Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 49:2, Spring 2014

193

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND LIVED COMMUNION FROM

THE PERSPECTIVE OF INTERNATIONAL

BILATERAL DIALOGUES*

Jeremy M. Bergen

PRECIS

The movement from the unity the churches already have in Jesus Christ to the

lived communion in which such unity would be fully realized is often understood in

terms of the work of the Holy Spirit. An examination of this theme in the reports of

international bilateral dialogues from 1982 to 2012 results in an outline of an implic-

it ecumenical pneumatology. In particular, the dialogues discern the work of the

Spirit in the practice of dialogue, wrestle with how the Spirit may have been active

in or despite historical moments of division, identify the Spirit with the present work

of healing memories, link the Spirit of unity with the church in mission, and reflect

on the experience of koinonia/communion and reception of the gifts of the Spirit.

The modern ecumenical movement is widely interpreted as a sign of the

movement of the Holy Spirit for the unity of the church.1 The international

Methodist-Roman Catholic dialogue explicitly identified the ecumenical movement

as “itself a grace of the Holy Spirit for the unity of Christians.”2 This link is perhaps

obvious given the intimate association of the Spirit and unity in texts such as 1 Cor.

12:12–13 and Eph. 4:1–6, as well as in the Second Vatican Council’s Unitatis

redintegratio: “It is the Holy Spirit, dwelling in those who believe and pervading

and ruling over the Church as a whole, who brings about that wonderful

communion of the faithful. He brings them into intimate union with Christ, so that

______________

*The author dedicates this essay to the memory of Professor Margaret O’Gara (1947–2012), of

the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto. 1See Michael A. Fahey, “The Ecumenical Movement Inspired by the Holy Spirit,” in D[oris]

Donnelly, A[delbert] Denaux, and J[oseph] Famerée, eds., The Holy Spirit, the Church, and Chris-tian Unity: Proceedings of the Consultation Held at the Monastery of Bose, Italy (14–20 October

2002) (Leuven: Leuven University Press; and Leuven, Paris, and Dudley, MA: Uitgeverij Peeters,

2005), pp. 119–136. Also see Ralph Del Colle, “The Holy Spirit and Ecumenism,” Ecumenical Trends 29 (June, 2000): 90–96; Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, “The Ecumenical Potential of Pneumatolo-

gy,” Gregorianum, vol. 80, no. 1 (1999): 121–145; and Philip J. Rosato, “Called by God, in the Holy Spirit: Pneumatological Insights into Ecumenism,” The Ecumenical Review 30 (April, 1978): 110–

126. 2Methodist-Roman Catholic Joint Commission, “The Apostolic Tradition,” fifth series (1991),

no. 94, in Jeffrey Gros, Harding Meyer, and William G. Rusch, eds., Growth in Agreement II: Re-

ports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level, 1982–1998, Faith and

Order Paper 187 (Geneva: WCC Publications; and Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, U.K.: Wil-liam Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000) (hereafter, GA II), p. 615. A similar expression is found in the

International Reformed-Catholic Dialogue, “The Church as Community of Common Witness to the

Kingdom of God,” third phase (2007), no. 197; available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pon tifical_councils/chrstuni/alliance-reform-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20070124_third-phase-dialogue_

en.html.

194 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

He is the principle of the Church's unity.”3 Yet, Ephesians 4 already displays the

tension between the unity that exists as a gift from God—“There is one body and

one Spirit” (v. 4)—and the unity which is threatened and is therefore a calling—

make “every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (v. 3).

The landmark 1961 New Delhi statement names these dimensions of unity and

suggests moreover that the Holy Spirit is the agent that makes visible “the unity

which is both God’s will and his gift to his Church . . . as all in each place who are

baptized into Jesus Christ” are brought “into one fully committed fellowship.”4 The

indispensable role of the Spirit to enable full unity underlies a joint statement by

Pope Benedict XVI and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: “[T]he Holy Spirit

will help us to prepare the great day of the re-establishment of full unity, whenever

and however God wills it.”5 The question arises: How is this promised and prayed-

for Spirit helping the churches prepare for the unity it does not have on the basis of

the unity it does have? In this essay I argue that the international bilateral dialogues

frequently give implicit, and occasionally explicit, answers to this question.

Michael Root’s helpful analysis of the relationship between the essential

unity the church and the unity that the church(es) seek(s) will undergird the ar-

gument that follows. Root proposed that the distinction between the essential

unity that the church cannot lose and still be church and the unity that can be lost

and regained is the difference between “common participation in the life of God

through” the means that mediate this participation and “joint participation” in

the same.6 Churches participate in the life of the same God and receive the same

Spirit, and, were this not the case, one or more of the communities involved

would cease to be the church. That is the essential unity of the church and the

basis for any common confession of faith or agreement in matters of doctrine.

While churches agree that there are forms that mediate this participation—such

as the proclamation of the gospel, ministry, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper—

there are differences in the way the conditions for authentic mediation are un-

derstood such that joint participation (or lived communion or full visible unity),

most notably with respect to the Lord’s Supper, is not yet possible but is a goal

of the ecumenical movement. Root warned against seeing the essential unity as

God’s gift and the calling to unity as a strictly human work. Both are dependent

on the Holy Spirit, in mediated forms. “The Spirit moves through the means [of

mediation] into the hearts of those who receive him in faith, and then out into a

______________ 3Second Vatican Council, Unitatis redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism) (1964), no. 2; available at

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_

unitatis- redintegratio_en.html. 4“Report of the Section on Unity,” Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches, New Delhi,

1961, no. 2; available at http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/assembly/1961-new-

delhi/new-delhi-statement-on-unity. 5Pope Benedict XVI and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, “Common Declaration,” November

30, 2006, preamble; available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/novem

ber/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20061130_dichiarazione-comune_en.html.

6Michael Root, “Essential Unity and Lived Communion: The Interrelation of the Unity We Have and the Unity We Seek,” in Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds., The Ecumenical Future: Back-

ground Papers for In One Body through the Cross—The Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity (Grand

Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004), p. 116; emphasis in orig-inal.

The Holy Spirit and Lived Communion in International Bilateral Dialogues 195

joint life, as is appropriate in the historical conditions of the time.”7 Thus, there

is a need to inquire about the Spirit’s work in history, under the actual condi-

tions of Christian division, to bring about full visible unity.

In his provocative book The End of the Church, Ephraim Radner advanced

the possibility “that the Holy Spirit has taken leave of the divided Church”8 with

the corollaries that a modern ecumenism that correlates divided churches with a

diversities of gifts of the Spirit, or a diversity of “unities” with the Spirit’s lead-

ing, is therefore incoherent.9 How can churches debilitated by division be the

agents of unity, through dialogue, for example? How can divided churches claim

to discern holiness in the witness of particular lives of holiness and witness? A

positive discernment is often taken to be a sign that ecumenical progress is being

made and, indeed, made by the power of the Spirit.10

He asked, “What does it

mean for churches to ‘agree’ about pneumatic holiness when the framework for

their discussion is one of Christian separation?” The faulty assumption, Radner

noted, “is that sanctification and the ‘experience’ of the Spirit are uniform even

within division.”11

In his persistent claim that “division, a contingent reality, in-

forms the very nature of ‘church’ as the providential ‘body of Christ,’” Radner

suggested that the actual fact of division ought radically to undermine the confi-

dence by which we might ascribe even to purportedly ecumenical activities of

divided churches the leading of the Holy Spirit.12

Root described Radner’s pro-

ject as a portrayal of “the threat that the lack of lived communion (to use

[Root’s] language) represents to the essential unity (and thus the essence) of the

church.”13

The present essay is not an engagement with the core of Radner’s pro-

foundly important critique. Rather, it aims to test and flesh out a premise of

Radner’s argument, namely, that the churches themselves understand their re-

cent and contemporary ecumenical activity as being guided by the Spirit, toward

the Spirit-given goal of unity. While it is immediately evident that most if not all

do—and one need not conclude from those dialogues that do not speak about the

Spirit that they deny the Spirit’s active presence—a close examination reveals

the particular modes and methods by which they understand this work to take

place. While I do not venture to judge whether the Spirit is actually doing what

the churches say the Spirit is doing, this essay highlights aspects of the church-

es’ self-understandings of the movement toward lived communion, delineates an

implicit or operative doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the church, and thereby pro-

vides tools by which to assess Radner’s challenge that discerning the Spirit amid

division is seriously impaired.

What follows is based on an examination of the reports of international

______________ 7Ibid., p. 120. 8Ephraim Radner, The End of the Church: A Pneumatology of Christian Division in the West

(Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), p. 10. 9Ibid., pp. 23–27. 10Ibid., p. 58. 11Ibid., p. 59, n. 2. 12Ibid., p. 1. 13Root, “Essential Unity and Lived Communion,” p. 124, n. 44.

196 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

bilateral dialogues since 1982.14

I have limited my review to those reports

published in the second and third volumes of Growth in Agreement,15

plus major

reports published between 2006 and 2012. Bilateral dialogues were selected

because their structure facilitates more explicit engagement with particular histories

of division and theological disagreement, and thus they are more reflective of

concrete barriers to and possibilities of actual lived communion than documents

emerging from multilateral settings. Though regional or national bilaterals could be

even closer to the ground, the internationals were selected because they constitute a

large, yet manageable set of data.

The question at hand is not what the churches might say together about the

Spirit as a doctrinal locus. A very helpful “descriptive presentation” of what has

been said about the Holy Spirit as its own topic–and about the Holy Spirit in

connection with justification, revelation, authority, the church, mission, and other

loci addressed by the dialogues—was given by Harding Meyer.16

Rather, I attend to

those texts that identify and discern the activity of the Spirit in relation to the

historical conditions of the absence of lived communion, including an account of

the divisions, reflection on the experience of dialogue, growth in recognition and

communion, or the healing of memories. What is pneumatologically significant

about particular historical developments, especially as brought to light by actual

ecumenical dialogues? Though I do not aim for comprehensive nor encyclopedic

presentation of all possible references, I identify several basic modes in which the

international bilateral dialogues understand the Holy Spirit to be bringing about the

unity that does not yet exist among Christians.

The reader may notice some gaps in my treatment of topics. Not every topic

in the dialogues is treated in explicit relation to the Spirit. Thus, while many dia-

logues involving the Roman Catholic Church, especially on questions of minis-

try and authority, touch on the role of the Bishop of Rome, I do not include dis-

cussion of those that do so apart from explicit reference to the Spirit. The reader

may also wonder about the paucity of discussion on the filioque. On the one

hand, debate about the procession of the Spirit is about the doctrine of the Holy

Spirit—the content of the church’s essential faith—rather than how the Spirit is

concretely understood to be present and active amid historical controversy,

schism, or division, even recognizing that the tradition charge is that the differ-

ence in doctrine has implications for how the church is understood to exist in

history. If anything might be relevant to my study, it may be the ecclesiological

issues at play in both the differences over the Bishop of Rome’s role in mediat-

ing doctrinal disputes and questions about the authority to reformulate the creed

______________ 14For a discussion of pneumatology in multilateral contexts, see Mary Tanner, “Pneumatology in

Multilateral Settings,” in Donnelly, Denaux, and Famerée, Holy Spirit, pp. 225–243; and Konrad Raiser,

“Holy Spirit in Ecumenical Thought,” in Nicholas Lossky, et al., eds., Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1991), pp. 473–478 (in 2nd ed., 2002, pp. 534–541).

15For GA II, see note 2, above; Jeffrey Gros, Thomas F. Best, and Lorelei F. Fuchs, eds., Growth in

Agreement III: International Dialogue Texts and Agreed Statements, 1998–2005, Faith and Order Paper 204 (Geneva: WCC Publications; and Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans

Publishing Co., 2007), hereafter GA III. 16Harding Meyer, “Pneumatology in Bilateral Dialogues: Attempt at a Descriptive Presentation,” in

Donnelly, Denaux, and Joseph, Holy Spirit, pp. 177–197.

The Holy Spirit and Lived Communion in International Bilateral Dialogues 197

promulgated by an Ecumenical Council. But, these are not addressed, at least

not in pneumatological terms, in international dialogues involving the Orthodox

Churches. (However, the very substantial treatment of the filioque by the North

American Orthodox-Catholic Consultation makes reference to Gregory of Nazi-

anzus’s argument for how the Spirit itself made its divinity known over time, as

the basis for suggesting that it will be by their listening to the Spirit that the

churches today may find new ways to formulate their common faith in ways that

respect their different traditions about the Spirit.)17

The Work of the Spirit in the Practice of Dialogue

General affirmations of the role of the Holy Spirit in particular dialogues, or

dialogue in general, are often made in prefaces or concluding paragraphs.

Though it may initially appear that such salutations are included as a matter of

course without specific theological intent, and it is difficult to draw conclusions

from the many dialogue texts in which the Spirit in not mentioned in this way,

the net effect is a cumulative impression that the churches understand them-

selves to be guided by the Spirit in their engagement with other churches.

The calling of the Holy Spirit to unity, whether it is said to be calling those

separated to be “visibly united in one church,”18

or at least “to move beyond our

present divisions,”19

suggests that churches understand their and other ecumenical

efforts as acts of obedience to the Spirit. The Spirit calls for openness to the other as

the basis for moving from existing common ground to deeper communion.20

Dialogue partners call for obedience or “docility to the Spirit” as the way to

respond to common and divisive challenges.21

One dialogue specified the kinds of

practices and dispositions that this calling may take: “We are beckoned by the

Spirit to exercise a disciplined imagination as we seek to be faithful in the contexts

we are given, to identify achievable goals and be swift to grasp opportunities to

reach them.”22

Just as several dialogues identified their activity as a response to the call of

the Spirit, several described the experience as one in which the Spirit was pre-

sent as a guide.23

The co-chairs of the Baptist-Lutheran dialogue characterized

______________ 17North American Orthodox-Catholic Consultation, “The Filioque: A Church Dividing Issue?

An Agreed Statement” (2003); available at http://www.scoba.us/resources/orthodox-catholic/2003 filioque.html.

18Anglican-Orthodox Dialogue, “Agreed Statement” (1984), preface, in GA II, p. 81. 19Pentecostal-Roman Catholic Dialogue, “Evangelization, Proselytism and Common Witness,”

fourth phase (1997), no. 130, in GA II, p. 777. 20Reformed-Roman Catholic Dialogue, “Towards a Common Understanding of the Church,”

second phase (1990), no. 6, in GA II, p. 781. 21Pentecostal-Catholic (1997), no. 116, in GA II, p. 774. 22Anglican-Methodist International Commission, “Sharing in the Apostolic Communion”

(1996), no. 12, in GA II, p. 58. 23See Baptist-Roman Catholic Dialogue, “Summons to Witness to Christ in Today’s World”

(1988), no. 58, in GA II, p. 385; Joint International Commission between the Roman Catholic Church and

the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, Statement of the Joint Commission, second meeting (1990), appendix 2, no. 1, in GA II, p. 701; Reformed-Oriental Orthodox Dialogue, “Report of the International

198 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

their dialogue as an experience of “unity in the one Spirit.”24

The Lutheran-

Mennonite study commission offered their report, “trusting that readers might

find here . . . evidence of the movement of the Holy Spirit for the unity of

Christ’s church.”25

In 2010, an Act of Repentance by the Lutheran World Feder-

ation following a unanimous vote and a formal response by the Mennonite

World Conference constituted a measure of official reception of that report.26

The service of repentance marked by repeated invocations of the Holy Spirit

suggests a high-level affirmation that the study commission indeed discerned the

movement of the Spirit.

Within their densely textured reflection on the work of the Holy Spirit, the

Roman Catholic-Pentecostal dialogue proposed that the timing and development

of their dialogue was due to the openness of hearts and minds to one another

created by “an outpouring of the Holy Spirit”27

in the twentieth century. The

birth and development of the Pentecostal movement, Vatican II as “a new Pen-

tecost,”28

the charismatic revival in the Catholic Church discerned by bishops

and popes to be “a welcome work of the Holy Spirit,”29

and the modern ecumen-

ical movement have all converged to bring about new insights and new recogni-

tions, as well as the clarification of real and substantial differences.

That the Spirit works in unforeseen ways is intimated by the question posed

in one dialogue: “Who knows how the Holy Spirit has led this dialogue in plant-

ing unity among the Reformed and the Oriental Orthodox families of churches

in generations to come?”30

Another one suggested that, even if joint actions of

witness are not yet possible for some Catholics and Pentecostals, the options

discussed in the report may help both sides to be open to the leading of the Spirit

in the future.31

Pope John Paul II and Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie

likewise acknowledged that, despite being unable to see how the obstacles that

separate their communions may be overcome, they nevertheless confessed hope

and confidence in light of the abiding “Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Truth.”32

Finally, the Methodist-Catholic dialogue recognized that the Spirit had led the

______________

Theological Dialogue” (2001), no. 1, in GA III, p. 39; and International Methodist-Catholic Dialogue

Commission, “The Grace Given You in Christ: Catholics and Methodists Reflect Further on the Church,” Seoul Report (2006), no. 7; available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni

/meth-council-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20060604_seoul-report_en.html. 24Baptist-Lutheran Joint Commission, “A Message to Our Churches” (1990), Introduction, in GA II,

p. 156. 25Memories: Reconciling in Christ: Report of the Lutheran-Mennonite International Study Commis-

sion (Geneva: The Lutheran World Federation; and Strasbourg: Mennonite World Conference, 2010), p. 110; available at http://www.lwf-assembly.org/uploads/media/Report_Lutheran-Mennonite_Study_

Commission.pdf. 26See Lutheran World Information, no. 6 (2010). 27Pentecostal-Roman Catholic Dialogue, “On Becoming a Christian: Insights from Scripture and the

Patristic Writings,” fifth phase (2006), no. 272; available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical

_councils/chrstuni/eccl-comm-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20060101_becoming-a-christian_ en.html, or at http://www.pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj18/2007RC_Pent_Dialogue.pdf.

28Ibid. 29Ibid., no. 260. 30Reformed-Oriental Orthodox (2001), no. 82, in GA III, p. 53. 31Pentecostal-Catholic (1997), no. 127, in GA II, p. 776. 32Pope John Paul II and Robert A. K. Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, “Common Declaration,”

October 2, 1989, in GA II, p. 327.

The Holy Spirit and Lived Communion in International Bilateral Dialogues 199

dialogue to new insights on ordained ministry and that the proximate goal, mu-

tual recognition of ministers, will depend not only on doctrinal agreement but

also “upon a fresh creative act of reconciliation which acknowledges the mani-

fold yet unified activity of the Holy Spirit throughout the ages.”33

Whether one church recognizes in another at least elements of the one church

of Christ is a recurring theme in bilaterals. The Catholic-Evangelical dialogue

explicitly ascribed to the Spirit’s agency the recognition that both communities

enjoy “the koinonia with the life of the Trinity” and on that basis regard it as

incumbent on both “to move from this singular condition of unity” into “an

experienced unity.”34

That movement from essential unity to lived communion, to

use Root’s language, is often framed in terms of baptism. “Recognizing our

common baptism, we now hear the Holy Spirit calling us to fuller communion.”35

That one’s baptism into Christ’s body is at the same time “a radical calling from

God to communion with all the baptized”36

is echoed in other multilateral

settings.37

Accordingly, one dialogue asked if the existence of divisions despite

common baptism, according to 1 Cor. 12:13 (in the one Spirit), is a sign of a failure

fully to understand the meaning of baptism.38

In one case where mutual recognition

of baptism does not yet exist, there is an acknowledgment that the “solution awaits

future leading of God’s Spirit.”39

Dialogue reports offer intriguing glimpses into varied understandings of the

roles of the Spirit and of the human participants in dialogue. Reference to the

guidance of the Spirit in the process of dialogue, noted above, suggests a kind of

divine/human cooperation. Several dialogues put the relationship somewhat dif-

ferently. The Spirit creates the conditions within which human participants ad-

vance unity through dialogue. These conditions may be confidence in the power

of “the Spirit of truth (cf. Jn. 14:16)”40

or a basic orientation for the coming to-

gether of two churches41

or the improvement of relationships by cultivating in

each the “capacity to respect each other’s ecclesial identity and to rejoice at each

other’s endowments (and even to share in them),”42

which has thereby “opened

up new possibilities for the future.”43

The initiation of an official dialogue be-

tween Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches was declared to be one out-

come of “the reconciling grace of the Holy Spirit” at work in prior unofficial ex-

______________ 33Methodist-Catholic (1991), no. 94, in GA II, p. 616. 34International Consultation between the Catholic Church and the World Evangelical Alliance,

“Church, Evangelization, and the Bonds of Koinonia” (2002), no. 22, in GA III, pp. 275–276. 35Anglican-Methodist (1996), no. 7, in GA II, p. 57. 36Joint Working Group of the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church, “Eccle-

siological and Ecumenical Implications of a Common Baptism” (2004), no. 104, in GA III, p. 583. 37Most notably Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper 111 (Geneva: WCC Publi-

cations, 1982), no. B6 (hereafter, B.E.M.). 38Anglican-Reformed Commission, “God`s Reign and Our Unity” (1984), no. 47, in GA II, p. 128. 39Baptist-Lutheran (1990), Introduction, in GA II, p. 156. 40E.g., Pope John Paul II and Robert A. K. Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, “Common Declara-

tion,” May 29, 1982, no. 7, in GA II, p. 314. 41Patriarch Ignatius IV of the Greek Antiochene Church and Patriarch Ignatius Zakka Iwas of the

Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch, “To All Our Children, Protected by God,” November 12,1991, in

GA III, pp. 2–3. 42Methodist-Catholic (2006), no. 9; see note 23, above. 43Ibid., no. 12.

200 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

changes.44

Other statements affirm that while unity is already given, the power

of the Spirit to bring about this reality by overcoming separations compels hu-

man work for unity.45

As the Joint Working Group put it, “Christian unity is a

gift of the Holy Spirit, not a human achievement. Dialogue prepares for that gift,

prays for it, and celebrates it once received.”46

This brings us to the many instances of prayer for the Holy Spirit in the bi-

lateral reports. Though these prayers for the Spirit of unity are often general and

brief,47

they may also reflect the invocation of particular dimensions of the Spir-

it’s work. Prayers are offered that the Spirit would enlighten and enliven a

common journey, emphasizing the Spirit’s work of accompaniment through his-

tory,48

and empower “hearts and minds to bear the fruits of unity,” bringing to-

gether the cognitive and affective dimensions.49

The Spirit’s leading toward vis-

ible unity is sought,50

especially the Spirit’s wisdom.51

The Spirit is invoked to

remove the obstacles to communion52

and “to heal wounds, to gather and edify

Christ’s people, to purify us, and to send us into the world anew.”53

In light of a

widespread apathy about the imperative of visible unity and a concern about the

nonreception of many dialogue results, one might expect prayers for the Spirit to

work among those to whom the reports are commended. In one instance—that

the Spirit might convince “all Christians of the urgency and the biblical impera-

tive of these concerns [embrace of evangelization and common witness, and the

avoidance of proselytism as defined in the document]”—a prayer is offered

along these lines,54

but the general absence of such prayers is puzzling.

______________ 44Joint Commission of the Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, “Communique”

(1985), in GA II, p. 190. 45Reformed-Catholic (1990), no. 146, in GA II, p. 813. 46Joint Working Group of the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church, “The

Nature and Purpose of Ecumenical Dialogue” (2004), no. 32, in GA III, p. 593. This text is not a bilateral report, though it includes reflection on the experience of the bilateral dialogues.

47E.g., “Come, Holy Spirit!” at the end of Pentecostal-Roman Catholic Dialogue, “Perspectives on

Koinonia,” third phase (1989), no. 112, in GA II, p. 751. 48International Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Mennonite World Conference,

“Called Together to Be Peace-makers” (2003), no. 215, in GA III, p. 259. 49Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the

Orthodox Church, “Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the

Church,” Ravenna Report (2007), no. 1; available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical

_councils/chrstuni/ch_orthodox_docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20071013_documento-ravenna_en.html. 50See Lutheran-Methodist Dialogue, “The Church: Community of Grace” (1984), Preface, in GA II,

p. 200; and Lutheran World Federation and Catholic Church, “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justi-

fication” (1999), no. 44, in GA II, p. 573. 51Pope John Paul II and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, “Common Declaration,” June 29,

2004, no. 11, in GA III, p. 189. 52Catholic-Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (1990), Appendix 2, nos. 4–6, in GA II, pp. 701–

702. 53Reformed-Catholic (1990), no. 165, in GA II, p. 818. 54Pentecostal-Catholic (1997), no. 115, in GA II, p. 774.

The Holy Spirit and Lived Communion in International Bilateral Dialogues 201

The Spirit in Division; the Spirit in Spite of Division

Discerning the Spirit’s presence within a history of division and separation

or within a new perspective on that history casts light on the self-understanding

of particular churches and the nature of the problems posed by division. Where-

as the method of many dialogues includes a common reading of scripture and/or

tradition, some have also engaged in an exercise of reading history together. The

pneumatological dimensions of memory—the presence of a past in a particular

way—will be considered in the following section. Here, I examine how dia-

logues have spoken about the presence of the Spirit in the events of division and

their persistence in history.

The Anglican-Lutheran report of 1987 is noteworthy for the biblical per-

spective it offers on a theology of ecclesial disobedience. The church has been

chosen by God and is the recipient of many blessings and gifts, though it contin-

ually needs spiritual insight to realize the magnificence of the gifts. Yet, the

people of Israel “were repeatedly blind or disobedient,” and the communities

that formed around the stories of Jesus illustrate that “jealousy, disputes and

misunderstandings were part of their experience even after receiving the gift of

the Holy Spirit.”55

According to the report, these experiences demonstrate the

need both for ongoing vigilance and penitence and for an ordered ministry. The

remarkable aspect here is the assertion of the Spirit’s presence through and in

spite of disputes and misunderstandings, since they are typically steps toward

schism and division.

The 1990 Anglican-Catholic dialogue touches on historical questions from

the perspective of the gift of the Spirit given to the whole people of God for the

sake of the church’s mission. Given to “individuals as well as communities,”

this gift manifests in the diversity of “[a]ll authentic insights and perceptions.”56

Yet, “[t]ensions inevitably appear,” as the report puts it, in passive voice. Some

tensions are healthy, while others, perceived to be incompatible, “cause . . . dis-

ruption within the community, [or] estrangement from other parts of the church”

and “become embodied in separated ecclesial communities.”57

While the distri-

bution of gifts is not the cause of division, it is an occasion from which such di-

visions may develop. A few paragraphs later, the difference between tolerable

and intolerable diversities is parsed in terms of those that are constructive or dis-

ruptive of communion. Moreover, the catholicity and holiness within which

communion consists are threatened by the church’s failure “to confront the

causes of injustice and oppression which tear humanity apart.”58

The ruptures in

the church’s unity are clearly due to human beings, specifically human failures.

Failure to perceive correctly, failure to discern, failure to act, and, implicitly, the

failure to love are all failures to live according to the Spirit given to the whole.

______________ 55Anglican-Lutheran International Continuation Committee, “Episcope” (1987), no. 13, in GA II, p.

14. 56Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, “Church as Communion” (1990), no. 29, in

GA II, p. 336. 57Ibid., no. 30. 58Ibid., no. 40 (p. 338).

202 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

The Reformed-Catholic dialogue contrasted the unifying power of the Spirit

with the separation that has occurred due to sin,59

though reserving the possibil-

ity that some separation arose out of impulses that were not sinful.

A mixture of faithfulness and unfaithfulness in the history that led to separa-

tion and division is explicitly discerned by several dialogues and implicitly by

many more. One Anglican-Methodist dialogue affirmed that the Spirit has been

at work in history, even if at times and in ways not always recognized. The

Methodist and the Tractarian movements are named as examples. It was “the

exigencies and decisions of the 18th century”60

that separated Anglicans and

Methodists. While the net effect of division is the development of church bodies

that are “incomplete and limited by our sinfulness and finitude,” they also ought

“to be honoured and even celebrated.”61

The judgment on the past is somewhat

suspended, and the present state of division bears both blessings and wounds.

Suggesting that the Holy Spirit may have permitted the divisions, the Methodist-

Catholic dialogue asserted: “The separations of the last five hundred years can-

not simply be condoned even if they cannot simply be condemned and blame

apportioned.”62

The Catholic-Evangelical dialogue appears to have gone further in its claim

that the breaking of communion may be understood as mandated by the Spirit.

“Evangelicals insist (as do Roman Catholics) that . . . ‘Church discipline, bibli-

cally based and under the direction of the Holy Spirit, is essential’” and that

“church discipline may demand the curtailing of concrete forms of fellowship

even in cases where offenders against the apostolic teaching are acknowledged

as brothers or sisters (cf. 2 Thess. 3:14–15).”63

Does this suggest that the endur-

ing essential unity, the basis on which “offenders” may remain “brothers or sis-

ters,” may at times require a (temporary) breaking of fellowship for the sake of

(future?) lived communion, jointly, in the fullness of apostolic faith?

Some dialogues affirm the necessity of reform, at least implying that the ac-

tual reforms called for by the sixteenth-century Reformers or changes imple-

mented in and through the division that ensued were in response to a legitimate

impulse.64

However, the conviction that reform is not an isolated mandate but

integrated by the Spirit into the life of church is expressed by the Methodist un-

derstanding that the “faith-filled risks and discontinuities” in history are “em-

braced by the reforming, renewing and indeed recreating power of the Holy

Spirit as the Church journeys through history.”65

Though the Catholics coun-

______________ 59Reformed-Catholic (1990), no. 146, in GA II, p. 813. 60Anglican-Methodist (1996), no. 8, in GA II, p. 57. 61Ibid., no. 5, in GA II, p. 56. 62Methodist-Catholic (2006), no. 14; see note 23, above. 63Catholic-Evangelical (2002), no. 18, in GA III, p. 274, citing “The Chicago Call: An Appeal to

Evangelicals (1977),” in Joseph A. Burgess and Jeffrey Gros, eds., Growing Consensus: Church Dia-logues in the United States, 1962–1991, Ecumenical Documents 5 (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist

Press, 1995), p. 579. 64E.g., Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity, The Apostolicity of the Church (Minneap-

olis, MN: Lutheran University Press, 2006), nos. 132–134, on pp. 62–63. 65International Methodist-Catholic Dialogue Commission, “Encountering Christ the Saviour:

Church and Sacraments” (2011), no. 24, pp. 19–20; available at http://worldmethodistcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/final-version-dialogue-book-from-Clark.pdf.

The Holy Spirit and Lived Communion in International Bilateral Dialogues 203

tered that the “continual reformation” must be undertaken within the framework

of the visible continuity of the church, the Methodist perspective evokes the

possibility of a providential ordering of division. We may not see just what the

Spirit is doing, and perhaps even provisional divisions are in the service of a

more profound unity.

The presence of the Spirit in various churches, despite divisions, is widely

echoed in the dialogues, often in connection with the recognition of the churchly

character of the other. For Catholics, such an affirmation of dialogue builds on

the assertion in Unitatis redintegratio that “the Spirit of Christ has not refrained

from using [separated churches and communities] as means of salvation.”66

Of

course, a situation of division provides an opportunity for reconciliation and thus

may be a witness to reconciliation before a watching world.67

Yet, the Catholic-

Methodist dialogue went beyond that in its proposal for how the Spirit may be

circulating gifts in and through divisions:

Reflecting on why the Holy Spirit had permitted all the divisions between

Christians, Pope John Paul II noted: “Could it not be that these divisions

have been a path continually leading the Church to discover the untold

wealth contained in Christ’s Gospel and in the redemption accomplished

by Christ? Perhaps all this wealth would not have come to light otherwise

. . .” A review of past history suggests that God has led each of our

churches in new ways that came through the separations. Catholics can

recognise that God has used Methodism, both in its beginning and

throughout its history, to develop gifts which eventually ought to bless all

Christians everywhere. Similarly, Methodists can recognise that God has

been at work in the Catholic Church’s preservation of important tradi-

tions and in its pursuit of fresh presentations of the Gospel for the benefit

of all Christian believers. The Spirit of God has been renewing both of

our churches, and this, in the mystery of divine providence, has opened

new opportunities for witness to the reign of God. The present dialogue

seeks to harvest such blessings, and thus to prepare the churches for the

common future to which the Spirit of God is leading them.68

It is noteworthy that the harvest of blessings is possible through dialogue and

prior to the realization of a fully lived communion, though the report states that

neither side “should regard their separation as acceptable.”69

Wounds of division are named throughout the many dialogues,70

some of

which are stated in explicitly pneumatological terms. Thus, in their discussion of

the invocation of the Spirit in the prayers of ordination, the Anglican-Reformed

dialogue acknowledged that, although these ordinations are defective in their not

being ordinations of the entire church, God’s response is not defective, and in-

______________ 66Unitatis redintegratio, no. 3; see note 3, above. 67Lutheran-Reformed Joint Commission, “Towards Church Fellowship” (1989), no. 77, in GA II, p.

245. 68Methodist-Catholic (2006), no. 14 (see note 23, above), quoting Pope John Paul II, Crossing the

Threshold of Hope (London: Jonathan Cape, 1994), p. 153. 69Methodist-Catholic (2006), no. 13. 70E.g., Anglican-Catholic (1990), no. 53, in GA II, p. 341.

204 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

deed these ordinations have been blessed by God.71

The Pentecostal-Catholic

dialogue named the fears each side had that the ecclesiology and practice of the

other limits the Spirit’s work, whether to specific manifestations such as tongues

and prophecy or to sacraments and church order. In light of the recognition “that

there is greater freedom for the Holy Spirit in both of our traditions than we ex-

pected to find,” one may infer that, without dialogue and in their separated con-

ditions, each recognized at least the possibility that their discernment of the

Spirit’s activity is constricted.72

Healing of Memories

The purification of memory, followed by the reconciling or healing of

memory, may be steps toward the unity of lived communion. Both elements

here, memory and unity, are deeply pneumatological. The idea of memory as a

sphere of pneumatic activity is implied by Jn. 14:26 and developed ecumenically

most notably in relation to the eucharist and apostolicity.73

The distortion of

memories due to human finitude and sin, even if not only with regard to rela-

tions with other Christians, may occur even despite the promised assistance of

the Holy Spirit.74

The language of purification of memory, given special currency in docu-

ments and actions of Pope John Paul II,75

includes rightly remembering a painful

past, accurately, with charity, and without resentment or hostility. It is often said

to include repentance and conversion.76

In dialogue, there is a need “to try to

understand history from the perspective of other churches in order to arrive at a

shared common understanding of it and, where necessary, at reconciliation, mu-

tual forgiveness and healing of memories.”77

Dialogues have reflected on a sig-

nificant and divisive figure in their histories such as Martin Luther78

or on a par-

ticularly painful event such as the 1599 Synod of Diamper, considered by the

______________ 71Anglican-Reformed (1984), no. 90, in GA II, pp. 140–141. 72Pentecostal-Catholic (1989), no. 68, in GA II, p. 745. 73In an evocative image from one of Wesley’s hymns, the Holy Spirit is called “the Remembrancer

Divine” (Methodist-Catholic [2011], no. 128, p. 70 [see note 65, above]). 74Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, “The Gift of Authority: Authority in the

Church III” (1998), no. 25, in GA III, p. 68. See also Disciples of Christ-Roman Catholic International Dialogue, “The Church as Communion in Christ,” (1992), no. 36, in GA II, p. 393.

75See Pope John Paul II, Tertio millenio adveniente (Apostolic Letter on Preparation for the Jubilee

of the Year 2000) (1994), no. 33, available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/ apost_letters /documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_10111994_tertio-millennio-adveniente_en.html; and idem, Ut un-

um sint (Encyclical on Commitment to Ecumenism) (1995), no. 2, available at http://www.vati

can.va/holy_father/ john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25051995_ut-unum-sint_en.html. 76See Catholic-Evangelical (2002), nos. 44 and 56, in GA III, pp. 280 and 283, respectively; Meth-

odist-Catholic (2006), nos. 37 and 95 (see note 23, above); and Joint Working Group, “Nature and Pur-

pose” (2004), no. 31, in GA III, p. 593. 77Joint Working Group of the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church, “The

Challenge of Proselytism and the Calling to Common Witness” (1995), no. 32, in GA II, p. 897. 78Roman Catholic-Lutheran Joint Commission, “Martin Luther—Witness to Jesus Christ” (1983),

in GA II, pp. 438–442.

The Holy Spirit and Lived Communion in International Bilateral Dialogues 205

Catholic-Malankara Orthodox dialogue,79

in an attempt to see the past in a new

light. The question in the previous section was how the Spirit was understood to

be working in the past, especially at times of conflict and division. The question

here is how the Spirit brings about a new perspective on the past, that is, a

healed or reconciled memory, or how the Spirit is present in the reconciled and

healed memory itself.

The “Common Declaration” of Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras,

though outside the chronological scope I am otherwise considering, may be

mentioned here. Their landmark 1965 statement consigned the memory of mu-

tual condemnations to oblivion. The overcoming of differences is a work of the

Spirit, they said. It includes “purification of hearts” and “regret for historical er-

ror”—at least implying that their own declaration is itself such a work of the

Spirit.80

Though later texts will speak about purifying or healing of memories,

rather than obliterating them, their action even suggests that a reorientation of

memory has canonical implications. The pneumatological themes of memory

and love were invoked by Joseph Ratzinger in his assessment of the declaration:

A “new evaluation of history that leads to a new evaluation of the present has

taken place here with full binding power: the reciprocal anathema of 1054 no

longer belongs to the official roster of the Church. . . . The old memory must be

replaced by a new one—a memory of love.”81

The second phase of Reformed-Roman Catholic dialogue included a sub-

stantial review of the respective histories and self-understandings of each, with

an eye to how to tell this story without resentments and misconceptions. The

framework for a common memory of the past is the conviction that “the various

strivings for reform were in their profoundest inspiration signs of the work of

the Holy Spirit,” though “human sinfulness also played its part” in the divi-

sion.82

The movement “to share one sense of the past rather than two,”83

which

the dialogue admitted does not yet exist, would be a “reconciliation of memo-

ries” and would entail the clearing away of misunderstandings,84

acknowledg-

ment of mutual injury and error,85

and asking “forgiveness of Christ and of each

other.”86

In the words of the Disciples-Roman Catholic dialogue, “The Spirit guides

the Church to understand its past, to recall what may have been forgotten and to

discern what renewal is needed for the gospel to be proclaimed effectively in

every age and culture. This underlines the importance of reflection and study in

______________ 79Joint International Commission for Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Malankara Or-

thodox Church, “Statement on the Synod of Diamper, AD 1599” (1999), in GA III, pp. 193–194. 80Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, “Common Declaration,” December 7, 1965,

in Thomas F. Stransky and John B. Sheerin, eds., Doing the Truth in Charity, Ecumenical Documents 1

(New York and Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982), p. 179. 81Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology,

tr. Mary Frances McCarthy (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1987 [orig.: Munich: Erich Wewel Ver-

lag, 1982]), p. 212. 82Reformed-Catholic (1990), no. 118, in GA II, p. 806. 83Ibid., no. 16, in GA II, p. 782. 84Ibid.; emphasis in original. 85Ibid., nos. 153–154, in GA II, p. 815. 86Ibid., no. 63, in GA II, p. 795.

206 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

the life of the church to keep alive the memory.”87

Margaret O’Gara draws at-

tention to the reforming power of memory. The achievement in the main section

of the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” was to reread remem-

bered history together in order to show how differences of theological expres-

sion are complementary rather than contradictory and how the Annex reflects

the remembering of a forgotten history whereby the churches came to agreement

on simul iustus et peccator.88

In remembering differently, both sides could de-

clare that past condemnations do not apply to the current teaching of the other.

Through new memories that make possible particular and necessary reforms, the

church more deeply expresses and embodies “all the truth” into which the Spirit

constantly guides it (Jn. 16:13).

Two dialogues involving Mennonites have been oriented by the healing-of-

memories framework. A “Healing of memories” section of the Mennonite-Catholic

report follows sections on “Considering history together” and “Considering theolo-

gy together.” The Spirit is not specifically identified either as present or active in

the history jointly considered or in the process of dialogue. However, the numerous

calls for a “spirit of repentance” and a “penitential spirit” are implicitly pneumato-

logical. The Catholic delegation invoked John Paul II’s “Universal Prayer for For-

giveness” during the 2000 Day of Pardon, a primarily christocentric prayer that

nevertheless petitions God that the prayer be inspired by the Spirit, and proposes to

apply the prayer for forgiveness for sins against the unity of the body of Christ and

sins committed “in the service of truth” to the sins committed against Anabaptists

and Mennonites in the sixteenth century.89

The Mennonite call for a similar posture

of repentance likewise used “spirit” rather than “Spirit” language.90

The Mennonite-Lutheran dialogue went beyond a call for repentance. The final

report was received, in part, through official acts of repentance and forgiveness at

the 2010 Lutheran World Federation Assembly in Stuttgart, as noted above. Prepar-

ing the way for that event, the final report consists of perhaps the most ambitious

and substantial common telling of a conflictual history, a 23,000-word chapter

“Telling the Sixteenth Century Story Together,” which focuses especially on the

persecution of Anabaptists by Lutheran authorities, and the condemnation of Ana-

baptist beliefs in Lutheran Confessions. The Spirit is not mentioned in this history,

nor is its activity in the sixteenth century discerned. Rather, the present work of

“rightly remembering our shared story,” may, “with the help of the Holy Spirit,

help to heal this part of the broken Body of Christ and offer an authentic witness to

the freedom that comes through Christ in mutual vulnerability and forgiveness.”91

Both sides recognize how their memories of the past may impede reconciliation, in

the Lutheran case by forgetting the legacy of persecution and condemnation, and

for Mennonites by remembering that past through a lens of “victimization that has

fostered a sense of self-righteousness and arrogance and has blinded us to the frail-

______________ 87Disciples-Catholic (1992), no. 36, in GA II, p. 393. 88Margaret O’Gara, “‘Seeing in a New Light’: From Remembering to Reforming in Ecumenical

Dialogue,” The Jurist, vol. 71, no. 1 (2011), pp. 63 and 73–74. 89Catholic-Mennonite (2003), nos. 199–202, in GA III, pp. 255–256. 90Ibid., nos. 203–204, pp. 256–257. 91Lutheran-Mennonite (2010), p. 91; see note 25, above.

The Holy Spirit and Lived Communion in International Bilateral Dialogues 207

ties and failures that are also deeply woven into our tradition.”92

The study commis-

sion concludes by noting that remembering the past differently may be a sign “of

the movement of Holy Spirit for . . . unity.”93

The Methodist-Catholic dialogue frames the history of division, at least in

part, as abuse or neglect of gifts of the Spirit. Yet, the same Spirit “brings about

repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation.”94

That “Spirit continues to shape

and enrich the memory of the community,” through the many ways it reminds

the church of Christ, and leads the church when necessary to self-criticism, re-

form, and renewal.95

Fifteen years later, that same dialogue articulated a re-

newed perspective on the phenomenon of separation as a basis for healed memo-

ries.96

Recognizing that each side once viewed the other through the lens of

blame for the separation, each has now worked hard to see the past through the

eyes of the other. There is therefore new appreciation for why each held nega-

tive perspectives of the other and for how each believed they were faithful to the

unity of the church even through actions that appeared to the other to contradict

it. Gifts that were once perceived as divisive, such as “Methodist preaching of

scriptural holiness,” may now be seen in service of Christian unity.97

Thus, a

new hermeneutics of separation renews the conviction that the Spirit is drawing

all Christian communities into deeper koinonia, perhaps with additional gifts

received during the time of separation. “All separations, therefore, are ever only

temporary for those who seek to follow Christ.” Christ’s followers “only need to

wait upon him and to respond whole-heartedly to the movements of the unifying

Spirit.”98

The Spirit and Ministry

Discussion about forms of ministry has been particularly prominent in dia-

logues involving the Catholic Church. The Methodist-Catholic dialogue articu-

lates a convergence found in several other dialogues—the development of the

threefold structure of ministry indeed took place in history under the guidance of

the Holy Spirit99

—as well as a divergence. “But we are not agreed on how far

this development of the ministry in now unchangeable and how far loyalty to the

Holy Spirit requires us to recognize other forms of oversight and leadership that

have developed, often at times of crisis or new opportunity.”100

The Methodists

discern the presence of the Holy Spirit in historical developments including the

______________ 92Ibid., p. 107. 93Ibid., p. 110. 94Methodist-Catholic (1991), no. 30, in GA II, p. 603 95Ibid., no. 31, p. 603. 96Methodist-Catholic (2006), nos. 40–44; see note 23, above. 97Ibid., no. 42. 98Ibid., no. 44. 99See also Methodist-Catholic (1991), no. 61, in GA II, pp. 609–610. 100International Methodist-Catholic Dialogue Commission, “Towards a Statement on the Church,”

fourth series (1986), no. 29, in GA II, p. 589. Also see Reformed-Oriental Orthodox (2001), no. 61, in GA III, pp. 49–50, for the Reformed perspective.

208 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

early councils, the events of the Reformation, prophetic individuals such as John

Wesley, and the emergence of Methodist conferences.101

Similarly, Roman

Catholics and (some) Pentecostals agree that the authoritative interpretation of

scripture reflects the activity of the Holy Spirit but differ in their identification

of the structures through which that activity is manifest.102

In several dialogues, the issue of ministry is framed in terms of the Spirit’s

distribution of gifts for the building up of the Body. For the Methodist-Catholic

dialogue, this “plethora of gifts and graces,”103

following 1 Cor. 12:1–11 and

Eph. 4:11–13, provides a way of talking about unity within a diversity of gifts,

especially regarding structures of ministry. One report affirms the assertion in

Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry that the People of God is the primary recipient

of the Spirit’s gifts and that gifts are given for service.104

“Christ continues

through the Holy Spirit to choose and call persons into the ordained ministry.”105

It is one thing for these churches to affirm this together; it is another for each

church to wrestle with whether and how the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit

is manifest in the forms by which each has understood these gifts to have taken

particular historical shape. The 2006 report acknowledges that gifts have been

developed, in each tradition, even in separation.106

Both the 2006 and 2011 re-

ports position the 2001 articulation of this insight—“Methodists and Catholics

can rejoice that the Holy Spirit uses the ministries and structures of both

Churches as means of grace to lead people into the truth of the Gospel of

Christ”107

—within the context of the reception of the Spirit’s many and varied

gifts.

At the same time, the churches acknowledge that there is not agreement on

whether particular structures—the historic episcopate in apostolic succession,

the Petrine ministry of the Bishop of Rome, or Christian conference—are “es-

sential gifts.”108

While Methodists do not agree that the Spirit’s work of dis-

cernment in truth may be identified with a structure as specific as papal infalli-

bility,109

they were challenged in the dialogue to consider whether the logic of

the gifts the Spirit gives to each Christian may be the basis for a new perspec-

tive. Methodists were asked whether their understanding of the Spirit’s gift of

assurance to individuals might also extend to the church’s “grasp of the funda-

mental doctrines of the faith such as to exclude all doubt, and whether the teach-

______________ 101Methodist-Catholic (1991), no. 21, in GA II, p. 601. 102Pentecostal-Roman Catholic Dialogue, “Final Report” (1982), no. 52, in GA II, p. 728. See also

Baptist-Catholic (1988), no. 48, in GA II, p. 383. 103Methodist-Catholic (2006), no. 86; see note 23, above 104Methodist-Catholic (2011), no. 139, pp. 75–76, citing B.E.M., no. M5 (see note 65, above). 105Ibid., no. 141, p. 76, citing B.E.M., no. M11. 106Methodist-Catholic (2006), no. 97. 107International Methodist-Catholic Dialogue Commission, “Speaking the Truth in Love” (2001),

no. 81, in GA III, p. 183. 108International Methodist-Catholic Dialogue Commission, “Synthesis: Together in Holiness”

(2010), no. 81; available at http://worldmethodistcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Roman-Cath

olic-Dialogue-Synthesis-Report.pdf. 109Methodist-Catholic (1986), no. 72, in GA II, p. 595.

The Holy Spirit and Lived Communion in International Bilateral Dialogues 209

ing ministry of the church has a special and divinely guided part to play in

this.”110

The way in which reception of dialogue results might in turn be understood

as the Spirit’s work to advance agreement on issues of ministry is raised by de-

velopments in Lutheran-Catholic dialogue. In the 1984 Facing Unity report, the

implications of the biblical image of the church as temple of the Spirit included

recognition that “the Spirit is given only in the fellowship of all local churches,”

that “no church can claim the Holy Spirit for itself alone,” as well as the obliga-

tion to work for unity in more structured forms.111

Both recognize the necessity

of “the function of episcope” (oversight) for the church and “can recognize as

‘the action of the Spirit’ the historical differentiation of the one apostolic minis-

try into more local ministry and more regional forms.”112

The next phase again

returned to the question of how to interpret historical developments in the forms

of ministry. Affirming together that the development of an episcopate in historic

succession was due not only to sociological and political factors but “with the

help of the Holy Spirit,”113

the report gives attention to the reasons why Luther-

ans may affirm this as important, even desirable, for the church but cannot agree

with Catholics on its indispensability.114

In the 2006 report, the dynamics of recognition open up further in light of

an event that has brought about a new situation: the signing of the “Joint Decla-

ration on the Doctrine of Justification” in 1999. The Catholic Church’s official

acknowledgment of a consensus with Lutherans on “basic truths of the doctrine

of justification,” which is “the measure and touchstone for the Christian

faith,”115

presses the Catholic Church to consider the structures by which such

faith was preserved and taught on the Lutheran side. Given that “succession in

faith” is the essential aspect of apostolic succession, without which “succession

in office would lack all value,” signing the Joint Declaration “implies the

acknowledgement that the ordained ministry in both churches has by the power

of the Holy Spirit fulfilled its service of maintaining fidelity to the apostolic

gospel regarding the central questions of faith set forth in the Declaration.”116

Given the singular and official status of the Joint Declaration, the assertion of

the Spirit’s working through separated structures of ministry (and not just de-

spite them) is remarkable. It also reveals the potential for a consensus on a ques-

tion of faith to reframe the perspective on existing divisions. A historical event

______________ 110Ibid., no. 75, in GA II, p. 596. 111Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity, “Facing Unity” (1984), nos. 90–91, in GA II, p.

465. 112Ibid., no. 97, p. 466, citing Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity, “The Ministry in the

Church” (1981), no. 45, in Harding Meyer and Lukas Vischer, eds., Growth in Agreement: Reports and

Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level, Ecumenical Documents 2, Faith and

Order paper 108 (New York and Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press; and Geneva: WCC Publications, 1984), p. 263.

113Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity, “Church and Justification” (1993), no. 191, in

GA II, p. 531, citing “The Ministry in the Church,” no. 49. 114Ibid., nos. 197–204, in GA II, pp. 532–533. 115Lutheran-Catholic (2006), no. 288 (see note 64, above), citing “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine

of Justification” (1999), no. 5, and Annex to the Official Common Statement, no. 3. 116Ibid., no. 288.

210 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

in the lives of the churches, the 1999 Joint Declaration, may be interpreted as an

action of the Spirit that cast new light on the Spirit’s work in both recent and

more distant history.

Holy Spirit and Unity in Mission

The importance of unity for the church’s mission, “that the world might be-

lieve” (Jn. 17:21), echoes throughout the dialogues. The Spirit is ultimately the

agent of the church’s mission in the world.117

Unity is at the same time a pre-

supposition of mission and a goal of mission. Moreover, the unity of the church

is not its own end but a sign and instrument of the unity God wills for the human

community.118

One dialogue has given focused attention to the ways in which the Spirit

may be discerned in particular histories of witness to the Kingdom of God. The

third phase of the Reformed-Catholic dialogue sought to articulate “the struggle

to overcome Christian divisions in relation to the struggle to overcome what di-

vides societies, nations, cultures and religions in today’s world.”119

To that end,

their final report included relatively substantial accounts of how Christians have

brought their “convictions about the kingdom of peace and justice into a laby-

rinth of human complexity,”120

specifically in advocating Aboriginal rights in

Canada, facing apartheid in South Africa, and struggling for peace in Northern

Ireland. These stories are told in ways that draw attention to how Reformed and

Catholic Christians came to face these issues together.

The Spirit is not identified in the historical narrative section of the report.

However, the subsequent section discusses the practice of discerning God’s will

in service of the Kingdom as “the process of listening to the Holy Spirit.”121

The

text is systematic in its treatment of the means by which the Spirit guides dis-

cernment, including the Word of God as reflected in scripture, the testimony of

the patristic era, the call to heed the voices of the poor, and seeing signs of the

Kingdom in peoples and cultures outside the church.122

As the text considers the

interrelation of discernment and particular historical circumstances, there

emerges a picture of how listening to the Spirit in the midst of history has

brought about movement toward lived communion through common witness in

specific contexts, which serves as a basis for future hope: “As the Holy Spirit

continues to lead us into shared and active expectation of the kingdom, we may

well find new ways to hold each other in mutual accountability and to grow in

reconciling love and common faith.”123

John Paul II’s words about the full

communion with Christ—and, by extension, among otherwise separated Chris-

______________ 117Anglican-Reformed (1984), no. 38, in GA II, pp. 125–126. 118Ibid., nos. 19–24 (pp. 120–121) and passim. In the language of “communion,” see Anglican-

Catholic (1990), nos. 16–24 and 29, in GA II, pp. 333–336. 119Reformed-Catholic (2007), no. 7 (see note 2, above). 120Ibid., no. 68. 121Ibid., no. 125. 122Ibid., nos. 130–133. 123Ibid., no. 208.

The Holy Spirit and Lived Communion in International Bilateral Dialogues 211

tians—in cases of martyria (witness) unto death124

are applied to the costly wit-

ness already given by Catholic and Reformed Christians in Northern Ireland and

South Africa, evidence of a profound movement by the Spirit from essential uni-

ty to lived communion.125

Communion and Gifts of the Spirit

The language of koinonia/communio/communion, so prominent in recent

ecumenical discourse,126

has obvious pneumatological dimensions, even founda-

tions. To the extent that the communion of God’s own trinitarian life is the basis

for the communion that is the church’s being and calling, the role of the Spirit is

central. In fact, as one dialogue put it, “The Spirit of God, acting in history, is

the main agent of that communion which is the church.”127

Another spoke about

the “invisible koinonia that is the life of the Holy Spirit.”128

In particular, com-

munion provides a framework for understanding the nature and range of legiti-

mate diversity. As the Spirit is the power of unity-in-diversity in God’s own trin-

itarian life, so the unity-in-diversity of the many gifts of the Spirit, the many

members of the one body, and Jews and Greeks and slaves and free sharing one

baptism (1 Corinthians 12) are clearly ecclesiological.

The sharing of gifts is what several dialogues have come to assert that the

Spirit is doing in and through their encounters with other Christians.129

A recent

phase of Methodist-Catholic dialogue was structured to attend to the gifts that

they recognize together and then that each recognizes and appreciates in the oth-

er. At the center of this process is the Spirit, who is both the giver of the gifts

and the one who enables their reception. The report reviewed the many years of

dialogue with this lens:

This newly cultivated capacity to respect each other’s ecclesial identity

and to rejoice at each other’s endowments (and even to share in them), is

certainly the fruit of the ecumenical movement and the dialogue of our

Joint Commission. More importantly, it is the work of the Holy Spirit. In

the Spirit’s power, the Church is not only strengthened to confess that Je-

sus is Lord (1 Corinthians 12:3); it also, in the power of the same Spirit,

finds and lives a life of communion. This is the deepest vocation of the

Church; and it is the common future towards which our sharing of gifts

leads us.130

______________ 124Ibid., no. 216, citing Ut unum sint, no. 84 (see note 75, above). 125Ibid., no. 214. 126As documented and analyzed most notably in Lorelei F. Fuchs, Koinonia and the Quest for an

Ecumenical Ecclesiology: From Foundations through Dialogue to Symbolic Competence for Commun-

ionality (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, U.K.: William Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2008). 127Disciples-Catholic (1992), no. 24, in GA II, p. 391. 128Methodist-Catholic (2006), no. 60; see note 23, above. 129According to Ut unum sint, dialogue is always in some way an exchange of gifts, no. 28 (see note

75, above).. 130Methodist-Catholic (2006), no. 9.

212 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

The trajectory from essential unity to lived communion is central to the log-

ic of communion: Since the church is grounded in the communion that God es-

sentially is, it is called to give visible expression to this communion in history.

“[W]ith the help of God’s Spirit,” Catholics and Evangelicals recognized that

since both communities have fellowship with the life of the Trinity, they are

called to move into “an experienced unity with one another.” They asked: “If

God has not been dealing with us as if we were apart from him, why should we

continue to live as if we were apart from one another?”131

Given the integrative

nature of communion imagery, it is not surprising that, in many of the themes

and texts discussed above, the work of the Spirit for unity-in-diversity is evi-

dent.132

In the recognition that the “Spirit uses the ministries and structures of

both” Methodists and Catholics,133

such currently separated diversity is cast in a

new light. The Spirit is the key to how such differences need not manifest in di-

vision.

The reality of communion entails the possibility of recognition that some

differences need not be incompatible or church-dividing but, in fact, may be re-

ceived by others as gifts.134

The Disciples-Catholic dialogue pointed to the way

in which the one Holy Spirit inspired the diversity within the Bible as a para-

digm of unity-in-diversity.135

The suggestion is then drawn that the different

emphases of Christian communities may have roots in the diversity of the Bible,

as presumably some Christians give particular weight to specific parts of the Bi-

ble.136

This logic is extended to each believer, to whom the Spirit gives from the

diversity of charisms.137

The reception of truth that the Spirit enables is not

simply the collation of individual insights, but, precisely by the coordination of

gifts and insights in communion under the guidance of those who exercise epi-

scope (oversight), the “mind of the entire body of Christ” may be discerned.138

Given the subsequent chapter on the importance of individual conscience, the

sensus fidei provides a way of talking about conscience as properly located with-

in a web of spiritual gifts, community, and authority. This helps to explain some

of the Disciples’ historical emphases, reflected for example in their structures

for ministry, and also provides some mutual assurance: Catholics do indeed af-

firm freedom of conscience, and Disciples do indeed place limits on freedom of

conscience in the church.139

Gifts of the Spirit are central in the Pentecostal-Catholic report on koinonia,

as are the challenges for how this is understood historically. While both agree

______________ 131Catholic-Evangelical (2002), no. 22, in GA III, pp. 275–276. 132E.g., Lutheran-Reformed (1989), nos. 77–78, in GA II, p. 245. 133Methodist-Catholic (2011), no. 146, p. 79 (see note 65, above). 134See Pope John Paul II, Orientale lumen (Apostolic Letter to Mark the Centenary of Orientalium

dignitas of Pope Leo XIII (1995), no. 18; available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/

apost_letters/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19950502_orientale-lumen_en.html. 135Disciples of Christ-Roman Catholic International Dialogue, “Receiving and Handing on the

Faith: The Mission and Responsibility of the Church” (2002), nos. 3.2 and 3.7, in GA III, pp. 124 and

125. 136Ibid., no. 3.10, p. 125. 137Ibid., no. 3.23, p. 128. 138Ibid., no. 3.24, p. 128. 139Ibid., no. 4.8, p. 130.

The Holy Spirit and Lived Communion in International Bilateral Dialogues 213

that the Spirit is “the Spirit of unity in diversity (cf. 1 Cor. 12:13 ff.) and not the

Spirit of division”140

and that the “essential unity of the church neither implies

nor mandates uniformity,”141

they disagree on how legitimate diversity is ex-

pressed. Whereas Catholics regard the establishment of denominations as a de-

parture from the unity of the church, Pentecostals tend to view them as “more or

less legitimate manifestations of the one universal church.”142

Whereas Catho-

lics understand the continuity of the contemporary church with the early church

to be signaled and safeguarded by bishops in apostolic succession, Pentecostals

tend to regard apostolic continuity to exist precisely in “discontinuity with much

of the historical church.”143

One finds substantial agreement on the biblical and

theological articulations of the Spirit as author of koinonia, but quite different

(and apparently incompatible) interpretations of this Spirit in the historical life

of the church. Thus, the Baptist-Catholic dialogue implicitly linked the many

gifts from the one Spirit to their understandings of church structures, but

acknowledged that it is not yet the case that the diversities of structures might be

received as gifts.144

The Spirit acts to maintain the whole people of God in the truth (Jn. 16:13).

How this may be discerned to work in history may be thought of in terms of new

insights about the compatibility of what was once perceived as incompatible. A

key barrier is as follows: “As Christians grow apart [into separated ecclesial

communities], complementary aspects of the one truth are sometimes perceived

as mutually incompatible.” The absence of the bonds of love, as expressed by

full communion, impairs the perception of truth. At the same time, the church is

sustained in the truth by “the action of the Spirit in preserving the living memory

of Christ,”145

an essential unity awaiting expression in lived communion.

The Lutheran-Catholic dialogue explicated some dynamics by which the

perception of truth is impaired, especially from the perspective of the Catholic

magisterium, in terms of the contextuality of particular articulations of the truths

of faith. The magisterium formulates teaching in order to clarify truth in the face

of error. Yet, particular “formulations of truths of faith do not in fact communi-

cate the truth in its fullness”; rather, the dynamic of responding to error leaves

its trace in the form of “the danger of a one-sided fixation” with what is contrary

to the error.146

Such teachings are binding for Catholics, yet, as the Spirit leads

the reception of teaching, “an aspect of truth which was first excluded as contra-

ry to the Catholic faith can subsequently . . . be taken up again in a form recon-

cilable with the faith of the church.”147

This means that the Holy Spirit guides

the church into the future articulation of its faith. The Spirit leads the magisteri-

um “to penetrate the truth of faith with deeper understanding” and to locate a

particular intervention appropriately within the hierarchy of truths, and even to

______________ 140Pentecostal-Catholic (1989), no. 34, in GA II, p. 740. 141Ibid., no. 36, p. 740. 142Ibid., no. 34, p. 740. 143Ibid., no. 108, p. 751. 144Baptist-Catholic (1988), nos. 23 and 48, in GA II, p. 378–379, and 383, respectively. 145Anglican-Catholic (1990), no. 30, in GA II, p. 336. 146Lutheran-Catholic (2006), no. 426 (see note 64, above). 147Ibid., no. 427.

214 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

reformulate a truth in ways that “correspond better to the challenges of new his-

torical situations.”148

The Spirit of truth is needed both because the church exists

in history, and therefore necessarily formulates its faith precisely to navigate in-

evitable contingencies of context, and because human error and sin cause the

church wrongly to take a contingent formulation of the truth for the truth itself.

The realization of true compatibility out of seemingly incompatible positions is

the work of just this Spirit.

Though the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” itself makes

only a single reference to the way in which the Spirit may have been at work in

the circumstances that led to the declaration’s formulation and approval at the

highest levels of the Catholic and Lutheran communions,149

and does not use the

term “differentiated consensus” to express its methodology, both are present and

may be understood as an instance in which the Spirit of truth brings into focus a

unity-in-diversity.150

The key to the Joint Declaration is its assertion of a “con-

sensus on basic truths of the doctrine of justification” and “that the remaining

differences in its explication are no longer the occasion for doctrinal condemna-

tions.”151

While Catholics and Lutherans continue to express their faith accord-

ing to their distinctive frameworks, the text explicates a compatibility that has

been made manifest by the Spirit.

Conclusions

The subheadings of the sections above are themselves my first general con-

clusion from my survey of how the dialogues understand the Spirit to be at work

amid the concrete history of division. They reflect something of the texture of

how the Spirit is spoken about as the churches reflect on their own ecumenical

calling—a calling in the first instance in obedience to the Spirit, and carried out

with the guidance of the Spirit. The presence of the Spirit in separated church-

es—especially in baptism, in the charisms for ministry, or in the capacity for

joint mission—point to a basis for growth toward lived communion.

Second, the prominence in recent years of memory as a topic of dialogue

reflects a certain kind of historical consciousness worth noting. Divisions persist

not only in differences of doctrine but also because of barriers at the affective

level in attitudes, resentments, and “nontheological” factors that have main-

tained and fostered separation. In separation, church traditions have developed

their own idioms of self-identity and self-expression that create a need for rec-

onciliation to take place in the sphere of memory. The Spirit may be discerned

as present in a healed memory, though in some instances may also be perceived

______________ 148Ibid., no. 428. 149Lutheran-Catholic (1999), no. 44, in GA II, p. 573. 150This method is alluded to in the Anglican-Catholic statement on Mary, which “sought not to clear

away all possible problems, but to deepen our common understanding to the point where remaining di-versities of devotional practice may be received as the varied work of the Spirit amongst all the people of

God” (Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, “Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ: The Seat-

tle Statement” [2004], no. 80, in GA III, p. 108). 151Lutheran-Catholic (1999), no. 5, in GA II, p. 567.

The Holy Spirit and Lived Communion in International Bilateral Dialogues 215

to have played a role in the providential division of Christians. An increased at-

tention to reading history together, of seeking one (somewhat reconciled) sense

of the past instead of two, thus also provides possibilities for naming how the

Spirit has been at work in a history of separation and division. Does the possibil-

ity of developing a shared account of the past have implications for revealing

new ways of understanding the Spirit’s presence in a conflicted past?

Third, not all dialogues make use of pneumatological language in their re-

ports on their activities. It is of course dangerous to speculate on what conclu-

sions might be drawn from an absence of particular language. Some aim very

directly at a common statement on a doctrinal area of significance, without pro-

legomena that recount a history of disagreement or a narrative of dialogue and

new insight. In such cases, even if the Spirit is a subject of dialogue, there will

be little if any reflection on the action of the Spirit amid the history of separa-

tion. It may be obvious, but worth noting nevertheless that references to the

Spirit in history are much more common in dialogue reports that have a histori-

cal orientation as opposed to those that proceed in a more systematic way.

Some churches have long given specific attention to the role of the Spirit,

and thus dialogues involving the Methodists or the Pentecostals are heavily

shaped by pneumatological texts, languages, and patterns of thought. Dialogues

involving the Orthodox Churches might be expected to exhibit this as well, and

indeed references to the Spirit are found throughout dialogues to which they are

party. Yet, they are overwhelmingly inclined to a discussion of beliefs about the

Spirit, the Spirit and the Trinity, and the Spirit’s work in constituting the church,

most notably through the eucharist. References to particular or unique acts of the

Spirit in history are quite rare. This observation might suggest that, whether or

not grounded in the filioque, there is a Western tendency toward a more

historical Spirit, in distinction from a more eschatological one. Of course,

historical and eschatological pneumatologies ought to be complementary. Yet,

from a human perspective they may also be perceived to be in tension which

only serves to highlight the way that implicit doctrinal assumptions may be

buried within various methods of dialogue itself.

Fourth, the references to the work of the Spirit amid a history of division are

notably positive. This might not be surprising, given that the Spirit is the Spirit

of unity, which seeks to make manifest the unity that is already its gift to the

church. At the same time, little is said in terms of a Spirit of judgment, the ab-

sence of the Spirit, or a more complicated providential ordering of the Spirit for

the sake of unity. The provocative suggestion posed by Radner is, indeed, not

reflected in the dialogues.

The question might be raised whether assertions of the Spirit’s leading and

blessing of dialogues is premature, given that in very few cases visible unity or

lived communion has been the result. While the churches together may confess

many things about the Spirit—and indeed the recently published study on eccle-

siology, The Church: Towards a Common Vision,152

is thoroughly pneumatolog-

ical—might it not be advisable to judge the presence of Spirit amid divisions by

______________ 152Faith and Order Paper 214 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2013).

216 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

the fruit of lived communion? Might it not be advisable to wait until Christians

could definitively declare together, “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to

us” (Acts 15:28)? The fact that many churches do not suggests an implicit

pneumatology that resists ascribing to the Spirit only work that is final, com-

plete, and settled. To be sure, discernment of the Spirit is often in retrospect;

nevertheless, the retrospective pneumatological perspective is often messy, in

process, partial, and incomplete.

Fifth, though there is generally not doctrinal controversy on pneumatology

among Western churches, including the Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant tradi-

tions, a difference that may be a doctrinal one is embedded in assumptions about

the provisionality or irreversibility of the work of the Spirit. As it arises most

notably in dialogues about structures of ministry and institutionality more gener-

ally, there are different judgments on the status of the historically developed

threefold structure of ministry. Even to say it developed with the guidance of the

Holy Spirit does not settle whether it is reversible, whether it belongs to the

well-being of the church or the essence of the church.153

Of course, no church

would regard the historical process of the canonization of scripture, universally

regarded as a process inspired by the Spirit, to be reversible. Clearly, the Spirit

has been judged to bring about new and irreversible developments in the life of

the church. The question is whether a basic difference in pneumatology may be

understood as standing behind various kinds of judgments on where irreversibil-

ity exists, whether there is a presumption toward revisability or not, for exam-

ple—a question that may also bear on how the Spirit might be understood to

have been an agent, or not, of (temporary) division in the church.

Finally, lived communion entails a communion in love as well as a com-

munion in truth. Here, it is worth noting a deficiency in my preceding study to

make a substantial point. Texts are not dialogues; a final report, even an agreed

statement, does not capture the relational process by which it came about. Thus,

though I have not been comprehensive or exhaustive even in my analysis of the

dialogues’ explicit discussions of the Spirit’s activity in history, there is a di-

mension of the Spirit’s work in dialogue that is not reflected in reports and

therefore is not captured in this study. Just as the experience of being apart caus-

es separate traditions to develop their own cultures, patterns of relating, and in-

tellectual frames of reference, so the experience of working together creates new

relationships, new understandings, and new realities. Of course, the new social

reality created in dialogue is difficult to convey to sponsoring churches, magni-

fying the challenge of reception. Yet, new social realities are certainly at the

core of what lived communion would entail. Lorelei Fuchs has written of the

Holy Spirit as “the adhesive which binds to the cognitive efforts the affective, to

the dialogical the doxological.”154

Though the affective dimension is communi-

______________ 153Key issues are discussed in Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology, vol. 2: The Works of God

(Oxford, U.K., and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 238–240. On p. 239, he notes George

Lindbeck’s comment that “It is to [the] episcopally united church . . . that all . . . Christian traditions owe their creeds, their liturgies, and above all their scriptural canon. If these latter are unexpungable, why not

the episcopate?” (quoting George Lindbeck, “The Church,” in Geoffrey Wainwright, ed., Keeping the

Faith: Essays to Mark the Centenary of Lex Mundi [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988], p. 199). 154Lorelei F. Fuchs, “The Holy Spirit and the Development of Communio/Koinonia Ecclesiology as

The Holy Spirit and Lived Communion in International Bilateral Dialogues 217

cated in reports only in traces, it may be that the snippets of doxology that do

break through—“Come, Holy Spirit!”155

—reflect the core pneumatological in-

sight about the movement from essential unity to lived communion.

Jeremy M. Bergen (Mennonite) has been, since May, 2014, Director of Theological Studies

at Conrad Grebel University College at the University of Waterloo (ON), where he has been

an assistant professor of Religious Studies and Theology since 2008. He also serves as an

associate member of the Advanced Degree Faculty of the Toronto School of Theology and

was a visiting professor during a sabbatical term in 2012 at the Waterloo Lutheran Seminary.

He holds a B.Th. from Canadian Mennonite Bible College in Winnipeg and a B.A. from the

University of Winnipeg; and both an M.A. and a Ph.D. (2008) from the University of St. Mi-

chael’s College, Toronto. He authored Ecclesial Repentance: The Churches Confront Their

Sinful Pasts (T & T Clark, 2011) and co-edited Power and Practices: Engaging the Work of

John Howard Yoder (with A. Siegrist; Herald Press, 2009) and Creed and Conscience: Es-

says in Honour of A. James Reimer (with P. Doerksen and K. Koop; Pandora Press, 2007).

His articles and reviews have appeared in several theological journals (including J.E.S.), edit-

ed collections, and popular periodicals. He has been editor of The Conrad Grebel Review

since 2009. He represented the Mennonite World Conference at the Tenth Forum on Bilat-

eral Dialogues (Faith and Order, World Council of Churches) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in

March, 2012. He was a presenter and program committee member for the International Shi-i

Muslim-Mennonite Christian Dialogue V in Winnipeg in 2011, and a presenter and partici-

pant in Dialogue IV in Qom, Iran, in 2009. Convener and steering committee member for the

Mennonite-Roman Catholic Student Dialogue at the Toronto School of Theology in 2006–

07, he has also presented papers at academic conferences in Serbia, Belgium, France, Cana-

da, and the U.S., and has participated in several colloquia and panels, including the Canadian

Theological Society and the American Academy of Religion, primarily on Mennonite, Ana-

baptist, and ecumenical topics. He has served on the General Board and the Christian For-

mation Council, 2001–07, and was director of Peace and Justice Ministries for the Confer-

ence of Mennonites in Canada, 1997–99.

______________

a Fundamental Paradigm for Ecumenical Engagement,” in Donnelly, Denaux, and Joseph, Holy Spirit, p.

169. 155Pentecostal-Catholic (1989), no. 112, in GA II, p. 751.