I was very blessed during my theological formation to take classes from two very renowned Catholic scholars, Avery Dulles, and Raymond E. Brown.
What these two shared in their vision for ecumenism was this: The path towards Christian unity, the road that will eventually bring all sincere Christians together into one community, around one altar, is not the way of somehow winning the other over to our own particular denomination, of getting others to admit that they are wrong and that we are right and of them returning to the true flock, namely, our particular denomination. Avery Dulles says the path forward needs to be the path of “progressive convergence”.
This path begins with the honest admission by each of us that no one denomination, has the full truth, incarnates the full expression of church, and is fully faithful to the Gospel. We are all deficient in some ways and each of us in some ways is selective in terms of which parts of the Gospels we value and incarnate and which parts we ignore.
The path forward is the path of conversion, personal and ecclesial, of admitting our selectiveness, of recognizing and valuing what other churches have incarnated, of reading scripture more deeply in search of what we have ignored and absented ourselves from, and of individually and collectively trying to live lives that are truer to Jesus Christ.
By each of us and each church living the Gospel more fully, we will “progressively converge”, that is, as we grow closer to Christ, we will grow closer to each other and thus “progressively converge” around Christ and, as we do that, we will eventually find ourselves around one common altar and will see each other as part of the same community.
The path to unity then lies not in converting each other over, but in each of us living the Gospel more faithfully so as to grow closer to each other in Christ.
As Christians of different churches, our views of the church will grow larger; and we will come closer to sharing common views. Then the Bible will be doing for us what Jesus did in his time, namely, convincing those who have ears to hear that all is not right, for God is asking of them more than they thought.”
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