Wait, Wait… How is Ecumenism Even Possible?

Peo­ple who are pas­sion­ate about the­ol­ogy are often skep­ti­cal about ecu­menism. (I should know; I used to be there myself.) At first blush, ecu­menism seeks to ask every­one to sell out: sac­ri­fice pre­cious con­vic­tions, or I’ll give up this if you give up that, or ratchet every­thing down to the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor. Ugh. The result­ing Chris­tian­ity would be too bor­ing even to contemplate.

In a good many cases of Chris­t­ian divi­sion, the mat­ters over which we were divided were con­sid­ered so seri­ous as to be worth going to war over. They were seen as the choice between truth and heresy, between the real gospel and false reli­gion, between Christ’s own church and some dis­torted imi­ta­tion of it.

So it’s a good ques­tion: if we dis­agreed about things so bit­terly in the past that we became sep­a­rate churches, how can we pos­si­bly claim to agree about them today?

Agree­ment can exist today over things that were dis­puted in the past in three ways: 1) there was a mis­un­der­stand­ing in the past; 2) there were dif­fer­ent tra­di­tions at work within the churches of the past; and 3) the churches have in fact changed over time.

We’ll start with mis­un­der­stand­ings today and save the oth­ers for tomor­row and the next day.

Here’s a case of mis­un­der­stand­ing. Not long after Luther came on the scene and the Ref­or­ma­tion started get­ting under­way, some Chris­tians came to the con­clu­sion that infant bap­tism was worth­less. Although they them­selves had been bap­tized as infants, they decided to be bap­tized as adults upon their own pro­fes­sion of faith and com­mit­ment to lead a Christ­like life. Luther­ans and oth­ers named them “Anabap­tists” (re-baptizers), though of course from the Anabap­tists’ point of view they were get­ting bap­tized for the first time. These Anabap­tists are the fore­run­ners of today’s Mennonites.

As with all new move­ments, the Anabap­tist started out a bit wild and woolly. There were many dif­fer­ent Anabap­tists claim­ing many dif­fer­ent things, and it took awhile for the dust to set­tle and a clear cen­ter to emerge. Cer­tain mar­ginal extrem­ists among the Anabap­tists claimed “that the Holy Spirit comes to human beings with­out the exter­nal Word through their own prepa­ra­tions and works”—and that’s what Luther­ans zeroed in on, so this phrase was inserted and pre­served in the Augs­burg Con­fes­sion (Arti­cle v), which is the Lutheran “char­ter” doc­u­ment, so to speak. Pretty much ever since then, Luther­ans have assumed that Anabaptists/Mennonites stuck to this idea, that even the Scrip­tures aren’t really nec­es­sary for Christians.

Well, Luther­ans were right to con­demn that position—but they were wrong to think that Anabap­tists and Men­non­ites through the cen­turies have believed it. Almost imme­di­ately it was excluded. Men­non­ites actu­ally share the Lutheran con­dem­na­tion of that posi­tion. It was only in recent decades, and espe­cially through the work of the Inter­na­tional Lutheran-Mennonite Study Com­mis­sion, that this long­stand­ing “dis­agree­ment” was resolved. In fact there was no dis­agree­ment at all, just a misunderstanding.

paul sailhamer says:
September 7, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Inter­est­ing point, how­ever, why did the “anabap­tist” come to the con­clu­sion that believ­ers should be bap­tized as adults or upon their own con­fes­sion of their faith rather than as infants? It seems that is the larger ques­tion. Maybe you will get to it tomor­row?
Enjoy­ing fol­low­ing your trek,
psailhamer
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Sarah Wilson says:
September 10, 2010 at 10:48 pm
There is no direct report of an infant bap­tism in the NT, and they saw lots of bap­tized infants who grew into adults with no mean­ing­ful Chris­t­ian faith, so they drew the con­clu­sion that bap­tism should be a human response to will­ingly accepted Chris­t­ian faith. That remains to be worked out between Luther­ans and Men­non­ites, and what has hap­pened so far doesn’t solve it, but it does make that dis­cus­sion pos­si­ble for the first time.
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