Kuncheria Pathil, C.M.I., Professor of Theology, Bangalore, India

The first and second millennia witnessed several tragic divisions and fragmentation in the one Church of Jesus Christ. On the ecclesial landscape, today we have several hundred Christian denominations vying with each other, each one claiming to possess the absolute truth and casting aspersions on others as “heretics” and “schismatics” or as defective in matters of “faith and order.” Does the third millennium give us the hope of the realization of the Lord’s prayer, “May they all be one, Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you so that the world may believe it was you who sent me Uohn 17:21)? Is there any real possibility in the third millennium for One Reunited Church, for reconciliation among the divided churches and the rediscovery of their wholeness? Has the ecumenical movement of the 20th century any bright prospect in the emerging third millennium? The answer to this question depends upon the vision we entertain with regard to the one rednited church.

What is our vision of an Ecumenical Church that could emerge in the third millennium? Unity of the Church can no more be conceived as a return of the other churches as prodigals to the Roman Catholic Church and its monolithic unity. Nor is it a return of all to the Orthodox Church or one Protestant Church like the Church of South India. Diversity of the churches should not be looked upon as a problem or as the root-cause of divisions. On the contrary, a rich variety and diversity of churches was not the only fact but also the norm ever since the inception of the Church. So, any movement for uniformity should be dismissed as a distorted vision of unity.

The vision of One Reunited Church calls for a Copernican Revolution: among the churches. We shall not regard the other churches as planets rotating around our own church as if we are the centre1. Every church must be ready to abandon the concept of unity centred around it. No one church is at the centre, but Jesus Christ is at the centre of all the churches. The way to unity is the movement towards the centre who is Jesus Christ. When all churches move towards the centre, they will be closer to each other, as different points at the circumference of a circle are closer to each other when they move towards the centre of the circle. It calls for a radical renewal or conversion, metanoia, on the part of every church by focusing on Christ.

The one reunited Church will be a fellowship or communion of different churches, united in one common faith. But each church will be different and unique, autocephalous or self-governing and autonomous (with its own norms, structures, theology and traditions). It will be a “unity in diversity.” No church will be under any other church. No church will be superior to others. No church will dictate to other churches. It will be a brotherly or sisterly communion. Members and ministers of any church will be welcome in all churches. They will have communion in the celebration of each other’s sacraments and worship. This was exactly the vision and practice of the early churches.

The Rediscovery of the Original Vision

It would be naive to think that the early church was a homogeneous group with a uniform organizational and administrative system headed by Peter or any other apostle. On the contrary, it was a fellowship of different local churches characterized by enormous diversity in forms of organization and administration, in the pattern of worship, and in the articulation and formulation of faith and doctrines. This diversity flowed spontaneously from their different historical, cultural, socio-economic, political and religious contexts.2

The first Christian community, that of Jerusalem, consisted of the apostles, the disciples and the first followers of Christ, all drawn from Judaism. It was a typically “Jewish Church” in its beliefs, rituals, prayers, life-style and community organization centred around the “Council of Elders.” They continued all the Old Testament traditions, attended the temple and the synagogue, but accepted Jesus Christ as the Messiah whom their own Old Testament traditions announced. The separation between Judaism and Christianity happened later by a gradual historical process.

From Jerusalem and its surroundings, Christianity gradually spread to Antioch, and from Antioch to the gentile world of Asia Minor, Greece and Rome. These new missionary churches were quite different from the Jewish churches in their life-style and approach to other cultures and nations. The emergence of Hellenistic and Gentile Christianity vis-à-vis Jewish Christianity triggered a host of tensions and conflicts among the early Christian communities.

The problem had showed itself already within the Jerusalem Church in the tension between the “Hellenists” and the “Hebrews” (Acts 6: 1-7). Diaspora Jews who had settled in Jerusalem, the Hellenists were at home in the Greek language and culture. The Hebrews were the native Palestinian Jews who strictly adhered to Hebrew and Aramaic language and culture. The Hellenists complained of discrimination and the Apostles gave justice to the Hellenists by appointing as leaders their representatives like Stephen. It was these Hellenists who were the pioneers of the mission in the gentile world and the founders of a new type of churches, indeed with the approval and under the guidance of Peter and Paul.

The Acts of the Apostles narrates vividly the story of the struggles of these new missionary churches (Hellenistic and Gentile Churches) to break away from Hebrew traditions of their Mother church in Jerusalem. The Mother Church was first unwilling to approve the emergence of the Hellenistic and Gentile Churches which were quite different in their life-style and traditions. The Jewish Christians insisted that the new Gentile Christians should accept and practice the whole of “the Law and Prophets” including the rite of circumcision. This narrow view held by the Jewish Christians was challenged by the Hellenist arid Gentile Christians whom the Council of Jerusalem supported with the ruling that the Jewish law and traditions should not be imposed on the new Gentile Christians (Acts, 15). The first ecumenical council thus had a pluralistic approach to the ecclesial traditions. Its vision was not a Church with uniformity, but, a communion of different individual churches.

There are clear indications in the New Testament of the existence of other types of Christian communities. Some of them shared the apocalyptic hope of the period and eagerly waited for the second co’ming of Christ who would establish the Messianic Kingdom3. Some other communities, e.g., the early Pauline Communities, were characterized predominantly by the charismatic element. There were still other churches which were more institutionalized and organized with the patterns of the episcopal ministry and other well-established traditions as seen in the Pastoral Letters. But all these different types of churches coexisted and had full communion with each other, provided they all adhered to the central Christological faith that Jesus is fully God and fully man, that He is God and Saviour.

Today we have to rediscover this original vision of the church as a communion of different types of churches, united in the central Christological faith but different in the expressions and life-style of this faith determined by the historical, cultural and social contexts of each.

Types of Churches Today

The churches today do not have uninterrupted historical continuity with the New Testament ecclesial types we have outlined. The New Testament types gave way to the development of other new types of churches. The conversion of Emperor Constantine and the identification of the Church with the Roman Empire was a decisive event in the evolution of the churches. Some important centres in the empire and the churches therein exerted influence on the surrounding regions, and slowly the churches in the Roman Empire were organized broadly under the five Patriarchates - Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Constantinople.

Under the patronage of these centres, the major liturgical “Rites” gradually developed and the different Individual Churches emerged. The churches outside the Roman Empire such as the Persian and the Armenian developed their own liturgical rites and individuality. The Indian Church of St. Thomas developed its own individuality though it was historically linked with the Persian Church. As the Roman Empire was divided into Western and Eastern Empires, so too the churches were very broadly classified as Western and Eastern.

Most churches around Alexandria and Antioch were separated from the other churches in the Roman Empire due to theological and doctrinal differences in Christology during the 5th century. These churches are called the Monophysite and Nestorian types of churches, or together called the Oriental Orthodox Churches. The second major division happened in the 11th century when the Western Roman Church and the Orthodox Church of Constantinople excommunicated each other, the climax of centuries-long political rivalries and theological disputes between Rome and Constantinople. The Orthodox churches are today in Greece, the whole of Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. The Protestant type of churches emerged during the 16th century Reformation in Europe and are divided among themselves under numerous denominations. The Anglicans are yet another type of churches emerged from the moderate reformation in England where they tried to make a synthesis between Catholicism and Protestantism. Today, we therefore have, several major types of churches with sub-types within each of them. How do we envisage unity or communion among these numerous types of individual churches?4

The Vision of the Future

We have indicated that the vision of unity we need is the original vision of the early churches. Unity should not be envisaged as a reduction of all existing types and individual churches to one type or to one historical church whether it be Roman Catholic or Orthodox or Protestant. No one church can claim to be the only valid type or the only model. Some ecumenists may argue that all our historical identities and ecclesial individualities must be abandoned, giving way to a new common identity or one new reunited church, like the Church of South India model. This is an amalgamation model which looks at our historical ecclesial identities as obstacles and problems.

But it must be pointed out that the existing individual churches and their identities are our precious heritage which must be maintained and safeguarded although these identities should not be conceived as static and closed. No one historical church is a finally finished product, but is always in the making by a give-and-take process of growth.

A federation of churches like the World Council of Churches is also an inadequate model. What should unite us is not merely a common plan of action, but our common faith which must be discovered, expressed and celebrated together in a deeper communion.

Our vision of one reunited church should be clearly in terms of a “Communion of Churches” or “Fellowship of Churches” where all churches must recognize each other as equals. This communion should be grounded in the common faith and in the communion of the sacraments. Such a communion must be maintained, supported and fostered in a conciliar relationship among the churches. To be more clear, all the churches must be able to sit together as equals in an ecumenical council which could be a visible sign of our ecclesial communion.5

How do we achieve the realization of this Model?

The realization of this vision requires a conversion and renewal on the part of all the churches. Divisions among the churches and their isolated existence for centuries have, in fact, caused some fragmentation among all the churches, though in different proportions. So there is need for healing and the rediscovery of wholeness for all the Churches without exception. It calls for theological and doctrinal dialogue among the churches, common reflection, common action and common prayer as well as worship. The healing of our wounds and the rediscovery of our wholeness or catholicity needs time, hard work and God’s blessings. We cannot fabricate church unity in a day or two. It is in our hopelessness and helplessness that God utters to us His healing and powerful word which alone can unite and save us.

The One Church of Christ exists in the many churches however defective they may be. How can we discern and discover the One Church in the many churches? Could we speak of some distinguishing marks of the One Church of Christ? St. Augustine described the “marks” or “notes” of the true church as “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic.” Martin Luther identified three visible signs or marks of the true church, namely, the possession of the Holy Word of God, the Holy Sacrament of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist. The Second Vatican Council acknowledged the presence of several “ecclesial elements” in the other churches such as, the sacred scriptures, the sacraments the episcopate etc. (Lumen Gentium, 15).

Can we spell out some signs or marks of the One Church in the many churches along these lines?

What we are suggesting here is not “reductionism” or “rninimaltsm.” We are not reducing the churches to their least minimum or commonality at the expense of their individuality and uniqueness. We are only trying to identify some of the signs of the “One Church” of Christ in the “many churches” which are the concrete embodiments or unique individual realizations of the former. While emphasizing the unity and communion among the churches, their diversity and uniqueness must be safeguarded and promoted at all costs so that the catholicity or wholeness of the Church may be discovered and enhanced.

Finally, our vision of the future will be utopian and unrealistic unless we take note of increasing divisions and fragmentation in the existing churches and the phenomenon of new mushrooming churches and sects. The Third Millennium will witness to such new

religious and sectarian movements in their full vigour, especially as the mainline churches push forward to translate their ecumenical vision into reality. Whatever be the obstacles and hardships ahead, the vision of an Ecumenical Church should be fully alive in us today as our challenge in the Third Millennium.

1. Edmund Schlink, “The Unity and Diversity of the Church,” in What Unity Implies, Geneva, 1969, pp. 33-51.
2. Cf. James D. G. Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the Character of Early Christianity London: SCM, 1977.
3. Thessalonians I and II and Mark Chapter 13 give clear evidence of Apocalyptic thinking in some of the early churches.
4. For an introduction into the different Churches, cf. Einar Molland, Christendom, London: Mowbrays, 1959.
5. The vision of unity as “Conciliar Fellowship” was developed in the Ecumenical Movement by the “Faith and Order Movement” and was finally approved by the Nairobi Assembly of the WCC in 1975; The vision of unity of Vatican II is in the same direction of “a brotherly communion of faith and sacramental life”, (Decree on Ecumenism, 14.; also Jan Cardinal Willebrands, “Moving Towards a Typology of the Churches”, The Catholic Mind (April 1970), pp. 40-42.