The image is by Mark Yettica-Paulson and is titled the “Intercultural Framework.” In his words, “it was developed to help individuals and communities navigate and be more intentional about cultures working together.” For the colour symbology and meaning of the image, see here.
Should one ask about ecumenism, it is not uncommon to be referred to the early councils of the church. These early councils formalised key elements of the church’s life: creed, canon, and hierarchy. This period and the councils are conceived as exemplar of the unity of the church and its developing forms of authority. But…is it true?
Andrew Walls does not think so. Indeed, he thinks that the opposite is the case. Where the early church manifested an already global reality, Chalcedon (451 CE) and its fallout represented the “end of the shared consciousness that had constituted world Christianity. The sixth century is a neglected Christian watershed – a great ecumenical failure.” Andrew F. Walls, “World Christianity and the Early Church,” in A New Day: Essays on World Christianity in Honor of Lamin Sanneh, ed. Akintunde E. Akinade (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), 26. These ecumenical councils succeeded only in dividing Christians in Europe from those in Asia and those in Africa. The church had become split “along cultural and linguistic lines,” and once this had occurred “it was all too easy for it to happen again. The relations of Greek-speaking and Latin-speaking Christians became increasingly acrimonious until, by the eleventh century, the two had drifted hopelessly apart” (Walls, 26). The early councils, in other words, were the moment of the greatest schism in the Christian church and established a normative pattern of division (along with notions of unity along cultural lines) that continue to the contemporary period.
To focus the conversation on present ecumenical concerns and theologies, though this is often valorised as a movement of unity against the backdrop of world wars, a number of critical comments have begun to emerge. For example, in relation to the famous 1910 Edinburgh conference, Raimundo C. Barreto describes it as “one of the final and decisive events of an era of western Christian expansionism,” and that the “unity it proposed to create was…culturally and epistemologically exclusionary, and its understanding of unity was shaped by the Christendom ecumenical project” (Raimundo Cesar Barreto, “How World Christianity Saved the Ecumenical Movement,” Protestantismo em Revista 46, no. 2 (2020): 224). This, however, ended up setting itself against the growth in world Christianity itself. That is, the very rise of the world Christian communion inserted a greater range of difference into the ecumenical question. Ecumenism is today not simply a question of confession and structure, but cultural difference and all that entails regarding embodied forms of the faith. Due to this cultural difference and due to the expectation that unity might be achieved in supposedly “a-cultural” terms, the ecumenical discussion has become depressed. As Barreto suggests, “what had earlier been seen as a blossoming ecumenical era soon began to show signs of frustration and distrust, leading some to perceive the situation as an ecumenical crisis” (Barreto, 225). But such frustration is unwarranted. This is the moment to listen to the Spirit of God speaking through the world Christian communion.
To return to Walls, the key ecumenical question remains the one unaddressed by the early church, it is the question of how “African, Indian, Chinese, Korean, Hispanic, North American and East and West European expressions of Christian faith and life can live together and bring mutual enrichment and correction. They are about the reversal of the process of division of the Church on cultural and linguistic lines, a return to the multicultural model of the New Testament church” (Walls, 28).
This is a big challenge, not the least because the reality of cultural difference challenged ecumenical definitions of unity based in cultural continuity. By way of illustration, note how for all the differences in ecumenical treatments of unity, the definition of diversity appears in one place alone: §2.2 of the 1991 Canberra Statement, “The Unity of the Church: Gift and Calling.” This definition reads as follows: “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).” This, of course, is not a definition of diversity at all, and certainly not one concerned with questions of cultural difference one finds through the New Testament record.
But there have been some signs of greater theoretical possibility. Writing in 1998, the then General Secretary of the World Council of Churches called for an “ecumenical intercultural hermeneutic which will enable us to comprehend unity as a fellowship of those who continue to be different and to offer criteria for this” (Konrad Raiser, “A Hermeneutics of Unity,” in Faith and Order in Moshi: The 1996 Commission Meeting, (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1998), 115). The below bibliography traces developments in this theoretical direction. Not all the developments are good, however. Note the shift between the 1996 consultation “On Intercultural Hermeneutics” to the formal instrument published by the WCC in 1999: “A Treasure in Earthen Vessels.” Whereas the former document took cultural difference as of material theological significance, the later instrument reasserts cultural privilege as necessary to unity.
But we have a beginning. We have a better understanding of the questions, including recognising that the great cultural diversity and lived embodiments of the faith through the world belongs to our fulfilment in Jesus Christ. Much work is to be done, but it is creative and exciting work, and well resourced by the world Christian experience!
“On Intercultural Hermeneutics: Report of a WCC consultation, Jerusalem, December 1995.” International Review of Mission 85 (1996): 241–52.
A Treasure in Earthen Vessels: An Instrument for an Ecumenical Reflection on Hermeneutics. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1999.
Ariarajah, S. Wesley. “Intercultural Hermeneutics – A Promise for the Future?” Exchange 34, no. 2 (2005): 89–101.
Barreto, Raimundo Cesar. “How World Christianity Saved the Ecumenical Movement.” Protestantismo em Revista 46, no. 2 (2020): 222–42.
Brett, Mark G. “Postcolonial Ecumenism and Its Multiple Contexts of Solidarity.” In Indigenous Australia and the Unfinished Business of Theology: Cross-Cultural Engagement, edited by Jione Havea, 17–24. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Brinkman, Martien E. “A Different Kind of Ecumenism.” In Rethinking Ecumenism: Strategies for the 21st Century, edited by Freek L. Bakker, 93–104. Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2004.
Brinkman, Martien E. “An Updated Ecumenical Theology.” In Meeting God in the Other: Studies in Religious Encounter and Pluralism in Honour of Dorin Oancea on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, edited by Alina Patru, 165–78. Münster: LIT Verlag, 2020.
Brinkman, Martien E. “From Ecumenical to Intercultural Theology,” In A Reformed Voice in the Ecumenical Discussion, 247–60. BRILL, 2016.
Brinkman, Martien E. “Intercultural Theology as the Integration of Ecumenism and Missiology: The Example of Latin American Christology,” In Crossroad Discourses Between Christianity and Culture, edited by Jerald D. Gort, Henry Jansen, and Wessel Stoker, 579–98. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010.
De La Torre, Miguel A. “Is Ecumenism Even Possible in the Context of World Christianity?” The Ecumenical Review 74, no. 1 (2022): 58–68.
Houtepen, Anton W. J. “Hermeneutics, Mission and Ecumenism: The Art of Understanding a Communicative God.” Exchange 24, no. 2 (1995): 91–110.
Houtepen, Anton W. J. “Intercultural Theology: A Postmodern Ecumenical Mission.” In Towards an Intercultural Theology: Essays in Honour of Jan A. B. Jongeneel, edited by Martha Frederiks, Meindert Dijkstra, and Anton Houtepen, 23–38. Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij Meinema, 2003.
Houtepen, Anton W. J., and Albert Ploeger, eds. World Christianity Reconsidered: Questioning the Questions of Ecumenism and Missiology, Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2001.
Kobia, Samuel. “‘Listening to the Voice of God’: New Trends in the Ecumenical Movement.” The Ecumenical Review 57 (2005): 195–204.
Neelankavil, Tony. “Louvain Revisited: Faith and Order Discussions on Intercultural Hermeneutics since 1971.” Exchange 28, no. 1 (1999): 60–84.
Raiser, Konrad. “‘…That the World May Believe’: The Missionary Vocation as the Necessary Horizon for Ecumenism.” International Review of Mission 88 (1999): 187–96.
Raiser, Konrad. “A Hermeneutics of Unity.” In Faith and Order in Moshi: The 1996 Commission Meeting, edited by Alan D. Falconer, 115–28. Geneva: WCC Publications, 1998.
Raiser, Konrad. “Beyond Tradition and Context: In Search of an Ecumenical Framework of Hermeneutics.” International Review of Mission 80, no. 319-320 (1991): 347–54.
Simon, Benjamin. “Ecumenical Perspectives on Intercultural Theology,” In Dialogues and Dynamics – Interculturality in Theology and Religious Studies, edited by Fritz Heinrich, Cornelia Schlarb, Egbert Schlarb, and Ulrike Schröder, 99–1108. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2021.
Von Sinner, Rudolf. “Ecumenical Hermeneutics for a Plural Christianity: Reflections on Contextuality and Catholicity.” Bangalore Theological Forum 34, no. 2 (2002): 89–115.
von Sinner, Rudolf. “Trust and Convivência: Contributions to a Hermeneutics of Trust in Communal Interaction.” The Ecumenical Review 57 (2005): 322–41.
