 Confessing Christians urged to embrace new ecumenism By Craig M. Kibler The Layman Online Friday, November 1, 2002 INDIANAPOLIS – A world-renowned theologian has called on confessing Christians throughout the mainline Protestant denominations to embrace a new ecumenism rooted in classic orthodox Christianity. The call was made in a paper by Dr. Thomas C. Oden, the Henry Anson Buttz professor of Theology and Ethics at the Theological School and the Graduate School at Drew University, that was read before nearly 700 people Oct. 25 during the historic Confessing The Faith Conference – the first-ever gathering of renewing and confessing Christians in North America. Saying that the old ecumenism has deeply fostered the disunity of the church, he said the social witness of the modern ecumenists – those who have forgotten the ancient ecumenical consensus – has been the most divisive element in modern Christianity. "They have been most divisive just at those points at which they have offended against ancient ecumenical boundaries: in permissive sexuality, relativism, political adventurism and permissivism," he said. Oden had invited the Confessing Theologians Commission, a group of theologians from most of the mainline Protestant denominations in North America, to meet in Dallas on Sept. 20-22 and prepare a pastoral letter – "Be Steadfast: A Letter to Confessing Christians" – that was presented at the conference. The paper by Oden, who was hospitalized and unable to attend the event, was read by Dr. James V. Heidinger, the president and publisher of Good News and chairman of the Association for Church Renewal, which endorsed the letter. Oden, referring to the participants in the conference as evangelical, confessing and renewing Christians in the mainline church of North America, said "many of us have found that committed Christian believers have more in common with believers in other mainline denominations than with some wayward forms of her own church leadership." "We seek to embody the unity of believing Christians in mainline denominations, and to reaffirm classic orthodox Christianity. We are here to create our oneness in Jesus Christ, to learn from each other about how the Spirit is working among us in our various vineyards, and to ask the Spirit to guide us in discernment," he said, adding: "To prevent further hemorrhaging of our churches, believers with all the mainline churches have formed confessing and renewing movements composed of people and congregations who exalt the Lordship of Jesus Christ and who adhere to classical Christian teaching of the Biblical faith, and who pray for the Spirit to strengthen the holy life. We cal upon our church leaders, trustees of institutions, board members of boards and agencies, and the seminaries of our churches, to transmit the historic Christian faith." Oden admitted that no one in the confessing and renewing movements knew where God was leading those initiatives. "But we know we must once again contend for the apostolic faith of the one, holy, universal and apostolic church. Under God's judgment and by God's grace, we covenant to participate in the Spirit's reconstruction of the church. This renewing work must be built only upon the foundation of our unity in the truth which is made known in Jesus Christ." Citing suggestions that mainline denominations may be doomed due to financial distress, moral confusion and doctrinal relativism, he disputed what he called dim warnings that there is only a "brief window of opportunity to reclaim our struggling denominations before they plunge into irreversible decline." Instead, Oden said there is evidence that the situation already is beginning to turn around. "As least we know that the Spirit has given us time for repentance. … not to express outrage or self pity, but to ask how the Spirit is calling us constructively to renew the church," he said, adding: "We pray to avoid the temptations of resentment, reactionary defensiveness, despair and lack of charity We are seeking to understand how we can reclaim our historic mission, our theological integrity, our battered church identity, our institutions, our academies, our boards and agencies and mission ministries." Saying that Scripture requires confessing Christians to warn the church when it is necessary, Oden reminded the audience that the Holy Spirit has not abandoned the church in its struggles. "God continues to offer that grace of perseverance by which the faithful are enabled to remain Christ's living body even while being challenged by infirmities, forgetfulness, heresy, apostasy, persecution and schism," he said. "The church is being surely preserved to 'proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.' Against the church "the gates of hell shall not prevail. "This means that the church will never decline into total forgetfulness since, guided by the Spirit, who is promising always to remind and teach the church (John 14:16; Matt. 23:20), even when the church fails to listen. The church insofar as guided by the Spirit does not fall entirely away from the fundamental truth of faith or into irretrievable error. She is preserved by grace, not by human craft or design (Matt. 7:25)." Even if individual churches or denominations "stumble or fall," Oden said that the one, holy, catholic church is "promised imperishable continuance. … The church's future is finally left not to human willing or chance, but to grace. Many branches of the seasonally changing vine may drop off or become sick and withered, but the church will be preserved till the end of the age. Though individual believers or structures may come to shipwreck, and even whole communions lose their bearings during crises, the church will be preserved (John 16:6, 13)." He called for the "vital recovery of ancient ecumenical teaching" and an effort to bring classic Christian teaching back into church leadership, calling it the new ecumenism. Oden contrast that with the "deterioration and eminent collapse of the bureaucratic and ideological wanderings of the modern ecumenical movement." He then outlined some differences between the new ecumenism and modern or old ecumenism:
He then placed the crisis of faith, confidence and moral judgment squarely within the churches themselves, citing:
The call to orthodoxy, of openly confessing classic Christian teaching in "good conscience without evasion or dilution," he said, already is resulting in a rebirth throughout the mainline denominations. That rebirth, Oden said, is a celebration of the "providence of God that works amid the world that must now live amid the wreckage strewn in the pathway of modern ideologies. We live amid the withering form of the old-line fantasy that sold its soul to modernity. The old-line was ashamed of the call to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. But the end of the elite modern old-line is the beginning of a new mainline committed to orthodox Christian teaching." |
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