’s a sense in which not to recognize the baptism of another church as a legitimate baptism is to say, “your church is not really a church,” and if the other church is not really a church, then that is also to say, “and you’re not really a Christian.”

-- from chapter 3, “One Life with Each Other: The Theology of Ecumenism”

Interested in Ecumenism Means You, Too? Order the book directly from Cascade Books or via Amazon.

Loving our ecclesial relatives--ALL of them

This is the seventh in a series of daily posts during this year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (January 18-25, 2011) offering brief reflections on the biblical basis for the quest for Christian unity. These reflections are drawn from the pages of Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010).

We embody one life with each other through the practice of “bearing with one another.” “Bearing with one another” suggests something like “putting up with one another,” the way we put up with family members whom we love but who thoroughly annoy us or with whom we have hotly-argued disagreements. It is the qualifier “in love” that makes putting up with one another possible, whether in family life or church life or in any of our relationships. Love in the biblical sense of the word makes putting up with each other possible because it is not a fleeting feeling that depends on whether we like the other or whether the other seems to love us. Love can be commanded in Scripture because love is an act of the will and not merely an emotion. When Jesus commands us, “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44), he’s not saying “have warm feelings of affection for your enemies,” but rather “love your enemies in the same way I love the people who crucified me and for whose sins I have died.” If that’s true for our relations with our enemies and with those currently outside the church, how much more should it be true of our relations with all those who belong to the body of Christ—even those we believe have dangerously distorted understandings of what it means to be Christian? We’re urged to speak the truth to one another later in chapter 4, and sometimes that may tragically mean maintaining some of the current divisions of the church until we make more progress together in our effort to “try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:10).

-- from chapter 3, “One Life with Each Other: The Theology of Ecumenism”

Interested in Ecumenism Means You, Too? Order the book directly from Cascade Books or via Amazon.

The Ecumenical Virtue of Humility

This is the sixth in a series of daily posts during this year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (January 18-25, 2011) offering brief reflections on the biblical basis for the quest for Christian unity. These reflections are drawn from the pages of Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010).

We embody one life with each other through the character trait of humility. In Ephesians 4:2, the two words translated “humility” and “gentleness” in the New Revised Standard Version were really synonyms in the Greek language. In English we’d call that a redundancy, but in Greek rhetoric the piling up of synonyms gave emphasis to an idea—what linguists call “semantic pleonasm,” for those who care about such things. If “humility” and “gentleness” mean the same thing in the Greek employed here, the language is emphatically making the single point, “be utterly humble.” Humility in the service of the unity of the church means being willing to contemplate the possibility that other Christians from whom we’re divided may have preserved some conviction or practice belonging to the wholeness of the church’s faith that our own church currently lacks, even while humbly offering the distinctive gifts of our own church to the rest of the body of Christ. Ecumenical humility means being open to the possibility that our own tradition could prove to be on the wrong side of this or that church-dividing issue, even while remaining committed to seeking the good of our own communion.

-- from chapter 3, “One Life with Each Other: The Theology of Ecumenism”

Interested in Ecumenism Means You, Too? Order the book directly from Cascade Books or via Amazon.

Ephesians and the Unity of the Church

This is the fifth in a series of daily posts during this year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (January 18-25, 2011) offering brief reflections on the biblical basis for the quest for Christian unity. These reflections are drawn from the pages of Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010).

The overarching theme of the New Testament letter to the Ephesians is the unity of the church as the body of Christ. It is part of God’s plan to unify all things—“a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth” (1:10). As the body of Christ, the church is “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (1:22-23). The church is “one new humanity” that transcends Jew and Gentile—the ethnic divisions of humanity that mattered to the readers of this letter—in which both groups are reconciled “to God in one body through the cross” (2:15-16). Christian unity is no easy unity, for the church is a community in which we must “speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another” and in which we may need to “be angry” at one another while avoiding letting that anger turn into sin (4:25-26). Being members of the one body of Christ means to “be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ” (5:21-33).

-- from chapter 3, “One Life with Each Other: The Theology of Ecumenism”

Interested in Ecumenism Means You, Too? Order the book directly from Cascade Books or via Amazon.

The Evangelistic End of Ecumenism

This is the fourth in a series of daily posts during this year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (January 18-25, 2011) offering brief reflections on the biblical basis for the quest for Christian unity. These reflections are drawn from the pages of Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010).

The unity for which our Lord prayed is nothing less than the very unity of the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and it falls short of that unity if it is not a unity the world can see. In verses 21 and 23 of John 17, the purpose of Christian unity is evangelistic—that is to say, it has as its ultimate end the conversion of the world: “so that the world may believe that you have sent me....so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” That is why many participants in the ecumenical movement emphasize visible unity as the goal of ecumenism. As the result of our divisions, we are not yet united at the Lord’s table. Our churches do not yet all recognize one another’s baptisms as the one baptism of the one body of Christ. We are not yet able to speak with one prophetic voice against the world’s injustices. Our divisions have compromised our witness so that the world does not find it compelling.

-- from chapter 1, “Here to Play Jesus: Why Ecumenism Isn’t Dead”

Interested in Ecumenism Means You, Too? Order the book directly from Cascade Books or via Amazon.

The Trinity and Christian Unity

This is the third in a series of daily posts during this year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (January 18-25, 2011) offering brief reflections on the biblical basis for the quest for Christian unity. These reflections are drawn from the pages of Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010).

The unity Jesus prays for his church is rooted in the life of the Triune God, the one God who as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is three distinct persons who share one divine essence and engage in one divine work, the redemption of the world. “That they may be one, as we are one,” Jesus prays in John 17:11 and 22, and in verses 21 and 23 he clarifies these connections: “As you Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us...I in them and you in me.”

The ancient Greek theologians had a technical term for the manner in which Jesus’ prayer in John 17 portrays the relationships between the persons of the Trinity. The Greek word perichoresis meant something like “mutual indwelling” or “mutual permeation” or “interpenetration.” The eighth-century theologian John of Damascus and others employed this word perichoresis when they explained the unity of the one God who is three persons, and they cited John 17:23 as the biblical basis of this concept. The being of each person mutually indwells or permeates the being of the other two persons, so that the Father is in the Son and in the Spirit; the Son is in the Spirit and in the Father; and the Spirit is in the Father and in the Son. Each person jointly participates in the work of the other two persons. When the Father creates the heavens and the earth and makes human beings in the image of God and gives them life, the Son and the Spirit jointly share in the divine work of creation. When the Son comes down from heaven and becomes incarnate for us and for our salvation, suffers and dies for our sins on the cross, is raised from the dead, ascends into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, and comes again to judge the living and the dead, the Father and the Spirit jointly share in the divine work of redemption. When the Spirit indwells the lives of believers, makes them holy, and empowers the Christian life, the Father and the Son jointly share in the divine work of sustaining what God has created and redeemed. This understanding of Trinitarian perichoresis is the concept behind the familiar Trinitarian symbol of three interlocking circles in which each circle is intertwined with and inseparable from the other two.

Jesus’ prayer makes it clear that these relationships of the Triune God are both the ground and the goal of Christian unity. It is the unifying life of the one God that dwells in us and makes us one, and the unity of the shared life and work of the three persons of the Trinity is the model and standard for the unity that ought to characterize the church. Christian unity is a perichoretic unity. That means that the lives of churches in relationship to other churches and the lives of individual believers in relationship to other believers ought to be as inseparably intertwined as the three interlocking circles that symbolize the Trinity. In other words, we are “members of one another,” as Scripture tells us more than once (Romans 12:5, Ephesians 4:25; cf. also 1 Corinthians 12:20-26).

-- from chapter 1, “Here to Play Jesus: Why Ecumenism Isn’t Dead”

Interested in Ecumenism Means You, Too? Order the book directly from Cascade Books or via Amazon.

Baptist World Alliance statement on the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

The Baptist World Alliance yesterday issued the following statement encouraging Baptist participation in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (January 18-25, 2011):

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

FALLS CHURCH, VA (BWA) -- “The greatest tragedy of life,” distinguished British Baptist pastor, F. B. Meyer once said, “is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer.” And prayer for Christian unity has been described as the soul of the movement for the visible unity of the church.

When, in 1908, Paul Wattson gathered a group of Christ-followers in New York for corporate prayer in observance of the “Church Unity Octave,” he was tapping into a tradition that has been traced to around 1740 when believers in Scotland gathered and prayed “for and with all churches.” Thankfully, in 1926, a wider group of churches in the Faith and Order Movement started publishing “Suggestions for an Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity” – a tradition that continues to this day – as a sign of their commitment to prayer for a great cause.

Many Christians will shortly be participating in the annual observance of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity from January 18-25. The printed material for this year’s observance is based on a text prepared by a group of Christian leaders from Jerusalem and finalized, as usual, by an international group set up by the World Council of Churches and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity of the Roman Catholic Church. It focuses on our oneness “in the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayer” (Acts 2: 42–47).

Is it not Jesus who set for us the example of prayer for the unity of those who would believe, thereby providing justification for the conviction that a firm bond exists between worship and unity? Indeed, as our Baptist forebears often explained, whatever understanding of visible unity one holds, prayer is the indispensable accompaniment of our committed engagement to realize the unity given to the church as both gift and demand.

Behind the opinion expressed on the subject of “spiritual unity” in the writings of such persons as former BWA President F. Townley Lord and George Beasley Murray is the conviction that worship and unity are inseparable. As former BWA President, John Clifford, once said, “It is a source of unfailing joy to us to feel that … our primary work links us with the holy church throughout the world, relates us to every believer in Jesus, in any church or none; makes us one with the self-forgetting missionaries of all societies.… We rejoice in the efforts now being made on behalf of unity of the followers of Jesus Christ, and gladly cooperate in these endeavors. We crave it; we pray for it.”

The Baptist World Alliance (BWA) has often encouraged its members to cultivate a vibrant corporate prayer life. In the Seoul Covenant of 1990, Baptists affirmed that their participation in the whole family of God implies a willingness “to pray and work with other Christians.” During the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, we encourage members of churches in fellowship with us to embrace the opportunity to join with Christians from other communions in the noble tradition of corporate prayer around a God-inspired purpose – that we may be one in order “that the word may believe” (John 17:21).

© Baptist World Alliance

January 18, 2011

The Diabolical Roots of Christian Division

This is the second in a series of daily posts during this year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (January 18-25, 2011) offering brief reflections on the biblical basis for the quest for Christian unity. These reflections are drawn from the pages of Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010).

In John 17, Jesus asks something else for his followers just before the first prayer for unity in verse 11. He prays, “Holy Father, protect them.” “Protect them”—why? “So that they may be one, as we are one.” “Protect them”—from what or from whom? In verse 15 Jesus prays, “I ask you to protect them from the evil one.” “The evil one” is the one elsewhere in the New Testament called the “devil,” diabolos in Greek, which literally means “one who divides.” The work of the diabolical one is to bring division, to divide people from God and to divide people from one another. The evil one seeks especially to bring division to those who ought to have the unity shared by God the Father and God the Son. Thus Jesus prays, “I ask you to protect them from the evil one.”

-- from chapter 1, “Here to Play Jesus: Why Ecumenism Isn’t Dead”

Interested in Ecumenism Means You, Too? Order the book directly from Cascade Books or via Amazon.

Churches speaking and acting together in Birmingham

The Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches meeting in New Delhi, India in 1961 issued a widely accepted definition of the visible unity sought by the modern ecumenical movement:

We believe that the unity which is both God’s will and his gift to his Church is being made visible as all in each place who are baptized into Jesus Christ and confess him as Lord and Saviour are brought by the Holy Spirit into one fully committed fellowship, holding the one apostolic faith preaching the one Gospel, breaking the one bread, joining in common prayer, and having a corporate life reaching out in witness and service to all and who at the same time are united with the whole Christian fellowship in all places and all ages in such wise that ministry and members are accepted by all, and that all can act and speak together as occasion requires for the tasks to which God calls his people.

Last week participants in the annual meeting of Christian Churches Together in the USA in Birmingham, Alabama embodied what it means for the churches to "act and speak together as occasion requires for the tasks to which God calls his people" in issuing "A Letter from Birmingham" in response to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail." I'm pleased that leaders of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Baptist communion to which I belong and a member body of Christian Churches Together in the USA, have joined in issuing "A Letter From Birmingham" and have made public statements calling attention to its significance. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has issued a press release, published also as an Associated Baptist Press story.

Good news to share on the opening day of the 2011 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

Jesus' Prayer for Christian Unity

This is the first of a series of daily posts during this year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (January 18-25, 2011) offering brief reflections on the biblical basis for the quest for Christian unity. These reflections are drawn from the pages of Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010).

According to chapter 17 of the Gospel According to John, on the eve of his crucifixion the main thing Jesus prayed for his followers was “that they may be one” (John 17:11). Four times in the course of this prayer Jesus prays that his disciples and all who later believe through their testimony might have unity: “that they may be one, as we are one” (v. 11); “that they may all be one” (v. 21); “that they may be one, as we are one” (v. 22); “that they may become completely one” (v. 23).

-- from chapter 1, “Here to Play Jesus: Why Ecumenism Isn’t Dead”

Interested in Ecumenism Means You, Too? Order the book directly from Cascade Books or via Amazon.

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2011 at Ecclesial Theology

During this year's observance of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (January 18-25, 2011) Ecclesial Theology will feature a series of brief daily reflections on the biblical basis for the quest for Christian unity, drawn from the pages of Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010). I hope you'll check here daily beginning on January 18--and more importantly, I hope you'll remember to pray daily for the unity of the church.

Ecumenical institutions and organizations--NCC Faith and Order Commission

Continuing a series of posts calling attention to selected resources featured in Appendix 1, "Resources for Ecumenical Engagement," in Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010):

As summarized in the constitution of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, the mission of its Faith and Order Commission is to “affirm the oneness of the Church of Jesus Christ and keep before the churches the Gospel call to visible unity in one faith and one Eucharist communion, expressed in worship and in common life in Christ, in order that the world may believe.” The Commission sponsors annual study groups, a series of books and occasional papers, and the electronic journal New Horizons in Faith and Order.

Interested in Ecumenism Means You, Too? Order the book directly from Cascade Books or via Amazon.

New publication--"'One Baptism': A Study Text for Baptists"

The current issue of Baptist World, the magazine of the Baptist World Alliance, includes my article "'One Baptism": A Study Text for Baptists" (vol. 58, no. 1 [January/March 2011], pp. 9-10). In this article I offer a Baptist perspective on the soon-to-be-released final version of the study text "One Baptism: Towards Mutual Recognition" drafted by the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches. The full text of the magazine issue is available online (click hyperlinked title above). Here's a snippet from the beginning of the article:

In December 2008 veteran Methodist ecumenist Geoffrey Wainwright shared his perspectives on the progress and challenges of the modern ecumenical movement with the delegations to the conversations between the BWA and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Members of both delegations were taken aback by his opening observation: “As far as the issue of baptism goes, the Baptists have won.”

Professor Wainwright was referring to the current ecumenical consensus that believer’s baptism by immersion is the normative biblical practice from which the practice of infant baptism derives its significance. The widely acclaimed convergence text Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry issued by the World Council of Churches in 1982 states, “baptism upon personal profession of faith is the most clearly attested pattern in the New Testament documents.” Many Baptists would be surprised to learn that the Catechism of the Catholic Church now regards immersion as the mode most theologically expressive of the significance of baptism and insists that those baptized as infants must go on to have personal experience of God’s grace. The wildest hopes of the seventeenth-century Baptists could not have imagined the degree to which much of the church today has converged toward important aspects of their historic dissent from the majority of the Christian tradition.

The WCC study text One Baptism: Towards Mutual Recognition stands in continuity with these encouraging ecumenical developments, and Baptists will be able to recognize themselves in its pages....(read more)

The Baptist Passion for Christian Unity

The January 2011 issue of Baptists Today (vol. 29, no. 1; p. 25) includes my guest commentary "The Baptist Passion for Christian Unity." Here's a snippet from the beginning of the article:

Enough non-Baptist Christians think the title of this guest commentary is oxymoronic that a few years ago my friend and former Campbell University colleague Glenn Jonas needed to write a pamphlet titled “Myth: Baptists are Anti-Ecumenical” for the “Baptist Myths” series sponsored by the Baptist History and Heritage Society.

But as many Baptists prepare to participate in this month’s observance of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (January 18-25), they can do so in the confidence that Baptists at our best have long been passionate about the quest for Christian unity.

Dr. Jonas’ pamphlet called attention to Baptist missionary William Carey, who in 1806—a full century before the 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference marked the institutional beginnings of the modern ecumenical movement—proposed “a general association of all denominations of Christians from the four quarters of the earth.”

Baptists later participated in the formation of the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches in the USA, and British Baptists leaders John H. Shakespeare and Ernest A. Payne even urged Baptists in the UK to pursue organic church union across denominational lines.

The passion of global Baptists for Christian unity is embodied by the Commission on Doctrine and Christian Unity of the Baptist World Alliance....

Interested in reading the rest of the article? If you don't already subscribe to Baptists Today or have library access to this news journal, print and electronic subscription information is available on the Baptists Today web site. (Otherwise, wait until public back issues are posted six months after publication. I'll post a link here at Ecclesial Theology when the back issue is available.)