Ecumenism in the Churches and the Unfinished Agenda of the Holy Spirit

Today when the Churches, intimidated by the threat of the global market, face an unprecedented challenge which they cannot handle singly, the art of discerning the Spirit must receive top priority in our ecumenical work. This challenge demands corporate networking as well as active participation at the base in the matter of decision-making, policy-forming and apostolic visioning. It also demands the creation of more effective patterns of thought, witness and worship. This is a gigantic undertaking that truly imposes on us all a spiritual—or Spirit-inspired—discernment process, a process supported by centuries of accumulated experience waiting to be rediscovered and put at the service of churches.

The Apostle's Creed enumerates five fields of synergy in which we engage the Spirit in a process of a continuous discernment as part of our faith in the Holy Spirit. In this creed, the churches, from very early times, have proclaimed their faith not only in God who created and God's Son who redeemed, but also in God's Spirit who has resumed these same divine activities and continues them along a five-dimensional perspective. Our own commitment to these five tasks is part and parcel of the proclamation of our faith in the Holy Spirit. The confession "I believe in the Holy Spirit" is immediately followed by the five items in the Spirit's as well as our on-going missionary agenda: the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.

My discussion here will cover only the first four fields of our synergetic action. The fifth and last item, "life everlasting" is left out, not because I have imposed an unfinished agenda on myself, but because "life everlasting" is the eschatological horizon within which all the other four activities take place.

Holiness in the Communion of Saints as the Catholicity of the Church

The Apostles' Creed mentions holiness and catholicity as the "marks" or distinguishing characteristics of the Church. They are the authenticating imprints of the Spirit. The subsequent creedal formulae such as those of Nicea and Constantinople have added a couple more such "marks" in response to the needs of the times. We, too, can increase the number today. However, my intention is not to multiply such signs of the Church according to the needs of our time, but to reinterpret them according to the spirit of our times. This work of interpretation is itself an exercise in discernment.

Holiness (qodes in Hebrew; adjective qados, and verb qades), strictly speaking, is an exclusive attribute of God, extended in a cultic context to places, things and persons in terms of God's own holiness. The temple is holy because God who is worshipped there is holy. Each one of us is holy because we are each consecrated by God's own Holy Spirit to be Her temple; the Churches are holy for the same reason. Holiness depends on God's presence.

The temple of Jerusalem was meant to be a holy place, but was turned into "a den of thieves" in Luke (19:46) and "a business house" (oikonemporiou) in John (2:16) because the money-demon had usurped Yahweh's place. The Spirit consecrates and mammon desecrates. Thus holiness is intimately connected with the renunciation of mammon, the absolutized capital. Evangelical poverty, advocated for all disciples of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, is not an optional extra for those seeking perfection, but the basic qualification to enter and serve in God's reign. A holy Church is essentially a poor Church, a Church that has visibly and palpably renounced mammon's rule for the sake of God's reign. "The Church is holy in its poverty," argues Lutheran theologian Jürgen Moltmann. This is a poverty that is made manifest in two principle ways, first...