Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lukas Vischer (1926-2008) was a Swiss Reformed theologian noted for his ecumenical efforts worldwide.
Ulrich Luz is professor of New Testament studies at the University of Bern, Switzerland.
Christian Link is professor of systematic theology at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Unity of the Church in the New Testament and Today

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Contents

Abbreviations....................................................................................................ixTranslator's Preface.............................................................................................xiIn Memory of Lukas Vischer.......................................................................................xiiiIntroduction Lukas Vischer......................................................................................1PART ONE Difficulties in Looking to the New Testament for Guidance Lukas Vischer................................71. Scripture and Tradition.......................................................................................82. Scripture: Witness of an Active History.......................................................................123. Unity Today...................................................................................................154. Concepts of Unity.............................................................................................18PART TWO On the Way to Unity: The Community of the Church in the New Testament Ulrich Luz.......................29Introduction.....................................................................................................291. Jesus: The Origin of the Community of the Church..............................................................34The Apostolic Age................................................................................................432. The Beginnings of the Church after Easter.....................................................................433. The Beginnings of Ecclesiology................................................................................544. The First Basic Conflict: The Church's Unity with Israel......................................................575. The Church as the Reality of Christ in Paul's Thought.........................................................76The Post-Apostolic Age...........................................................................................916. Developments in the Church after the Death of the Apostles....................................................917. The First Ecclesiological Concepts of Church Unity............................................................1268. The Second Basic Conflict: Church Fellowship in the Controversy with Christian Gnosticism.....................142PART THREE The Unity Movement: Church Fellowship in the Oecumene Christian Link.................................1631. On the Way to Unity...........................................................................................1632. The Church's Unity with Israel................................................................................1793. Flash Points of Unity.........................................................................................1934. Conciliar Fellowship..........................................................................................2355. Church Unity and Missions.....................................................................................245Index of Subjects and Names......................................................................................249Index of Selected New Testament and Other Ancient Texts..........................................................252

Chapter One

Lukas Vischer

All churches appeal to Scripture. They regard it as the necessary foundation of their doctrine and life. They know that they are obligated to listen to its witness.

Should it then not be the case that if the separated churches would examine Scripture together and give heed to its witness in their midst they would remove the barriers to unity? In the course of the ecumenical movement people have often made this assumption. They hoped that going back to the original witness would make it possible to achieve a breakthrough. The common study of Scripture would bring together the representatives of the various traditions. It would, so to speak, have a cleansing effect by making it possible to distinguish between what is primary and what is secondary. Confronting the biblical witness would make visible the true foundation and the appropriate form of the church's unity.

To a degree the assumption proved to be right. Returning to the original witness did indeed often lead to positive results. The ideas of unity that the representatives of various churches brought from their tradition were called into question when they had to be justified in a joint discussion before the witness of Scripture. Thus Protestant Christians discovered anew the significance for unity of the worshiping community, and Roman Catholic Christians had to see for themselves that certain ecclesiastical structures they regarded as an absolute precondition for church unity had not been ordained by Jesus himself but were the result of historical developments. On both sides, working with the biblical witness led to a new emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church.

At the same time, however, the assumption was too nave. Looking to Scripture for guidance about unity proved to be much more complicated than was originally assumed.

1. Scripture and Tradition

The inquiry is difficult first of all because the churches are not able to start from a uniform understanding of Scripture and its meaning for the church's life and witness. As much as they regard it in general as a necessary foundation, their ideas differ widely in the details. The meaning and the role of Scripture are circumscribed by differing theological and ecclesiological presuppositions. For example, the different traditions define the relationship between the authority of Scripture and the authority of the church in fundamentally different ways. Scripture also plays different roles in the life of the individual churches. One thinks, for example, of the position Scripture occupies in worship. It makes a difference whether the emphasis lies on the regular reading of selected passages of Scripture or on their interpretation in the sermon.

Thus from the very beginning the presuppositions that are accepted in the various traditions influence the study of Scripture. Scripture does not stand above the differences among the individual traditions as a neutral referee. It is, rather, read and heard unavoidably in the context of each tradition. Of course, it is possible to agree about the proper exegesis of certain texts on the basis of historical-critical study, but when it comes time to interpret the text's original sense discovered by this method in its meaning for the life of the church, the differences in understanding Scripture and its authority come once again to the fore.

The difference becomes especially clear when it comes to defining the relationship between Scripture and tradition. One can read Scripture under the assumption that finally there can be no disagreement between its witness and the church's tradition preserved through the centuries. A special form of this opinion is the claim that the witness of Scripture has been understood in an exemplary manner in the tradition of the ancient church. Scripture can also be understood, however, as a critical court of appeal. It contains the original witness on which the church is dependent if it is to be preserved from distortion and error. God always speaks anew to his church through the testimony of Scripture. Tradition is always under the suspicion of having deviated from the original message. The churches of the Reformation were forced to this understanding of Scripture by their own experience. The tension between Scripture and ecclesiastical conditions had become so obvious that the protest against tradition was unavoidable.

For a long time the different understanding of the relationship between Scripture and tradition appeared to be one of the unbridgeable contrasts among the churches. Thus it is no wonder that in the ecumenical conversation special attention was focused on this question. And the efforts were not fruitless. The World Conference for Faith and Order in Montreal (1963) was able to offer the following jointly formulated statement:

Our starting-point is that we are all living in a tradition which goes back to our Lord and has its roots in the Old Testament, and are all indebted to that tradition inasmuch as we have received the revealed truth, the Gospel, through its being transmitted from one generation to another. Thus we can say that we exist as Christians by the Tradition of the Gospel (the paradosis of the kerygma) testified in Scripture, transmitted in and by the Church through the power of the Holy Spirit. Tradition taken in this sense is actualized in the preaching of the Word, in the administration of the Sacraments and worship, in Christian teaching and theology, and in mission and witness to Christ by the lives of the members of the Church.

This text is so important because it looks at the question of the relationship between Scripture and tradition from a new perspective. The usual emphasis is turned on its head. One could say that instead of "Scripture and tradition" it speaks of "tradition and Scripture." It makes it clear that in all ages and even today the church draws the good news from the living tradition that from the beginning has been passed on from generation to generation. The transmission of the gospel is the precondition for the church's existence and life. For its part Holy Scripture is nothing other than the mirror of this tradition. At the same time, however, it is the criterion that permits us to distinguish between the true tradition and stunted or even distorted traditions, for in it is indelibly fixed the original witness of the tradition. "For the post-apostolic Church the appeal to the Tradition received from the apostles became the criterion. As this Tradition was embodied in the apostolic writings, it became natural to use those writings as an authority for determining where the true Tradition was to be found." Thus the question has shifted. The primary question is no longer to what degree Scripture and to what degree tradition bear witness to God's revelation. The question is rather how one can distinguish between true tradition and distorted tradition and what role the witness of Scripture plays in this task.

Somewhat later, the Second Vatican Council made a similar pronouncement when it gave up the traditional idea of two independent sources of revelation. "There exists a close connection and communication between sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end"(Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, 9). In view of this change in the way the question is put, one can at least raise the question whether applying the term "authority" to Scripture is really appropriate. Does this term do justice to the close connection, indeed, the blending of Scripture and tradition? Or does it instead deceive us into thinking that Scripture is completely separate from tradition and stands over against the church as a self-contained court of appeal? If Scripture bears witness to the true tradition in the church's tradition, it does matter whether the church, the community that has grown out of the tradition, has a living relationship with that original witness. It must allow itself to be inspired, corrected, and led in a continuous conversation with those first witnesses. In this role Scripture can be described with the catchword "authority." The witness of Scripture carries so much weight that in no circumstances can the church ignore it. Indeed, its weight is so great that in certain circumstances one can, or even must, speak of the sole authority of Scripture. Yet one may never forget how closely and inseparably Scripture and tradition are allied.

As one can see in these texts, the differing positions have moved closer together. Yet, differences remain. Although the contrast is seen in a new perspective, it has not been eliminated. Scripture continues to be read from different presuppositions. The primary difference is that a different value is accorded to the tradition of the ancient church. To what degree is Scripture a court of appeal even for the earliest tradition? To what degree are they so interwoven that they interpret one another reciprocally? To what degree are Scripture and the tradition of the ancient church normative for the church of all ages?

The different presuppositions have radical consequences precisely when we are talking about the unity of the church, consequences that three examples will illustrate.

What significance does the credo of the ancient church have for the unity of the church? How are Scripture and credo related?

What importance are we to attribute to the development of the ecclesiastical ministries in the first centuries? What stage of the development is binding for the following ages?

What significance does the role of Peter have for the unity of the church? Is the idea of a Petrine office a legitimate development of the biblical testimony about Peter?

These examples show that the appeal to Scripture does not alone make unity possible. The theological and ecclesiological presuppositions of the various traditions complicate the effort to come to a common understanding of the biblical witness. Even if the joint effort to discover the original sense should be successful, the question remains how one is to make use of the results.

Thus appealing to Scripture does not by itself enable us to move beyond the differing conceptions of the unity of the church because the differing conceptions of unity influence how Scripture is read and interpreted. The result is a contradiction: all churches acknowledge that Scripture is a criterion for distinguishing between true tradition and distorted traditions, yet this criterion is embedded in the context of the traditions. For this reason even the text of the declaration of Montreal ends with the open question, "How can we overcome the situation in which we all read Scripture in the light of our own traditions?"

Of course, to recognize this dilemma is not to say that the attempt to come to a common understanding of Scripture's witness is inevitably hopeless. The mutual study of Scripture is fundamental to every ecumenical conversation. At the same time, however, one must examine critically one's own presuppositions. One must constantly ask whether the theory and practice of one's interpretation really agree or whether it turns out that in view of the challenges of one's age the theory no longer does justice to Scripture's witness. One must ask whether certain criteria of interpretation that proved to be of value in given historical situations have become a "pre-judgment" that in a new historical situation makes it difficult to hear the witness of Scripture without bias. One thinks, by way of example, of the way Paul's statements in Romans 13 on the role of authorities are used. His call to the Roman church to obey the authorities may in many situations prove to be the central instruction to which other statements about one's relationship to political power are to be subordinated or indeed even connected. If it is understood as a principle, however, and applied without distinction to all situations, one does violence to the diversity of the biblical witness. The problem becomes even greater when the interpretation that was valid in a given situation becomes a part of one's denominational heritage. In any case, the task of gaining clarity about the witness necessary in one's own historical situation will inevitably lead to a clash among the differing starting positions of the denominational traditions.

2. Scripture: Witness of an Active History

The attempt to learn what Scripture, and especially the New Testament, has to say about the unity of the church comes up against a further difficulty, one that lies in the nature of the New Testament texts themselves. The New Testament contains a variety of writings that, although revolving around the same center, in many other ways differ from one another. They are all born of different occasions, and in their content as well as in their form they reflect the presuppositions, purposes, and emphases of certain authors and situations. Only later were they brought together in the collection in which we read them today. For this reason, whoever consults the New Testament inevitably is faced with a multiplicity of voices and statements that cannot simply be reduced to a common denominator.

It is, therefore, not proper to expect from the New Testament a consistent doctrine of the unity of the church. Given the nature of the New Testament, it is not able to provide a coherent theology, and the attempt to bring together the various statements of the New Testament like the pieces of a mosaic is from the very beginning a futile endeavor.

Yet the difficulty goes even deeper. The diversity of statements about the nature of the church and its unity, which on closer examination are obvious in the writings of the New Testament, raises the question whether the nascent church actually lived in unity or whether even this first age was characterized by controversies and conflicts. In the ecumenical movement the assumption is often unthinkingly expressed that the first Christians were "of one mind." Yet closer examination of the New Testament writings shows that they bear witness to an active history full of conflict. It is time to abandon once and for all the image of harmonious agreement. Clearly, the gospel could be appropriated and proclaimed only by working through controversies.

For this reason, the task can be simply to re-tell the active history we know from the New Testament witnesses. How did the Christians of the first generation deal with the gospel's impulse? What tensions arose as a result? In what interplay of forces did various interpretations develop? What forms of Christian faith and life emerged? How were conflicts overcome — or not overcome? The New Testament does not first and foremost exhibit a coherent concept of the unity of the church; rather, it shows how people struggled in the multiplicity of interpretations and concepts on behalf of community in Christ.

Indeed, one can ask whether the term "unity" already creates false expectations and thus blocks access to the New Testament witness. To begin with, one must recognize that the word "unity" appears relatively infrequently in the New Testament. One finds it only in late writings, and even there not in connection with "church." The author of Ephesians speaks of the "unity of the Spirit" (4:3) and of the "unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God" (4:13). He uses the word "unity" to develop the confession to the one Lord. Because Christians have been called to hope through the one Spirit, they are to maintain the bond of peace in the unity of the Spirit. Later, in Ignatius, the term "unification" (henosis) takes on greater importance.

The term is especially encumbered by a long philosophical tradition. Its use in Platonic philosophy has left its mark on the word. Wherever the word is used, the idea of multiplicity is implied as its opposite. The "one" denotes what is real, and one must reason a posteriori to it from the "many."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Unity of the Church in the New Testament and Todayby Lukas Vischer Ulrich Luz Christian Link Copyright © 2010 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Excerpted by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.