Catholicity by Grace

Catholicity by Grace September 22, 2015

For a long time, opponents of the ecumenical movement have charged that it was an attempt to arrive at a doctrinally-light, lowest-common-denominator, man-made organizational unity. The slightest investigation would have demonstrated that this is untrue. The World Council of Church’s New Delhi 1961 statement “On Unity” may be imperfect in many ways, but in no sense does it suggest that the WCC was trying to construct a unity of their own devising.

The statement says clearly (section 3) that “We all confess that sinful self-will operates to keep us separated and that in our human ignorance we cannot discern clearly the lines of God’s design for the future. But it is our firm hope that through the Holy Spirit God’s will as it is witnessed to in Holy Scripture will be more and more disclosed to us and in us. The achievement of unity will involve nothing less than a death and rebirth of many forms of church life as we have known them. We believe that nothing less costly can finally suffice.”

A few paragraphs later (5), the statement insists that “Unity is not of our making, but as we receive the grace of Jesus Christ we are one in him. We are called to bear witness to the gift of unity through offering our lives as sacrifices to his glory. The fact that we are living in division shows that we have not realized God’s gift of unity and we acknowledge our disobedience before him.” And they follow by reiterating that “the unity which is given is the unity of the one Triune God from whom and through whom and to whom are all things. It is the unity which he gives to his people through his decision to dwell among them and to be their God. It is the unity which he gives to his people through the gift of his Son, who by his death and resurrection binds us together in him in his Sonship to the one Father. It is the unity given to his people through his Spirit, and through all the gifts of the Spirit which enliven, edify and empower the new humanity in Christ” (6).

Regarding the difficulty of sorting through questions of ministry, they state again, “In this, as in all matters relating to Christ’s Church, it is upon the Holy Spirit that we must rely” (16).

However the WCC has degenerated into lefty causes over the decades, much of its work was faithful and inspiring. It produced a treasure that might well be picked up and put to fruitful use by the church today and in the future. It provided something very like an Evangelical ecclesiology, if Evangelicals are interested.


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