Digging Out the Embedded Church - The Maranatha Community

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We need constantly to remind ourselves of the simple tie that binds all Christians together and at the same time be aware of the many ways that faith has been expressed sincerely by our many fellow Christians. WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? When my fellow Protestants say they could never have fellowship with Catholics because of their doctrine of transubstantiation, I have to ask on what level they could not have fellowship. Could they not even pray with them, sing hymns with them, weep and rejoice with them? It really goes back to the principle that Anthony Norris Groves enunciated – life, not light is the basis of Christian fellowship. There are Catholics who have not submitted to Jesus as Saviour and Lord just as there are similarly Protestants or Orthodox who have not done so. But where the divine life is apparent, I can have fellowship in worship and witness and action. We can be hopeful today that there can be progress in visible unity in the Church, but there does not seem much prospect of the Protestant-Catholic-Orthodox divide being overcome in any structural or ecclesiological way: the differences in concept of the nature of the Church are so entrenched and so diverse. The very essence of Protestantism is the emphasis on the individual‟s approach to God, while the sacramentalist system has required the Church to mediate between God and the individual. John H Erikson points out in The Ecumenical Future 185 that differences in Church order which the Protestant Reformation underlined are still with us today, when doctrinal differences are gradually being resolved. He writes: „By the closing decades of the 20 th century, that century of remarkable ecumenical advances, differences in Order would continue to divide, even though disagreement in Faith had lost much of its divisive power.‟ Michael Root writes in the same volume of essays 186 of the dilemma ecumenists are in today because of the different views of what the Church is. Each tradition is separated from the others by its ecclesiology, yet all share the marks of „Church‟. Now even Orthodox and Catholic theologians have come (or are coming) to accept that Christian groups other than themselves can be thought of as „Churches‟ in some sense. This points to an acceptance that there can be some kind of Christian Unity without Churches being united organically. The answer to the dilemma is, first and foremost, to define who and what is a Christian. 187 The highly complex sacramental system which developed in the Orthodox and Catholic Churches would seem to tell us that the unregenerate is brought to salvation by ceremonies conducted by the Church. The infant is brought to Christ through baptism. This is the medieval way of salvation, which began to evolve in Church history in the 2 nd Century. 185 Ed Braaten, Carl E and Jenson, Robert W, The Ecumenical Future, William B Eerdmans Publishing Co 2004, pp 149-150. 186 Ed Braaten, Carl E and Jenson, Robert W, The Ecumenical Future, William B Eerdmans Publishing Co 2004, pp 106ff. 187 Coad, F R, A History of the Brethren Movement, The Paternoster Press, 1968, p 277. Page 149
Even some Protestant churches today, heirs of the teaching of the Magisterial Reformers who held to a medieval concept of the church as co-extensive with society, while not subscribing to baptismal regeneration, see infant baptism as bringing a child into God‟s covenant with the Church. But these churches would insist that, for a child to become a Christian, there must be personal faith in Jesus as Saviour. In 1990 Keith A Fournier wrote a book with the title Evangelical Catholics. 188 In it he claimed to be such a Christian and held it up as the most natural of descriptions for a believer in Jesus. Yet he remained committed to the teaching and discipline of the Roman Catholic Church. He writes of his conversion experience: „“Lord, I want to believe,” I cried out, “If you are real, please come to me and save me. I confess my sin, and I ask your forgiveness. I invite you, Lord Jesus Christ, to be my Saviour.”‟ My Protestant friends say to me that he cannot be both Evangelical and Catholic. But if his turning to Christ was real (and only God knows his heart) I must accept he has become my brother in Christ, even though he is holding some views which I reject. Fournier also writes: „An evangelical wave is sweeping Christian churches of every tradition, including my own. And it is leaving in its wake renewed and committed believers who are striving to re-evangelise their churches and evangelise the nations. But, for the most part, these believers are doing their work apart from one another.‟ Even in a sacramentalist system, personal faith is seen as essential to salvation. While devotion to Mary and the saints in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions remains very high, they are not meant to eclipse a personal faith in Jesus, nor to replace him as supreme Saviour of mankind. The doctrinal basis of the WCC is still a firm assertion of a belief in a Trinity and in the real humanity and deity of Jesus. The Orthodox ‘Jesus Prayer’, ‘Lord Jesus, Son of God, be merciful to me a sinner,’ echoes in the heart of all true Christians of whatever denomination. I cannot separate myself from, ignore or despise anyone who cries out to Jesus like this. They may be, from my point of view, mixed up with all sorts of errors, but they share with me new life in Christ and I must make the effort to meet them, pray with them and help them as I am able. If I make understanding of the faith rather than possession of Jesus the basis of my fellowship with other believers, I am putting a stumbling block in the way of real unity. All three traditions see the Cross of Christ as the means of our forgiveness and his Resurrection as the empowering of the believer to live a holy life. The doctrine of justification by grace through faith, a cause of contention in the Church at the time of the Reformation, no longer seems to be a divisive factor for many Christians today. At a „folk religion‟ level there are Catholics who are trying by their works to merit salvation, as there are Protestants who are doing the same. It is the task of teachers in all three traditions to explain that this is not the Gospel. 188 Fournier, Keith A, Evangelical Catholics, Thos Nelson Publishers, Nashville, 1990. Page 150
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Digging Out the Embedded Church Dis
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The Maranatha Community comprises t
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Introduction CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chr
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ead, nicely browned on top. He plac
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HOW DO WE DIG OUT THE EMBEDDED CHUR
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That the Church should express this
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For Alfeyev, „Faith is a gift, th
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„heresies„ of the Early Church
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Traditionally, the Church has made
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CHAPTER 1 CHRISTIAN UNITY IN THE EA
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A certain Docetic teacher, often id
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Novatianism When the persecutions o
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The fortunes of the Arian party in
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An attempt was made in 482 AD (29 y
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was development in the interpretati
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CYPRIAN AND AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO The
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position would see baptism as not t
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The Eastern Church‟s relationship
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insisted from the second Lateran Co
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There is so much that Orthodoxy sha
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we do not talk to each other. Our t
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The question of heresy does not com
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They were missionary-minded and the
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Lollard ideas lingered in English r
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CHAPTER 4 THE SECOND GREAT SPLIT: W
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unity‟s sake in subsequent centur
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Erasmus wrote he asserts, through o
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attle-cry, is perhaps the most famo
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Regulations for the good ordering o
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Eucharist was not just a commemorat
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CHAPTER 5 QUOTATIONS ON THE THEME O
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How rare then it is to meet a man w
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are often much bigger divisions bet
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St Germanus of Constantinople - 8 t
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manner. He declared that men could
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S L Greenslade - 20 th Century: „
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CHAPTER 6 HOPES FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY
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imminent return of Christ (Komensky
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a concern that merchant adventurers
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also anti-Socinian. Calixtus himsel
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The Eastern Churches were not rent
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everyone - from outward forms to in
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Women were not usually members of t
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work in America, shows him, though
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The aim of the conference was to br
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From 1768 Harris‟s home at Talgar
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twice more to congregations of Whit
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denominations was not their distinc
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It was from the overseas Protestant
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THE OXFORD TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT Anot
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the Church of England‟s doctrinal
Page 103 and 104: „We pray that… all who desire t
Page 105 and 106: thereof, in prayer, in the remembra
Page 107 and 108: honours the Lord and his Word; the
Page 109 and 110: apostolic church enjoyed, and that
Page 111 and 112: episcopate were too radical for mos
Page 113 and 114: Denominations began to form their o
Page 115 and 116: In this Shanghai Conference‟s Rep
Page 117 and 118: With so much talk of unity and coop
Page 119 and 120: „The liturgical movement in weste
Page 121 and 122: • Sharing a corporate life of wit
Page 123 and 124: • Our acknowledgement of the Apos
Page 125 and 126: (h) The Evangelical Church in Germa
Page 127 and 128: It changed nothing in respect of do
Page 129 and 130: Some Evangelical Protestants want t
Page 131 and 132: • It is in continuity with the
Page 133 and 134: But things have changed. Richard Ma
Page 135 and 136: evangelism - (and) state what the r
Page 137 and 138: Repentance and faith are at the hea
Page 139 and 140: outcome of being justified. Agreeme
Page 141 and 142: Virgin‟s salutary influence on me
Page 143 and 144: h) Confession The sacrament of pena
Page 145 and 146: demanding way would be sin. The que
Page 147 and 148: If the opportunity for the Church t
Page 149 and 150: Ministers, priests and laypeople in
Page 151 and 152: West Kirby, near to my home, the Si
Page 153: n) Shared Study Courses There is a
Page 157 and 158: Vincent de Lérins spoke of a „pr
Page 159 and 160: It is not likely, in the foreseeabl
Page 161 and 162: Christ and are trying their best to
Page 163 and 164: upon the name of our Lord Jesus Chr
Page 165 and 166: Perhaps this dying process is now b
Page 167 and 168: economic factors giving rise to suc
Page 169 and 170: deeper ecumenism, one that does not
Page 171 and 172: APPENDIX 1 THE NICENO-CONSTANTINOPO
Page 173 and 174: APPENDIX 2 FOUR BIBLICAL TEXTS ON T
Page 175 and 176: The „apostles and elders‟ of th
Page 177 and 178: „The purpose of the Reformation C
Page 179 and 180: What all three traditions have in c
Page 181 and 182: Cromwellian period, in a treatise o
Page 183 and 184: BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS AND DOCUMENTS
Page 185 and 186: Cullman, Oscar, The Earliest Christ
Page 187 and 188: McCarthy, Tim, The Catholic Traditi
Page 189 and 190: Letter concerning the civil princip
Page 191 and 192: Coptic Orthodox Church, 10 Council
Page 193 and 194: Parousia, 24, 68, 93 Paul VI, 10, 1
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