John Zizioulas in his recent book Communion and Otherness
Within Eucharist communion is affirmed and sanctified as well as otherness. It is a place where difference does not lead to division, but is good. We are all brethren in Christ within and by the Eucharistic bond. Through this bond, division can be released from it’s hold on the community at large.
For the Eucharist to be the solution to our divisions, the ecumenical crises of the Church in the cafeteria Christianity we find in the multiplicity of denomination driven by history and schism. How do we overcome and identify heresy and schism to overcome this in order to recover a path to true Eucharist and a healing of the division in our world?
Adiaphora and authority highlight two of the key stumbling blocks in our movement to a unified church. What about our differences makes us refuse communion between our different denominational walls? Zizioulas notes that heresy is to be kept apart from communion, because improper notions (heresy) lead to improper praxis and ethics. So it is proper to exclude from communion those who are heretical. But, on the other hand, the reverse is equally true. It is required to admit into communion those who are not and who are out of each others circle. Each faith and denomination typically has a confession, a written document expounding what they believe. Less structured, it seems, is a statement of what latitude is permitted. The Reformed and the Arminian have differences in interpretation of doctrines of justification and election. But, one might wonder are those differences so large as to deny communion? It may make sense for those different believers to gather together in different parish communities. Within parishes interest groups form, the altar guilds, the choirs, the kitchen ladies, etc. Parishes holding to different beliefs held as adiaphora might also gather in groups holding to their separate beliefs. Alternatively parishes might, in immigrant communities, might hold together to keep ethnic memories alive, places where the old and young can remember and keep language and custom alive in a new land. But there is also a call for parishes which have a mix of Reformed, Arminian, and all the ethnic communities all together. Our theologians and church leaders perhaps need set up lines of demarcation more clearly. What denominations are within which boundaries of adiaphora? Is there an “adiaphoric” map made of the denominational clusters? It seems to me our denominations are more careful to state the boundaries of what they do believe and less to state the scope of the region where differences are ok.
The (A?) second problem holding back ecumenism is authority (property?). For 1400 years or so, the Church was under the office of the Episcopate. Bishops held the office whose primary responsibility is (was?) unity. Councils set doctrine. Bishops kept the church unified by rhetoric and the authority of the office. Many, if not most, denominations in the western world today do not look to the episcopate any longer. Even those that do, for example the well publicized ECUSA/Anglican divisiveness, one might ask whether the episcopate is a force for unity in that example.
Thank you for this very different take on ecumenism. Most blogs either are totally against it; or, for it without any specific guidelines as to theological postions and what constitutes heresy. Your post is a rare one in that it goes further to help us resolve these questions. I do hope you will do another one that even goes more specifically into this very important topic. Please email me if you do another one on this topic. Thanks.