Common devotion and the unity of the church

Tomorrow is the first Sunday in Advent and thus the beginning of Year Two in the Daily Office Lectionary. In addition to providing daily nourishment for personal spiritual growth, reading the Scripture passages assigned for each day contributes to progress toward the visible unity of the body of Christ as Christians across the divisions of the church together devote themselves to "the teaching of the apostles" and to "the prayers" (Acts 2:42).

The Anglican Book of Common Prayer and Roman Catholic Daily Missal both include daily office lectionaries along with other resources that guide personal devotions based on the daily office readings. A few years ago my wife gave me a Christmas gift that's become for me an indispensable resource for following the daily office: the four volumes of For All the Saints: A Prayer Book For and By the Church (American Lutheran Publicity Bureau, 1994-1996) include for each day the full text of the Old Testament, Epistle, and Gospel readings, an opening and closing prayer selected from the whole of the Christian tradition in its historical depth and contemporary breadth, and a devotional reading from one among the company of the saints that develops themes from one of the Scripture readings for that day, along with the full text of the Psalter, other patterns and resources for individual and family devotions, and occasional icons connected with seasons and significant feast days of the Christian year.

Electronic resources for following the daily office include The Daily Office maintained online by the Mission of St. Clare (the "text by day" feature downloads well to cell phones) and the Forward Day by Day meditations posted online by Forward Movement Publications.

If you've not previously followed the daily office, try taking it up as an Advent discipline in the days between now and December 25. You might serendipitously encounter Christians in other churches who are doing the same thing, and you just might find yourself having the kinds of conversations with them that make for the increase of the "one hope" (Ephesians 4:4) for the oneness of the church in this most eschatological of seasons of the Christian year.

"The Church Still Needs Baptists" now available online

The issue of Baptists Today in which my guest commentary "The Church Still Needs Baptists" appeared (vol. 27, no. 8 [August 2009], p. 28) is now available online as a PDF file in the Baptists Today public back issue archive (click on hyperlinked title above).

Regent's Reviews reviews Baptist Sacramentalism 2

The re-launched Regent's Reviews published by Regent's Park College of the University of Oxford includes in its first issue a review of Baptist Sacramentalism 2, ed. Philip E. Thompson and Anthony R. Cross (Studies in Baptist History and Thought, vol. 25; Paternoster, 2008), to which I contributed the chapter "The Sacramentality of the Word in Gregory of Nyssa's Catechetical Oration: Implications for a Baptist Sacramental Theology." The review by Paul Goodliff of the Baptist Union of Great Britain appears on pp. 7-9 of the PDF version of the issue linked here.

Washington Theological Consortium: New Books of Note in Ecumenism

Gerald Stover, an active lay ecumenist with the Lehigh County Conference of Churches in Pennsylvania, has called my attention to a most helpful annotated bibliography of recent books on ecumenical themes maintained and updated periodically by the Washington Theological Consortium. Readers of this blog will note in the current listing notices regarding two volumes I've mentioned here: Paul D. Murray, ed., Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism (Oxford University Press, 2008) and John A Radano, Lutheran & Catholic Reconciliation on Justification (Eerdmans, 2009).

Paul Fiddes on "Baptists and Receptive Ecumenism"

Following up on a previous post on "receptive ecumenism" as a promising paradigm for ecumenical engagement: British Baptist theologian Paul Fiddes of Regents Park College, University of Oxford, presented a paper on "Baptists and Receptive Ecumenism" at a conference on Receptive Ecumenism: The Call to Ecumenical Learning at St Mary’s Catholic Church, Cadogan Street, Chelsea, UK in November 2007, later published in revised and expanded form in the journal Louvain Studies 33, no. 1-2 (2008). The Society for Ecumenical Studies has made the text of the published article available online in PDF (click on hyperlinked title above).

"Dei Verbum § 9 in Baptist Perspective" available online

For those interested, a PDF electronic offprint of my article "Dei Verbum § 9 in Baptist Perspective" in Ecclesiology 5, no. 3 (September 2009): 299-321, mentioned in a previous post, is now linked from the Beeson Divinity School web site (click on hyperlinked title above).

The tenth anniversary of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification

In honor of the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation:

Ten Years of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification

Roman Catholics, Lutherans and Methodists to Commemorate the Event on October 30 and 31 in Augsburg

AUGSBURG, Germany/GENEVA, 15 October 2009 (LWI) - Several commemorative events will be held in Augsburg, Germany on 30 and 31 October to celebrate the signing of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ) between the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Roman Catholic Church ten years ago.

During a special worship service on Reformation Day in 1999, the LWF and the Vatican affirmed that mutual condemnations on the decisive question of justification that had been repeated for centuries no longer applied to the teaching of the respective churches. At the 2006 World Methodist Conference in Seoul, South Korea, the member churches of the World Methodist Council formally affirmed the JDDJ.

The highlight of the upcoming commemorative celebrations will be a ceremony on 30 October at 19:30 hrs in the Golden Hall of the Augsburg "Rathaus." Greetings by the Lord Mayor of Augsburg Dr Kurt Gribl; by Bishop Dr Johannes Friedrich of Munich, presiding bishop of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany; and by Bishop Dr Walter Mixa of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Augsburg, will be followed by brief introductions to the topic by the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) Walter Cardinal Kasper, and by LWF General Secretary Rev. Dr Ishmael Noko. Prof. em. Eberhard Jüngel from Tübingen will deliver the keynote address titled "What Does Our Happiness Have to Do with Our Blessedness?"

On 31 October from 09:00 hrs, presentations related to the JDDJ will continue in the Golden Hall. Speakers will include the long-serving bishop of the Evangelical Methodist Church in Germany Dr Walter Klaiber of Tübingen, and the former president of the German Bishops' Conference Karl Cardinal Lehmann of Mainz. The PCPCU president and the LWF general secretary will give the closing remarks. The festivities will conclude with an ecumenical worship service in the Augsburg Cathedral and a reception in the Michael Sailer Hall.

Kasper, Noko and Klaiber will address a press conference hosted jointly by the LWF, PCPCU and the Evangelical Methodist Church in Germany on 30 October at 15:00 hrs at the "Hollbau" Annahof in Augsburg.

This is a joint press release by the media offices of the Lutheran World Federation, Evangelical Methodist Church in Germany, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria and the Diocese of Augsburg.

Receptive Ecumenism

One of the most encouraging aspects of my participation at the recent WCC Faith and Order Commission meeting was the evidence I encountered in the form of paper presentations, discussions, and informal conversations that "receptive ecumenism" as an approach to ecumenical engagement is gaining traction. In a glossary appendix to my forthcoming book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity, I define "receptive ecumenism" as follows:

Receptive ecumenism—An approach to ecumenical dialogue according to which the communions in conversation with one another seek to identify the distinctive gifts that each tradition has to offer the other and which each could receive from the other; given expression by Pope John Paul II in his 1995 encyclical on ecumenism *Ut Unum Sint (“That They May Be One”): “Dialogue is not simply an exchange of ideas. In some ways it is always an ‘exchange of gifts’” (§ 28). Some *interconfessional dialogues, such as that between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Methodist Council, have worked toward concrete proposals for the exchange of ecclesial gifts.

Paul D. Murray, Senior Lecturer in Systematic Theology and Director of the Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University (UK), has been one of the major voices advocating and exploring the possibilities of receptive ecumenism, especially through his leadership of the ongoing Receptive Ecumenism project at the Centre for Catholic Studies. A virtual version of the Centre's January 2009 conference on "Receptive Ecumenism and Ecclesial Learning: Learning to Be Church Together" is online (click on conference title above).

I close this post with the Centre's brief explanation of receptive ecumenism:

The essential principle behind Receptive Ecumenism is that the primary ecumenical responsibility is to ask not “What do the other traditions first need to learn from us?” but “What do we need to learn from them?” The assumption is that if all were asking this question seriously and acting upon it then all would be moving in ways that would both deepen our authentic respective identities and draw us into more intimate relationship.

"Ecumenical Theology and/as Systematic Theology"

My article "Ecumenical Theology and/as Systematic Theology" appears in the October 2009 issue of the journal Ecumenical Trends (vol. 38, no. 9: pp. 6/134-9/137 and 15/143). The issue is not available online, but here's an excerpt from the introductory section of the article for those who don't have access to a library that carries Ecumenical Trends:

There is now an ecumenically shared commitment to ecumenical formation as indispensable to preparation for pastoral ministry, evidenced by the Directory for the Application of the Principles and Norms of Ecumenism published by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (1993) and the World Council of Churches Programme on Ecumenical Theological Education working document “Magna Charta on Ecumenical Formation in Theological Education in the 21st Century” (2008)....Yet in the absence of more intentional efforts in ecumenical formation, the average ordinand is either unaware of the significant strides toward visible unity in faith and order that have emerged from the bilateral and multilateral dialogues or else regards them as mildly interesting but of little relevance to the practice of congregational ministry. Pending needed curricular revision, professors of the individual biblical, historical, theological, and practical disciplines can re-envision their courses so that their learning outcomes include ecumenical formation as it relates to the subject matter. As a systematic theologian, I am convinced that this can best by accomplished in my own discipline if ecumenical theology is understood as a specific form of systematic theology that is systematic in its own right, is informed by other expressions of systematic theology, and in turn can serve as a source for systematic theological construction.

Faith and Order: Emerging coherence and changes of patterns

I'm now back home from the WCC Faith and Order meeting in Crete and enjoying being back in the routines of family life and teaching. This article on the WCC web site summarizes the proceedings of our meetings; papers, responses, sermons, and other documents from the meeting are available on this page.

In a future post I will offer some reflections on a promising and encouraging new approach to ecumenical engagement called "receptive ecumenism," which figured prominently in some of our discussions.