Ecumenical Stirrings

John Calvin never met Martin Luther. Over the centuries, the doctrinal heirs of the two great reformers have often seemed to interpret this happenstance of history as a command to avoid spiritual alliances. But the new spirit of ecumenicism is changing all that. For the first time in U.S. history, 25 leading churchmen from all of North America's major Lutheran and Reformed (chiefly Presbyterian) churches gathered a fortnight ago for a serious dialogue on the theologies of these two traditions of the Protestant faith.

The invitation to the closed-door session at Manhattan's Warwick Hotel was extended to Lutherans last October by Dr. James McCord, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, and secretary of the North American Area of the World Presbyterian Alliance. The dialogue was limited to exploratory topics, most importantly an evaluation of contemporary thinking on the major issues that divide the churches. Among the principal differences between the two confessions are the doctrine of predestination and the nature of the Lord's Supper. To Lutherans, Christ is truly present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist; Reformed churches more commonly think of the Communion service as a memorial to Christ's Last Supper in Jerusalem.

Much of the discussion centered on two papers. Dr. Conrad Bergendoff, president of Augustana College (Lutheran), warned that the unity represented by the World Council of Churches "is still marginal and peripheral," and will remain so until Christianity can be "expressed in common confessions of faith." Presbyterian John Leith, of Richmond's Union Theological Seminary, countered by suggesting that bold doctrinal talks might help church leaders toward unity by getting the focus off the superficial topic of organizational structure. "We are called upon to make serious decisions in the realm of theology and polity," he said.

At the end of the two-day meeting, the churchmen agreed to meet in Chicago next February, formally assigned papers to two theologians on the Gospel, the Scriptures and the Confession.

It is not just the Reformed churches and the Lutherans who are finding the path to mutual understanding easier than it used to be. This year gestures of ecumenical unity--involving Catholics as well as Protestants--seem to be visible everywhere. Items:

> With increasing frequency, Catholic theologians are being asked to speak to Protestant groups, and Protestants to Catholics. In January, Father Godfrey Diekmann, a Benedictine liturgical expert, became the first Catholic to address the Minnesota State Pastors' Conference. His major point: a fresh study of Luther's writing might show that Catholics and Protestants are no longer irrevocably split on the central dogmatic issue of the Reformation, the question of justification. Fortnight ago, Lutheran Theologian Joseph Sittler, of the University of Chicago Divinity School, spoke to 800 Catholics under the auspices of the Jesuits' Loyola University, cited the "terrible urgency" of church reunion.

> The National Lutheran Council, meeting last month, endorsed a plan to set up a new cooperative agency for Lutheran bodies. Purpose: to bring in the big (2,400,000 members), conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, largest of the Lutheran groups outside the N.L.C., which has avoided close contact with churches whose doctrines seemed too liberal.

> In April, representatives of the United Church of Christ, the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., the Protestant Episcopal Church and the Methodist Church will meet in Washington for the first official discussions of a four-way merger into the new "catholic and reformed" church proposed by Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, Stated Clerk of the Presbyterians, and San Francisco's Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike.

> The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore last January established a new ecumenical commission, including the noted Jesuit scholar, Father Gustave Weigel, to organize and promote interfaith efforts toward Christian unity.

> In June, the American Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church (Suomi Synod) and the United Lutheran Church in America will merge. The new denomination, with 3,000,000 members, will be the nation's sixth largest Protestant group.

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