Ecumenical dialogue texts--Prairie Centre for Ecumenism, "Ecumenical Dialogues"

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):

The Prairie Centre for Ecumenism, an ecumenical institute sponsored by seven denominations in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, maintains an annotated online bibliography of many of the international and Canadian national dialogues, with most of the reports and agreed texts hyperlinked to online sources.

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

Ecumenical dialogue texts--the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification

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):

The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ) was officially confirmed by the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church on October 31, 1999, in Augsburg, Germany—482 years after Martin Luther posted the “95 Theses” on the door of the Schlosskirche in Wittenburg. This “differentiated consensus” on the doctrine that divided the Western church in the sixteenth century was the outcome of decades of dialogue between representatives of the Lutheran and Catholic churches and is one of the most significant recent achievements of the ecumenical movement. In 2006 the JDDJ was officially joined by the World Methodist Council, so that it may now be said that there is substantial agreement between Catholics, Lutherans, and Methodists in their teaching about justification by faith as the gracious gift of God. Along with Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (World Council of Churches, 1982), the JDDJ is one of the two most significant advances attained in ecumenical dialogue thus far.

Both the JDDJ and the statement of Methodist association are available online (see hyperlinks above) and in print: Lutheran World Federation and Roman Catholic Church, Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000); Geoffrey Wainwright, “World Methodist Council and the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” Pro Ecclesia 16, no. 1 (Winter 2007) , pp. 7-13).

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

Ecumenical dialogue texts--The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices (ed. Kinnamon and Cope)

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):

The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices, ed. Michael Kinnamon and Brian Cope (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans; Geneva: WCC Publications, 1997) is an exhaustive collection of documents from the twentieth-century ecumenical movement that includes significant passages from the most widely influential texts produced by assemblies, conferences, and studies of the World Council of Churches and similar bodies, covering the three broad areas of historic concern within modern ecumenism: faith and order, life and work, and mission and evangelism.

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

Ecumenical dialogue texts--Documentary History of Faith and Order 1963-1993, ed. Gassmann

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):

Günther Gassmann (ed.), Documentary History of Faith and Order 1963-1993 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1993) includes a number of key ecumenical dialogue texts that have resulted from the work of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches during a key period in the evolution of the Faith and Order stream of the modern ecumenical movement. The three decades between the fourth and fifth world conferences on Faith and Order (Montreal 1963 and Santiago de Compostela 1993) were a period of important and creative work by the WCC’s Commission on Faith and Order. While continuing and deepening ecumenical theological discussions that date back to the first world conference in 1927, several major studies have significantly advanced the search for the visible unity of the church. At the same time, the constituency of Faith and Order broadened, particularly through the full participation in the commission of the Roman Catholic Church. Gassmann introduces the texts, setting them in their historical context and linking them together.

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

Ten Things You Can Do for the Unity of the Church

The program for the upcoming Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina General Assembly (First Baptist Church, Asheville, North Carolina, March 25-26, 2011) will include two events related to my most recent book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010):

At 2:30 P.M. on Friday, March 25, I will lead a ministry workshop session titled "Ten Things You Can Do for the Unity of the Church." The assembly program book describes the workshop as "an action plan for grassroots ecumenical engagement based on Dr. Harmon’s new book, Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity." Much of the material I'll present in this session is rooted in chapter 5 of the book, and the workshop title is taken from the subtitle of that chapter.

At 8:30 P.M. on Friday, March 25, there will be a book signing for Ecumenism Means You, Too at the Smyth & Helwys display in the exhibit hall (during the fellowship reception that follows the evening worship service). The Smyth & Helwys booth will have copies of the book available for purchase throughout the assembly, and I'll be available for signing copies at the Gardner-Webb University School of Divinity booth at times other than the scheduled book signing.

I'm looking forward to seeing local area and CBFNC-connected readers of Ecclesial Theology at these events later this week.

Ecumenical dialogue texts--Centro Pro Unione, "Interconfessional Dialogues"

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):

The Centro Pro Unione in Rome maintains an "Interconfessional Dialogues" web page that provides links to online agreed texts from selected interconfessional dialogues. Texts from dialogues involving the following communions and organizations are currently linked: Anglican Consultative Council, Roman Catholic Church, Assyrian Church of the East, Baptist World Alliance, Coptic Orthodox, Mlankara Syrian Orthodox, Disciples of Christ, World Evangelical Alliance, World Alliance of Reformed Churches, World Council of Church Joint Working Group, Lutheran World Federation, Mennonite World Conference, World Methodist Council, Pentecostals, and the Orthodox Church.

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

Ecumenical dialogue texts--Growing Consensus, ed. Burgess and Gros

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):

Joseph A. Burgess and Jeffrey Gros, eds., Growing Consensus: Church Dialogues in the United States, 1962-1991 (New York: Paulist Press, 1995) includes ecumenical documents produced by bilateral, multilateral, and church union dialogues in the United States.

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

Christian unity as a "concrete end-picture"

Over at the blog Inhabitatio Dei, Halden Doerge (who, by the way, copy-edited my book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity in connection with his editorial duties at Cascade Books/Wipf & Stock Publishers) and Ry Siggelkow have co-authored a thoughtful post on "The End of Ecumenism" that may be of interest to readers of Ecclesial Theology. Doerge and Siggelkow raise important questions about the "end" of ecumenism--"end" as the goal of the modern ecumenical movement, "end" as the eschatology of the church that properly frames it, and "end" as the cessation of certain approaches to ecumenism that the authors understand to be unfaithful to this eschatology of the church. This post and the impressively reflective comment thread it engendered are encouraging signs that the quest for Christian unity is far from dead among younger theologians, ministers, and laypersons.

I want to affirm the ecumenical instincts expressed in this post, even while questioning its equation of formal bilateral and multilateral ecumenical dialogue with mere "negotiation." Ecumenism can be equated with negotiation only when church union discussions (like those related to the Leuenberg Agreement in Europe and the Consultation on Church Union in the United States) are read in light of what might be called an "ecumenism from below." There is also an "ecumenism from above," however, that corresponds to the concerns that Doerge and Siggelkow have rightly expressed regarding the kind of ecumenism targeted by the late Anglican Archbishop William Temple's often-quoted observation: "It is not by contrivance and adjustment that we can unite the Church of God. It is only by coming closer to Him that we come nearer to one another."

In a chapter on "Baptists, Praying for Unity, and the Eschatology of Ecumenism" that I contributed to A Century of Prayer for Christian Unity, ed. Catherine E. Clifford (William B. Eerdmans, 2009), I built on the appropriation of Ludwing Wittgenstein's concept of "concrete end-pictures" by the late Baptist theologian James Wm. McClendon, Jr. (1924-2000, pictured above left) in making my own case for an "ecumenism from above":

The church’s efforts to embody here and now the eschatological future disclosed in the biblical story ought to include the heeding of the dominical imperative of visible Christian unity. Two features of McClendon’s treatment of the eschatology at the core of the baptist vision support this assertion. First, McClendon echoes and builds upon Paul Althaus in defining eschatology as the division of theology that is “about what lasts; it is also about what comes last, and about the history that leads from the one to the other.” Second, McClendon draws from Ludwig Wittgenstein in developing the eschatological introduction to Doctrine [the second volume of McClendon's Systematic Theology] not in terms of a linear chronology of eschatological events but rather a series of interconnected “concrete end-pictures” suggested by the New Testament: the last judgment, the return of Jesus Christ, resurrection, death, hell, heaven, and the rule of God. To these focal concrete end-pictures identified by McClendon we should add the visible unity of the followers of Christ, for that is precisely the concrete end-picture envisioned by Jesus in his prayer for those who believe in him in John 17. This is a perichoretic unity that participates in the life of the Triune God (vv. 11 and 21-23a), is in the process of being brought to full completion (v. 23b), and is a visible witness to the world of the love of God (v. 23c). This prayer discloses a concrete end-picture in that it represents the eschatological hope of the person of God’s self-disclosure. Such unity is therefore what lasts and what comes last, and its process of being brought to completion belongs to the history that leads from the one to the other. If McClendon has characterized the eschatological essence of the baptist vision rightly, and if the quest for the visible unity of the church rightly belongs to the fullness of this vision as John 17 suggests, then Baptists are being true to their historic ecclesial vocation when they devote themselves to the quest for visible unity in faith and order.

Formal ecumenical dialogue and the reception of its results at the grassroots in embodied relationships can indeed participate in the history that leads from what lasts to the "concrete end-picture" of visible Christian unity that comes last. I'm glad to see such interest in furthering this needed conversation about it.

Ecumenical dialogue texts: Building Unity, ed. Burgess and Gros

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):

Joseph A. Burgess and Jeffrey Gros, eds., Building Unity: Ecumenical Dialogues with Roman Catholic Participation in the United States (New York: Paulist Press, 1989) is the most complete compendium of ecumenical documents produced in the United States including conciliar and bilateral dialogues in which Roman Catholics have participated.

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

Baptist hymn singing, receptive ecumenism, and the Nicene Creed

In a previous post I expressed my appreciation for the Baptist-produced Celebrating Grace Hymnal (2010) in light of the implications for receptive ecumenism of the Baptist practice of hymn singing that I noted in my 2010 Lourdes College Ecumenical Lecture (subsequently published as "How Baptists Receive the Gifts of Catholics and Other Christians" in Ecumenical Trends 39, no. 6 [June 2010], pp. 1/81-5/85):

Baptist hymnals are arguably the most significant ecumenical documents produced by Baptists. They implicitly recognize hymn writers from a wide variety of traditions throughout the history of the church as sisters and brothers in Christ by including their hymns alongside hymns by Baptists....[In addition to numerous] patristic hymns, Baptists receive through their hymnals the gifts of Francis of Assisi and Teresa of Jesus, Martin Luther, the post-Reformation Roman Catholic author of 'Fairest Lord Jesus' from the Münster Gesangbuch, the Methodist Charles Wesley, and more recently the Pentecostal pastor Jack Hayford, to name a few hymn writers whose ecclesial gifts Baptists have gladly received with their voices and hearts.

In that previous post, one of several things I praised about the Celebrating Grace Hymnal was this:

I'm delighted that the Celebrating Grace Hymnal has resisted the practice of altering the wording of hymns by non-Baptist hymn writers that were sometimes perceived in their original wording to be at odds with aspects of Baptist theology. While perhaps done with the best of intentions, such Baptist tweaking of hymn texts often results in disasters both theological and aesthetic. Case in point: “The Church’s One Foundation” by nineteenth-century Anglican priest and hymn writer Samuel John Stone (1839-1900). The first stanza of the hymn originally began with this couplet: "The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord; she is his new creation, by water and the word." That last phrase seemed to suggest a theology of baptism that was a bit too sacramental for Baptist voices to sing, so many Baptist hymnals--including the two hymnals of most of the period of my own Baptist formation, those published in 1975 and 1991 by the Southern Baptist Convention--altered "water and the word" to "Spirit and the word." Not only did that ruin a nice alliterative pair of words; it communicated a soteriology that is ultimately Gnostic. Thankfully, the Celebrating Grace Hymnal retains Stone's original wording. Many Baptist hymnals also excised the third stanza, which describes a church "by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed," and also omitted the original fifth and final stanza that began, "Yet she on earth hath union with God, the Three in one, and mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won." With the omission of those two stanzas, many Baptists missed the opportunity to be formed by an ecclesiology that values the visible unity of the church, the doctrinal catholicity of the church, and the nature of the church as a Trinitarian fellowship in which all the redeemed of all the ages participate in God and in one another. The Celebrating Grace Hymnal restores these stanzas, too.

Recently I discovered in the Celebrating Grace Hymnal another instance of this salutary practice of receiving the ecclesial gifts of the hymns of other traditions without distorting or ignoring the theology embedded within them. I was searching for an appropriate Christological hymn to sing with my Christian Theology students at Gardner-Webb University School of Divinity at the beginning of a class session on patristic Christological developments. To my great delight I noticed that the Celebrating Grace Hymnal includes as stanza 2 of the hymn "O Come, All Ye Faithful" a stanza that other Baptist hymnals have omitted from the hymn text attributed to eighteenth-century English Catholic hymn writer John Francis Wade (1711-1786):

True God of true God, Light from Light Eternal,
lo, He shuns not the virgin's womb;
Son of the Father, begotten, not created.
O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!

If the language of this stanza seems familiar, it's because the stanza incorporates the language of the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made....

The restored stanza joins this creedal affirmation of the fullness of divinity present in Jesus Christ with an echo of the earliest polemical appeal to the doctrine of Christ's virginal conception as evidence of the true humanity of Christ (an appeal that may seem counterintuitive to contemporary evangelicals accustomed to hearing the virginal conception mentioned as a proof of Jesus' divine origin).

In a review of my book Towards Baptist Catholicity: Essays on Tradition and the Baptist Vision (2006), Charles Scalise rightly suggested that the liturgical/theological formula lex orandi, lex credendi ("the rule of praying is the rule of believing") might function most appropriately for Baptists if re-envisioned as lex cantandi, lex credendi--"the rule of singing is the rule of believing" (Perspectives in Religious Studies 35, no. 4 [Winter 2008]: 433-35). Even if there are presently few Baptist congregations that include the corporate recitation of the Nicene Creed in Sunday worship (though there are some that do so), the many Baptist churches affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship that are adopting the Celebrating Grace Hymnal now have the opportunity each Christmas season to sing a key portion of the Nicene Creed and to have their faith formed by it. Lex cantandi, lex credendi!

Ecumenical periodicals--Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology

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):

Published by the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, Pro Ecclesia seeks to give contemporary expression to the one apostolic faith and its classic traditions, working for and manifesting the church’s unity by research, theological construction, and free exchange of opinion. Members of its advisory council represent communities committed to the authority of Holy Scripture, ecumenical dogmatic teaching and the structural continuity of the church, and are themselves dedicated to maintaining and invigorating these commitments. The journal publishes biblical, liturgical, historical and doctrinal articles that promote or illumine its purposes.

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

Ecumenical periodicals--Ecumenical Trends

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):

Published by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement at the Graymoor Ecumenical and Interreligious Institute, Ecumenical Trends is a monthly (except August) journal that publishes articles on the ecumenical and interreligious movements. Ecumenical Trends reports on current trends and progress in these movements around the world. It covers theological consultations, conversations, dialogues and cooperation, and it notes the availability of documents and resources and occasionally publishes the text of dialogue documents.

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

On universalism, heresy, and the "Rob Bell controversy"

A confession: before an intra-evangelical controversy erupted late last month after promotional materials for Rob Bell's forthcoming book Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived made some suspect that Bell would endorse a doctrine of universal salvation, I'd never heard of Rob Bell. I now know that many, many other people have heard of Rob Bell, the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan and a popular speaker and author whose previous books include Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (the title of which I do recall registering in my mind sometime since its 2005 publication).

A disclaimer: I am not a universalist. Exegetically, a settled doctrine of the ultimate salvation of all persons seems difficult to reconcile with the clear teaching of many passages of Scripture. Theologically, a necessarily universal salvation seems to contravene both the freedom of God and the freedom of humanity. I will not be surprised if I discover in heaven that the God revealed in Jesus Christ has indeed in the end reconciled all people to God, but I cannot presume that.

While I am not a universalist (and won't be able to determine whether Bell is a universalist until Love Wins is published on March 15), I have written a few things about early Christian expressions of universalism, some (but possibly not all) versions of which have historically been deemed heretical by the church. I've also written a bit about what actually qualifies as heresy, a charge made by many contemporary Christians against other Christians without proper nuance or care. In this post I'll restrict myself to calling attention to some of what I've already written along these lines that may be of relevance for determining (1) what sort of concept of universalism Bell may prove to be at least entertaining, and (2) whether it actually constitutes heresy.

My first book Every Knee Should Bow: Biblical Rationales for Universal Salvation in Early Christian Thought (2003) explored the manner in which Clement of Alexandria (ca. AD 160-215), Origen (ca. 185-ca. 251), and Gregory of Nyssa (331/340-ca. 395) appealed to Scripture in developing rationales for their concepts of apokatastasis, the hope that all rational creatures will ultimately be reconciled to God. I revisted my work on Gregory of Nyssa--whose March 9 feast day happens to be today--in the chapter on Gregory I contributed to the recently published volume "All Shall Be Well": Explorations in Universal Salvation and Christian Theology from Origen to Moltmann (2011) edited by "Gregory MacDonald." The paragraphs below excerpted from the final couple of pages of that chapter (pp. 61-63) offer my theological evaluation of the hope of universal salvation as maintained by Gregory of Nyssa and others:

In its efforts to clarify this not insignificant ambiguity in the plot of the biblical story of God’s salvation, early Christian theology offered three major readings of the manner in which the story concludes for those who have not responded positively to the divine work of salvation during their earthly lives. The majority reading, represented by Tertullian and Augustine, understands the eschatological punishment of such persons as eternal in duration—the everlasting torment of separation from God. Some of the second- and third-century apologists, represented by Justin Martyr and Arnobius, offered what was ultimately a minority reading in which punishment is eternal in effect rather than duration—following the resurrection, the wicked are destroyed, evil therefore ceases to exist, and God is “all in all.” The other minority reading is represented by Clement, Origen, and Gregory—punishment is eternal in effect rather than duration, but its effect is not destruction but transformation. It is possible that these three early Christian readings of the biblical portrayal of the destiny of the impenitent might not be mutually exclusive. If we may theorize that it is possible for God in the eschaton to save, say, Adolf Hitler (or any other fallen human being)—and “for God all things are possible” (Matt 19:26)—such a salvation would require the destruction of the evil person he had become in his earthly life (cf. Justin Martyr and Arnobius), the painful transformation of who he had willingly become into what God intended him to be (cf. Clement, Origen, and Gregory), and the torment of knowing for eternity the tragedy of what was irrevocably lost in his refusal to participate in God’s salvation during his earthly life (cf. Tertullian and Augustine).

Is belief in an ultimately universal salvation heresy from the perspective of the tradition of the community of faith across the ages? One certainly cannot claim with J. W. Hanson, a nineteenth-century Universalist (of the American denominational variety), that universal salvation was the consensus position of the patristic church. While it remained a minority viewpoint throughout the patristic period, one may argue that in its basic outlines universalism contradicted neither creed nor council. It affirmed belief in the coming of Christ “to judge the living and the dead,” “the resurrection of the body” (the speculations of Origen excepted), and “the life everlasting.” Even in the anathemas against Origen associated with the Fifth Ecumenical Council, the objection seems not to have been with a universal apokatastasis per se but rather with the protology presupposed by the Origenist version of the apokatastasis, as Anathema I suggests: “If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration (apokatastasis) which follows from it: let him be anathema.” It is significant that Gregory of Nyssa, who developed a concept of apokatastasis virtually identical to that of Origen sans Origen’s protology, was never condemned by council or synod, was revered by the later church as a staunch defender of Nicene orthodoxy, and was canonized as a saint with a feast day on March 9 (although doubts of later copyists of Gregory’s works about the orthodoxy of his eschatology are reflected in their emendations of a number of passages in which these ideas are expressed).

Implicit in this traditional criterion of a proper protology for assessing the orthodoxy of eschatological proposals is a healthy aversion to deterministic theologies that negate divine and human freedom, for “the monstrous restoration which follows from” a doctrine of the pre-existence of souls is deterministic in its requirement of a cyclical return to the beginning. This concern is the rationale behind Karl Barth’s denial of dogmatic universalism, even though the logic of his doctrine of election points in that direction: if God must save humanity and humanity must be saved, then neither God nor humanity would be free.

Those who find themselves attracted to Gregory’s hopeful eschatology must also consider Origen’s own reservations about making it the customary public teaching of the church (c. Cels. 6.26). In this connection there is much wisdom in the words of the nineteenth-century German pietist Christian Gottlieb Barth: “Anyone who does not believe in the universal restoration is an ox, but anyone who teaches it is an ass.”

The church is right to guard against a dogmatic universalism in light of its experience. Universal salvation as a foregone conclusion can lead, and has led, to indifference toward evangelistic endeavors and easy cultural accommodation rather than transformative engagement with culture. On the other hand, a hypothetical outcome of universal salvation ought not to detract necessarily from the urgency of the mission of the church. In such a case, failure to experience God’s salvation in one’s earthly existence would be an eternal tragedy both for that person and for all those to whom that person relates, a tragedy that the church should be urgently concerned about preventing. As I sometimes tell my students, “I will not be surprised if I discover in the resurrection that the God revealed in Jesus Christ has saved all people, but in the meantime we should not count on that.”

In the meantime, God does wish to save all people (1 Tim 2:4). Whether all will be saved must remain a mystery of divine and human freedom—as it seems to have remained for Gregory of Nyssa.

In my most recent book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (2010), I address the question of precisely what qualifies as heresy in the course of discussing the relation between early Christian debates over heresy, the loss of the church's unity, and efforts to repair it:

A heretic is not merely someone who holds ideas that the powers that be in the church consider wrongheaded. It’s not quite that easy to be a heretic. In 1 Corinthians 11:18-19 the Apostle Paul addresses the “divisions” that have occurred in the church at Corinith. In verse 19 he uses the Greek word haireseis, which in transliteration supplies our English word “heresies,” as a near synonym for the “divisions” mentioned in verse 18 (Greek schismata, the source of the English word “schisms”). The nearly identical meaning of the two words is reflected in the translation of schismata in verse 18 as “divisions” and haireseis in verse 19 as “factions” in several English versions, but there is also a shade of difference in meaning so that heresies qualifies the nature of the schismata. The Corinthian divisions resulted in part from heresies, which are self-chosen opinions that divide the church when they are introduced into the teaching that takes place within it.

In light of the Paul’s use of the Greek word for “heresies” in this passage and in light of the nature of early heresies in the first few centuries of the church, it seems that one has to fulfill three criteria in order to be a heretic in the fullest classical sense of the word.

First, a heretic is someone whose account of the Christian story is so dangerously inadequate that it’s really an altogether different story than the biblical story of the Triune God. One such radically different telling of the Christian story was Gnosticism (from the Greek word gnosis, “knowledge”), which by the second century claimed a secret insight into the true nature of Christianity that was really rooted in a Platonic dualism between the good realm of spirit and idea and the evil realm of matter and flesh. Gnosticism met this criterion of heresy because according to its version of the divine story, God could not have anything to do with an essentially evil material order and humanity could be saved only by escaping it. Arianism was a fourth-century heresy that maintained that the Son’s divinity was of a different and lesser order than the Father’s divinity. The teachings of Arius (d. AD 336) and his followers also met this criterion because they too distanced the fullness of God from the work of redeeming humanity through the incarnation, delegating the work of salvation to that which is less than the fullness of God.

Second, one must also teach this alternative version of the Christian story as an authoritative teacher in the church—or at least as someone who wants to be recognized as a teacher. Many people entertain ideas that would be heretical if they were taught, but not everyone teaches them.

Third, to be a heretic one must insist that this dangerously inadequate telling of the Christian story be regarded by the church as acceptable teaching and through this insistence threaten to divide the church. Heresy is therefore not only about problematic theological ideas. It also involves divisive behavior toward the church. Heresy is therefore as much a matter of ethics as it is of doctrine (pp. 19-21).

I hope everyone with an interest in the "Rob Bell controversy" keeps these things in mind. And that's all I have to say about that (apologies to Forrest Gump).

Ecumenical periodicals--The Ecumenical Review

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):

The Ecumenical Review is a quarterly peer-reviewed ecumenical theological journal co-published by the World Council of Churches and Wiley-Blackwell. Each issue focuses on a theme of current importance to the movement for Christian unity, and each volume includes academic as well as practical analysis of significant moments in the quest for closer church fellowship and interreligious dialogue.

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

Ecumenical periodicals: Centro Pro Unione Bulletin

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):

The Centro Pro Unione Bulletin is a semi-annual journal published in English by the Centro Pro Unione in Rome. One of the issues each year contains a multilingual bibliography of interchurch and interconfessional dialogues

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

World Council of Churches 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):

The Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches has an aim integral to the work of the WCC: “to proclaim the oneness of the church of Jesus Christ and to call the churches to the goal of visible unity.” The chief means of achieving this goal is through study programs dealing with theological questions that divide the churches. The Faith and Order plenary commission (on which I currently have the privilege of serving as a representative of the Baptist World Alliance) has 120 members—pastors, laypersons, academics, and church leaders from around the world—each nominated by his or her church. The Faith and Order Commission includes the full membership and participation of several other churches who are not members of the WCC, among them the Roman Catholic Church. Thirty members of this Commission constitute the Faith and Order standing commission, who meet at least every 18 months and guide the study programs of Faith and Order.

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

Ecumenical institutions and organizations--World Council of Churches

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):

The World Council of Churches is the broadest and most inclusive among the many organized expressions of the modern ecumenical movement. It brings together 349 churches, denominations and church fellowships in more than 110 countries and territories throughout the world, representing over 560 million Christians and including most of the world’s Orthodox churches, scores of Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist and Reformed churches, as well as many United and Independent churches. While the bulk of the WCC’s founding churches were European and North American, today most member churches are in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East and the Pacific. It describes itself as a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior according to the Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfill together their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with the goal of visible unity in one faith and one eucharistic fellowship, expressed in worship and in common life in Christ.

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