Meanings of Full Communion:

The Essence of Life in the Body

O. C. Edwards, Jr.

Background

When those Faith and Order commissioners of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America assigned to study “full communion” during the 2000-2003 quadrennial study period first met in March 2000, our task seemed simple enough.[1] It soon became evident, however, that we were not dealing with a clear term that had a simple meaning which only needed to be observed in its various manifestations to be fully understood and explicated. Instead, it soon became clear that while a number of the ecclesial traditions present at the dialogue table use the term “full communion,” they do so in different ways. Others do not use it at all, having terms of their own to express the closest relation Christian bodies can have to one another. And even in the churches that use the term, it does not always reach the heart of the matter, it does not always touch what for those traditions is the essence of life in the Body of Christ, the criterion by which they recognize authentic Christian faith and life in their own and other groups.

This awareness made us conscious of the great danger of talking past one another when we use this heavily freighted term as though we all mean the same thing by it and we all know what that is. Nor is this danger limited to our group; it is, if anything, greater in the ecumenical world at large, and the possible damage of such misunderstanding is proportionate to the levels of discussions in which it might occur.

As a result, our work for the four years took a different turn. We decided that our time together would be well spent if we could produce a typology, a taxonomy, a roadmap, of the different ways in which “full communion” is used by different traditions, what terms are used instead by other bodies, and what aspects of life in the Body are understood to be of the essence of authentic Christian identity for them. While this is a more modest goal than the one we started out with, it seemed to us that it might be of greater service to the churches if it could help them avoid misunderstandings in the future. It is in hope of providing such a service that this report is offered.

One way of beginning to map how churches can talk past one another when using full communion language is to re-trace some of the experience of our group. Our original approach to our task was to look at full communion proposals that had been accepted or were being considered by particular churches. The entire group would prepare for each meeting by reading two such documents that had been chosen for that session. To prompt discussion, two members would prepare papers on each document, one from “within” one of the traditions that produced it and the other from “outside” those traditions. We recognized, of course, that none of these papers would be definitive; all of the authors would share their own perspectives rather than make official statements for their tradition. Each of the papers would perform two tasks: it would (a) use the koinonia/communion language of Canberra[2] and Santiago [3] as the filter and framework for analyzing the terminology of the document, and (b) discuss how that agreement is being worked or lived out existentially.

The reference to Canberra indicates what our presuppositions were. Most of us had gone beyond thinking of full communion as merely a synonym for eucharistic fellowship. We knew that it must include sharing in a number of other elements in the life of the church as well. Since so many do think simply of Holy Communion when they hear of “full communion,” we would avoid misunderstanding by using the Greek word koinonia that embraces in the New Testament a range of meanings that includes sharing and participation along with communion. Canberra speaks of a koinonia given and expressed in:

- the common confession of apostolic faith;
- a common sacramental life entered by the one baptism and celebrated together in one eucharistic fellowship;
- a common life in which members and ministries are mutually recognized and reconciled;
- a common mission witnessing to the Gospel of God’s grace to all people and serving the whole creation.

It goes on to say:

The goal of the search for full communion is realized when all the churches are able to recognize in one another the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church in its fullness. This full communion will be expressed on the local and the universal levels through conciliar forms of life and action. In such communion churches are bound in all aspects of their life together at all levels in confessing the one faith, sharing sacramental life, and engaging in common witness, sustained by recognized and reconciled ministry.[4]

Glitches[5] in the Canberra Model

WCC then went on at Canberra to call on all the churches to move toward full communion by taking steps to make the recognition it called for in one another. The first was the recognition of one another’s baptisms on the basis of the agreement on its nature reached in the WCC Faith and Order document on Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (BEM).[6] The next was to get all to agree that the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed contains an adequate statement of apostolic faith. On that basis it was thought that forms of eucharistic hospitality would then be appropriate. From there churches could move on to a mutual recognition of ministries, and then to seeing that this unity was expressed in a mission of evangelism and social justice and expressed in decision making at local as well as international levels. Thus Canberra not only defined full communion but published a strategy for achieving it as well.

The reason our study group failed at first to recognize what an oversimplification this is in its understanding of the goal and the means to achieve it is the same reason it seemed appropriate for WCC at Canberra to make it: many churches can indeed achieve full communion in this way without distorting the essence of the life of the Body of Christ as they perceive it. This can be seen in some of the full communion agreements that have already been reached. The accords achieved by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church, on the one hand, and by the ELCA and some churches in the Reformed tradition, on the other, can serve as good cases in point.[7]

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

The ELCA has a compact list of the “theological and missiological implications of the Gospel” that they regard as the “characteristics of full communion.”[8] They are:

1. a common confessing of the Christian faith;
2. a mutual recognition of Baptism and a sharing of the Lord’s Supper, allowing for joint worship and an exchangeability of members;
3. a mutual recognition and availability of ordained ministers to the service of all members of churches in full communion, subject only but always to the disciplinary regulations of the other churches;
4. a common commitment to evangelism, witness, and service;
5. a means of common decision making on critical common issues of faith and life;
6. a mutual lifting of any condemnations that exist between churches.

It can be seen that, with the exception of the last two, these are the elements of koinonia that Canberra listed, stated in different language and order. The provision for joint decision-making gives reality to the other commitments, while the mutual lifting of condemnations reflects Lutheran history in which anathemas were given and received.

The Episcopal Church

One of the ELCA’s full communion partners, the Episcopal Church, has had an equivalent list of its own since the late 1880s. First the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the USA set forth what it regarded as the conditions on which it could unite with other Christian bodies.[9] Then, two years later, the bishops of the Anglican Communion meeting at Lambeth picked up the U. S. statement and, after slight revision, issued it as their world-wide standard. Their resolution, known as “The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral” read:

That in the opinion of this Conference, the following Articles supply a basis on which approach may be by God’s blessings made towards Home Reunion:

(a) The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, as “containing all things necessary to salvation,” and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith.
(b) The Apostles’ Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol;[10] and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.
(c) The two Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, ministered with the unfailing use of Christ’s words of Institution, and the elements ordained by Him.
(d) The Historic Episcopate,[11] locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church.[12]

While neither Canberra nor the ELCA document spells out the historic episcopate as the form in which ministries would be recognized and reconciled, ELCA was willing to accept this form of ministry in its full communion agreement with the Episcopal Church. And, since the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral had organic unity as its end, that unity would include common mission and common decision-making. Assuming that for Canberra and the ELCA the central place of the Bible is so obvious as to go without saying, it thus would appear that these three statements can be taken as functional equivalents of one another. Or can they?

Three Reformed Churches

The bases of ELCA’s agreement with the Presbyterian Church, USA, the United Church of Christ, and the Reformed Church in America are not quite the same. The Formula of Agreement by which full communion was established between the four churches did not mention the historic episcopate and none of the four had it at the time the agreement was made. Instead, they recognized one another as churches where the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered, they lifted any condemnations they had against one another, pledged to continue to recognize one another’s baptism, and encouraged Eucharistic sharing. They also made commitments to consultation and joint decision-making, theological dialogue, and, in effect, living in charity with one another.

What is said about ordained ministry is that the four churches will “recognize each others’ various ministries and make provision for the orderly exchange of ordained ministers of word and sacrament.” Thus, the lack of the historic episcopate is not seen to be a defect in one another by the four churches. It is obviously not a pre-condition for full communion. Thus, for all their apparent similarity, these lists of the conditions for full communion are not quite the same.[13] 

Roman Catholic Church

The problem of similarity obscuring deep differences can be seen by looking at another list that sounds very much like those already discussed. A Roman Catholic member, Lorelei Fuchs, SA, introduced us to her church’s way of referring to tria vincula, “three bonds.”[14] These are vinculum symbolicum, unity in faith, vinculum liturgicum, unity in worship, and vinculum sociale vel hierarchicum, unity in ministry.

Unity in faith consists of creedal confession of Christian belief as revealed in Scripture and tradition. Unity in worship comprises shared sacramental life and liturgical celebration of word and sacraments. Unity in ministry embraces the general mission of all the baptized and the particular mission of those set apart in ordained ministry as deacon, presbyter, and bishop, inclusive of the Petrine ministry of the Bishop of Rome.

Again, the match to the others is close, but here ministry includes not only three orders of ministry with (although it is not spelled out here) bishops in apostolic succession, but the primacy of the pope as well.[15]

 

The Essence of Life in the Body

Orthodox Churches

When one looks at the report of Paul Meyendorff, the Orthodox member of the group,[16] the inadequacy of the Canberra list of elements of koinonia alone as a basis for negotiating full communion becomes clear. While Orthodox would have little difficulty recognizing that full communion includes the Canberra elements, agreement on those issues would not of itself permit full communion between two churches in the same country. “The Orthodox would categorically reject any denominational model that would allow parallel ecclesial bodies in a given geographical area.”[17] As Meyendorff says, “The Orthodox principle of church organization is territorial.”[18] He means in effect that the Orthodox do not admit the possibility of more than one church in any given place. Thus, “the present situation of Orthodoxy in North America, with its multiplicity of jurisdictions that followed the rise of Communism in Eastern Europe, is seen by all as an anomaly and a scandal.”[19] Communion between separate ecclesial bodies in the same territory would not therefore be full communion, but would instead be “partial communion” at best.

Full communion for the Orthodox can only mean organic union.[20] It is the sort of communion that exists in a parish or a diocese, within an autocephalous church, or between autocephalous churches. There is full communion between the churches in communion with the ecumenical patriarch, i.e., the Orthodox Church in its various territorial manifestations. “The Orthodox seek to enter into communion with the Oriental Churches of Armenia, Ethiopia, or Egypt once unity of faith and reconciliation of memories has been achieved, or with the Church of Rome, or the Church of England.”[21] Note that full communion could be sought with the Church of England, but not with the Anglican Communion in general. The Church of England is a national church, it is the church in that country in so far as there is one.

There is more at stake here than a simple difference of vocabulary. It is not that the Orthodox use the expression “full communion” in one sense while other groups use it in another. Rather, it a matter of a basic understanding of the nature of the church. There is only one church in the full sense of the word and it is comprised of all the territorial churches in communion with one another.[22]

That full communion within the church in one place, or between the church in one place and the church in another, is expressed in a number of ways: by sharing in the Eucharist, by praying officially in the liturgy for the appropriate bishop(s) in the diptychs,[23] by bishops concelebrating on appropriate occasions, by mutual recognition of orders, and by conciliar forms of action and decision making.

But how would a church in a particular territory that has not already been so come to be recognized as the church there? First, Meyendorff points out that agreement in faith may take more demonstration for the Orthodox than for some traditions.

The first criterion for full communion, according to the Orthodox, would certainly be theological agreement on the essentials of the faith. But what this actually means is not clear. Certainly it would include: 1) a shared Trinitarian faith, as expressed in the ecumenical councils and particularly in the Creed of Nicea-Constantinople; 2) a shared Christological faith, affirming Jesus Christ as Son of God and Savior; 3) a faith based on Scripture. For some Orthodox, unity of faith would also require formal acceptance of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, while for others, agreement on the basic elements expressed by these councils would be sufficient.[24]

In addition, Meyendorff says there may have to be something that sounds similar to but deeper than the repeal of mutual condemnations in the ELCA/Reformed Churches agreement: a “reconciliation of memories.”[25]

For the Orthodox, then, the Canberra steps for achieving full communion would not be adequate by themselves. Common faith, sacramental life, ministry and members, and mission would not make churches able to “recognize in one another the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church in its fullness” if they were “parallel ecclesial bodies in a given geographical area.” Each church would have to be recognized as the territorial church in its area. Thus for the Orthodox this territorial principle touches the essence of life in the Body of Christ, a criterion by which they recognize authentic Christian faith and life in their own and other groups.

Roman Catholic Church

This view of Orthodox Christians suggests that the other groups looked at above may also each have their own view of what is the essence of life in the Body of Christ, their own sine qua non for achieving full communion. Although the discussion of the tria vincula above has shown that the Roman Catholic position is much more complex than just the one point, a sine qua non for that church was implied in the statement of Fuchs already quoted that unity in ministry includes unity in regard to the ministry of the Bishop of Rome. Walter Cardinal Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, stated this position in more detail and with reference to the authoritative documents in the Prolusio he gave at the Plenary Meeting of his Commission November 12-17, 2001. In it he said:

For a systematic presentation of the Catholic communio ecclesiology we start with the Council's Constitution Lumen gentium. In number eight, which tries to define where the church is really and concretely to be found, the ecumenical question arises with the famous “subsistit in”. The Constitution states that the church of Jesus Christ is concretely real in the Catholic Church, in communion with the Pope and the bishops in communion with him. In this statement lies the nerve of the ecumenical dialogue, and the declaration Dominus Jesus (2000) and consequent debate have shown very clearly that the nerve here is raw, and the pain threshold correspondingly low.[26]

Presbyterian Church (USA)

Can a similar sine qua non be discerned in the churches of the Calvinist/Reformed tradition that have entered into full communion with the ELCA? One was at least suggested in an untitled paper on the Presbyterian Church (USA) read by William Steele, a teaching elder of that church who serves as pastor of a Reformed parish and served as the able recorder for our group. In discussing the Presbyterian Church’s response to the original proposal of the Consultation on Church Union (COCU), he reports that it was defeated by a vote of 104 presbyteries against the measure with only sixty-six favoring it.[27] He accounts for that rejection by pointing to two factors: opposition to the historic episcopate because Presbyterians are suspicious of hierarchical systems of church governance[28] and loyalty to the recognition of two types of elders, teaching elders and ruling elders. Teaching elders are “ministers of word and sacrament,” while “ruling elders are charged with measuring the spiritual life of a particular church, its ministry, discipline, and the furtherance of the gospel.”[29]

For Presbyterians, ruling elders are not merely “ministers of governance” like Episcopal vestry members or old-time Methodist stewards; “they are real presbyters. They are ordained; set aside for ministry.”[30] While this sense of the importance of these issues is not spelled out in any official Presbyterian document listing the conditions under which it will enter into full communion, the decisiveness of the vote indicates that it is felt by a large majority of clergy and laity.[31]

The other of the seven churches belonging to COCU that rejected the proposal was the Episcopal Church; it was concerned about the lack of clear provision for the transmittal of the historic episcopate. Not all churches of the Reformed tradition, however, shared the reservations of the Presbyterians. The United Church of Christ, the only other Reformed church involved in the Consultation, voted wholeheartedly to accept the proposal.

Reformed Church in America

While the Reformed Church in America was not a member of COCU, it was the third church in the Calvinist tradition to enter into full communion with the ELCA. Since that agreement included a mutual recognition of ministries without imposing one form on all the churches, both the Presbyterians and the RCA were able to enter it. Yet the RCA has the office of elder and, while its members are not specified as “ruling,” that is unnecessary, for ministers of word and sacrament are not referred to as elders. Thus there are ministers, elders, and deacons, who together make up the consistory of a church and can be referred to corporately as its pastorate.[32]

The commissioner from RCA in our group, Donald J. Bruggink, spoke of the RCA’s history of eucharistic hospitality stretching back to the seventeenth century. Agreement in theology, however, was a different matter.

It took thirty-five years of formal theological dialogue to bring the Lutheran and Reformed to the point of recognizing sufficient agreement to realize church communion. All of the churches recognized the Nicene and Apostles Creeds. The mutual suspicions and misunderstandings with reference to what was believed concerning justification by faith, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and ministry were the subject of those decades of discussion.[33]

In a later communication he indicated that the issues of ministry were not the ones that held up agreement so long. Differences were discussed, but the Reformed practice of ordaining elders and deacons, while Lutherans commissioned, and the Lutheran use of bishops while Reformed oversight devolved to the Classis or Presbytery, were not, ultimately, seen as church dividing, and both sides were urged to “affirm and recognize the validity of one another’s ministries” (Invitation 31).[34]

Thus, the “Formula of Agreement” in A Common Calling can say that the four churches involved “recognize each other’s various ministries and make provision for the orderly exchange of ordained ministers of Word and Sacrament.” But Bruggink does not suggest that the office of elder is as central to the RCA’s sense of what it means to be church as the Presbyterians’ rejection of the COCU proposal suggests that it is for theirs.

Consultation on Church Union/Church of Christ Uniting/Churches Uniting in Christ

Since a number of references have been made to COCU, something needs to be said about that group and its relation to full communion. In 1960 the Stated Clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the USA, Eugene Carson Blake, proposed that his church and the Episcopal Church, the Methodist Church, and the United Church of Christ begin discussing the possibility of uniting with one another to form a church that was “truly catholic, truly reformed, and truly evangelical”.[35] In response the Council on Church Union was formed in 1962. A Plan of Union was drawn up by 1970 and another in 1985, but both were rejected, largely because of disagreements about ministry. From there the original four churches and five others that had joined them decided to plan for a covenant relation among separate churches rather than organic unity. In 1999 a provisional agreement was made by the member churches that left the issues concerning ministry to be settled later. This agreement was consummated in 2002 and COCU was succeeded by CUIC (Churches Uniting in Christ).

CUIC was considered in our group at the early stage of our discussions when we were looking at full communion agreements from the inside and the outside. The view from inside was presented by a United Methodist commissioner, Molly Vetter, whose paper, “Toward Koinonia: Some Thoughts on the Churches Uniting in Christ,” will make a contribution to a later stage of this article.[36] The paper of the “outsider,” John T. Ford, CSC, a Roman Catholic, was later published as an article in Ecumenical Trends.[37]

Both the Vetter and the Ford papers, however, call attention to one aspect of the current stage of the agreement that brings the churches involved together, the “pledge to combat systematic white privilege.” This is a particular emphasis within the call to shared mission that is one of the elements of koinonia in a number of the documents studied. It has a particular poignancy in that three long-standing member churches of CUIC are historic black churches in the Methodist tradition: the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion, and the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Vetter calls attention to the importance of this consistency of profession with practice by saying: “Approaching agreement theologically requires careful attention to the inequalities we know socially. It would not be true koinonia if we came to ideological or doctrinal agreement without intentional care to ensure justice in all our inter-relationships.”[38]

Even more strongly, the Report of the Eighteenth Plenary of COCU that sets forth the “visible marks” of CUIC says: “Because systematic skin color privilege militates against the most basic principles of the gospel of justice, in the final analysis there can be no authentic communion in Churches Uniting in Christ with the unchallenged existence of this demonical principality in our midst.”[39]

For the churches of Churches Uniting in Christ the challenging of white privilege is a sine qua non for full communion among themselves. Here we find, then, an instance where the fourth of Canberra’s loci for identifying full communion, “a common mission witnessing to the Gospel of God’s grace to all people and serving the whole creation,” becomes central. For these churches at this time and in this place, a specific form of unity in mission is identified as essential to communion.

International Council of Community Churches

This may be the most appropriate place to consider another of the member groups of CUIC, although they do not have a sine qua non for their communion with others. To the contrary, most of the congregations of the International Council of Community Churches are composed of people from a variety of Christian traditions.  Serving all Christians at communion is the accustomed practice. Thus, according to their ecumenical officer, Herman Harmelink III, a member of our group, “As a participant in Churches Uniting in Christ, the ICCC is working for the broadest possible recognition and reconciliation of ministries, with an attendant acknowledgement of ‘full communion’ between all of the participating churches.”[40]

The concentration of Harmelink’s first remarks was on eucharistic hospitality, but he has since gone on to reflect on the “main forces holding the communion together.”[41] The two that he identifies are the interracial nature of the ICCC and the fact that most of their congregations are “a union of people from many Christian traditions.”[42]

The motivation for community churches was to have just one church in a community, rather than a number of competing congregations and denominations. In this sense, many ICCC people feel that they are post-denominational and do not wish to be called a denomination, but rather a communion.[43]

Also important to the community churches is a consensus about their beliefs, which is summarized in the Nicene Creed, even though they do not ordinarily use creeds in their worship.

Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod

As noted above, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America does not appear to have a version of the essence of life in the body of Christ that does not fit in with Canberra. It does, however, indicate the direction in which a temptation to have one might lie. In its setting forth of its list of elements of koinonia necessary for full communion, it says: “Agreement in the Gospel can be reached and stated without adopting Lutheran confessional formulations as such.”[44] Indeed, the reactions of some of their members to the agreement with the Episcopal Church which calls for episcopal ordination shows that the temptation has not always been resisted.[45]

Other Lutherans, however, are not comfortable in going this far in openness to others’ ways of apprehending the faith. The only basis for unity recognized by the Lutheran Church/Missouri Synod (LCMS) is confessional agreement or agreement in doctrine. It is clearly their sine qua non; for them the essence of full communion or church fellowship lies in doctrinal accord. The presupposition for this confessional accord is the unity created by the Holy Spirit working through the gospel and the sacraments whenever it is preached and they are administered.

They do not ordinarily use the term “full communion.” Instead, they usually speak of “altar and pulpit fellowship.” The forms of koinonia involved in altar and pulpit fellowship have been summarized as follows:

1. Pastors in good standing in each church body may be invited to preach from the pulpits of congregations of the other church body.
2. Congregations of church bodies in fellowship may hold joint worship services.
3. Members of the congregations of each church body who are in good standing in their own congregation and do not violate principles regulating Communion practices in the host congregation shall be welcome guests at the altar of congregations of the other church body.  In the interest of the pastoral care and responsibility of the congregation of which an individual is a member, there should not be an indiscriminate visiting of the altars of churches either within his own church body or at the altars of congregations of that church body with which his church is in fellowship.
Members in good standing may transfer their membership from a congregation of one church body to a congregation of the other church body in conformity with the practices of the receiving congregation.[46]

The Missouri Synod approach to altar and pulpit fellowship cannot be fully understood without reference to their ecclesiology. The executive director of their Commission on Theology and Church Relations, Samuel H. Nafzger, shared with the group a chart on “Inter-Christian Relations” from the LCMS perspective. It distinguishes between “visible Christendom” and the Una Sancta, the true church composed of all who share in the fides qua, the “faith in the heart by which you believe” (as contrasted with the fides quae, the content of the faith which is believed). The precise boundary of this church is invisible, but it is known to be present by the marks of the church, the gospel and sacraments.

There are some within all Christian bodies who belong to the Una Sancta. Thus that church, the true church is one and its ontological unity is the motivation of all LCMS ecumenical activity. “The source of this desire for visible unity in the church was their conviction that there is in fact only one holy Christian Church on earth. The unity of this church is given with the faith that joins all Christians to their one Head, Christ, and to each other.” [47]

The unity of the Una Sancta is also the reason LCMS insists upon confessional agreement:

While the church’s internal unity is perfect and known only to God (Eph. 1:4), the limits of external fellowship are determined by whether the Gospel is preached purely and the sacraments are administered according to Christ’s institution.  The Gospel and the sacraments are in themselves always pure.  In this way they create and pressure the church in her hidden unity throughout the world.  Yet, when church bodies make public confession of the Gospel and the sacraments, tragically some obscure or explicitly contradict the teaching of the Gospel and the proper administration of the sacraments.  For this reason the limits or boundaries of the external fellowship are creeds and confessions.  Churches in altar and pulpit fellowship share the same confession, including the rejection of errors that contradict this confession.  Where churches cannot agree on a common confession, the basis for church fellowship does not exist.[48]

Thus it is clear that doctrinal agreement is of the essence of external unity in the church for the Missouri Synod.

 

 

Churches the Canberra Pattern Does Not Fit

With LCMS we leave the territory in which the elements of koinonia listed by Canberra serve as entree into the essence of life in the body of Christ. The categories in which that is framed for the churches remaining to be considered differ sufficiently from these to require a different approach altogether. Nor is it to be expected that a single pattern will characterize all of these.

Baptists

A case in point is the American Baptist Churches as presented by S. Mark Heim. He distinguishes the concerns of Baptists from those of either Orthodox and Catholics, on the one hand, or those of the churches of the magisterial Reformation, on the other. The first two, he says, depend on a magisterial office for a definitive interpretation of Scripture and tradition. The Protestants, while maintaining a position of Scripture alone, have depended for its correct interpretation upon creeds and confessional formulas, liturgy, and a learned ministry. In contrast to both of these:

Baptists made the distinctive proposal that the local, congregational community should be the primary and determinative instrument in interpreting Scripture. If we want to know what the Bible means or teaches, the best way to proceed is for a small community of committed Christians (“regenerate believers" in the language of our tradition) who know each other face to face and are covenanted together, to pray and counsel with each other and seek God's will. This, Baptists believed, provided the situation in which the Holy Spirit could speak and be heard most freely. The church aimed to be a "theocracy of the Holy Spirit."[49]

This perspective reflects what have been called “Baptist principles” or “Baptist distinctives.” A list of these would be some variation on these points: authority of Scripture, believer's baptism, regenerate Church membership,[50] priesthood of all believers, soul competency (or soul liberty),[51] congregational autonomy, and religious freedom.[52]

This is not a random list of qualities, but a closely interlinked one that grows out of the basic understanding Baptists have of what it means to be church. They have a radically congregational polity in which they expect their members to be regenerate believers who look for the Holy Spirit to direct them in every important decision before them.

Only a community of people voluntarily, personally committed and covenanted, and each devotedly seeking God's will through Scripture, could hope to reach enough agreement to maintain their continuity in the gospel and to live effectively together.[53]

This means that Baptists are not a denomination in the sense of being a communion that can enter into communion with others. Instead, they have associations for consultation and cooperation, but each congregation is autonomous and must, under the guidance of the Spirit, make every important decision for itself. Indeed, with such a polity it is possible that “all of the content of the church's worship and witness could in principle be changed from one week to the next by a decision of the members who fill the pews.”[54] Thus for Baptists the principle purpose of associations is cooperation in mission.

Connected associational life beyond the local congregation is based on covenant. Baptists have not been certain that such association was essential to the church's nature as such, but they have been certain that it was essential to the church's mission and hence their connectional life has always had a strong mission orientation, and relatively little sacramental or organic emphasis.[55]

If the connection that Baptists of one congregation have with those of another of the same association is for cooperation in mission rather than for discerning doctrine, then, a fortiori, relations with other traditions are loose, ad hoc, and liable to be transitory.

Communion in the larger Baptist family is expressed by the willingness to participate together in the same work of mission and witness. This form of relation is easily extended across ostensible denominational lines, particularly among those with an ecclesiology that focuses on the local congregation.[56]

All of which is to say that, while shared mission is element four of the Canberra full communion list, the Canberra vision of the process for inaugurating full communion is difficult to apply to an ecclesiology so congregational as that of the Baptists.

Churches of Christ

How many differences there can be between churches that seem to have similar polity and doctrine is clear when the American Baptists are contrasted with the Churches of Christ. Growing out of the Second Great Awakening in the early nineteenth century, this American-born group “emerged from the larger Stone-Campbell Movement[57] in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the context of bitter fights over doctrine and practice.”[58] Douglas Foster, a commissioner in our group from this tradition, said that these struggles left the Churches of Christ with a sectarian mentality that regarded their members as the only Christians.

Such a development was ironic since the early leaders of the Stone-Campbell movement had sought out generic terms with which to identify themselves precisely to avoid sectarian names that would distance them from other Christians. As one of their leaders said in the middle of the twentieth century: “To apply the terms the church, or the church of God or the church of Christ to any limited number of Christians is to sectarianize these scriptural phrases. . . .  We have, in spite of ourselves, become a sect whose special purpose is to contend against sectarianism.”[59]

Although the Churches of Christ have a fiercely congregational polity, there are three centers of influence that succeeded in creating an informal but real consensus among them that has only begun to collapse in recent years.[60] Those informal accountability/authority structures are the journals of the movement and their editors, well-known traveling evangelists, and the Bible faculties and administrators of their colleges and universities.

The exclusivists among these have used two principal arguments to justify their position. “The first is the strongly held belief in immersion of believers as the invariable point of entry into Christianity - the point at which salvation occurs.”[61] The second grows out of 2 John 9-11:

Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not Christ. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed. For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.[62]

This is understood to mean that one has to accept every statement attributed to Jesus in the New Testament - undoubtedly, as interpreted by the authorities listed above. Since those in other churches have arrived at different conclusions about the meaning of some passages, “members of the church, therefore, cannot have fellowship with those in ‘the denominations’ because they practice doctrinal error.”[63]

It is interesting to compare this understanding of baptism with that of the Baptists. The Churches of Christ consider baptism by immersion to be entry into the church and necessary to salvation, on the basis of Mark 16:16: “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved.”[64] According to Heim, however, there is variety in baptism and belief about it among Baptists. While all consider believer’s baptism to be normative, there are nevertheless those who accept members who were baptized as infants or even never baptized at all.  What is necessary is that church members be regenerate, and that status is established by the testimony of the candidate when applying for admission, a testimony that has to be evaluated first by the deacons or elders and finally by the entire membership.[65] The word “immersion” does not appear in Heim’s paper.

As long as this exclusivist position prevailed, full communion was not an issue of discussion among the Churches of Christ. Now that their position is no longer so unanimous, though, some of their spokespersons are beginning to consider a more flexible approach. Thus F. LaGard Smith recently issued a book in which he recognized a spectrum of degrees of fellowship that stretches from the universal fellowship of all human beings to the intimate fellowship enjoyed by a congregation. In between are the degrees of “faith,” “in Christ,” and “conscience” fellowship.[66] There is no single set of categories by which these gradations are distinguished. Some of them overlap with areas of koinonia listed in the Canberra statement, but most do not. Given the space, it would be profitable to study the list. It will have been noticed that “fellowship” is the term the Churches of Christ use instead of “full communion.” While the exclusive position is no longer absolutely uniform among them, it will likely take time before the issue of full communion occupies much attention in most Churches of Christ.

Church of God, Anderson, Indiana

In marked contrast to the Churches of Christ, the Church of God, Anderson, Indiana, has no formal procedures for the admission of members to its congregations; membership is established by participation in congregational life. It is difficult to fit the Church of God’s thought into such categories as full communion. As its commissioner, Gilbert W. Stafford, said:

It is difficult in that certain assumptions are made, for example that a church has certain requirements for entering into full altar and pulpit fellowship with other churches; that such fellowship will be based on formal ecclesiastical negotiations; and that such agreements are in official, written form.  None of these assumptions fit my tradition’s historic way of being church.[67]

This “network of churches” (Stafford’s term) is a product of the Holiness movement of the nineteenth century. This means that it believes in two experiences or “works of grace,” new birth or conversion by which one is saved and “entire sanctification” or “perfection.” What distinguishes the Church of God, Anderson, from the rest of the Holiness movement is the insistence of its founder Daniel Sydney Warner that “holiness of heart and life is inextricably bound up with ecclesiological understandings.”[68]

In Warner’s view, the new birth places one in the one and only universal church. No distinction whatsoever is to be made between the new birth and membership in the one universal church. One could refer to this as a kind of Christian unity by default, that is, whether one is aware of it or not, all believers are at one by virtue of the new birth. But beyond this unity by default is the active experience of unity made possible by entire sanctification, or the perfection of love (i.e., the whole hearted love of God, of God’s people, and of God’s world). [69]

It is to be noted that perfection is not a gift of flawlessness, but is precisely the experience of awareness of the unity of the church and love for it. This wholehearted love of God, of God’s people, and of God’s world is what “full communion” would mean to someone in this tradition. It can even be referred to as “seeing the church.”

It happens in conversation, in prayer, and in the sharing of testimonies. It happens in corporate worship when the gathered community experiences the presence of Christ. It happens when Christian people connect with each other and sense the witness of the Spirit, the bond of love, unity of purpose, the urgency of mission, and empowerment for service.[70]

Thus it comes as a shock to members of the Church of God to learn that some traditions believe that full communion can be achieved by formal ecclesiastical negotiations. They would say first that such negotiations are not necessary and that they can in no way guarantee the experience.

Hypothetically, however, Stafford is able to imagine what it would take for his and another network of churches to have a formal relationship in which “the ordained ministers would be mutually acceptable, our worship life harmonious, our churches listed in each other’s annual publications, and our resources merged for common mission.”[71] For such an achievement, agreement in a number of matters would be necessary. These include understanding the church as a group of disciples continually being taught at the feet of Christ, belief in his atoning death and resurrection, and living out one’s baptism by being dead to sin and alive to Christ. The shared doctrine of God would include full Trinitarian faith and acknowledgement of both the full divinity and the full humanity of Christ.

In addition, agreement on the following would be necessary:

a) salvation as being synonymous with membership in God’s one universal church. . .
b) it is the will for God to do a perfecting work in the lives of believers prior to death. . .
c) the kingdom of God was inaugurated by Jesus the Christ, is manifested in hearts made pure by faith, and will be brought to consummation at the return of Christ when world history will end and the saints will be gathered into heaven; and
d) believer’s baptism by immersion, the Lord’s Supper as the universal meal of our Lord presided over and superintended by the Lord for all of his people, and feet washing as the supreme model of our Lord’s ministry, of our various ministries in the church, and of our relations with each other.[72]

As noted above, however, such negotiations are not necessary from the perspective of the Church of God. “What is necessary is prayer, worship, sharing, and caring for each other.”[73]

Assemblies of God

This sense of unity that exists automatically is close to the understanding of the Assemblies of God, as explained by Frank Macchia, a member of another study group who assisted us by presenting a Pentecostal perspective on full communion. He said that Pentecostal churches in general have not thought much about visible unity. While it was a goal of the pioneers of the movement, “their vision of visible unity faded with the gradual desire to gain the acceptance of their more ecclesiastically and socially established siblings in the Evangelical movement and their acceptance of eschatological visions of the future that feared a ‘world church’ of the antichrist.”[74]

But the leaders of the Assemblies of God would not see a need for the sort of formal negotiations for a relation of full communion envisioned in the Canberra model. Though they may have much in common doctrinally with other Pentecostal churches, there is no need to establish a formal full communion that would imply doctrinal unity within diversity, for they are already one in the Spirit of God and that is the unity that is really essential for Christianity.[75]

As Macchia points out, this is related to their ecclesiological self-understanding. The leadership of the A/G still tends to see itself as a movement of churches united by the Spirit of God, faith in Jesus, and the mission of God in the world. As such, they tend not to think of "full communion" on a corporate or structural level, but instead on an individual, ad hoc, and spiritual level.[76]

Thus if other Christians are present when they celebrate the Eucharist, they are welcome to receive. Unity can also be expressed in missionary activity jointly undertaken, at least with Evangelical and other Pentecostal groups, but always through ad hoc decision about the particular activity.

While Macchia feels that something is lost in having this as the only sort of unity considered by Pentecostals, he also regards it as an important aspect of unity likely to be neglected by the churches that negotiate relations of full communion.

With the loss of the goal of visible unity, the individualist unity in the Spirit that could have augmented the goal of visible unity as a legitimate pneumatological emphasis, among others, moved in to fill the vacuum as the only emphasis.[77] Thus at present even seeing the desirability of wider church associations than they now have seems a long way off for the Assemblies of God. Their members would be suspicious of any ties to other bodies that would seem to minimize their distinctive doctrines. Yet they have a deep understanding of unity in the Spirit that could be a valuable addition to other bodies engaged in ecumenical activity.

Religious Society of Friends

Most of the churches for whom the Canberra model does not fit have an emphasis on religious experience that focuses on inward spiritual change brought about by the Holy Spirit. The presentation of Paul Anderson, a commissioner from Evangelical Friends International, shows that Quaker belief fits that pattern in many ways.[78] As Anderson says, “Friends believe that full communion, or Koinonia fellowship, is a spiritual reality availed to all who respond to the loving grace of God in faith and who live responsively under the leadership of the present Christ in faithfulness.”[79]

Quakers do not assume that this experience is limited to their group. Rather, they are taught by their founder George Fox to seek “that of God in everyone.”[80] Thus “Friends have therefore been keen to recognize the workings of Christ within all sectors of Christianity, and even beyond.”[81] As an illustration of this principle, Anderson points to an experience of John Woolman when he tried to preach to Delaware Indians through Moravian interpreters: he found that divine love was felt more strongly after efforts to translate were given up. Anderson also describes this sort of experience as being “‘gathered’ by Christ into spiritual unity.”[82] This sounds very much like the experience of “seeing the church” described by Gilbert Stafford above.

Something about Anderson’s presentation that could be surprising to non-Friends is his insistence that “because Friends do not resort to outward sacramental rites they are often considered non-sacramental, but this is not the case.”[83] An Episcopal way of translating what he says would be that Friends experience the grace of the sacrament without the matter of the sacrament,[84] and do so more fully for that very reason. For instance, they hold that the baptism of Christ is that of fire and the Holy Spirit rather than the water baptism of John. And they feel that they experience communion of the Real Presence of Christ in their unprogrammed meetings for worship.

As a result, they feel left out by the document on Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry from the 1982 meeting of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches in Lima, Peru “because their expressions were Spirit-based rather than formalistic.”[85] This problem was addressed in the Canberra statement in the section that calls upon churches to act on the agreement they already have. While discussing the forms of eucharistic hospitality that could be appropriate in the light of convergence in faith in baptism, Eucharist, and ministry, it goes on to say: “we gladly acknowledge that some who do not observe these rites share in the spiritual experience of life in Christ.”[86]

Mega-Church Movement

While our survey has been by no means exhaustive, it has aimed at being comprehensive of major variations in approaches to the closest possible bond between Christian communities. It thus occurred to us that a major phenomenon in contemporary American Christianity is what is called the “mega-church movement.” As there were no representatives of that tradition in our group, we asked Gilbert Stafford to request a statement from one of its leading theologians, Professor Gilbert Bilezekian of Trinity Evangelical University. Bilezekian’s thought is the inspiration of Willow Creek Church in South Barrington, Illinois. At first, Bilezekian refused the request, saying:

Because the seeker or mega-church movement cuts across denominational lines, many churches that fit in that category keep faith with the polities of their particular affiliations.  As for independent churches, since they do not adhere to uniform policies relative to fellowship matters, each local body acts on the basis of its own rules or lack of them.  This is often the domain of separatist or exclusive groups whose practices, when fellowship is an option, vary ad infinitum.  I would be at a loss to find enough coherence among them to describe their practice of full communion when their very raison d'etre is often the rejection of inter-church communion.[87]

When he later granted permission[88] for us to use his communication as an “an example of at least one viewpoint expressed by one theologian who has a long-standing relationship within the seeker or mega-church movement,”[89] he went on to say:

Such churches may indeed interrelate among themselves at the level of associative networks designed for sharing information and resources. But their fellowship protocols are generally confined to the internal life of congregations that view themselves as self-contained and self-sufficient entities. It is no accident that their favored self-designation is “Community Church” affixed to the name of the locality.[90]

This represents one end of the spectrum of degrees to which the Canberra pattern of koinonia applies. The experience of these congregations of what it means to be church does not include any need for wider fellowship. Instead, some mega-churches suggest new and different directions toward full communion that transcend denominational structures.

Conclusion

This brings us to the end of our consideration of the various approaches and alternatives to full communion in the thought of the Christian bodies surveyed. There are still other bodies to be heard from and providing opportunity for that will be part of the agenda for the new quadrennium. The main result of this provisional study, however, has been to see that many of the churches that use the Canberra model find their own sense of the essence of in the Body of Christ to lie in a sine qua non that the koinonia categories really do not touch. Other traditions find the entire Canberra mode of stating things to be foreign to their way of thinking.

Phrased this way, our conclusions sound rather pessimistic. Yet it is at least possible that what appears so negative may be one of the most promising aspects of our study. A way forward seems indicated by something in the Canberra statement, a suggestion that there is value in diversity:

Diversities which are rooted in theological traditions, various cultural, ethnic or historical contexts are integral to the nature of communion; yet there are limits to diversity. Diversity is illegitimate when, for instance, it makes impossible the common confession of Jesus Christ as God and Saviour the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8); salvation and the final destiny of humanity as proclaimed in Holy Scripture and preached by the apostolic community. In communion diversities are brought together in harmony as gifts of the Holy Spirit, contributing to the richness and fullness of the Church of God.[91]

Cardinal Kasper also suggests a value to diversity in speaking about the Petrine ministry, the sine qua non of his tradition. He begins with the general principle that “the ecumenical process is not a one-way street in which only others have to learn from us and, ultimately, to join us. Ecumenism happens by way of a mutual exchange of gifts and mutual enrichment (UUS 28).” [92] After specifying some of the things in other traditions that he thinks would enrich his church, he goes one to say:

The Catholic Church is convinced that its institutional "elements", such as episcopacy and the Petrine ministry, are gifts of the Spirit for all Christians; therefore, it wants to offer them as a contribution in a spiritually renewed form to the ideal of fuller ecumenical unity. This does not mean association, or the insertion of other Christians into a given "system" but mutual enrichment. The closer we come to Christ in this way, the closer we come to each other in order, ultimately, to be fully one in Christ.[93]

Cardinal Kasper’s words recall to mind some of those from Molly Vetter’s paper on CUIC:

Drawing from the necessity of bio-diversity, as well as the danger of bio-similarity, I would suggest that our religio-diversity strengthens our sustainability. We can adaptively respond to God’s call better when we retain diversities in our church structures. We can respond to the needs of the world better when we approach them from a variety of perspectives. . . . The fullness of our communion may happen not in our subscribing fully to any one particular doctrine or plan, but in our fullness of diversity. [94]

At the close of our time together in this first four year study period on the topic of full communion, one of the more senior members of our group reflected:

When I first began to glimpse something of the ecumenical vision in the early sixties, it occurred to me that in our separation God was allowing each tradition to explore one or more facets of the divine glory, and the results of their exploration would be what each brought to the reunited church so that we could all profit from one another’s experience and be mutually enriched by one another’s gifts. An analogy can be seen in the way that all the many religious orders in the Roman Catholic Church have their own individual charisms. These, however, are not regarded as antithetical to one another, but as mutually complementary. About the time this occurred to me, I came across H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture.[95]  One of the important principles of this book is an expression that Niebuhr attributed to the nineteenth-century Anglican theologian, Frederick Dennison Maurice, that people are “generally right in what they affirmed and wrong in what they denied.”[96] The use of this hermeneutical principle might make it possible for the way that each tradition has experienced the essence of life in the Body to become the common treasure of all.

That would be full communion indeed.

 

Members of the 2000-2003 Full Communion Study Group

Co-chairs:

Sr. Dr. Lorelei F. Fuchs, SA         Roman Catholic Church

Rev. Dr. O.C. Edwards, Jr.         The Episcopal Church

Members:

Rev. Dr. Paul Anderson               Religious Society of Friends

Rev. Dr. Donald J. Bruggink        Reformed Church in America

Rev. Dr. John T. Ford, CSC         Roman Catholic Church

Rev. Dr. Douglas A. Foster         Churches of Christ

Rev. Herman Harmelink, III        Intl Council of Community Churches

Rev. Dr. H. Mark Heim               American Baptist Churches

Dr. Paul Meyendorff                   Orthodox Church in America

Rev. Dr. Samuel H. Nafzger       Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod

Rev. Dr. Gilbert W. Stafford        Church of God, Anderson, IN

Rev. Dr. William L. Steele          Presbyterian Church (USA)

Rev. Molly Vetter                       United Methodist Church