"Seeing Epiphany Whole" (full text)

The new issue of Christian Reflection: A Series in Faith and Ethics published by The Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University, a thematic issue on the liturgical seasons of Christmas and Epiphany, includes my article "Seeing Epiphany Whole" (vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 61-68). The full text of the article is now available online (click on hyperlinked title), along with the full text of other articles in the issue and a set of study guides and lesson plans. Here's a snippet from the opening of the article:

epiph∙a∙ny noun 1 capitalized: January 6 observed as a church festival in commemoration of the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles or in the Eastern Church in commemoration of the baptism of Christ; 2  : an appearance or manifestation especially of a divine being 3  a (1): a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something; (2): an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking; (3): an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure; b: a revealing scene or moment.

As the dictionary definition of “epiphany” suggests, there is a tension between the non-religious use of the word and the meaning of the Christian observance of Epiphany: the origins, associations, and essential theological meaning of the feast and ensuing season of the Christian year are not easily perceived or intuitively grasped in a “simple and striking” manner. Epiphany is a season of variable length (depending on the date of Easter) that begins on January 6 and extends to the beginning of Lent. It was celebrated as a commemoration of the baptism of Christ beginning in the third century, but by the fourth century in the West it also became associated with the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles in the persons of the Magi. Subsequent associations with events in the life of Jesus have included Christ’s miraculous provision of wine for the wedding at Cana. Rather than a feast and season with an “essential nature or meaning,” Epiphany can seem like a cacophonous party marking disjointed events.

What ties together this wealth of images? The Greek word epiphaneia, of which “Epiphany” is a transliteration, means “manifestation”—thus the non-religious usage of the word in the sense of “a revealing scene or moment.” Understanding Epiphany as a feast and season that celebrates divine revelation can help the Church see Epiphany whole. (continue reading the full text)

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2012 resources

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2012 (January 18-25, 2012) is less than two months away, and many local churches and ecumenical associations are planning events in connection with that observance. I've had the privilege of working with the Ecumenical Ministries Committee of Eastern Area Community Ministries in Louisville, Kentucky on their plans for observing the Week of Prayer, which will include a seminar rooted in my book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity and an ecumenical community Week of Prayer for Christian Unity service at which I will preach the homily. For the benefit of readers of Ecclesial Theology who are involved in planning similar events or who might be inspired to plan a service or other observance of this significant annual practice of "spiritual ecumenism," here are links to resources for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2012 made available by the World Council of Churches and the Graymoor Ecumenical and Interreligious Institute:

World Council of Churches: http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/faith-and-order-commission/xi-week-of-prayer-for-christian-unity/week-of-prayer-for-christian-unity-resources/resources/2012/2012-worship-and-background-material.html

Graymoor Ecumenical and Interreligious Institute: http://geii.org/week_of_prayer_for_christian_unity/welcome/joint_message.html

Ecclesial theology at the AAR

With the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion beginning in San Francisco tomorrow, it's worth noting that the sort of "ecclesial theology" highlighted by this blog--"theology done in, with, and for the church--in the midst of its divisions, and toward its visible unity in one Eucharistic fellowship"--still has a presence within the AAR, as exemplified by the Ecclesiological Investigations program unit. The program for the three Ecclesiological Investigations sections at this year's meeting follows below.

A19-213 Ecclesiological Investigations Group

Michael Attridge, University of Saint Michael’s College, Presiding

Theme: Ecclesiology and Church Law: Ecumenical Investigations

Sandra Mazzolini, Pontificia Universita Urbaniana, The Code of Canon Law: The Dark Side of Ecclesiology?

Joshua Davis, Vanderbilt University, On Law and Reception: Ladislas Orsy in Dialogue with Richard Hooker

Scott MacDougall, Fordham University, Questioning “Communion”:  Eschatological Ecclesiology and the Angelican Covenant Debate

Andrew Pierce, Trinity College, Dublin, Policing Koinonia: Anglicanism’s Managerial Turn

Business Meeting: Gerard Mannion, University of San Diego, Presiding

A20-284 Ecclesiological Investigations Group
Julie Clague, University of Glasgow, Presiding
Theme: Ecclesiology and Islam: Comparative Explorations in Religion and Community

Joshua Ralston, Emory University, The Comeback of Christendom?: Political Ecclesiology and the Challenge of Muslim Immigration

Jakob Wiren, Lund University, The Consummation of the Community: Eschatological Perspectives on the Umma and the Church with Regard to the Religious Other

John O’Brien, University of San Diego, Muslim–Christian Interfaith Encounter in Pakistan

Miroslav Volf, Yale University, Allah: A Christian Response

Responding: Mona Siddiqui, University of Glasgow

A21-114 Ecclesiological Investigations Group and Wesleyan Studies Group
Peter De Mey, Catholic University, Leuven, Presiding
Theme: What is Distinctive about Methodist Ecclesiology?

Robert Martin, Saint Paul School of Theology, Toward a Wesleyan Sacramental Ecclesiology

Miriam Haar, Yale University and Trinity College, Dublin, Ecumenical Dialogue on Apostolicity with Churches of the Wesleyan Traditions: A Promising Chaos?

Justus Hunter, University of Dayton, Toward a Methodist Communion Ecclesiology

Responding:
Kenneth B. Wilson, Canterbury Christ Church University and Chichester University
Russell E. Richey, Emory University

"One Baptism": A Study Text for Baptists (full text)

In connection with the recent release of the WCC study text "One Baptism: Towards Mutual Recognition," here is the full text of my Baptist World article "'One Baptism": A Study Text for Baptists" (vol. 58, no. 1 [January/March 2011], pp. 9-10), which offered a Baptist perspective on the final draft of the document in advance of its release:

“One Baptism”: A Study Text for Baptists
By Steven R. Harmon

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. It recognizes the concerns that churches that baptize only believers have about the adequacy of infant baptism as a disciple-making practice, and it asks infant-baptizing churches to consider how their communities might more intentionally help those baptized as infants become committed disciples.

Baptists will also appreciate the rich engagement of Scripture throughout the document. The fathers and mothers of the church from the formative centuries of Christian history after the New Testament era are also the common heritage of the whole church and could have been cited in this connection, but instead “One Baptism” is rigorously biblical in its appeal to authoritative texts. Section II, “Baptism: Symbol and Pattern of the New Life in Christ,” can provide Baptist pastors with more inspiration for preaching and teaching on biblical baptismal themes than they can exhaust in a lifetime of ministry.

“One Baptism” also poses hard questions to Baptists regarding our recognition of the baptisms of other churches. Many Baptist churches have required candidates for church membership who were baptized as infants but now testify to personal faith in Christ to be rebaptized, inasmuch as personal faith precedes baptism in the New Testament pattern. By shifting the emphasis from chronological orderings of faith, baptism, and formation in faith to the whole journey of the Christian experience in the company of the church, “One Baptism” offers a way for Baptists to discern in other patterns of baptismal practice comparable journeys of Christian experience, even while Baptists continue our internal practice of baptizing only believers as a witness and gift to the rest of the church.

On the question of rebaptism, “One Baptism” calls churches that require those previously baptized as infants to be rebaptized as a condition of membership and churches that require the same of those previously baptized as believing adults but in a church of differing faith and order to reflect on the implications of those requirements. The document fails, however, to address a variation of the latter scenario with which many Baptist congregations must deal: members of Baptist churches who were baptized as believers, but at rather young ages, who later in life question whether they really understood the commitment they were making and now wish to be baptized following their more mature embrace of faith. Baptists may nonetheless find help in “One Baptism” for addressing such cases pastorally, for both the steps toward faith taken by young children who are then baptized and the mature faith of adults can be related to the baptism near the beginning of their journeys, which need not be repeated.

“One Baptism” is a study text rather than a proposal for ecumenical convergence. The appropriate Baptist response to it is to study it! Some Baptist churches are struggling with debates over whether church membership policies should be revised so that candidates who were baptized as infants in other churches but now profess personal faith in Christ may be admitted to full membership without rebaptism. Careful study of “One Baptism” will help everyone involved in such deliberations think through the implications of their decisions about this matter for their stances on the legitimacy of non-Baptist churches and their members’ faith. Whether all Baptists find agreement with it or not, the study of “One Baptism” by Baptist ministers, laypersons, and whole congregations will yield a greatly enriched Baptist theology of baptism and potentially a more powerful baptismal practice.

Steven R. Harmon is Adjunct Professor of Christian Theology at Gardner-Webb University School of Divinity in Boiling Springs, North Carolina.

© Baptist World Alliance 2011

"One Baptism: Towards Mutual Recognition" released by WCC

In a post early this year I called attention to my article "'One Baptism": A Study Text for Baptists" (vol. 58, no. 1 [January/March 2011], pp. 9-10) in which I offered a Baptist perspective on what was then 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 WCC has now officially released this document as One Baptism: Towards Mutual Recognition. A Study Text (Faith and Order Paper no. 210; Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2011). I received a copy of the 21-page booklet in the mail last Saturday, and it is now listed as the most recent publication (no. 210) on the list of Faith and Order Official Numbered Publications on the WCC web site. Copies may be ordered directly from WCC Publications, Rte de Ferney 150, P.O. BOX 2100, CH-1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland; e-mail: publications@wcc-coe.org; Tel. +41 22 791 60 18; Fax. +41 22 798 13 46.

Note: the PDF document currently available on the WCC web site under the title "One Baptism: Towards Mutual Recognition" is a 2006 draft version of the text; the official 2011 publication has been substantially revised. If the WCC makes the official 2011 publication available online, I will call attention to its electronic availability and link the text here at Ecclesial Theology.

Update (January 9, 2012): The final text of "One Baptism: Towards Mutual Recognition" is now available online in PDF on the WCC web site (click on hyperlinked title).

Tradition-retrieving evangelicals and the problem of magisterium

Today Baker Academic released Evangelicals and Nicene Faith: Reclaiming the Apostolic Witness (ed. Timothy George), to which I contributed chapter 6, "The Nicene Faith and the Catholicity of the Church: Evangelical Retrieval and the Problem of Magisterium" (pp. 74-92). Here's a snippet from the midst of that chapter:

Even if unacknowledged or denied outright, there is a configuration of functional magisterial authority for Baptists and others who belong to the broader free church or believers’ church tradition—by which I mean those churches that emphasize the authority of the congregation of baptized believers gathered in a covenanted community under the lordship of Christ, which include Mennonites, the Disciples of Christ and Churches of Christ, Bible churches, a great many nondenominational churches, and numerous Pentecostal and charismatic communities, as well as Baptists. In my opinion this configuration, which for the sake of convenience we will call free church magisterium, embodies aspects of the strengths of both the Roman Catholic and magisterial Protestant paradigms, while in theory avoiding their susceptibilities to overly realized eschatologies of the church.... Perhaps unsurprisingly, I suggest that free church magisterial authority is located in the gathered congregation. Though this is a clumsy English coinage, we might call this the magisterium-hood of all believers—which I think is the implication of reading the Gospels as manuals of discipleship, which therefore means that all who become disciples of Christ are commissioned by him in Matthew 28:18–20 to participate in the church’s teaching office.

Baptists and Orthodox hold exploratory talks

BWA General Secretary Neville Callam with delegation members of the

Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in Crete

The Baptist World Alliance has issued the following press release regarding last week's pre-conversations between representatives of the (Eastern Orthodox) Ecumenical Patriarchate and the BWA in Heraklion on the Greek island of Crete:

Baptists and Orthodox hold exploratory talks

Washington, DC (BWA)-- Teams representing the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople held exploratory talks on the island of Crete that could lead to the commencement of formal international dialogue between Baptist and Orthodox Christians.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate enjoys the status of "first among equals" among Eastern Orthodox prelates, and is widely regarded as the representative and spiritual leader of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians.

The two teams, which met from October 30 to November 2, reviewed earlier discussions between the BWA and the Orthodox Church and proposed that any international dialogue should be aimed, among other things, at increasing mutual understanding and knowledge of each other; the exploring of a common witness to the world; and the encouragement of common action on ethical and moral issues.

"The aim of the Baptist-Orthodox dialogue is to respond to the Lord's prayer to his Father for his disciples 'that they may all be one ... that the world may believe' (John 17:21)," said BWA General Secretary Neville Callam, who led the BWA delegation. "Facing this challenge today, we believe that we should continue to explore our common ground in biblical teaching, apostolic faith and tradition as well as practical Christian witness, together with our remaining differences."

Callam expressed the hope that Baptists and Orthodox will be able to commit to as wide a dialogue as possible, in truth, love, mutual respect and transparency.

Participants left the meeting with the understanding that the Ecumenical Patriarch would examine the proposal developed by the Crete meeting and determine whether to remit it to the Orthodox Churches with a view to securing their participation in the proposed Baptist/Orthodox international dialogue.

The delegations shared fellowship with the Orthodox community in Crete as guests of His Eminence Archbishop Irenaos of Crete.

Members of the BWA team were Callam; Steven Harmon, adjunct professor of Christian Theology at Gardner-Webb University School of Divinity in the state of North Carolina in the United States; and Paul Fiddes, professor of Systematic Theology at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.

The Orthodox team comprised Gennadios of Sassima of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and professor of Orthodox theology and canon law; George Tsetsis, a former permanent representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the World Council of Churches; and Konstantinos Kenanidis, general director of the Orthodox Academy of Crete.

It is expected that a decision on whether formal dialogue will take place will be made by March 2012.

© 2011 Baptist World Alliance

Update: Associated Baptist Press has also issued a press release-- "Baptists, Orthodox consider formal dialogue."

Seeing Epiphany Whole

The new issue of Christian Reflection: A Series in Faith and Ethics published by The Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University includes my article "Seeing Epiphany Whole" (vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 61-68). Here's a snippet from the opening of the article:

epiph∙a∙ny noun 1 capitalized: January 6 observed as a church festival in commemoration of the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles or in the Eastern Church in commemoration of the baptism of Christ; 2  : an appearance or manifestation especially of a divine being 3  a (1): a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something; (2): an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking; (3): an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure; b: a revealing scene or moment.

As the dictionary definition of “epiphany” suggests, there is a tension between the non-religious use of the word and the meaning of the Christian observance of Epiphany: the origins, associations, and essential theological meaning of the feast and ensuing season of the Christian year are not easily perceived or intuitively grasped in a “simple and striking” manner. Epiphany is a season of variable length (depending on the date of Easter) that begins on January 6 and extends to the beginning of Lent. It was celebrated as a commemoration of the baptism of Christ beginning in the third century, but by the fourth century in the West it also became associated with the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles in the persons of the Magi. Subsequent associations with events in the life of Jesus have included Christ’s miraculous provision of wine for the wedding at Cana. Rather than a feast and season with an “essential nature or meaning,” Epiphany can seem like a cacophonous party marking disjointed events.

What ties together this wealth of images? The Greek word epiphaneia, of which “Epiphany” is a transliteration, means “manifestation”—thus the non-religious usage of the word in the sense of “a revealing scene or moment.” Understanding Epiphany as a feast and season that celebrates divine revelation can help the Church see Epiphany whole.

In the near future the entirety of the article and the issue of Christian Reflection in which it appears will be available in PDF on the web site of The Center for Christian Ethics, along with a study guide and other accompanying resources. When posted, I will provide the link in an updated post here.

Three influential works

The November 2011 issue of Baptists Today (vol. 29, no. 11) includes an article on pp. 30-31 by M. Blake Kendrick, Associate Pastor for Students and Spiritual Formation at First Baptist Church of Greenwood, South Carolina, that compiles responses to a question he posed to selected Baptist scholars and writers: "Other than the Bible, what three literary works have had the greatest impact on your life or have been pivotal in the shaping of your identity or sense of vocation?" I was among those surveyed; here are my responses as they appear in the Baptists Today article:

1) Systematic Theology (in three volumes) by James Wm. McClendon, Jr., 2) Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine, and Life by Geoffrey Wainwright, and 3) The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age by George A. Lindbeck.