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Whoever writes theology must have always in mind that she or he is the last person who should be talking about such things. Yet she or he must write. To think otherwise, or to refuse writing because one thinks thus, is to concede defeat at the hands of contradiction. And ecuminism, after all has been written (though it's never all been written), must be a blessing the lives inside contradiction.
By ecumenism I mean any conscious effort to live, as Christians, as one Body. Such an effort is not a strange one; in fact, any creed-reciting Christian proclaims one Church, and any Bible-reading Christian can find impetus for unity in John 17. But "unity" is not unlike "freedom" in that the word has become a place-holder, a sign beneath which might lie years and perhaps centuries of ideologies and stories and debates.
Thus while few Christians would deny that unity is "a good thing," various traditions have approached that goal variously. Two families of approaches I've taken the liberty of naming the reducer family and the assimilator family. The names should give a basic idea, but being an article-writer, I'll take a couple paragraphs to flesh out each.
Reducers aim low to strike unity. If traditions or teachings or political practices obstruct the arrow's path to the unity-target, we simply to tear them down. Not everyone likes confessing sins to priests, so that must go. Some will get offended if we use adjectives like "absolute" or "perverse," so we'll come up with a vocabulary that does not offend. Everything we do aims to remove rituals and practices and symbols that might cause someone offense. Perhaps in some absurd realm one might even hear a reducer say things like "Some of the best Christians don't even know Jesus."
Assimilators, on the other hand, assert (with impeccable logic) that if every Christian worshiped, thought, sang, lived together, and prayed like we did, then everyone would be doing things the same and thus there would be real unity. To ask what must change for the sake of unity is to look outside. What we've got going is the real deal, and if there is to be unity, it must be a right unity. We will be unified when they correct their ways.
Of course, each of these positions is a caricature, and that's the point. Relatively few Christians would claim one side of the other. The easy solution, one might think, would be simply to find a middle ground, a place in which one is neither too reductionist nor too exclusive. But such a solution eludes the solution-seeker, and for good reason. The sliding scale that I've painted here does not exist prior to real, people-filled traditions, none of whom (or at least few of whom) have become what they've become expressly for the sake of pursuing falsehood. Moreover, most if not all of these traditions have already positioned themselves relative to other traditions, each having at least internally-convincing reasons that the SBC or the RCC or the COC in fact does the terminal C better than do others. (I realize that the terminal C stands for different things in the three examples. That's the only humor you're getting in this essay--enjoy it.)
Those who have claimed to transcend those divisions nearly inevitably end up subdividing into their own ecumenical traditions, the EC and the CUIC and others, leaving behind those who would claim that an older tradition does it better than the new, ecumenical tradition. In other words, to steal from the William James (or Betrand Russell, or wherever the story originated) anecdote that everyone seems to steal, disputes between groups of Christians are traditions, traditions, traditions, all the way down.
At this point in the article one hopes for a solution. None is forthcoming. My only proposal is an attempt at dialectic. As we are going along, let us hold fast to both of these poles. Let us cling with the traditionalist's fervor to the mothers and fathers in the faith who have come before even as we play the missionary, talking together as we bring our gifts to the Christ who becomes incarnate in each new cultural encounter. As we drift towards one, the other will pull on us, but let us never divorce our lives and our thoughts and our worship from either pole.
Such an endeavor might on first glance seem impossible, but the reality is much worse: it is impossible. Thus humility. As we live together as Christians in God's creation, Catholics and Emergents and Presbyterians and Baptists and others, the old virtue of humility ought to inform what we do. Even as we assert with the confidence of converts (and Christians ought always to be, on some level, converts), our ears always must be open lest we miss the voice of the ass that would save us from angels. (That's a biblical allusion. Not many of those either in this essay. Enjoy it.) Our confidence ought always to be in a God who opens eyes and ears, not one who opened them. But humility is not always a virtue that pulls downward; always to pull downward is a vice, namely cowardice. Humility also pushes upward, insisting that the other person might well need to hear from me, that what I say might be a saving moment (not necessarily the saving moment, if you confess such a thing) for those hearing me. Thus we Christians, as executors of traditions and as inheritors of traditions, practice humility, that dialectic virtue that lives between tradition and novelty, between proclamation and revelation, between loving by offering a hand and loving by taking a helping hand.
Such is the wonderful impossibility of the Way of Jesus Christ.
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"... real, people-filled traditions, none of whom (or at least few of whom) have become what they've become expressly for the sake of pursuing falsehood ..."
to build on this idea - can we assume that the various church traditions have a meaning which came out of a time of a new revelation of God, and that these traditions are valuable as a historical marker of truth, even if they have lost some of the power of their relevence as the cultures have changed and merged and developed?
if so - can we assume that it would not be difficult for a person to appreciate and embrace all traditions, even when those individual tradiitons are not in agreement with each other?
could this then be a third type of ecumenism?
(this could be the embracer type of ecumenism.)
Certainly ecumenism deserves better than the two caricatures that I painted. You're right that we Christians need at least a third way, and my hunch is that fourth and fifth and sixteenth ways might also do us some good.
Nate,
I enjoyed this article. It made me think.
The lack of a conclusive "third ecumenism" left me unsettled.
Also, if both poles are wrong then shouldn't we abandon both? Are we to be the martyr stretched between the two or Samson who pushes them down preparing the way for a new construct (or a return to the NT Church).
Scott, I did leave the "third ecumenism" unsettled on purpose. I'm not even sure about the way I've set up the question, much less the answer.
As far as abandoning the two poles, I think that each is genuinely good, so I'm not ready yet to turn them loose. Genuine continuity and genuine present-ness (pardon the sloppy Platonism there) are both genuine goods for which the Church should strive, even when they pull against one another. That's why I think that the contradiction itself defines both the problem and the promise of Church on Earth.
Nate, I'm curious then...do you see much of what you're article described as being the tension between the Kingdom of Earth and the Kingdom of Heaven? (i.e. in the world, not of the world)
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"... real, people-filled traditions, none of whom (or at least few of whom) have become what they've become expressly for the sake of pursuing falsehood ..."
to build on this idea - can we assume that the various church traditions have a meaning which came out of a time of a new revelation of God, and that these traditions are valuable as a historical marker of truth, even if they have lost some of the power of their relevence as the cultures have changed and merged and developed?
if so - can we assume that it would not be difficult for a person to appreciate and embrace all traditions, even when those individual tradiitons are not in agreement with each other?
could this then be a third type of ecumenism?
Posted by tammy | Posted at 06/29/2007 4:41 AM(this could be the embracer type of ecumenism.) Posted by tammy | Posted at 06/29/2007 4:43 AM
Certainly ecumenism deserves better than the two caricatures that I painted. You're right that we Christians need at least a third way, and my hunch is that fourth and fifth and sixteenth ways might also do us some good. Posted by Nathan P. Gilmour | Posted at 07/02/2007 2:23 PM
Nate,
I enjoyed this article. It made me think.
The lack of a conclusive "third ecumenism" left me unsettled.
Also, if both poles are wrong then shouldn't we abandon both? Are we to be the martyr stretched between the two or Samson who pushes them down preparing the way for a new construct (or a return to the NT Church).
Posted by Scott | Posted at 07/05/2007 8:14 AMScott, I did leave the "third ecumenism" unsettled on purpose. I'm not even sure about the way I've set up the question, much less the answer.
As far as abandoning the two poles, I think that each is genuinely good, so I'm not ready yet to turn them loose. Genuine continuity and genuine present-ness (pardon the sloppy Platonism there) are both genuine goods for which the Church should strive, even when they pull against one another. That's why I think that the contradiction itself defines both the problem and the promise of Church on Earth.
Posted by Nathan P. Gilmour | Posted at 07/09/2007 2:24 PMNate, I'm curious then...do you see much of what you're article described as being the tension between the Kingdom of Earth and the Kingdom of Heaven? (i.e. in the world, not of the world) Posted by Scott | Posted at 07/10/2007 7:04 AM