the holy spirit and the ecumenical movement

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT

J. K. S . REID

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1643-49) is poorer than the Heidelberg Catechism in that it lacks any section devoted explicitly to the Holy Spirit. Sixty years ago, the Presbyterian Church in the USA felt this deficiency so acutely that it sought a remedy by adding a chapter entitled simply “Of the Holy Spirit.” Although the chapter, so far as I know, has been adopted by no other church that uses the Westminster Confession of Faith, it has been a regular part of the Confession as used in the now larger United Presbyterian Church in the USA. The chapter has four paragraphs, in the first of which the Holy Spirit is acknowledged as the third person in the Trinity and declared the same in substance as the Father and the Son, equal in power and glory, and worthy of the same worship. The other three paragraphs chiefly emphasize the creative aspect of the Holy Spirit (he is “the Lord and Giver of life”), the inward aspect (“moves, persuades and enables”), and the corporative aspect (“all believers being vitally united to Christ,” and so “one to another in the Church”).

This addition is an undoubted improvement. It does something to break down a reserve which the Church has historically exercised in its statements concerning the Holy Spirit. Not that this reserve is wholly culpable. The New Testament is, as has often been said, interested not in what the Holy Spirit is but in what he does ; and no doubt it is this that prompts a certain reticence in the post-New Testament Church. It is only with apparent reluctance that more than the bare minimum is said. The bare mention of the Holy Spirit in the Apostles’ Creed is copied in the succeeding Nicene Creed by a simple bare mention ; this is amplified in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan version, but of the work of the Holy Spirit only the inspiration of the prophets is mentioned ; and it is only two hundred years later that there is interpolated into this formula the contentious Filioque clause.

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Like the amplifications just mentioned, the fuller statement of the revised Westminster Confession of Faith is motivated by discernible influences, and in the three aspects which it writes into the statement can be read an implicit commentary on much Church history. The Holy Spirit is creative - the vivifying and revivifying work of the Holy Spirit is being emphasized against false concepts of irreformability ; the Holy Spirit is inward in its working - then it is convinced persuasion that is the end, not an enforced intellectual capitulation; the Holy Spirit is corporative - hence we must think of his achievement as societary and not as merely individualistic.

These three aspects are distinguishable but by no means distinct from one another; and the formulation of the three paragraphs makes no mistake here. They are not directed each exclusively to the affirmation of one of the aspects ; rather all the aspects can be discerned in each of them. In his creative aspect he works to convince in face of ignorance and disregard and to unite by overcoming the sinful separation in which the old humanity is involved. In his inward aspect he creatively arouses that new understanding which can apprehend Christ and incorporate into the community of those similarly persuaded. In his corporative aspect he makes effective and acceptable the offer of a new created humanity in Christ in which the old sordid divisions are overcome.

Thus the Holy Spirit ranges with entire freedom, repudiating categor- ization into classification of action or distinct aspects ; repudiating institutionalization, even within the “institutions” through which he works, for after all it was Christ and not the Holy Spirit that was incar- nate ; repudiating also inscripturization, as though in the undoubtedly inspired utterances of the Bible his work was completed and exhausted. “The wind bloweth as it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth” (John 3.’8) - so is the Spirit.

THESIS I : The Holy Spirit is simply God’s way of contriving that man respond and that when he does so it is his own response. Needless to say, this simple statement does not say all that ought to be borne in mind in thinking of the Holy Spirit. But it does express certain elements that are essential in general and relevant for the practical purpose in hand here. Right thinking about the Holy Spirit has to be right about the character of the Holy Spirit ; about the character of that with which action is particularly concerned, namely man ; and about the relation between the two.

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God. Against all the persistent and various emphases to the contrary, when we speak of the Holy Spirit we speak of God, of nothing less and of nothing other than God. We have not to do with God and the Holy Spirit. We have even to take care in using the expression the Holy Spirit of God, as though the Holy Spirit were something that God had or possessed in separation from his own being. We have rather to do with God himself at work in a way specially characteristic of his operations with men. This comes to powerful expression in the scriptural and traditional phrase “the finger of God,” though here again the form of expression could be read to imply that the Holy Spirit is no more than part of God. Thus Christ’s exorcism, attributed in Luke 11. 20 to “the finger of God,” is in Matthew 12. 28 credited directly to “the Spirit of God.” So Saint Augustine can speak of the “finger of God by whom we are sanctified.” Saint Ambrose ventures farther in suggesting that the Son is the Father’s right hand and the Spirit his finger ; but there is no thought of inferiority, but only of cooperation in activity : “the right hand, the finger of God, is God in operation, the Father working by the Son, and the Son by the Spirit.” (One may recall the Michael- angelo Sistine Chapel rendering of the creation of man, where it is the Finger of God that is outstretched to lift Adam into life.)

Almost as important as the positive affirmation of God in action are certain denials that are implied. However closely associated in working on and in man, the Holy Spirit is not submerged in humanity nor identified with the spirit of man. The Holy Spirit remains God. For testimony to this it is of interest to be able to quote M. Schmaus, “Der Heilige Geist bleibt von den von ihm begeisteten Glaubigen wesentlich verschie- den wie Gott vom Menschen.” Further we are given security against Sabellian tendencies in any form: the simple statement that the Holy Spirit is really God at work is a barrier against further definition so re- fined that, before the argument can be brought to a halt, all that is left in our hands is a quality adhering to God in a more or less unreliable and transient way. Again we are defended against thinking of the Holy Spirit as a tertium quid coming to our rescue when our thought has led

De Spirit. et lit., 16. 28. De Spirit. Sanct., 3. 3-5.

8 Cf. H. B. SWETE, The H o b Spirif in the Ancient Church, London, Macmillan, 1912,

Katholische Dogmatik IV/l , Miinchen, 1940, S. 39, quoted in E. SCHLINK, Pro Veri- p. 320.

tare, Miinster und Kassel, 1963, S. 139.

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us into dualism. Then theologically it is supposed that the gulf between “up there” and “down here,” and the problem of Transcendence and Immanence are overcome by means of a bridge term, viz. the Holy Spirit. And again, religiousi’y it is thought that Christ has done a work which, though intended for men’s benefit, has stopped short of making contact with them. The gap in the circuit has then to be closed if any benefit is to reach them ; and to bridge the gap is the office of the Holy Spirit. But the dualism that has intruded into the picture at these points is quite false. It would not have penetrated any way at all if it had been firmly maintained that the Holy Spirit is not a bridge but a dimension, God in action on men’s behalf.

Further, when we say that the Holy Spirit is God at work, we are effectively prevented from supposing that such spiritual activity is simply one method of operation among others which might equally well have been devised and chosen. In the end, this line of thought would first detach personal character from God and then destroy it. On the other hand, when we say that the Holy Spirit is God at work we are tying into our thought of God that he operates spiritually ; and though this concept is by no means self-explanatory and must be understood in the sense imparted to it by revelation and the Gospel, it does at first accomodate the ideas of personalness, personal operation, and personal relationships.

Man. It may be assumed that Christian thinking has never seriously entertained the intention of denying that man has something to do which is distinguishable from God and what God does. It is of course a quite different question whether in the expression of its thinking it has always succeeded in making this clear. Religion itself presupposes an authentic distinction between God and man. Worship is not divine narcissism. It has not even been common (though of course not unknown) within the Christian tradition to construe worship as something which, because it is based on an illusory distinction, is transient. At its farthest extreme the light of Christian revelation discloses a still worshipping community saying “Alleluia, salvation and glory and honour and power unto the Lord our God” (Rev. 19. l), and this has been taken to belong to escha- tology rather than mere apocalyptic. The more powerful impulse mani- fest within Christian thought has been to emphasize the place that man has and the part he has to play ; and Christian theology can be seen in great measure as a struggle between the forces wishing to restrain this tendency and those wishing, sometimes for the best “evangelical” reasons, to give it emphasis. Pelagius champions the independent ability of man

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in the name of a commendable moral earnestness and a desire to show God to be not a liar ; but Augustine wins the day against him. But in the last resort did he win the battle on such terms as fairly expressed the cause he championed? At first they did not prevent him lapsing to the level of synergism, as when he declares that salvation ex utroquept, id est et voluntate hominis et misericordia Dei (Ench. 32), a phrase on which Karl Barth pours much scorn l . In this form the part that man plays is conceived as cooperant : the salvific result is the function of two factors. It is at least an earnest attempt to conserve the independence that belongs to man and his part, and a witness to the indispensable evangelical demand. On the other hand, Augustine is quite capable of retracting the whole without apparent remainder into the divine side of things-indeed he seems to do so in the very same chapter of the En- chiridon, where he says : “the whole is assigned to God, who both pre- pares beforehand man’s good will to be assisted, and assists it when prepared .” This vacillation is a frequent occurrence where terminology is at fault.

There can be little doubt that the modern terminology of address- response has furnished a more adequate category for the expression of that real independence which is man’s even when he is being saved. Three aspects of special significance it fitly accommodates. For one thing, the concept conserves the personal element so clearly present in the biblical “Thus saith the Lord.” Secondly, it expresses that initiative which rightly is attributed to the divine side of what in some sense is a common action and which is just as firmly embedded in the biblical witness. Thirdly, the category of address-response makes con- ceivable the solemn facts of inappropriate response and total lack of response, in other words renders intelligible, without any complete rationalization, the fact that men reject the divine initiative. With this we pass over to the matter of the relation between God’s action and man’s.

The Relation between God and Man. “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Gal. 5. 25) -it is a familiar example of a familiar biblical paradox, that juxtaposition of indicative and imperative verbal moods : be what you are ; or you have been made (holy), then be holy. But the text cited has a further implication. The Holy Spirit is the

KARL BARTH, The HoQ Ghost and the Christian Lge. London, Frederick Muller, 1938, p. 34.


sphere in which the paradox, though no doubt logically still incompre- hensible, is nonetheless intelligible. The Spirit is the area in which God is at work but without reduction of man to pure passivity, in which, as we may say, God does all, but there is still something for man to do, or actively decline to do. This, it need hardly be said, has nothing whatever to do with human free will as usually understood. In the matter of free will man is confronted with a number of options between which he has the ability to make a choice. Here, on the contrary, God does something, yet in such a way that it may or may not be appropriated by the man for whom it is done. Nor are we here confronted with a “permissive” will of God as ordinarily understood. For this would imply that God sits back waiting for something new to happen; and as Calvin often insists, this is no appropriate way in which to think of God or the situation in which man over against God is placed. On the contrary, God does act, yet again in such a way that the action may be repudiated.

We must accordingly say something like this : the Holy Spirit operates in an area in which God’s will, though expressed in action, does not forthwith realize itself but remains in some manner suspended. Looked at from the other side, it is the area in which man, while being the object of God’s action, may nonetheless reject what is undoubtedly done for him. When God in the beginning made the heavens and the earth, the fiat of his will, Let there be light, and so on, is succeeded instantly by the fact of light, and so on. Meantime the Spirit is there, but only in the background - “the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters” (Gen. 1. 3). The Spirit is as it were in abeyance. But in the case of man, the Spirit moves into a front position, as is testified in the Yahwehist account of creation (Gen. 2.7). And then there is cleared a little space in which man in that dependent independence that is his can raise his head and stand upon his feet. God wills here too - he “wills that all men should be saved” (I Tim. 2. 4) ; God sends his Son, the express image of his glory (Heb. 1. 3) : God sends the Holy Spirit (Joel 2. 28, see Gal. 4.16). But the will of God as thus expressed is not succeeded by instant realization. Here where God deals with men as Holy Spirit, the impossible incongruity occurs : the realization of what he wills and does suffers sus- pension. The measure of the gravity of this incongruity is exemplified in the fact that there have been those who hastened to remove it : prae- destinatio duplex is essentially the alarmed, even panicked declaration that what is incongruous with the will of God is not incongruous after all : the incongruity is run back and lodged in the arbitrium arcanurn Dei.


But then, alas !, God becomes something of which the revelation in Christ is not a reliable clue ; and in the end it is impossible to save him from being the author of evil. The solution proposed is logically impec- cable ; but it is also unchristian. In particular it is at this point and in this way unchristian, that it fails to reckon with the mode in which the Holy Spirit operates.

We apply these considerations to the problem of the Holy Spirit and the ecumenical movement in the following way. We are in the area of the operation of the Holy Spirit - that area in which God does all and where nonetheless man may act or react or counteract, the area in which radical incongruity can occur. “There is one body” (Eph. 4. 4) but there are many churches : what is singular is plural. This is the incongruity. It is the merit of the ecumenical movement to have focussed attention on this incongruity. In doing so, it is both the creation of the alarm and shame which recognition of the incongruity evokes, and also the instru- ment for increasing and spreading that alarm and shame with the object of removing its just cause. There are those in our churches who believe that in the last resort the incongruity is unreal and so needs no solution. It is enough that there should be and should be recognized to be a spiritual unity. This in the end is all that really matters. The plurality that has infected the situation does nothing to render ineffective that real spiritual unity. There are on the other hand those who think that the incongruity is so real that it admits no solution. All that remains possible is federal relationship in which there will be a tacit agreement to differ and a resignation to remain in separation. Moreover these can readily join hands with those others in all kinds of cooperative activity for the alleviation of human need, the resolution of the world’s problems, and the establishment of a coexistence as peaceful and productive as may be contrived. People of both sorts are to be found both outside and also inside the ecumenical movement.

But the considerations already expressed prohibit such thinking. We are here in the area of the Spirit’s operation. To both parties therefore it is necessary to reiterate that paradoxical juxtaposition of indicative and imperative verbal moods : you are, therefore be. Those who imagine that spiritual unity is enough argue exactly as if the “ye are holy” meant exemption from the “therefore be ye holy.’’ Those who believe that more than spiritual unity is unattainable argue as if the unattainability of holiness were an excuse for disregarding the imperative to be holy. But the supposition would be repudiated by both parties. So too in the case


of the unity of the Church to whose promotion the ecumenical movement is devoted. Besides, a consideration not hitherto mentioned has to be remembered. The area in which the Holy Spirit operates is to be understood not only as supplying the context in which paradoxical incongruity is intelligible, but also, and much more, as the sphere in which it is surmountable: the sphere in which the Holy Spirit really operates for the progressive removal of the incongruity. As the Holy Spirit enables sanctification, so he enables unity. The Holy Spirit never gives up or gives in, but continually renews the opportunities. Where he is at work there is no final rejection. He really is at work. He is, we remind ourselves, simply God‘s way of contriving that man respond and that when he does so it is with his own right response. The ecumenical movement stands or falls by whether that is true or not true.

THESIS 11 : The Holy Spirit is associated but not identijied with the Church, and so is able freely to promote unity. Needless to say, the phrase koinonia pneumatos is of cardinal importance at this point. How are we to understand it ? Is the genitive here to be understood as subjective or objective ? - the most momentous consequences flow from the choice made between these alternatives. It is not that the choice made deter- mines absolutely what follows, but rather that a course is oriented which other supplementary factors then hasten from all sides to endorse until none other seems even possible. It is of course impossible to deal fully with the issue here involved. Broadly, the choice lies between “the sense of membership which the Holy Spirit imparts” and participation in something that is distinct, greater and more comprehensive 2. If Lietzmann is right and “no exegetical skill” can give us certainty here, we are entitled to seek guidance from other quarters. If the Holy Spirit is to be understood as God contriving a real human response, it is on the objective rather than the subjective side that the right choice lies. Thus Stahlin : the koinonia is “a large number of people who either share in or accept a part in something which is both greater and more comprehensive than themselves, and through sharing in which they stand in close communion with one another.s For this understanding etymo- logical justification is found in the Latin equivalent for koinonia : Com- munio = cum + munus, the enjoyment or experience of a common

PLUMMER, ICC commentary on 2 Cor., ad loc. * Cf. W. STAHLIN, “Koinonia and Worship,” in Studia Llturgica, vol. 1 , 4 Dcc. 1962 ; “Fellowship in the Holy Spirit.”

Op. cit.


function. That is, a common involvement in sancta yields a common unity as sancti. It is clear that the objective sense in no way excludes a subjective sense of the phrase, but rather facilitates a subjective sense while resisting identification with it.

Accordingly, 2 Cor. 13. 14, the Trinitarian benediction is to be understood as a benedictory conferment on those to whom it is uttered of that charis which Jesus Christ is and has, that love which God mani- fests in the GospeI, and that openness and accessibility to participation in the Holy Spirit which in turn strengthens the bonds of fellowship within the visible community.

In Phil. 2. 1 the objective and subjective aspects are combined: “if there is any sharing of the Spirit.” Had Paul said “if there is a sharing of the Spirit,” we should have to conclude that he was arguing : if there is, as of course there is. But this tis, any, brings the matter down to terms of less and more, as comparison with the other phrases used also shows. We are precisely in that area in which God does all to con- trive the human response, and yet where realization of that action is suspended, the area of the operation of the Holy Spirit.

This becomes even clearer in Eph. 4. 3 f. There is, we are told, “one body,” intimately connected with the immediately succeeding “one Spirit.” But that unity which assuredly is a unity that also ambiguously is ; it is subject to greater or less achievement : the Ephesians are enjoined to “spare no effort to make fast ... the unity which the Spirit gives.” The Holy Spirit cannot do more for unity than he has already done. Yet the response to what God does is a matter of more or less. Once again we are in the area where God does all and yet all is not done. There is no automatic unity. We are faced again with incongruity between what is and what is, between the unity that is and the disunity that is.

The condition giving rise to this incongruity lies in the character of the area in which the Holy Spirit operates. But we can say more about its cause. Quoting E. E. Aubrey : “Where the Holy Spirit was viewed as coming to all believers it was inevitable that rival and even contradictory ideas should be advanced as born of the Spirit, and that not only controversy but insubordination and strife should result.” The problem is already present in the New Testament itself. Saint Paul’s answer is

New English Bible. “The Holy Spirit in Relation to the Religious Community,” in JTS, 1940, p. 2 f.


in terms of charismata - they all have a common source in the Holy Spirit ; hence an order may be discerned among them of which he gives some account (I Cor. 13. 14, where e.g. intelligible preaching is given priority to glossalulia), while all are subordinate to the service of the Church. But the problem of what is churisma and what only appears as such does not rise for solution. The Johannine answer (I John 4. 1) is to distinguish between “spirits,” and the criterion is whether or not Christ be confessed. But the difficulty of extracting an answer from the application of the criterion is recognized : we have to “try the spirits.” The Church was still left to work out its own answer to the problem.

The emergence and extension of ecclesiastical authority, while no doubt it arose from a multiplicity of causes, did at first provide an answer. The tendency to identify the guidance of the Holy Spirit with ecclesiastical authority is clearly seen in Ignatius, Iraeneus, and Cyprian.B The tendency was intensified by sacramental doctrine. Both in the Gos- pels and also in Acts, the Holy Spirit is set in the closest conjunction with baptism. As the sacramental system develops, “the Holy Spirit is thought of as imparted by the Church through baptism, confirmation, the eucharist, and ordination.” The Montanist and Donatist movements are in this context to be seen as defections from the orthodox view in the interest of the freedom of the Spirit. While they were rightly suppressed, the theology of their suppression only encouraged the prevailing tendency towards ecclesiasticizing the Holy Spirit. It was never denied that the Holy Spirit existed and operated outside the Church; and many statements can be found in which this in fact is explicitly affirmed. But thepructice of the Church stifled the expression of this truth. In general the Holy Spirit is regarded as simply channelled through the ecclesiastical apparatus. With the rise of the notion of the Church as authorita- tive interpreter of Scripture, the investment of the Holy Spirit is completed. The Bible now speaks only through the Church, never to it. The Church “is shut up to talking merely with itself in the company of the archaeological survivals of its own dogmatic statements.”

It is too early to say how far, or indeed whether, the Roman Catholic Church will in our day move in the direction of modifying this understanding of itself and the relation of the Holy Spirit to itself. But the out- lines of the traditional position, of the position which it is still to be

Cf. E. E. AUBREY, op. cit. for much of the following.

Cf. J. K. S. REID, Theology and the University, ed. Coulson, p. 138. a Ep. Phil, vii ; Haer. 111 24. 1 ; Ep. 74. 5 , Sentent episc. 16.


hoped will be transcended, are clear enough. As George S. Hendry puts i t : “The Roman Catholic view is succinctly expressed in the official formula : The Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church.” As grace is trans- formed into the “sweet poison” of a supernatural infusion, the Holy Spirit is regarded in such a way that it becomes the possession of the Church. Not that this institutionalization of the Holy Spirit brings the Holy Spirit down for incorporation merely in the human, the natural or the material. On the contrary, the effect is two-way and not one way only: the Church is thereby elevated to a quasi-divine status, eligible therefore to be the extension of the incarnation, and capable of speaking with the voice of God himself. The real damage done to the Holy Spirit by this view is rather the implicit denial of his independent existence apart from and outside of the Church. With this thefreedom of the Holy Spirit is thrown into doubt. The Church becomes the repository of the Spirit. He is “buried in the sacraments” (E. E. Aubrey, op. cit. , p. 7 ) ; and this is not compensated for by the provision of official outlets through which at the discretion of the Church the presence and power of the Holy Spirit can be leaked to the believer. This is a very different thing from the Spirit that “bloweth where it listeth.” Further, the Lord- ship of the Holy Spirit, which is clearly declared in the New Testament and which the Council of Constantinople was at such pains explicitly to write into the creed, is impugned and impaired. When freedom is lost the Spirit falls under ecclesiastical control ; and then the proper roles are reversed: Church and Spirit have really exchanged places. By this means the problem of real differences being attributed to the same Spirit is evaded. What the Church does not say the Spirit does not say. And so Luther is almost immediately excommunicated. No time is allowed to “try the spirits.”

With reference to the subject of the present study, the following further implication has to be drawn. The expressions used by Roman Catholics, even authoritatively and even as late as those having reference to the Second Vatican Council, reveal that for some within the Roman Catholic Church the “ecclesiological problem” simply does not exist. (E.g., the Aeterni Dei sapientiae is at the very best ambiguous ; and also those of Ad Petri Cuthedrum, 1959.) The object in mind, and the hope cherished is the “return” of those separated from the See of Peter. How

The Holy Spirit in Christiun Theology, Philadelphia, Westminster, 1956, 55 ff. a KARL BARTH, op. cit., p. 34.

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT 54 1

could it be otherwise, if the Holy Spirit reposes wholly within the Church? For in this case those who part from the Roman Church part with the Holy Spirit ; they must simply make their own individual way back to the Church to be again participant in the Holy Spirit. Then the problem of unity is not strictly speaking a church problem at all. The Church can only regard it as a missionary problem, the recall of individual apostates to the true and only fold of Christ and the Holy Spirit.

The ecclesiological problem is only a problem for those who construe the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Church in a quite different light ; and for these we have to look outside the Roman communion. It is not of course possible to characterize adequately the understanding of churches reformed of the Holy Spirit. Yet there is an element of common understanding which can be set in all its contrast to Romanism by reference to three successive Johannine verses. The dominical promise is (John 14. 16) that “another Comforter” or “another to be your Ad- vocate” will be sent. Our Lord does not say to the disciples : When I go away, you will take my place, although this is what the Roman view implies. It is not the Church that takes over, but the Holy Spirit. Fur- ther, the Holy Spirit is (v. 17) “the Spirit of truth.” Each of the terms has to be allowed its full value. The Spirit of truth - hence we deal with what is not exhaustively expressible in propositions or dogmas; and the Spirit of truth - it is impossible for it to be identified with “religious fervour, moral earnestness, or even man’s creative activity’’ Then in the next verse (18) the nature of the truth here conceived becomes plain : it is Jesus Christ (cf. 16. 13 : the Holy Spirit has the office of guiding into all the truth). There is then a triadic relation, involving a polarity between the Holy Spirit and the Church. For the Spirit bears witness to Christ and brings that witness to the notice of the Church.

But now as already said, the Holy Spirit is simply God contriving that man make a response that is his own. Herein lie the seeds of both sorrow and hope. The response evoked is neither entire nor perfect. A diversity of gifts degenerates into a difference of opinion, a difference of opinion into a controversy, and controversy in the end issues in division. But division does not mean that there are those in whose community the Spirit remains unimpaired, and those who part from that inspired community. It is rather a division between those who make their response

New English Bible. 1 KARL BAum, op. cit. , p. 35 f. a HENDRY, op. cit., p. 66.


in such different ways that separation results. The unity of the Spirit is not preserved by incorporation in one of the institutional entities involved. The unity of the Spirit continues unimpaired while the responses made are incompatible. The unity that is becomes the disunity that is. But by the same token, since the Holy Spirit remains independent (but of course not unrelated) to the divided bodies, there is both an obligation to bring the different responses into compatibility with one another, and also the hope that by and through his continuing operation evoking response the incompatibility will be resolved. For if the Holy Spirit is and remains the Spirit of God, where he works creatively the churches can be made new ; where he works to reconcile, the churches can draw together ; where he works redemptively, the perfection of the unity of the Spirit may be achieved in the bond of peace. Since the Holy Spirit is identifiable with no church, no altogether right response has been achieved But since consequently the Holy Spirit is dissociated from no church, the separated churches can be drawn together to make the right response. Here what Terrence N. Tice has written concerning the Spirit’s “Calling of the Churches Together” is apposite.’ Putting it in my own words, the affirmation is this : the churches already have a common centre ; but this not in the sense that each of them has a piece of the truth of God, but rather in the sense that they each owe an obedience to a common external power that does not repudiate us in all our narrow foolishness.

THESIS 111 : The ecumenical movement is the arena where the churches expose their own responses to the operation of the Holy Spirit (i.e. their traditions) to judgement by the Holy Spirit, in the presence of other churches and in the light of their dferent responses, in the hope that by reassessing them the incongruity between the unity that is and the disunity that is may be overcome. The Holy Spirit operates to evoke response, God doing all, yet men responding in a response of their own which is inadequate. This response materializes itself as traditions. Preaching is response. But preaching is not identical with the Gospel. In preaching, the Gospel is clothed in words other than the words of Scripture, our own words, and also in concepts that we should not have chosen for ourselves but which are thrust upon us because others, both believers and unbelievers, use and understand them. Preaching is the Gospel being passed through tradition. The celebration of the Eucharist is response, a response of obedience to a dominical command. Yet even

Come, Creator Spirit, World Alliance of Reformed Churches, 1963, p. 28.

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE ECUMENICAL. MOVEMENT 543

in the Reformed Churches which adhere most closely to the form of the action in the Upper Room, there is difference in what is done eucharis- tically now and what was dominically done then. And besides, how can we be sure that the intention which informs that external action is identical with his intention? How can we be sure that even where one celebration differs externally very little from another, the intention informing each is identical? Is there even a sufficient similarity between the Re- formed and the Lutheran intention ? The Eucharist itself also is passed through tradition. The form the Church rakes is response. But as form is given to the Church which our Lord founded, differences arise - such grievous differences as make one church decline to call church another which claims the name. This response too materializes in traditions some of which are mutually exclusive and contradictory. Within the unity which is arises the disunity which is. The ecumenical movement has the merit of recognizing this incongruity for what it is and trying to remedy it.

It would be idle to suppose that all concerned with and in the ecumenical movement are moved by purely spiritual reasons, that is, that the desire to make a more obedient response to the Spirit alone operates. Circumstantial pressures play their part too. The Church, it is said, is weakened by disunity. If it is to withstand and even overcome prevalent secularism or militant atheism, it must unite. For united it stands, divided it falls. Such an argument could, mututis mutundis, be heard in the boardroom of any commercial company. On a slightly higher level, it is maintained that in making its contribution to the remedy of social evils, whether it be the issue of war and peace, or the matter of the social structure or education, the witness of the Church can hardly be heard because of the discordant voices with which it speaks. Therefore unite, so that a united Christian witness can be made. The churches in Wales have been subjected to another and surely unprecedented circumstantial pressure. A well known philanthropist offered a large sum of money if within 10 years they achieve union.

On the other hand, there are circumstancial influences that operated in the opposite sense. The Presbyterian Church of England some years ago contemplated the rewriting of their standard of belief. Much of the debate was on a high or profound level. But one consideration exerted a probably critical influence. It was realized that there would almost certainly be a small intransigent minority, which, if it cared to do so, could decline to accept the new standard, claim to be the legally recognized Presbyterian Church of England, and so prove itself the legitimate


holder of the accumulated property and funds. A similar consideration has already been expressed in the case of the proposed union between the Church of England and the Methodist Church. This union, in its second stage, may involve the Church of England in a modification of its relation to the State resembling disestablishment. It has been alleged that the Church of England may thereby incur the loss of some of its endow- ments amounting to a vast sum.

The fact is that circumstances will always be present both to encourage and also to discourage the movement towards unity. And this is indi- cation enough that they operate in a field that is neutral. This means not, of course, that they are outside divine control, but simply that divine providence is not clearly discernible in them, nor the divine will unam- biguously expressed by them. There can be no reason why churches should not candidly both acknowledge and make use of secular pressures which operate in the direction in which they, for other better reasons, feel obliged by a higher call to go. After all, in the response already made and the traditions already accumulated similar adventitious circumstances have by no means been inoperative. But neither will it do to be moved solely by such pressures. This would be not only illegitimate but also disastrous. Unions contrived as panic measures of improvisa- tion to meet an adventitious need are unlikely to endure. Nor do they deserve to survive the strains of living together, any more than a secular mariage de convenance.

In what direction are we then to look for guidance in our resolve to move towards greater unity ? The answer can hardly be in doubt. The Holy Spirit is a point of reference both outside the churches and at the same time common to the churches. If traditions are response to the Holy Spirit, it is to the Holy Spirit that evoked them with all their in- adequacy that they must be referred. Traditions tradition Christ but do not imprison Him. There is not only the historical Jesus with whom we are linked, but also the risen Christ by whom hic et nunc we are ad- dressed. And as has been said, “Das Pneuma ist das ganze Christus- geschehen ais Hier und Jetzt.” So, carrying all our cherished traditions, like tired toys clutched in perspiring hands, we fall upon our knees before this Risen Lord.

It is this that the ecumenical movement gives us opportunity to do - and this not only by ourselves, each church meeting in a corner for self-

SCHLINK, op. cit., p. 151.

THE HOLY SPWT AND THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT 545

examination, but in the company of other churches which have in their own inadequate way responded to the Holy Spirit and accumulated traditions. In so far as their response, though different from ours, is adequate, the Holy Spirit finds expression and his work achieves realization. So far we can learn how better to respond to him. So far we shall be taught how to overcome that grievous incongruity between the unity that is and the disunity that is. So far shall we make a success of the endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Deo volente esto I

the holy spirit and the ecumenical movement

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