“Towards Ecumenical Unity: An Analysis and Preliminary Proposal,”

Journal o f Ecumenical Studies, 47:3, Summer 2012

TOWARD ECUMENICAL UNITY:AN ANALYSIS AND PRELIMINARY PROPOSAL*

Timothy Lim T. N.

Introduction

This essay examines the prospect of ecumenical unity in light of issues per- taining to ecclesial identity, mutual accountability, and hospitality. I offer a hypothesis that, apart from the trajectory of hospitality, the constructs of ecclesial identity and accountability as ecumenical categories pose more problems than they would assist in the separated churches1 process toward full and visible communion. After an analysis of the current taxonomy of ecumenical proposals, I hope to re-engage the ecumenical project by proposing a theological rethinking of “recognition״ in an interdisciplinary discourse.

I. An Analysis o f the Taxonomy o f Ecumenical Proposals

Traditionally, ecumenical accomplishments are achieved through recasting the vision,1 clarifying the scope of unity,2 creating a dialogical openness toward conciliarity fellowship,3 constructing models of ecumenical ecclesiology,4 revis- iting the processes,5 and strengthening the embrace of ecumenical reception.6

*Thanks to Dr. William McDonald and the North American Academy o f Ecumenists for pro- viding a forum for students to participate in the annual student essay contest. I would like to ac- knowledge Dr. Amos Yong, my dissertation supervisor and mentor for constructive theology; Dr. Jeffrey Gros, my ecumenical mentor; Dr. Gabriel Fackre, my evangelical-ecumenical mentor; Dr. Michael Palmer, my mentor in philosophy; as well as philosopher Dr. John Inglis and philosophical theologian Dr. Anne Joh for their generosity in spending many hours dialoguing with my ideas of dreaming a viable ecumenical paradigm.

1The World Council of Churches (WCC) “magna carta” definition o f ecumenism, as “one fully committed fellowship” with “all in each place” and “in all the places,” agreed upon at the New Delhi General Assembly in 1961. See Willem A. V isser’t Hooft, ed., The New Delhi Report: The Third Assembly o f the World Council o f Churches, 1961 (London: Association Press, 1962), pp. 116-135.

2E.g., the WCC Executive Committee’s definition of the WCC’s ecumenical role at the Toronto meeting in 1950; Harding Meyer, That All May Be One: Models and Perception o f Church Unity (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999).

3E.g. His Holiness, Aram I (previously Archbishop o f the Armenian Orthodox Primate of Lebanon, Aram Keshishian), Conciliar Fellowship: A Common Goal (Geneva: WCC, 1992).

4E.g., Lorelei Fuchs, Koinonia and the Quest for an Ecumenical Ecclesiology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2008); and Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen, ed., Ecumenical Ec- clesiology: Unity, Diversity; and Otherness in a Fragmented World (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2009).

5E.g., Paul Avis, Reshaping Ecumenical Theology: The Church Made Whole? (New York: T.& T. Clark, 2010).

6E.g., G. R. Evans, Reception o f Faith: Reinterpreting the Gospel Today (London: SPCK, 1997); Paul D. Murray, ed., Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way fo r Contemporary Ecumenism (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2008).

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Journal of Ecumenical Studies398

Methodologically, ecumenical dialogues seek convergences on some founda- tional and/or fundamental doctrinal and practical differences across different ecclesial traditions and denominations.7 Yet, the pursuit of ecumenical convergences in the dialogical process has gone through several rounds of recalibra- tion, from “legitimate diversity” to “fundamental convergences,” “agreed consensus,” “differentiated consensus,” “differentiated participation,” and “consensus for commonality or for compatibility.”8 There is, of course, a rich history behind the pursuit of consensus, dating back to Vincent of Lerin’s famous die- turn, quod ab omnibus, quod ubique, quod semper creditum, before the modem ecumenical movement.9 Despite remarkable ecumenical progress throughout this century, ecumenists have time and again recognized that, with each major breakthrough, new and old obstacles have resurfaced with greater intensity “enlarging the areas of possible disagreement,” as if to underscore the reality of deeper levels of disunity existing between the churches than the “the unity weshare” amid impaired communion.10 It is as if the “winter of ecumenism” never

11 12 dies. While much more can be said, that will suffice for now. Are there waysto break out of the ecumenical impasse? We shall return to this question below.

The invitation of the North American Academy of Ecumenists (NAAE) for students to submit essays on ecumenical unity reflecting on the trajectories of ecclesial identity, mutual accountability, and hospitality is a much anticipated annual event for junior and senior scholars and theologians in the field. Like the platform created by the Ecclesiological Investigation Network under the leader- ship of Michael A. Fahey and Gerard Mannion in 2006, the NAAE, founded in

7E.g., The “Lima Text” (1982) or Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper 111 (Geneva: World Council o f Churches, 1982); Thomas F. Best and Tamara Grdzelidze, eds., BEM after 25: Critical Insights to a Continuing Legacy (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2007); Susan K. Wood, One Baptism: Ecumenical Dimensions o f the Doctrine o f Baptism (Collegeville, MN: Litur- gical Press, 2009); The Nature and Purpose o f the Church '. A Stage on the Way to a Common State- ment, Faith and Order Paper 198 (Geneva: WCC, 2005); and Paul Collins and Michael A. Fahey, eds., Receiving ״ The Nature and Mission o f the Church ” (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2008).

8E.g., Michael Kinnamon, Truth and Community (Grand Rapids, Ml: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1988); Joseph A. Burgess, ed., In Search o f Christian Unity: Basic Consensus/Basic Differences (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992); William G. Rusch, “Structures of Unity: The Next Ecumenical Challenge—A Possible Way Forward,” Ecclesiology 2 (September, 2005): 107- 122; as well as the negative critique by Annemarie C. Mayer, “Language Serving Unity? Linguistic- Hermeneutical Consideration of a Basic Ecumenical Problem,” Pro Ecclesia 15 (Spring, 2006): 205-222; and Minna Hietamäki, Agreeable Agreement: An Examination o f the Quest for Consensus in Ecumenical Dialogue (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2010).

9For a concise treatment o f the history of consensus and reception, see G. R. Evans, “Consen- sus and Reception,” chap. 6 of M. Douglas Meeks, ed., What Should Methodists Teach? (Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1990); available at http://divinity.duke.edu/oxford/meetings/1987/12_1987 _Evans.pdf.

,0P. C. Rodger and Lukas Vischer, eds., The Fourth World Conference on Faith and Order, Montreal, 1963 (New York: Association Press, 1964), p. 41; and Konrad Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition: A Paradigm Shift in the Ecumenical Movement? (Geneva: WCC, 1991), pp. 1-30.

11G. R. Evans, “Introduction: The ‘Winter of Ecumenism’?” in her Method in Ecumenical The- ology: The Lessons So Far (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 1-18.

12For an extended review o f major ecumenical developments, proposals, and contemporary ap- proaches since the inception of the modem ecumenical movement, see Timothy Lim, “A Prole- gomenon on Mapping the Terrains for Proposing a Methodological Framework Prior to the Con- struction of an Ecumenical Ecclesiology” (paper submitted for coursework in April, 2010).

http://divinity.duke.edu/oxford/meetings/1987/12_1987

399Toward Ecumenical Unity: An Analysis and Preliminary Proposal

1957, presents one of the most esteemed avenues for creative engagement with this recondite issue of whether and how there can be new ways of conceiving unity in creative fidelity to each confessional consciousness, even as ecumenists continue to repair the damage done in the history of Christianity’s internal division.13

The modem ecumenical movement would not have made much headway if not for the founding members’ persistent pursuit of rethinking ecclesial identity, accountability, and hospitality—paradigms that remain fashionable in ecumenical language today.14 For instance, in Reshaping Ecumenical Theology, Angli- can Paul Avis exemplifies the contemporary use of rethinking ecumenical unity in the trajectories of ecclesial identity, accountability, and hospitality. He rec- ommends that churches apply a “hermeneutics of unity”15 for the embrace of “a robust [or chastened] sense of ecclesial identity.”16 Avis calls Christians to remain faithful to their own respective historic “confessional consciousness.”17 He also asks Christians provisionally to recognize the consciences of other Chris- tians in their respective traditions without anathematizing or stigmatizing alternative versions of Christian truth-claims18 He then proposes what he considers to be a realistic process on the way to communion in the pastoral economy of God’s church.19

Without undermining Avis’s important proposal, my analysis will show that the problem of Christian division will continue when ecumenical unity is pur- sued through the instrumental trajectories of ecclesial identity and mutual accountability (and, to a lesser degree, the trajectory of hospitality). As a qualifier, I do not mean that ecclesial identity and mutual accountability are not important instruments of ecumenism but that the terms raise so many questions that for me these trajectories would present more challenges than assistance to the ecumenical quest, especially in today’s complex and pluralistic ecclesiological land- scape.

Ecclesial identity and mutual accountability are heavy-laden terms. The

'3The history o f Christian unity and division is as old as Christian history, as argued in GaiusJackson Slosser’s now-dated Christian Unity, Its History and Challenge in All Communions in All Lands (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1929). Without undermining the modem ecumenical movement, Slosser’s work will correct a view that ecumenicity is a project that arose with the modem ecumenical movement.

14Besides the several volumes o f Growth in Agreement that detail the progress o f breakthroughs in ecumenical dialogues, see also the narrative by Robert S. Bilheimer, Breakthrough: The Emer- gence o f the Ecumenical Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1989).

15Avis, Reshaping Ecumenical Theology, p. 60.16Ibid., p. 107.17Ibid., p. 100.18See ibid., p. 153.19Readers familiar with the developments of the ecumenical movement will be hard-pressed to

evaluate Avis’s proposal fairly. On the one level, he offers a perspective radically different from previous ecumenical proposals, which appears to be more ambivalent in recognizing the churches. On another level, the realistic temper o f Avis’s later sections o f the book treating rapprochement, deeper convergence, and agreement in faith (though it corrects the idealistic ethos o f earlier ecumenical work) cannot be said to have really “reshaped” ecumenical theology, since these were familiar ecumenical models. What differs is the tempo of these directions.


immediate question that would follow is that of identification, identity formation, and accountability. When theologians and ecclesiologists use the term “ecclesial identity,” one must necessarily ask, “Which ecclesiastical identity?” In other words, before we can formulate a reply, we must ask from which center of “the Church and the churches” is the question of ecclesial identity to be explored?20 If we follow Catholic conversations on whether Vatican II exemplifies a continuity and/or discontinuity view, and in light of the range of Catholic perspectives internally on where the center of ecclesiality is (that is, what makes the church, the Church), we would have to ask: How is the ecumenical body to cali- brate our answers for formulating an acceptable theology of ecclesial identity toward ecumenical unity, if by ecclesial identity we refer to the Catholic Church?21 Implicitly, the framing of the Catholic Church as the center of ecclesiality will present problems for repairing ecumenical relationships, especially in the case of churches that do not have formal ties with hi¿! ecclesiastical churches.

The issue is made even more pressing in light of the inadequate language of Vatican II on ecclesial identities outside the Catholic Church (although, at another level, the language of Vatican II is far more charitable and welcoming than the condemnatory language of Trent and Vatican I on ecclesial identities outside the Catholic Church).22 Despite the more welcoming language of “separated brethren” and “separated communities” (note here that Vatican II does not use the language of “churches” to describe Protestant communities, unlike their ref- erence to Orthodox communities as “sister churches”), the grammar of ecclesial identities in conciliar councils of Vatican II, I would argue, has already called into question the ecclesial status of churches that have not returned to the “Mother Church,” when it uses the language of “subsist in” the Catholic Church to describe these communities. Implicit in the language is the identification that these communities do not belong as churches in their own right of existence and identity.23 I do not say this to suggest a “wet blanket” on Catholic progress in ecumenism but merely to recognize the immense complexity that comes with taking major steps in affirming and/or reforming the Catholic view of ecclesiality as it concerns the recognition and/or nonrecognition of Christians from other traditions.

Which ecclesial identity? We may extend the question of ecclesial status to churches and ecclesiastical traditions such as Eastern Orthodoxy or Protestant

20G. R. Evans, “Ecclesial Identity,” in her The Church and the Churches: Toward an Ecumeni- cal Ecclesiology (Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 121- 173.

21E.g., Robert L. Fastiggi and Steven C. Boguslawski, eds., Called to Holiness and Commun- ion: Vatican II on the Church (Scranton, PA: University o f Scranton Press, 2009).

22E.g., Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Mortalium ánimos uses the language of “false Christians” to describe communities outside the Catholic Church. This was, o f course, ratified in De motions oecumenica in 1950.

23For an enlightening perspective of the Catholic tradition on the language of “subsistence,” see Walter Kasper, “The Decree on Ecumenism: Read Anew after Forty Years,” in John Paul II, Walter Kasper, John Zizioulas, Geoffrey Wainwright, et al., eds., Searching for Christian Unity (New York: New City Press, 2007), pp. 18-36.


ism, which are unable to submit to the supremacy of the papacy in light of their own ecclesial traditioning and identities.24 The same problem of ecclesial identity as the measure for staging ecumenical unity is not focused only on the Catholic Church. It is also a problem if Eastern Orthodoxy or Protestantism be- comes the standard for measuring the true church. As Alister McGrath noted in Christianity’s Dangerous Idea, Protestantism is problematic as a center of ecclesiality in that it has granted license to the autonomous reading of itself as the true center, to the effect that Protestantism—especially in Reformed, Baptist, and Pentecostal/Charismatic churches—represents the most polyvalent Christian groups in the twentieth century.25 As noted above, Bordeianu and others have made similar observations.26

Turning to the notion of mutual accountability in ecumenical conversation, I would ask whether, by mutual accountability, the officials meant by implication that it is possible to establish a multilayered level of accountability toward ecumenical unity. Like the foregoing conversation, this is also a complex issue. On the one hand, accountability of Christian unity must be established on the grounds of faithfulness to God, to Christ, to the Spirit, to the living communion of the faithful, and to the truth of revelation in scripture.27 Accountability is fun- damentally basic as a theology of Christian stewardship and discipleship and really should not be contested at all. But, on the other hand, truth and revelation imply the development of tradition, which introduces the question of whosestandard and yardstick for the measure of Tradition and traditions are used in

28ascertaining truth and revelation.Even though the development of doctrine occurs in the context of ecclesiol-

ogy (as has been argued by Singapore theologian Simon Chan), there are major

24E.g., Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds., Church Unity and the Papal Office: An Ecumenical Dialogue on John Paul II's Encyclical Ut Unum Sint (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001); and Mark E. Powell, Papal Infallibility: A Protestant Evaluation o f an Ecumenical Issue (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009). In the Eccle-

siological Investigation Network’s Annual Meeting in May, 2011, held at Dayton, Ohio, Romanian theologian Radu Bordeianu raised questions as to why the pope refuses to accept the historical des-

ignation as Bishop of Rome. Behind the question lies a deeper question on whether the submission to and recognition o f Catholic tradition is the center of ecclesiality. See also Adam A. J. DeVille, Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects o f East-West Unity (Notre

(.2011 ,Dame, IN: University o f Notre Dame Press25Allster E. McGrath, Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution—A History

(.2007 ,from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First Century (New York: HarperOne26See note 24, above.27E.g., Philip Graham Ryken, The Communion o f Saints: Living in Fellowship with the People

(.2001 .,o f God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing Co28A question that has been explored in French Dominican Yves Congar’s now-famous Tradi-

tion and Traditions: An Historical and a Theological Essay (New York: Macmillan, 1967); Yves Congar and Avery Dulles, The Meaning o f Tradition (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2004); and, still earlier, by Cardinal John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development o f Christian Doctrine, 6th ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989 [orig., 1845]). Also see Rolf J. Poh-

1er, Continuity and Change in Christian Doctrine: A Study o־ f the Problem o f Doctrinal Develop ment y Friedensauer Schriftenreihe 2 (Bern and New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1999); and Alain

1816-1845,) Bibliotheca) יY. Thomasset, L ,Ecclesiologie de ‘John Henry Newman Anglican (.2006 ,Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 198 (Leuven: Leuven University Press


consequence on the adjudication and implication of doctrinal change (as clari- fied by Evangelical church historian Alan Sell).29 Still, in juxtaposing the question of accountability with Tradition, we have just introduced a complication on the appropriateness of accountability as an ecumenical leitmotif for unity. Do all churches accept the common Tradition of, say, the creeds of the ecumenical councils?30 The answer is no. Polarity exists even here in Eastern Orthodoxy, within Catholicism, between the churches of the East and West, between the churches of the Reformation and the Catholic Church, and among those of the diverse denominations in Evangelicalism. As Catholic theologian Bradford E. Hinze asks, after examining a decade of activity of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Can Tradition (not) Change?”31

The problem here is already complicated without expanding the question of accountability in the direction of mutuality. When we consider that mutual accountability entails one tradition/denomination’s accountability to another tradition/denomination on one level (which is already deeply complicated, for, if such a form of unity is possible, there would have been no splintering of churches in the first place) and mutual accountability to the unity of the universal church on a broader level, then the notion of accountability is further flawed with the controvertible problem of locating the universal church. It is just like the earlier problem: From which center do we locate the true church?32 Of course, the issue of papal authority, discussed earlier under the trajectory of ecclesial identity, remains a recondite issue that need not be repeated here.

Of the three trajectories on which the NAAE invites contributions for rethinking ecumenical unity, hospitality appears to carry the greatest potential as an instrument in the pursuit of unity among the churches. Among some significant conversationalists on a theology of hospitality, Christine D. Pohl’s Making Room continues to exercise watershed influence on ecumenical theology, not just to strangers outside the church but also to “strangers” inside the church.33

29See Simon Chan, “The Church and the Development o f Doctrine,” Journal o f Pentecostal Theology 13 (October, 2004): 57-77; see also Alan P. Sell, ‘“Change and Decay’ or Onward Still, and Upward’? Reflections on the Development o f Doctrine,” in his Enlightenment, Ecumenism, Ev- angel: Theological Themes and Thinkers, 1550-2000, Studies in Christian History and Thought (Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster Press, 2005), pp. 166-204.

30E.g., Confessing the One Faith: An Ecumenical Explication o f the Apostolic Faith as It Is Confessed in the Nicea-Constantinople Creed (381), 2nd ed., Risk Book 153 (Geneva: World Coun- cil o f Churches, 1991).

31Bradford E. Hinze, “A Decade of Disciplining Theologians,” Horizons 37 (Spring, 2010): 92-126.

32E.g., Francesca Aran Murphy and Christopher Asprey, Ecumenism Today: The Universal Church in the 21st Century (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2008).

33Christine D. Pohl, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999). Her work has been variously cited and examined in other proposals on an ecumenical theology of hospitality, such as Amos Yong, Hospi- tality and the Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Other (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007); Elizabeth Newman, Untamed Hospitality: Welcoming God and Other Strangers (Grand Rap- ids, MI: Brazos Press, 2007), especially the chapter on “Divided House and the Table o f Grace”; and Letty Russell, Just Hospitality: God's Welcome in a World o f Difference (Louisville, KY: Westmin- ster John Knox Press, 2009), especially the chapter on “Riotous Difference as God’s Gift to the Church.”

Toward Ecumenical Unity: An Analysis and Preliminary Proposal 403

The language of hospitality as that of welcoming strangers in the church presents a hopeful prospect for advancing the goal of ecumenical conversation toward unity among the churches. This is especially the case for Christians and churches that were previously “strangers” to other ecclesial traditions/denominations. It takes seriously the Pauline injunction in Galatians and Romans on showing hospitality and contributing to the well-being especially of those in the household of faith. It has also been recommended as a model toward intercommunion or the sharing of the Table of the Lord.34

At the present time, the model for eucharistic hospitality remains an unreal- izable goal despite theological and practical proposals.35 On another level, the language of hospitality can be seen as that of inviting conversation but not deep enough so as to grant true communion and unity. Apart from several biblical imperatives to show kindness to those in the faith, the language of hospitality follows the grammar of cordiality appropriate for strangers and not for deeper bonding with those in the family. If one considers the church as a household of faith (albeit represented by various streams), then the logic of cordiality and hospitality do not adequately represent the deeper bond of unity and communion for those in the family; in that sense, cordiality and hospitality may undercut what the ecumenical movement seeks to achieve, even though I must concede that the leitmotif of hospitality carries the weight of ecumenical unity better than the other notions of ecclesial identity and mutual accountability.

IL Preliminary Contours in Rethinking the Theological Science o f Ecumenicity

To facilitate the contemporary quest for models of ecumenical church rela- tions with a view toward unity, I propose to turn our previous conversation on the problem of ecclesiality (that is, which of the churches truly represents the true Church) in a slightly different direction. I ask now how we can facilitate the process of granting “recognition” of the churches theologically. Though still at an early stage in this process of reconstruction, I begin this section with an exploration of the technical term “recognition” before presenting a proposed contour for a fourfold ecumenical theology of recognition.

In ecumenical theology, “recognition” is typically considered inseparably with “reception,” and, especially after Gerard Kelly,s important work, “recognition” explores the legitimacy and authenticity of the dialoguing churches in their “otherness” so as to aid the quest for full, visible communion among the churches.36 Historically, the trajectory of “recognition” began with the World

34E.g., Patrick T. McCormick, A Banqueter ,s Guide to the All-Night Soup o f the Kingdom o f God (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004), especially chaps. 2 and 3; and Wolfgang Vondey, People o f Bread: Rediscovering Ecclesiology (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2008).

35E.g., Jeffrey T. Vanderwilt, Communion with Non-Catholic Christians: Challenges and Op- portunities (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003); and George Hunsinger, The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast, Current Studies in Theology (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

36Gerard Kelly, The Significance and Meaning o f the Idea o f "Recognition " in the Work o f Faith and Order, 1910-1991 (Ottawa, ON: Collège dominicain de philosophie et de théologie,


Conference of Faith and Order at Edinburgh in 1937, which called for “mutual recognition” as a particular way for conceiving unity among the churches.37 His- torically, ecumenical “recognition” discusses the acceptance of historical creed(s) as an ecumenical statement of unity, the interchange of membership, the exchangeability of clergy and ministry, and sacramental intercommunion. As William Rusch explains, “Recognition functions in the context of unity in diversity, seeking an ecumenical path between the tendency to remove all difference and the opposing inclination to settle for mere coexistence or cooperation. It af- firms a certain ‘otherness,’ resisting the urge to take over, to adopt, or to take possession.”38 Taking Rusch seriously would mean that “recognition” entails more than the quest for theological consensus and/or agreement, whether the use of consensus as conformity or compatibility. However, a lacuna exists in the quest for a theology of “recognition.” Prevailing ecumenical mechanisms often ignore or downplay—so it would appear—the science of recognition and bridge- building found in philosophy, sociobehavioral psychology (human and organiza- tional), and political theories that are crucial for understanding why individuals and institutions behave the way they do.39

Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch and Christopher Zum suggest that The Philosophy o f Recognition is both influential in and influenced by developments in other fields of the Geistes- and Sozialwissenschaften.40 In the last decade, theories of recognition generate a wide variety of inquiries in domains such as ontology and epistemology, moral and political philosophy, social-psychological theory, action theory, legal philosophy, philosophical anthropology, and the history of philosophy. Sociopolitical philosophers Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth are among those at the forefront of the debates.41 But, within the fields of eccle-

1992); idem, Recognition: Advancing Ecumenical Thinking,, American University Studies VII, 186 (New York: Peter Lang, 1996); Eeva Martikainen, From Recognition to Reception: The Apostolic Faith and the Unity o f the Church in the World Council o f Churches, Europäische Hochschul- schritten XXIII, 739 (New York: Peter Lang, 2002); and William G. Rusch, Ecumenical Reception: Its Challenge and Opportunity (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, U.K..: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2007).

37See The Meanings o f Unity, Faith and Order Paper 1 (New York: Harper, 1937); and Lukas Vischer, ed., Die Einheit der Kirch Material der ökumischen Bewegung (Munich: Theologische Bücherei, 1965), p. 257. It must however be said that in documents o f the WCC Executive Commit- tee Meeting at Toronto the language expressing the vision o f the formation of the WCC is not to grant the recognition o f the churches but for the WCC to become a platform of “ecclesiological neu- trality” whereby member churches may participate in the quest for church unity without the risks of needing to admit, agree with, or recognize the fullness o f other participating churches. See the WCC Central Committee’s statement on “The Church, the Churches, and the World Council o f Churches”; and Vitaly Borovoy, “The Ecclesiological Significance o f the WCC: The Legacy and Promise of Toronto,” The Ecumenical Review 40 (July-October, 1988): 504.

38Rusch, Ecumenical Reception, p. 87.39Yves Congar, “La ‘réception’ comme réalité ecclésiologique,” in his Eglise et papauté: Re-

gards historiques (Paris: Cerf., 1994), p. 254.40Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch and Christopher F. Zum, The Philosophy o f Recognition:

Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (New York: Lexington Books, 2010).41Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition: A Political-Philosophical

Exchange (London: Verso, 2003). Also see Patchen Markell, Bound by Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Gram- mar o f Social Conflict (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1995); and Robert F. Williams, Recognition:


siology and ecumenism, the language of recognition has been explored only as a subfield of reception, although conversations in practical missional ecclesiology have already broadened to include theories of recognition in philosophy, politics, and sociopsychology, especially when practical theology relates to the church’s mission to the oppressed, marginalized, and outcasts in areas of color,

4לmigration, violence, gender, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, and classism. My proposal, however preliminary, hopes to give voice to the fourfold character of “recognition” in philosophy, sociopsychology, political theory, and theology in articulating a theology of recognition that would pay attention to these sensibili- ties.43

In what follows, due to space constraints, I can sketch only very briefly and broadly the contours of a fourfold theology of recognition in engagement with philosophy, sociopsychology, political theory, and theology.44

1. The paradigm of recognition must, of course, begin with Aristotle’s definition of Anagnorisis in Poetics 45 Aristotle moved the stages of recognition

Fichte and Hegel on the Other (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992).42See Harold T. Lewis, Yet with a Steady Beat: The African American Struggle fo r Recognition

in the Episcopal Church (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996); Raimundo Barreto, Facing the Poor: Three Evangélico Responses to the Plight o f the Oppressed in Brazil (Saarbrücken: DVM Verlag, 2009); M. Daniel Carroll R., Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010); William T. Cavanaugh, Migrations o f the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning o f the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerd- mans Publishing Co., 2011); Anthony R. Gittins, Ministry at the Margins, Strategy and Spirituality for Mission Series (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002); Mary R. Sawyer, Church on the Margins: Living Christian Community (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003); George B. Thompson, Jr., Church on the Edge o f Somewhere: Ministry, Marginality and the Future (Herndon, VA: Alban Institute, 2007); Cheryl J. Sanders, Ministry at the Margins: the Prophetic Mission o f Women, Youth, and the Poor (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009); and Christopher L. Heuertz and Christine D. Pohl, Friendship at the Margins: Mutuality in Service and Mission, Resources for Rec- onciliation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010).

43This proposal relates particularly to the interface o f theories of recognition with ecclesiology. It does not undermine earlier and contemporary proposals that have juxtaposed sociology, manage- ment, politics, and ecclesiology such as found in H. Paul Douglass, The Protestant Church as a So- cial Institution (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1935); Ernest Troeltsch, The Social Teachings o f the Christian Church, 2 vols. (New York: Harper& Brothers, 1960); H. Richard Niebuhr, Social Sources o f Denominationalism (New York: Meridian, 1929); Robert Lee, Social Sources o f Church Unity: An Interpretation o f Unitive Movements in American Protestantism (New York: Abingdon Press, 1960); Dietrich BonhoefFer, Sanctorum Communio: A Dogmatic Inquiry into the Sociology o f the Church (London: Collins, 1963); James B. Jordan, Sociology o f the Church (Tyler, TX: Geneva Ministries, 1966); Stanley Hauerwas, In Good Company: The Church as Polis (Notre Dame, IN: University o f Notre Dame Press, 1995); Johannes A. van der Ven, Ecclesiology in Context [of man- agement] (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996); and Daniel Izuzquiza, Rooted in Christ: Toward a Radical Ecclesiology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publish- ing Co., 2009).

44Readers can look forward to a prospective dissertation that will tease out this interdisciplinary theology o f ecclesial recognition more fully in one to two years.

4 Terence Cave, Recognitions: A Study in Poetics (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1988); Philip F. Kennedy and Marilyn Lawrence, eds., Recognition: The Poetics o f Narrative, Interdiscipli- nary Studies in Anagnorisis, Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature (Bern and New York: Peter Lang, 2008).


from ignorance to knowledge and to the building and embracing of friendship.46 It is not just any kind of friendship, but, to borrow the language of Deryck Sher- iffs, the paradigm pertains to a “friendship of the Lord” and in the language of Sharon Ringe, to a friendship within a community of “Wisdom’s friends,” which grows incrementally through the stages of relation-building of trust from igno- ranee to discovery and deep bonding.47 As Croatian Miroslav Volf proposed in another context that is relevant here, embrace rather than exclusion is the para- digmatic attitude that I seek to cultivate in the movement of advancing ecumenical recognition.48 What is lacking in Volfs proposal is the movement from ex- elusion to embrace made possible by Aristotelian and Hegelian notions of recognition.

2. G. W. F. Hegel’s Phenomenology o f the Spirit provides the famous intersubjective relationship of master and slave, which may be translated for my purpose to that of an intersubjective relationship of “us” and “them.” The interest is to turn a new course of recognizing the other without “demonizing” the other as inferior or less-abled. Here, Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy of differentiation will provide a needed balance to Hegel’s sublation of differences, inasmuch as Paul Ricoeur’s symmetric relationship of relationality in The Course ofRecogni- tion will allow for an egalitarian framework for an ecclesiological reconstruction.49 Viewed theologically, the philosophy of recognition would enable a theology of unity amid diversity in the church.

3. The prospect of distinction necessarily entails the step of judgment, evaluated by means of taste, preferences, and other yardsticks of measurement— so Pierre Bordieu teaches us in his reflexive sociology as analyzed by Loic Wacquant.50 Recognition is, however, not a static exercise. It implies the jour

46See the author’s paper on “The Promise of ‘Friendship in the Lord’ as an Evangelical- Ecumenical Motif,” presented at the American Academy of Religion, Ecclesiological Investigation Network Group, at Montreal in 2009. See also Jacques Derrida, The Politics o f Friendship, tr. George Collins (New York: Verso, 1997); David Burrell, Friendship and Ways to Truth (Notre Dame, IN: University o f Notre Dame Press, 2000); and Steve Summers, Friendship: Exploring Its Implications for the Church in Postmodernity (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2010).

47Deryck Sheriffs, The Friendship o f the Lord: An Old Testament Spirituality (Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster Press, 1996; Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2004); and Sharon H. Ringe, Wisdom’s Friends: Community and Christology in the Fourth Gospel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999). I am also grateful for the helpful comments from Dr. Dennis Doyle, Dr. Michael H. Montgomery, and Dr. Wolfgang Vondey.

48Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration o f Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996).

49See Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Phenomenology o f the Spirit, tr. Arnold V. Miller and J. N. Findlay (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1977); Alexandre Kojeve, Bryan Frost, and Robert Howse, Outline o f a Phenomenology o f Right (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); Emmaneul Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (Pittsburgh, PA' : Duquesne Uni- versity Press, 1969); Robert F. Williams, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other (Albany, NY: State University o f New York Press, 1992); Robert R. Williams, Hegel's Ethics o f Recognition (Berkeley, CA: University o f California Press, 1997); Paul Ricoeur, The Course o f Recognition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005); and Jan-Olav Henriksen, Desire, Gift, and Recognition: Christology and Postmodern Philosophy (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009).

50See Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique o f the Judgment o f Taste, tr. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987); David Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociol


ney of surviving the openness of one’s identity to becoming vulnerable, which really, as Kenneth McLaughin has explained, is the sociopsychology of recognition (as distinguished from the subfield of neuroscientific psychology of recognition, such as found in the work of Shimon Edelman and Ronald T. Kellogg).51 The quest for recognition viewed theologically with a psychology of recognition is that of the metaphysics of being and communion. It bears some affinity with Metropolitan of Pergamum John Zizioulas’s Communion and Otherness.52 While Zizioulas’s project is located within the Orthodox tradition and the Greek culture (and despite critics such as Andrew Louth’s rejection of Zizioulas as rep- resenting faithfully a “neo-patristic synthesis”), what matters is the sociopsychology of being and otherness in communion that I hope to engage theologically.

4. In Axel Honneth’s post-Hegelian struggle for political recognition by means of love, both law and solidarity will check the unhealthy tendency of human fallibility in the direction of abuse, exclusion, and denigration, all of which are significant principles for reconstructing a healthy theology of ecumenical recognition among the churches. Iris Marion Young’s Justice and the Politics o f Difference and Charles Taylor’s work on the politics of recognition provide the needed balance to push the frontiers of recognition without succumbing to the status quo in advancing the progress of ecumenical unity.53

5. I hope that I have provided some broad contours here for a constructive work aimed to help rethink theological recognition of the relationship among churches from that of a center-and-peripheral paradigm to that of affirming the uniqueness of “us” and “them” symmetrically. The progress from ignorance and arrogance would be replaced by knowledge, friendship, and unity, thus trans- forming the churches’ witness to unity and mission to the world. This fourfold reading attempts “to reframe the debate about ecclesial differences [and] about what is constitutive of the Church” through the lens of “recognition.”54

ogy o f Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

51See Richard Ganis, The Politics o f Care in Habermas and Derrida: Between Measurability and Immeasurability (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2011); and Kenneth McLaughlin, Surviving Iden- tity: Vulnerability and the Psychology o f Recognition, Concepts for Critical Psychology (New York: Routledge: 2011).

52John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church, ed. Paul McPartlan (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2006).

53See Charles Taylor and Amy Gutmann, eds., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics o f Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics o f Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); idem, Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas o f Gender, Political Philosophy, and Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Axel Honneth The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar o f Social Conflicts (Cam- bridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2005); idem, Disrespect: The Normative Foundations o f Critical Theory (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2007); Simon Thompson, The Political Theory o f Recognition: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2006); and Lois McNay, Against Recognition (Oxford, U.K.: Polity Press, 2007).

54William J. Abraham, “Church and the Churches: Ecumenism,” in Gerald R. McDermott, ed., The Oxford handbook o f Evangelical Theology (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 307.


Conclusion

This essay explores the current taxonomy of ecumenical unity proposals and asks to what end the trajectories of ecclesial identity, accountability, and hospitality provide a useful framework for facilitating the healing of impaired communion among the churches. In light of past and present research, I have shown my hypothesis that, apart from the trajectory of hospitality, the constructs of ecclesial identity and accountability as ecumenical categories pose more problems than assistance in the process toward full and visible communion among separated churches. I have also offered a preliminary contour of an interdisciplinary view of “recognition” as a viable alternative for future discourse in the pursuit of ecumenical unity among separated churches.

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