A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. John l3:34‑34

Later that same evening, in his high priestly prayer Jesus said to the Father:

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. John 17:20‑23

Two observations emerge from these remarks from Jesus. First, the unity that Jesus sought for the church was to be somehow patterned after the Trinity. Jesus asked, "that the [the church] may be one as we [the Trinity] are one." This, of course, suggests a complex unity for the church. The church is not to be characterized by a rigid uniformity typified by a straightforward monotheism but rather one characterized by a paradoxical tension typified by the Trinity. That is, ecclesial oneness should be a unity with variety. Second, these words from Jesus demonstrate that ecclesial oneness and evangelism are inseparably linked and that it is the will of God that both be accomplished.

Reflecting on this two‑dimensional response by Jesus in one of his epistles, the apostle John made it clear that their inseparableness was indeed Jesus' intention, He wrote,

"If anyone says. 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom lie has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he [Jesus] has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother"

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him [Jesus]: whoever loves God must also love his brother. 1 John 4:20-21

This command that Jesus "has given us" is a loose paraphrase of his two great commandments to love God and love one's neighbor. The apostle John's paraphrase of Jesus' words is a divinely authoritative interpretation to which the contemporary church must adhere if it is to remain faithful to apostolic teaching. Loving God requires us to also love one another. A viable ecumenism is therefore a divine imperative for the church.

In 1970, evangelical scholar John R. W. Stott wrote of this concern. He observed that the visible unity of the church "is both biblically right and practically desirable, and we should be actively seeking it." Yet, in counterbalance, he wondered, if we were

to meet the enemies of Christ with a united Christian front, with what kind of Christianity would we face them? The only weapon with which to overthrow the opponents of the gospel is the gospel itself.

Stott was concerned that if in our efforts to bring unity the church we found ourselves required to compromise the integrity of the gospel, all such ecumenical unity would be for naught. "It would be a tragedy," he explained,

if, in our desire for their overthrow, the only effective weapon in our armoury were to drop from our hands.

Stott's point reflects in abiding concern within Protestant evangelicalism. An ecumenical unity at the expense of the gospel would he a Pyrrhic victory for the church. It would he a success gained at too great a cost — a success requiring the gospel to be sufficiently watered down as to lose its salvific qualities. In doing so, Christianity would cease to exist, at least as it has been historically understood.

Other scholars, however, look at this problem of the gospel from a different perspective. Thinking in terms of Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum "The medium is the message." they insist that the gospel presented from a fragmented church generates a profound and far‑reaching distortion of its definition. Hence, to preserve the definition of the gospel through ecclesial separation is of little help since such separation itself results in its distortion. Citing such passages as John 13:34‑35 and l7:2O‑22 that we've already considered, they argue that the notion of reconciliation lies at the center of the gospel. If such reconciliation does not exist within the medium (i.e., the church) neither will it be properly manifested in the message (i.e., the gospel). Otherwise stated, if the notion of reconciliation lies at the core of the gospel message, a visibly fragmented church argues against the very message that it affirms and proclaims. At the very least, the gospel is distorted. In this sense, the reconciliation being offered is holly other‑worldly and has no practical bearing in this present world. Yet when asked what was the greatest commandment, Jesus answered with an other‑worldly (loving God) and a this-worldly (loving one's neighbor) response (Mt 22:37‑‑40).

Based on this line of reasoning, ecumenicists draw the following inference: To the degree that the followers of Jesus do not reflect the love of God and his reconciliation in their relationships inside the church, they diminish the credibility of the gospel that they are proclaiming to those outside the church. George Lindbeck comments,

Now as in the first centuries, men are not likely to hear the gospel except to the degree that they find themselves compelled to say, "see how these Christians love one another — (and God and the world).

In short, both sides of the debate on ecumenism offer compelling rationales for the rightness of their particular perspective. In the one, doctrinal purity paramount. In the other, active reconciliation is paramount. Though overlap exists between the two positions (ecumenicists are concerned about the integrity of the gospel and antiecumenicists are concerned about the unity of the church), emphases and the prioritizing of the doctrinal issues in question generate differing paradigms. Hence, it is to this fundamental question of paradigms that we must turn if we are to make sense of the church's differences in regard to ecumenism.

In the following, we will observe two paradigms at work in contemporary theology that have a bearing on the question of ecumenism. Both are centered on an understanding of the nature of God. The first is grounded in an understanding of God that believes him to exist outside of time (in a timeless ever‑present mood). It is called the epiphanic model. The second is grounded in an understanding of God that believes him to exist inside of time. It is called the eschatological model. These two paradigms are still being debated by theologians. As we will see, they correspond to the two sides of the ecumenical debate. In the first model, doctrinal purity dominates. In the second, active reconciliation dominates.

The Gospel

Invariably, when the subject of ecumenism arises within the church, theological debate quickly drifts to questions related to the gospel. The central question asks, how would an ecumenical union between two differing ecclesial bodies affect the integrity of the gospel?

The epiphanic model: an other‑worldly gospel

The epiphanic model sees the mission of the church primarily as proclaiming or mediating grace to individuals. Hence, the gospel is a matter between the individual and God with the church only serving as the vehicle that brings the two together. It is epiphanic in the sense that God draws the sinner away from the temporal world to issues that are timeless and other‑worldly. The Four Spiritual Laws (now called The Four Spiritual Principles), developed by Campus Crusade for Christ International as an evangelistic tool, is one of many methods that typify the epiphanic model. Each of the four laws/principles draws the individual away from the temporal world and to an encounter with God who exists outside the temporal world in a timeless and other‑worldly dimension.

In its pure form, Christians who affirm this understanding of the gospel insist that a person can receive Christ as Savior and yet maintain a decisively anti‑Christian lifestyle for a lengthy period of time, in extreme cases lasting for the remainder of his or her life. In his book The Gospel According to Jesus, John MacArthur Jr. described an encounter he had with a Christian minister who affirmed such an understanding of the gospel.

I spent some time once with a fellow minister who drove me through his city. We passed a large liquor store, and I happened to mention that it was an usual‑looking place.

Yes,' he said, "There is a whole chain of those stores around the city, all owned by one man. He is a member of my Sunday School class." I wondered aloud what the man was like, and the minister replied, "Oh, he's quite faithful. He is in class every week.

"Does it bother him that he owns all those liquor stores?" I asked. "We've talked about it some," he said. "But he feels people are going to buy liquor anyway, so why not buy it from him?"

I asked, "What is his life like?"
Well, he did leave his wife and has been living with a young girl." the minister replied. Then after several minutes of my bewildered and uncomfortable silence, he added, "You know, sometimes it's hard for me to understand how a Christian can live like that."

Understanding how a Christian can live like that requires that we go back to our understanding of the nature of God and how it shapes the nature of the gospel.

If God exists "in outer space or beyond, the gospel will also exist in outer space or beyond. It will be wholly other‑worldly, a transaction between the sinner and God that occurs in an epiphanic (timeless) moment when the mind of the sinner is torn away from this world to contemplate eternal truths. Jurgen Moltmann comments that in an epiphanic gospel, faith becomes "transformed into an immediate contemplation of eternal truths of reason" that involves both "a negation and a breakaway from history" in order to rightly grasp them, Here the sinner makes a deal with God by affirming certain biblical assertions as true. As such, the gospel requires no psychological or behavioral changes other than to affirm a specific theory of the atonement. It is therefore not unthinkable for a man to embrace the gospel and yet leave his wife, live outside of wedlock with another woman and be the owner of a morally questionable business.

According to MacArthur, this model of the gospel has a large following in the church today:

The gospel in vogue today promises them that they can have eternal life yet continue to live in rebellion against God. Indeed, it encourages people to claim Jesus as Savior yet defer until later the commitment to obey Him as Lord.

Dallas Willard has argued similarly:

The sensed irrelevance of what God is doing to what makes up our lives is the foundational flaw in the existence of multitudes of professing Christians today. They have been led to believe that God, for some unfathomable reason, just thinks its appropriate to transfer credit from Christ's merit account to ours, and to wipe out our sin debt. Upon inspecting our mind and finding that we believe a particular theory of the atonement to he true — even if we trust everything but God in all other matters that concern us.

Though many of these Christians do not conduct themselves in such an ungodly fashion as that illustrated by MacArthur, it is clear that a godly lifestyle is not required by this understanding of the gospel.

What is more, though ecclesial unity between believers of differing ecclesial traditions is deemed desirable, according to this model, the gospel can nevertheless maintain its own integrity even in the absence of ecclesial unity. It can do so because the question at hand is the relationship of the sinner to a holy God who exists outside of time and culture. Questions related to this‑worldly concerns are therefore set apart from the essence of the gospel, placed at secondary or tertiary levels. Hence, the need for unity is not built into the core of the gospel — it does not require the visible unity of the church in order to be correctly understood and embraced.

With this in mind, this epiphanic or other‑worldly model characterizes the gospel by the following four points:

1. Behind the passion of Jesus Christ—along with the other narratives presented in the biblical text — are timeless and changeless truths that each and every person is responsible to learn and embrace.

2. The gospel message is limited to a contemplation and acceptance of the reasonableness of these truths related to the passion of Jesus Christ — that is, the gospel is essentially a message that is to be cognitively understood and embraced.

3. Because these truths are understood to be timeless and changeless (independent of culture and history), one's salvation is limited to an awareness and acceptance of them without their required outworking in the temporal world.

4. The primary concern of the gospel is therefore between God and the individual — in comparison, all other relationships are set aside and deemed irrelevant.

The eschatological model: a this‑worldly gospel

The second model highlights Gods "eschatological triumphant mercy" — where he brings "all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ" (Eph 1:10; cf. Col 1:19‑20). Central to this definition of the gospel is the notion of reconciliation. This includes not only the reconciliation of individuals to God, but also the reconciliation of people to people (renewed sociological sensitivities) and people to creation (renewed ecological sensitivities). As such, the gospel is defined as the hope‑giving word of promise that is worked out in history between individuals who have been estranged and in need of reconciliation. Rather than striking a deal with God that grants salvation to the individual, provided that a specific other‑worldly understanding of the atonement is believed, this model requires a this‑worldly engagement of the gospel by the individual. Here, God is understood to exist inside of time and the gospel, and in turn, is understood to require a working out in the give‑and‑take of real time.

Because God is understood to exist inside of time, he takes on more of the attributes of a person than is the case with the other model. In his critique of the first model, Moltmann comments:

Before the unchangeable God [ i.e., the God of the eternal present] everything is equal and equally indifferent. For the loving God [i.e., the God inside time], nothing is the matter of indifferenceÉ. We may not assume anything as existing in God himself which contradicts the history of salvation; and, conversely, may not assume anything in the experience of salvation which does not have its foundation in God.

In this second model, the two great commandments that dominate Matthew's Gospel account-loving God and loving peop1e-becomes a central component to the gospel. This is because it would be unthinkable that a personal God characterized by love would offer a gospel that is not also characterized by love. Responding to the gospel, then, becomes more a question of relationship than of the adherence to formulas or principles.

In this model, forgiveness is essential, just as in the previous model we considered. The difference lies in the fact that in this model such forgiveness is not understood in terms of a cognitive grasp of tuneless truths. Rather, in this model the gospel cannot be quantified by cognitive analysis and mathematical precision. The real question turns on relational themes: has a genuine reconciliation between estranged individuals taken place? Though we cannot assess whether a person is genuinely saved via a formula or shorthand description, we nevertheless "know it when we see it," Our spirit bears witness with the other's spirit, assessing on a noncognitive level whether he or she is a genuine believer in Jesus Christ.

The weakness of this model, however, is centered precisely on what it has marginalized. The notion of imputed righteousness, a theme that dominates the Pauline depiction of the gospel (cf. Rom 5:21), is decentralized in the eschatological model. If the alleged believer is not satisfactorily loving God or loving people, he or she is left in a state of disorientation‑not knowing whether he or she is truly inside the faith. Belief is measured by the quality of love, an assessment that is subjective in orientation and thereby susceptible to error. With the notion of imputed righteousness, measuring belief is a more objective process and thus less susceptible to error: whether a person is inside the faith is determined by his or her declaration of faith and a corresponding declaration of eternal life by God (cf. Rom 10:9‑10).

According to the eschatological model, ecumenical unification of the church is integral to the gospel witness because an essential part of the gospel is the notion of reconciliation. As such, the church must be reconciled to itself if it is to be a credible and persuasive witness of the gospel. That is to say, if the promises of God cannot be seen in those who already are followers of the Christian God, there is no compelling reason for an unbeliever to trust that these same promises can be fulfilled in his or her own life. Hence, a failure to achieve a visible ecumenical unification of all Christians causes a fundamental flaw in the church's role as a sign and instrument of eschatological reconciliation in a divided world.

This eschatological or this‑worldly model, then, characterizes the gospel by the following four points:

1. Because God is understood to exist in space and time, the redemption wrought by Jesus Christ affects space and time, providing an ultimate reconciliation of all things under his headship.

2. The Christian experience is essentially communal, in a time‑conditioned orientation, not individualistic, in a timeless (eternal present) orientation. The emphasis not only involves ones own individual reconciliation to God through Christ, but also reconciliation to one's neighbors through Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Jn 4:20‑21).

3. The spiritual truths that emerge from the Christ‑event confront and challenge culture, yet always require their own cultural expression. This premise stands in opposition to the notion of abstracted spiritual principles that are timeless, changeless and transculturally and ahistorically applicable.

4. The historicalness of the gospel message (e.g., the incarnation and passion of Jesus Christ) requires an outworking of the gospel in history and culture in the life of each individual believer.

The Church

A second issue integrally related to ecumenism is the doctrine of the church. The question is, if ecumenism were effectively implemented, how would it change the complexion of the church? In the following, we will examine the doctrine of the church from two perspectives:

(a) the church as guardian of doctrinal purity and

(b) the church as guardian of its sacramentality.

The epiphanic model: guardian of doctrinal purity.

In the epiphanic model God exists outside of time and relates to us in that context. Because of this, the gospel — and all aspects of truth, for that matter — is understood in acultural and ahistorical categories, applicable crossculturally and transhistorically. The foremost responsibility of the church, then, is the guardianship of doctrinal purity, since if that were to he compromised the church would forfeit the reason for its existence. Ecclesial schisms, splits, divisions and separations are therefore considered necessary evils to be administered for the greater good of guarding against doctrinal error.

We should not infer from this, however, that doctrinal purity is important only when God is understood in epiphanic categories. Clearly, the church has always been concerned with doctrinal purity. We see this concern in the early ecumenical councils, the anathemas pronounced against heretics, the Inquisition and the countless theological debates conducted throughout church history. Nevertheless, with the one exception being the Great Schism of the eleventh century, which divided Catholicism from Eastern Orthodoxy, the church remained unified‑until the sixteenth century.

Since the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, the quest for doctrinal purity took on a new shape. At an unprecedented rate, the integrity of ecclesial unity has been sacrificed on the altar of doctrinal purity, witnessed by the almost endless number of denominational separations.

Yet the irony of this legacy is that initially the sixteenth‑century Protestant Reformers had no intention of separating from the Roman Catholic Church and founding a new ecclesial tradition. Their interest was simply to bring about a spiritual renewal within the Roman Catholic Church. However, this was rendered an impossibility when the mother church rejected their criticisms and alternative perspectives and instead anathematized and excommunicated them. Because of the lack of ordained clergy, the Reformers and their followers deemed it necessary to ordain ministers outside the traditional episcopal succession within the Roman Catholic Church. They justified this decision on the grounds of theological expediency, hoping that their separation from the mother church would not he prolonged and that ecclesial unity would someday be restored.

Over the course of time, however, the Reformers and their followers stopped thinking of the Roman Catholic Church as the mother church to which they hoped to return someday. Instead, "Catholicism became the country of Egypt and they thought of their own churches as the promised land." The Protestant exiles had become "so thoroughly acclimatized in their new ecclesiastical homes" that they viewed themselves superior in morality, spirituality and theology to the mother church that had previously cast them out. From their perspective, then, returning to the mother church violated simple logic — they had much to lose and little to gain.

This ecclesial attitude toward the mother church set a precedent within Protestantism that has been passed down through the centuries as Protestant ecclesial bodies experienced their own schisms and brought into existence new ecclesial traditions. Rather than seeking a reconciliation to mother churches, these new ecclesial bodies have understood themselves as first and foremost defenders of doctrinal purity. Loyalty to mother churches was therefore of little importance.

It is here where the epiphanic model of the church has played such an important role. The beginning of ecclesial divisions within Protestantism occurred at approximately the same time that Enlightenment ideals entered this ecclesial tradition. Thinking in terms of timeless truths devoid of cultural and historical influences, Protestantism adopted an attitude where relationships and holistic integration (this‑worldly concerns) were de‑emphasized in favor of the pursuit of doctrinal purity.

Francis A. Schaeffer is representative of this model. He insisted that the primary responsibility of the church is the maintenance of doctrinal purity. This, he explained, requires a steadfast commitment to specific doctrines as absolute and therefore nonnegotiable. If these doctrines are violated and repudiated by any ecclesial body, separation becomes a mandatory response. If separation does not occur, he added,

the tendency is to go from ecclesiastical latitudinarianism [toleration of false doctrine] to cooperative comprehensiveness [active participation in false doctrine] Thus Christians may still talk about truth but tend less and less to practice truth.

Once this occurs, he added, it fatally compromises a believer's effectiveness as a witness to the gospel before a watching world.

One important means by which Schaeffer believed that doctrinal purity could be achieved as by an "analysis of concepts." This, he explained, required a careful study of the Bible with the intent of establishing the limits of orthodoxy. He insisted, "The bounds are set not by any 'method' but by the truth God has given us in propositional form in the Bible." Moreover, these propositions are timeless and acultural since they come to us from a God who exists outside of time yet has chosen to break into our world and reveal them to us. They therefore possess a universal applicability.

The concern for doctrinal purity — central to this first model — has made ecumenism an almost impossible task. In their attempt to define a singular doctrinal stance among differing ecclesial traditions, theologians of various traditions have found it exceedingly difficult to form a consensus regarding the limits of orthodoxy. Commenting on the problems of interdenominational dialogue, Robert Jenson writes:

On each traditionally disputed item, the dialogues have sought what has come to be called convergence, a narrowing of the distance between differing positions to the point where a particular dispute can no longer be incompatible with fellowship inside one churchly communion. And such convergence has, with almost monotonous consistency, been regularly achieved. But from each remaining small and apparently tolerable divergence, an urgent reference has emerged to some other topic on the agenda, causing a newly virulent division with that topic. And with that topic it has gone the same way, and so on, finally to the beginning.

Hence, with few exceptions, the great divides in church fellowship "have come no nearer."

In this epiphanic model of the church, then, the very nature of maintaining doctrinal purity contradicts the possibility of ecumenical unification. To have the one requires the repudiation of the other.

The eschatological model: the church as sacrament.

In the second model, the church is more concerned with time‑related issues. Understood as a sacrament, divine grace is channeled through the church to the world as the church serves as the custodian of holy writ, orthodoxy (as clarified by the early church councils), liturgical worship and the channel for the preaching of the Word of God. Just as the other two sacraments in the church — baptism and the Lord's Supper — point backward and forward, so does the church. As sacrament, the church points back to the actual accomplishment of God's victory in our Lord's incarnation and passion, and points forward to the complete manifestation of that victory when humanity and all creation will become full and visible participants in the redemption which has already been accomplished. Endowed with grace, the church is therefore chosen by God so that it effects the reality which it signifies.

Understood as a sacrament, then, the church becomes grounded in time-related issues. It points to the past and the future. Moreover, it possesses a present‑tense quality since it must be experienced in the here and now in order to be efficacious.

In this respect. when one enters a local assembly of believers where the risen Lord Jesus is worshiped and his Word is preached, that individual engages in a sacramental rite. The grace of God is present in that assembly in a manner not present anywhere else. This does not mean that the grace of God cannot be spurned by a person with an unrepentant heart. What it does mean is that the church itself is a vehicle or channel of grace and that all who enter through its doors are exposed to, and encouraged to draw from, that grace. There are four arguments in favor of this model.

First, according to the Bible, God has chosen to attach eschatological signs to his chosen people. This understanding of signs reaches back to the Old Testament and forward into the New. The essential role of the nation of Israel as the chosen people centered on their being an eschatological sign of God's unfailing promises. 'Though subject to the vicissitudes and corruptions of the surrounding nations, Israel remained the object of God's grace, and in the eschaton it will exemplify the holiness of God. The prophetic protests' against the nation of Israel, as attested in the Old Testament, were intended "to purify, not subvert, traditional institutional orders." Even Jesus recognized the legitimacy of the institutions among the Jewish people of his day and, accordingly, lived and worked within those structures. He did this in spite of the fact that those institutions had become corrupted by false doctrine and sinful leadership.

Based on this Old Testament precedent, God established his chosen people in the New Testament. The essential role of the church to serve as a chosen people centered on their being an eschatological sign of God's unfailing promises. Similar to the Old Testament precedent, prophetic protests in the Church Age should be to purify — not subvert by means of ecclesial separation‑traditional institutional orders.

Second, the eschatological signs of a chosen people are meaningless unless they are visible sociologically and historically. In an eschatological framework, the church is to be a sign among the nations of God's eschatologically triumphant mercy. The church is to show that grace in the reconciliation and unification of all things in Christ (see Eph 1:9‑10: Col 1:19‑20). Thus, Christians must he reconciled among themselves and also be reconcilers in the world if they are to be credible and persuasive witnesses. According to the Bible, God desires both an internalized and an externalized faith. Moreover, these two dimensions are necessarily interconnected (cf. 1 Jn 4:19‑21).

Third, the catholicity (universality) of such an eschatologically defined community would necessarily include a mixture of unbelief and faithfulness . In this respect, the Protestant principle of simul justus et peccator (simultaneously just and sinner) would apply not only to individual believers but also to the community of believers. The negative description of the churches at Sardis and Laodicea in the third chapter of Revelation provide examples of this concept. These churches indicate at least the possibility of making out a scriptural case for the view that a church, even while losing none of its character as a church, can be in some respects substantially unfaithful to its Lord. The apartheid churches of South Africa offer a contemporary illustration. Lindbeck writes,"The apartheid churches ... are no less churches than the black ones that they oppress, just as the sixteenth‑century Catholics and Protestants were part of the same elect people as the Anabaptists whom they jointly slaughtered." Though falling short of the model of love and holiness that should characterize all churches, they nonetheless were still churches and should be recognized as such.

From this understanding of the church as a sacrament, the church is best understood by what it points toward, not by what it fully possesses now. The implications of this insight cuts in two directions. On the one hand, though a sacrament, the church does not work efficaciously upon a person who is unrepentant towards God. It "does not guarantee the reality which it symbolizes . . . . It does not work automatically, i.e., magically. " Its sacramental character can be thwarted just as any sacramental sign can be thwarted by an unrepentant sinner. On the other hand, the church's eschatological horizon and promised blessings cannot be thwarted. It is still the channel by which God has chosen to bless his people. It remains God's channel in spite of the sinfulness of its people or leadership.

The essential character of churches, then, is paradoxical. Like individual believers, churches fall short of God's standard of holiness yet are still sustained by his gracious hand. Moreover, this paradox is not easily overcome. Stott comments on this difficulty:

Fundamentalists have tended to hold a separatist ecclesiology and to withdraw from any community which does not agree in every particular with their own doctrinal position. They forget that Luther and Calvin were very reluctant schismatics who dreamed of a reformed Catholicism. Most evangelicals, however, while believing it right to seek the doctrinal and ethical purity of the church, also believed that perfect purity cannot be attained in this world. The balance between discipline and tolerance is not easy to find.

Stott's point is that the perfect church does not exist in the world and that attempts to make it so are unrealistic. We must seek a balance between discipline and tolerance if the church is to survive.

Fourth, a singularly unified church best reflects its sacramentality since a fragmented church fails to give adequate witness to the victorious grace and eschatological redemption achieved at the cross. Typically, the Protestant position has argued for an existentialized understanding of the church according to which it possesses a spiritualized unity. Such spiritual unity exists in the invisible and spiritualized celestial city, a oneness in a strictly other-worldly dimension. Yet if the church is to be understood as a sacrament (a dispenser of grace to all those who enter into its orbit), its sense of unity must occupy both realms (this‑world and other‑world). A sacrament, by definition, is a channel of grace. Thus, if it fails to occupy both realms, it ceases to be a channel.

The notion of the church as sacrament therefore requires it to be ecumenically unified. A united church is therefore essential since spiritual truth cannot be understood in the abstract and, instead, can only be seen as it is worked out historically and culturally. In this respect, Moltmann argues that the epiphanic understanding of God follows "the thought forms of the Greek mind, which sees the logos of the epiphany of the eternal present of being as truth, and thus constructs doctrines from that perspective." He adds, however, that the real language of Christian eschatology . . . is not the Greek logos, but the promise which has stamped the language, the hope and the experience of Israel. It was not the logos of the epiphany of the eternal present, but in the hope‑giving word of promise that Israel found God's truth." It reflects "a knowledge of history and of the historic character of truth." An ecumenical unification is therefore necessary since the absence of unity leaves the impression that there is no historic (this‑worldly) character of truth to the gospel.

The Relevance of Ecumenism to the Postmodern Debate

Having considered how our understanding of the nature of God (theology proper) generates a domino effect that ultimately acts upon our understanding of ecumenism, we will now examine how our understanding of hermeneutics has a similar effect upon ecumenism.

Modernism and ecumenism.

The modernist paradigm and ecumenism have historically been a poor match. Under modernism, differing religious systems with triumphalistic attitudes have vied for universal recognition and acceptance. The modernist epistemology generated two responses within the church in the twentieth century, both of which worked against the ecumenical agenda.

The first response, the tribalization of theology, does theology "only in, for and with one's own kind." Modernism set afoot within the church a trend of massive retreat from ecumenism. The doing of theology was Òonly from one's own ecclesial traditions‑Lutheran, Reformed, Baptist, Anabaptist, Anglican, Methodist, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Pentecostal, whatever." This doing of theology was also characterized by specific theological camps: process, liberation, dispensational, covenant, existential, Jesus Seminar, and so on; or as an ethnic or gender subcommunity, such as feminist, gay and lesbian, African‑American or Hispanic. An antiecumenical spirit has been dominant where theologians were content to work within tightly fixed ecclesial, perspectival and ethnic parameters with little interest in integrating their insights with those of the broader Christian faith.

The second response was the opposite: a movement characterized by the universalization of theology. This response attempted to advance the mission of ecumenism by erasing all theological particularities. This erasure was so complete as to eliminate not only such distinctions as "ethnic, ecclesial and perspectival but also any basic distinction between Christian faith and other world religions and all people of good will‑hence the growth of the universalizing of theology based on some common core of truth or holiness." As noted earlier, here Karl Rahner and Paul Tillich have been two of the more prominent standard bearers, Rahner with his "anonymous Christian" conceptualization and Tillich with his correlational theology.

Nevertheless, both trends represent different ways in which modernism logjammed the work of ecumenism. With the first trend, "fundamental Christian identity was associated with the loyalty to the subcommunity of common stock with its attendant customs and traditions." That is equated absolute truth with a specific Christian subtradition that de facto was understood to be a universalized paradigm. This understanding of absolute truth was true in both liberal and conservative denominations. Those who held to this view were not able to advance the mission of ecumenism and, arguably, were not even interested in doing so. The second trend, however, was equally problematic. The conceptualization of a "common core of truth or holiness" tended to favor one paradigm of truth or holiness while trivializing or falsely representing other paradigms. It also had the tendency to be predicated upon the moods and moralisms of some prevailing culture, which determined the definition of this common core. Such favoritism doomed ecumenism since it forced capitulation of rather than fostering respect for differing theological positions.

Postmodernism and ecumenism.

In contrast to its mismatch with modernism, ecumenism has found a more kindred spirit in postmodernism. This is because they both abhor fragmentation, both strive for holistic thinking, and neither requires the universal recognition of a given system and therefore is capable of avoiding the problem of triumphalism. Individual theologians are permitted to maintain the integrity of their particular theologies since they are not forced into a singular system deemed universal and absolute. Hence, in the eyes of some scholars, postmodernism is a superior epistemology to modernism in that it offers a way around the need for universals and, in its place, offers the legitimization of diversity that is less condemnatory than was previously the case.

Three of the characteristics of postmodernism that are advantageous to the work of ecumenism are the following.

First, postmodernism is characterized by pluralism. It denies that there is any one singular legitimizing system of thought on which all cultures and all historical settings depend. As Jean‑François Lyotard explains, postmodernism demands a "war on totality." In its place, it affirms the plurality of conflicting systems, systems that are more local and regional in scope. Stanley Grenz explains.

Each of us experiences a world within the context of the societies in which we live, and postmoderns continue to construct models to illumine their experiences in such contexts.

These models give the impression that those who live inside their assumptions and work out their implications have a hold on reality that is universal in scope. Such impressions, however, are nothing more than "useful fictions" that one eventually abandons as he or she encounters the larger world from which reality is ordered.

Second, postmodernism is characterized by centerlessness . No shared focus unites the divergent elements to common standards from which people can appeal in their efforts to measure the rightness or wrongness of a given issue. As Steven Conner explains,

The postmodern condition ... manifests itself in the multiplication of centres of power and activity and the dissolution of every kind of totalizing narrative which claims to govern the whole complex field of social activity and representation.

This legitimizes the understanding of society as a collage, where seemingly incompatible systems are placed side by side and recognized as possessing a rightful place within the overall picture. Or, to change metaphors, society is likened to a stew in which vegetables, onions, potatoes, meat and so on maintain their distinctive character and wholeness, yet together create a delicious meal of competing flavors and textures all in the same bowl. To blend all the ingredients into a puree (a singular flavor and texture) drastically alters the meal and, as many would agree, ruins its flavor. In this respect, modernism is likened to the puree; postmodernism to the stew.

Third, postmodernism is characterized by subjectivism. Postmodernists insist that all peoples view reality from finite points of view and are influenced by the cultures and historical situations from which they are located. John Hick, for example, argues that where people are born in the world, to a large extent, determines how they will understand a host of issues, including religious ones: people born into Hindu families will likely be Hindu, people born into Catholic families will likely be Catholic, people born into Pentecostal families will likely be Pentecostal. He explains,

We can refer to this manifest dependence of spiritual allegiance upon the circumstances of birth and upbringing as the genetic and environmental relativity of religious perception and commitment.

Grenz adds that according to postmodernism,

we do not simply encounter the world that is "out there" but rather we construct the world using the concepts we bring to it.

Moreover,

We have no fixed vantage point beyond our own structuring of the world from which to gain a purely objective view of whatever reality may he out there.

Pure objective knowledge — a knowledge characterized as possessing the exactitude of God's eye — is therefore rendered an impossibility. We can no more stand outside of these influences and think than we can, so to speak, jump over our own shadows. Whatever we do or think, cultural and historical influences leave an indelible mark.

These three characteristics — pluralism, centerlessness and subjectivism — collectively provide a vehicle from which many scholars believe ecumenism can move beyond its modernist past. Since it sidesteps the notion of universal truth, it gives competing theologies the freedom to exist side by side without being overpowered by one or another.

Such a perspective, however, is not without its critics. They identify three problems with such thinking:

(1) What if a universal truth indeed exists (e.g., Jesus is Lord)?

(2) What is to prevent one of the competing theologies from insisting that it is the center and attempting to overpower the rest?

(3) Is an overarching system where competing theologies are balanced together and therefore possess a sense of healthy respect for one another even feasible?

So which paradigm is more in keeping with the Christian faith? At this point, we will not attempt to resolve these challenges. We only wish to bring to the reader's attention three observations.

First, more than one paradigm exists that is promoted within Christian scholarship, and thus needs to be honestly considered. A failure to do so results in an ostrich head‑in‑the‑sand mentality that does damage to one's credibility by those on the outside looking in.

Second, there exists a greater compatibility of postmodernism with ecumenism than that of modernism.

Third, postmodernism, though more compatible to ecumenism than modernism, still has important questions to answer.

SUMMARY

There is a concern among many scholars to overcome obstacles that have logjammed the ecumenical agenda. They understand modernism as one of the major impediments to this agenda and are therefore intrigued with the possibilities of postmodernism.

We have examined the theology of ecumenism with a special interest in how modernism and postmodernism play a role in shaping our understanding of it. Specifically, we have observed that a central question we must address goes back to the fundamental issue of the nature of God:

does God exist inside or outside of time?

The notion that he exists inside of time favors the postmodern agenda, whereas the notion that lie exists outside of time favors the modernist agenda.