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Problems with the Meaning of Full Communion
By O.C. Edwards, Jr.
When the group of American Faith and Order commissioners assigned to study “full communion” during the new quadrennium first met in March 2000, our task seemed simple enough. 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. Instead, a number of traditions use the term “full communion” but do so in different ways, while 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 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.
Before our group realized the lack of clarity in the term, we tried to discover its meaning by considering full communion agreements that are in operation. We had two papers on each of the ones examined, one by someone from one of the traditions that was party to the agreement and the other by someone outside it. Each paper was to do two things. First it was to see if agreement could be phrased in the language of “The Unity of the Church: Gift and Calling,” the Faith and Order document adopted by the Seventh Assembly of the World Council of Churches held in Canberra, Australia in 1991. The second was to discuss how the agreement is actually being lived out by the churches that are party to it.
The key term in the Canberra document was the Greek word koinonia, a term used in the New Testament to embrace a range of meanings, including fellowship, close mutual relationship, participation, sharing in, partnership, contribution, and gift. Perhaps the nearest English equivalent to koinonia is “communion.”
We knew at the time that full communion was not just a matter of eucharistic sharing, that it included sharing in a number of other elements in the life of the church as well. The way the term is used in the Canberra Statement was appropriate to this understanding. Canberra speaks of a koinonia given and expressed in
1. the common confession of apostolic faith;
2. a common sacramental life entered by the one baptism and celebrated together in one eucharistic fellowship
3. a common life in which members and ministries are mutually recognized and reconciled;
4. a common mission witnessing to the Gospel of God’s grace to all people and serving the whole creation.
The Statement then goes on to offer a strategy for achieving full communion embodying those elements.
At first we found no difficulty analyzing full communion agreements in terms of the Canberra elements of koinonia because many churches can achieve full communion that way without distorting the essence of the life of the Body of Christ as they perceive it. That can be seen in the full communion agreements that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has reached with the Episcopal Church, on the one hand, and a group of churches in the Reformed tradition on the other.
The ELCA, for instance, has a list of the “theological and missiological implications of the Gospel” that they regard as the “characteristics of full communion.” This list is the Canberra list with two differences. The first is a provision for joint decision-making that gives reality to the other commitments, and the second is a mutual lifting of condemnations that reflects Lutheran history in which anathemas were given and received.
One of ELCA’s dialogue partners, the Episcopal Church, has had a list since the late 1880’s of the common elements needed for it to unite with other Christian bodies, the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. These are the Bible, the ancient creeds, baptism and eucharist, and the historic episcopate. While neither Canberra nor the ELCA list specifies the historic episcopate, Canberra was based on the recommendations of the WCC Faith and Order document on Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry that included it, and ELCA accepted it as the way ministries of the two churches would be reconciled. Since the acceptance of the Bible could go without saying for Canberra and ELCA, the three lists would seem functional equivalents of one another.
That is, it would until the agreement between ELCA with the Episcopalians is compared to the one they made with the Presbyterian Church, USA; the United Church of Christ; and the Reformed Church in America. None of those churches has the historic episcopate and nothing was said about their acquiring it. Thus, for all their apparent similarity, these lists of the conditions for full communion are not quite the same.
This problem of similarity obscuring deep differences can be seen by looking at another list that sounds very much like those already discussed. Roman Catholics speak of three bonds of unity in the church, unity in faith, in worship, and in ministry. As one of their members of our commission pointed out, unity in ministry involves the Petrine ministry of papal primacy.
This recognition that the Episcopal Church makes the historic episcopate a prerequisite for full communion and that the Roman Catholic Church does the same with the Petrine ministry demanded our attention. It showed that while both churches can employ the koinonia language of Canberra to talk about full communion, each reserves an additional element that is for them a sine qua non for such a relation. The recognition that each of these traditions has an element that for them is a non-negotiable condition for full unity opened the possibility that koinonia language does not always get to the heart of the matter, that different churches have their individual commitments to what for them is the essence of life in the Body of Christ.
The possibility became a certainty when our group looked at some other churches for whom the Canberra categories are appropriate descriptions of much of their life. Our Orthodox commissioner, for instance, said that the principle of church organization for his tradition is territorial, and that it would reject any denominational model that allowed parallel church bodies in the same geographical area. He went on to admit that, since the rise of Communism in Easter Europe, the situation of Orthodoxy in North America has not followed that territorial principle, but he said that all recognize that situation to be an anomaly and a scandal.
Alerted by this discovery, our group went on to identify such non-negotiable elements in other communions. Our Presbyterian commissioner suggested that a de facto one, if not a theoretical one, for his church could be their belief that ruling elders are not just ministers of governance. Rather, they are ordained presbyters as truly as the teaching elders who are ministers of word and sacrament. It was that conviction, he said, as well as opposition to the historic episcopate, that caused 104 out of 170 presbyteries to vote against approving the original proposal of the Consultation on Church Union (COCU). This principle did not deter the United Church of Christ, the other Reformed body in the original consultation, from giving the proposal full support. Nor does it seem to be an issue for the Reformed Church in America, the third Reformed church in the full communion agreement with ELCA.
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 1962 the Presbyterian Church in the USA, the Episcopal Church, the Methodist Church, and the United Church of Christ formed the Council on Church Union to begin discussing the possibility of uniting with one another to form a church that would be “truly catholic, truly reformed, and truly evangelical.” In time five other churches joined them. A Plan of Union was drawn up by 1970 and another in 1985, but both were rejected, largely because of disagreements about ministry. Since then the goal has changed from organic unity to a covenant relation among separate churches. In 1999 the member churches made a provisional agreement 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).
Three of the five churches that joined the initial four were historic black churches in the Wesleyan tradition: the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion, and the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Understandably, then, the Report of the Eighteenth Plenary of COCU includes among the “visible marks” of CUIC it sets forth the pledge to combat systematic white privilege. This could be a “heart of the matter” issue for the black churches involved. Having been disappointed so often by the white churches’ lack of persistence in combating racism, they could feel that this is a “put up or shut up” situation.
A communion that is quite explicit about its own sine qua non is the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (LCMS). Believing, as Luther did, that there is only one church of all the faithful but that this has to be distinguished from “visible Christendom,” LCMS says that external fellowship may be shared only with bodies in which the gospel is preached purely and the sacraments are rightly administered. To make sure that the gospel is preached purely, churches entering into altar and pulpit fellowship must share the same confession of faith, which is embodied in the historic Lutheran documents.
From all this it can be seen that there are a number of churches that, although some have an additional element that for them is the key to full communion, the elements of koinonia listed by Canberra nevertheless serve as entrée into they way they understand the essence of life in the body of Christ. The remaining churches to be looked at, however, have basic understandings of what it means to be church that have very little in common with the elements of koinonia listed in the Canberra statement.
Baptists are a good case in point. They think that the local congregation (the real locus of church for them) is made up of believers who have been born again: indeed, they are not baptized until they can demonstrate their condition. Their task is to discern the will of God for them as it is revealed in scripture and they do that by coming to agreement over the meaning of what is said in the Bible. They thus constitute a priesthood of believers and need no authority beyond themselves. To exercise that priesthood, their freedom of conscience must be recognized. This process of discernment happens in congregations that are autonomous, and freedom of religion is a presupposition of it. In the perspective of such congregationalism, the concept of full communion between denominations is alien. Association is based on shared mission rather than any sacramental or organic relation.
Another instance is the Churches of Christ. These churches grew out of the Second Great Awakening in the 19
th century in movements founded by Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell, who sought to restore Christianity to its New Testament purity. While their generic name originally was an effort not to distance themselves from other Christians, the Churches of Christ over time came to see themselves as the only Christians. Thus for them, full communion with another body would be apostasy. They interpreted 2 John 9-11 to mean that they had to accept every statement attributed to Jesus in the New Testament, understanding it in the sense in which their leaders interpreted it. Since people in other churches interpret the statements differently, fellowship with them would be fellowship with error. While this exclusivist position is no longer absolutely uniform among the Churches of Christ, it will probably take time before the issue of full communion occupies much attention in most Churches of Christ.A third tradition for which the koinonia categories of Canberra simply do not fit is that of the Church of God, Anderson, Indiana. This group grew out of the Holiness movement of the 19th century and thus talks of two experiences or “works of grace,” conversion and “entire perfection” or “sanctification.” New birth makes one a member of the one and only universal church. Thus the Church of God has no formal procedures for the admission of members; one becomes a member of a congregation by participating in its life. And it is within the life of the congregation that sanctification occurs. This second work of grace is not understood as the achievement of moral perfection, but precisely as being overcome with love for God, for God’s people, and God’s world. It is especially an awareness of the unity of the church that can be described as “seeing the church.” This awareness comes upon the sanctified especially in worship and times of spiritual sharing. And if full communion were a term used in this network of churches, it would refer to this experience. Yet the experience is not limited to the particular network of churches; one can have it across denominational lines. But formal negotiations between bodies are not necessary for it and cannot guarantee the experience.
Similar to the Holiness perspective of the Church of God, Anderson, is the Pentecostal one of the Assemblies of God. They see no need to establish formal relations of full communion with other Pentecostal churches because they are already one in the Spirit. Or, more precisely, those who have received the gifts of the Spirit in any of these churches are already at one with each other. The commissioner from the Assemblies of God admitted that there are limits to this perspective in that it restricts rapprochement with non-Pentecostal churches, but insists as well that there is an understanding here of what it really means to be one in Christ that formal negotiations for full communion cannot guarantee.
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 our commissioner from the Evangelical Friends International showed that Quaker belief fits that pattern in many ways. His way of stating their position was that full communion or koinonia is a spiritual reality that is experienced by all who respond to the grace of God and try to live in faithfulness. He also said that, while Friends do not use outward and visible signs to convey the grace of sacraments, they are nevertheless sacramentalists. Indeed, he seemed to feel that the grace of sacraments can be experienced more fully apart from outward signs. Thus Friends do not have John the Baptist’s water baptism but have instead Jesus’ baptism of fire and the Holy Spirit. And they feel that they experience communion of the Real Presence of Christ in their unprogrammed meetings for worship.
This situation of groups like Quakers who do not use the matter of sacraments is addressed in the Canberra statement in its discussion of the forms of eucharistic hospitality that could be appropriate in the light of convergence in faith, and in baptism, eucharist and ministry. There it says that “we gladly acknowledge that some who do not observe these rites share in the spiritual experience of life in Christ.”
Our full communion study group also took cognizance of a growing phenomenon in American Christianity, the mega-churches, and consulted through the mail Dr. Gilbert Bilezekian of Trinity Evangelical University, whose thought is the inspiration of Willow Creek Church in South Barrington, Illinois. At first he was reluctant to respond, saying, “I would be at a loss to find enough coherence among them to describe their practice of full communion when their very raison d’être is often the rejection of inter-church communion.” He went on to say, however,
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.
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.
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. The main result of this study 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. Either that or the churches belong to traditions that 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. That suggestion
was picked up by one of our older members, who said:
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. About the time this occurred to me, I came across H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture. 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." The use of this hermeneutical principle could 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 Full Communion Study Group
Sr. Lorelei Fuchs, SA Roman Catholic Church
Rev. Dr. O.C. Edwards, Jr. The Episcopal Church
Rev. Dr. Paul Anderson Society of Friends
Rev. Dr. Donald Bruggink Reformed Church in America
Rev. Dr. John Ford Roman Catholic Church
Rev. Dr. Douglas Foster Churches of Christ
Rev. Dr. H. Mark Heim American Baptist Churches
Dr. Paul Meyendorff Orthodox Church of America
Rev. Dr. Samuel Nafzger Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod
Rev. Dr. Gilbert Stafford Church of God, Anderson, IN
Rev. Dr. Bill Steele Presbyterian Church (USA)
Rev. Molly Vetter United Methodist Church