Christian Unity (the book) - The Maranatha Community

loyalty to Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, not on agreement over doctrinal orecclesiastical positions. There were speakers, however, who urged thatdenominational differences were important. Each denomination held sometruth that was important to the whole church and must be preserved.From all these deliberations and discussions the Catholic branch of the Churchwas excluded as there were no official Roman Catholic delegates, but severalspeakers expressed the hope that one day the Roman Catholic and Orthodoxchurches would become involved in working for unity.Edinburgh 1910 led to the formation, directly or indirectly, of two ecumenicalstudy groups; indirectly, the Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work inStockholm in 1925 and, directly, a World Conference on Faith and Order inLausanne in 1927. The Stockholm Conference dealt with practical issuesrelevant to the progress of the churches’ life and witness; the LausanneConference tried to face doctrinal questions.Over 50 years later, Faith and Order produced a paper in which baptism wasconsidered as a basis for unity (known as the ‘Lima‘ text as the Conferencewhich produced it was held in Peru). The view of this Paper is that ‘thenecessity of faith for the reception of the salvation embodied and set forth inbaptism is acknowledged by all the churches.’ 132All denominations would agree that personal commitment is necessary forresponsible membership in the body of Christ. However, the strong andtraditional hard-line Baptist view that infant baptism is no baptism at all andthat baptism on confession of faith is therefore required for membership of alocal congregation is still a stumbling block.On this question, Anthony R Cross writes gloomily, ‘There seems to be littleprospect of a rapprochement in the foreseeable future – if ever.’ 133 But thefact that increasingly Catholic and Orthodox practice is to see that openconfession of Christ follows infant baptism at a later date should encouragethe United Free Church in 1900 and taking part in the measures which were to bring aboutunion with the established Church of Scotland after his death.132Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Faith and Order, Paper 111, WCC, 1982.133Cross, Anthony, Baptism Christology and the Creeds of the Early Church: Implicationsfor Ecumenical Dialogue, essay in Ecumenism in History, ed Cross, A R, Paternoster Press,2002, p 32.Page 151