Concilium
2001 / 3
Introduction: Towards an Ecumenical Structuring of the Churches
An Invitation to Recognize the Unity in Process
José Oscar Beozzo and Giuseppe Ruggieri
Christians today evaluate the progress of the churches towards unity in a variety of ways, and their assessments range from pessimism to optimism. By contrast, this issue of Concilium offers an invitation to an open realism, or an invitation to recognize what is possible now and what at the same time, to the degree to which it has been effectively implemented, will allow further progress to be made.
In doing this, however, the contributors to this issue do not want to retrace the progress of theological dialogue between the various churches. This is not because they fail to appreciate the great progress that has been made in understanding the divergent positions on problems which have been, and still are, serious factors in the divisions between the churches, ranging from the understanding of scripture and tradition to the doctrine of justification, the sacraments and in particular ministry in the church. Rather they want to distance themselves to some degree from the ‘exclusive’ privilege given to the dialogue over doctrine. While such a dialogue is always legitimate and necessary, it in fact runs two risks if it is not set in a broader context, that brings out not only the doctrinal dimension of faith but all the other elements of church life.
The first risk is that the theological and doctrinal dialogue becomes a surrogate for the way towards unity. One sometimes gets the impression that everything can be said, from the creed without the filioque to the recognition of a substantial accord on the doctrine of justification, provided that there are no changes in the structure of the churches as they are now and provided that nothing disturbs the jealous defence of their ‘confessional identity’.
The second risk is the opposite one, of supposing that doctrinal consensus can of itself lead to reconciliation between the churches. But just as it was not only — or sometimes not even mainly — doctrinal motives which led to the [8] divisions in the churches, so too we may expect that equally the overcoming of doctrinal differences is not in itself enough to lead towards unity.
In this connection our intention is not to propose new ways, but simply to reaffirm shared convictions which nevertheless remain purely theoretical achievements, without having any effect in practice. It is, for example, recognized at the highest level of the churches concerned that the cause of the division between the churches acknowledged in the fourth century by the Council of Ephesus on the one hand and the Nestorian churches on the other was not doctrine as such. Thus on 11 November 1994 Pope John Paul II and the patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East (Nestorian by tradition) signed a joint declaration in which they proclaimed ‘before the world’ their common faith in the mystery of the incarnation of the Word of God, true God and true man.
The humanity to which the blessed Virgin Mary gave birth was always that of the Son of God himself. This is the reason why the Assyrian Church of the East prays to the Virgin Mary as ‘the Mother of Christ our God and Saviour’. In the light of the same faith the Catholic tradition addresses Mary as ‘Mother of God’ and hence as ‘Mother of Christ’. We both acknowledge the legitimacy and rightness of these expressions of the same faith and respect the preference of each church in its life and in its liturgical piety. This is the only faith that we profess in the mystery of Christ. The controversies of the past have led to anathemas regarding persons and formulae. Today the Spirit of the Lord allows us better to understand how the divisions which arose in this way were largely due to failures of understanding.1
That means that while the doctrinal divergences are not annulled, today they appear in a new light. The problem then is that of knowing what it is today that allows us to see these doctrinal differences in a new light, which is no longer dramatic or explosive. A similar question can be put to the agreement between Catholics and Lutherans on the doctrine of justification.
Evidently the answer is to be sought in an analysis of the historical context which led to what we would now judge to be an excessive importance being attached to doctrinal formulations. And with as much evidence, we have to ask ourselves whether today other doctrinal differences which were also considered cause of divisions are still so, for the same or for other reasons.
However, attempting such a task would also take us away from the aims of this issue. In a much more humble way it seeks to take a less ambitious, but nevertheless necessary course. The starting point is the conviction that the unity between the churches, though not complete, is already under way. In [9] saying this we are talking not only of the unity of the church, of the dogmatic note that we profess in the creed which is common to Christians: I believe in one church. In fact all Christians who recognize themselves in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed believe that the unity of the church as the work of the Spirit is already present, but will not be fully manifested until the eschatological consummation.
Instead, we are talking about unity between the churches, even though this has not been fully implemented and has yet to be recognized sufficiently in practice: the one faith in Jesus Christ, the many and varied elements of Christian life, of worship, of doctrine and of discipline, even of scripture are already common in varying degrees to the Christian churches. These common elements allow us to speak of unity in process, even if it is not complete. The example given by the meeting in Toronto in May 2000 between Roman Catholic and Anglican bishops is a sign of the way in which the churches can recognize and increase this unity in process.2
Towards an ecumenical structuring of the churches
Starting from this conviction, it seems important to focus attention on the effective ‘structure / structuring’ of the churches in such a way that their character as churches is recognized or there is reconciliation of their diversities. However, it is necessary to clarify the meaning of the terms ‘structure / structuring’, particularly so that it is not understood in a mainly sociological sense. In his Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie,3 Lalande gave three meanings to the term ‘structure’. The first is that of a ‘disposition of the parts which form a whole, as opposed to their functions’, a meaning which occurs above all in physics and biology; the second is that of a ‘whole formed of phenomena in harmony as opposed to a simple combination of elements, in such a way that every phenomenon depends on the others and is what it is only within its relationship with the others and thanks to them’; the third meaning, analogous to the previous one, is that of an ‘overall orientation which dominates a mentality and organizes it around a given idea of directive value’.
It is clear that here we are referring to the second sense of the term, though freeing it from its connections with Gestalt psychology which have governed it historically. In fact in a theological reflection the structure cannot be seen only from the punctual and synchronic, almost static, perspective of a single form. The church is a reality which is always in movement, whose faithfulness to its identity is guaranteed by the Spirit. Hence the structure itself can vary over time, but that does not alter the fact that as [10] a permanent datum it has an internal structural logic, a disposition, an order, which functions for the well-being of all. The adjective ‘ecumenical’, added to structuring or structure, then seeks to indicate what logic of church unity makes it possible, by incarnating it in a precise ‘order’, in a precise ‘disposition’ of church life, to respect the unity already given to the churches and at the same time to be open to a more complete realization of this unity.
In this connection it is useful to refer to the original meaning of ‘hierarchy’, which in the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite indicates the gradual communication of God through which there are ‘grades’ with an internal arrangement, corresponding to the economy of salvation, of this self-giving by God to human beings. This disposition has to be recognized in the church. Before the term hierarchy (sacred origin, sacred order, sacred lordship) underwent a change, from the Middle Ages onwards, so that it came to denote the various degrees of the power of order and the different grades of jurisdiction, it had the meaning, taken from Neoplatonism, of an ordered structure of worldly and Christian reality which has its origin in God himself.4 The theme of the ‘hierarchy of truths’, which is taken up many times in this issue, cannot be understood without this reference.
Thus ‘structuring/ structure’ is meant to indicate the translation of this disposition, the logic inherent in the communication by God to human beings, into action, and the ‘ecumenical structuring/ structure of the churches’ means the will to make manifest, specifically in respect of the ordered whole of the elements which constitute the life of the church, God’s intention, revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, that all should be one as he and the Father are one.
Having defined the meaning of the term which is meant to indicate the common intentions of the contributions in this issue of Concilium, it remains to spell out some important questions of method.
The first relates to the sapiential (meaning that it is not simply the fruit of theological ingenuity) and spiritual (i.e. in obedience to the Spirit) character of any ecumenical ecclesial structuring. In the century which has just passed it was John XXIII who showed this capacity for bringing out the internal logic of ecclesial life. This pope, who was far removed from being a professional theologian, and also from being one of those who are often called ‘progressives’, and very close to the wisdom of the church fathers because he personally spent a good deal of time reading them, had the wisdom to demonstrate the living character of church doctrine over against the fixity of neoscholastic theology. He laid bare what here we call structure, using terms like ‘aggiornamento’ and ‘pastoral magisterium’, and thus indicated the need for the ‘living substance’ of the gospel to be transmitted in means adequate [11] to the times, so as to usher in the ‘new Pentecost’ of the church. Aggiornamento was not an alternative to faithfulness; it was not the abandonment of the ‘immutable’ substance of the gospel but the expression of its living continuity in history.5 The ecumenical structuring of the churches, seen as both a sapiental and a spiritual work, is thus not primarily a matter for professional theologians, but for all the people of God, which, in the variety of tasks and charisms, perceives the ‘signs of the times’ and the way that the Spirit is pointing out for the churches.
The second thing that has to be spelt out is the recurrent misunderstanding about our ‘separations’ or, if one wants to put it that way, about the lowest common denominator. The structuring of ecclesial life is not in fact a process of separating out an ecumenically pure ‘nucleus’ which all can use, as opposed to an accidental ‘core’ which belongs to the specific confessional character of the individual churches. In analogy to the clarifications made by contemporary theology in biblical hermeneutics, it is never possible to separate the substance of the message from its particular interpretation, since it is here that the substance of the message must always be grasped. Our specific individual and ecclesial nature is not an extraneous accident which can be separated from the grace which is given in common with the others, but the place where this grace is perceived, welcomed, and lived out. In that sense there are no definitive formulae here. And from this point of view the mystery of unity, which is already believed in, experienced and lived out in the churches, is present in their respective differences, provided that they adopt an attitude of humility and openness to the mystery of unity which does not allow itself to be circumscribed by them. Thus the myth of a lowest common denominator which has to be broadened and extended as far as possible so that all may come within it has to be abandoned. In fact, the opposite is the case, namely that the mystery of unity must be lived out from the differences themselves and within them. This means an ‘ecumenical structuring’ of the churches which remain different churches yet operate by increasingly being one church.
We conclude with a short account of the various contributions in this issue. We sum them up not in order to synthesize them, but to make clear what was asked of the various contributors.
The sense of the reference to the past
The first part of the issue is devoted to the ‘structures of communion before the great divisions’. The spirit which presides over this examination of the past is not the ‘classic’ one which idealizes the first centuries of church [12] history and thinks that it is possible today simply to revive the forms of the past. History leaves nothing untouched.
There are various reasons for this examination of the past. It can be explained in two ways. First, to speak of an ecumenical structuring of the churches today, and hence of the adaptation of the forms of ecclesial life to the needs of a ‘sorority’ of the churches who live out their own diversity in a ‘reconciled’ way, is not simply a utopia or a dream. In the past the structuring of the churches was more open than it is now. And if we are to obey the principle of realism, we cannot move forward without any real point of reference; it is important to see how much is given in the church.
Secondly, this examination of the past aims to challenge the validity of a hermeneutical principle which today is almost universally accepted and which was expressed effectively by Joseph Ratzinger in a lecture in Graz in 1976: ‘Although it is illegitimate here to silence history and to retrace the course of the centuries, it is legitimate to affirm today that what has been possible for a millennium cannot be impossible for Christians today.’6
Then it is important that for centuries the church has known the structural primacy of the local church over the universal church (cf. the article by D. Salachas). It is also important that the status of doctrine in the church was different, in that doctrine was not autonomous but substantially ordered by and subordinated to preaching and worship (cf. the article by Hans Joachim Schulz). Finally, it is important that in the first Christian centuries the channels of communication were much more dynamic (visits and letters, synods determined by territory, etc.) and less constrained by a monolithic recognition of a single discipline (cf. the article by Angelo Di Berardino).
Today the structural primacy of the local church seems to be one of the vital conditions for an ecumenical structuring of the churches. This is so for two sets of reasons. First, it alone allows the conception and practice of the unity of the church as ‘unity in communion’. This involves reflection on the mystery of the Trinity itself, a traditional motive, as is demonstrated in Salachas’ article. The unity of the church, nourished by communion with the eucharistic body of Christ, does not correspond to the sociological and juridical models tried out in the social sphere, but rather reflects the mystery of the divine life which is communion in plurality and plurality in communion. If any other analogy can be affirmed, it can only be that of the unity between husband and wife.
But there is another important aspect which only the structural primacy of the local church makes it possible to respect. The late J. M. Tillard loved to emphasize it: precisely because the local church is rooted in a territory, it is ‘the human (geographical, cultural, historical, sociological) space where [13] the gospel of God — "fulfilled" at Jerusalem in the resurrection of Christ and at Pentecost, which liberated its effects — grasped the whole of homo (man) and the humus (ground) in which he germinates, homo qua humus, homo and humus’.7 It is the concrete, historical character of grace, which is always grace for someone in a particular place and at a particular moment of history, that comes to manifest itself in the structural primacy of the local church. Hence diversity, lived out in communion, is truly a testimony to the ‘multicoloured’ divine wisdom (cf. Eph. 3. 10).
On the other hand this primacy of the local church must not be misunderstood so that the vision of the local church is made the alternative to the universal church. As W. Kasper has recently asserted, to say that the one church is given in the local churches and from these (in quibus et ex quibus) does not mean that the universal church is the sum and the result of the local churches, just as the local churches are not provinces and articulations of the one universal church. The one church is a gift of God and not the result of human action from below. It is the fruit of the unity of the Father, the Son and the Spirit, who give themselves in every local church, above all in its supreme activity, the celebration of the eucharist. The local church and the universal church interpenetrate each other in turn. To affirm an ontological and chronological primacy of the universal church over the local churches is not a compulsory way of affirming this character of the one church as grace.8
We intend the necessary integration and subordination of the doctrinal dimensions to preaching and liturgical celebration, a topic dealt with in Schultz’s article, to be seen as a way of playing down the doctrinal conflict between the churches, since in fact they converge much more closely in the faith, in preaching and in worship. But to play down this doctrinal diversity does not mean relativizing Christian truth. In fact it is important to distinguish between doctrine and truth. Doctrine is one of the forms in which the truth is expressed, which is grasped more deeply in the church’s confession. Moreover it is important, particularly in connection with an ecumenical structuring of the churches and an even more faithful recognition of the truth, to grasp that these aims do not have to be bound up with a controversialist form of proclamation of the truth.9
In fact there are also ‘epochs’ (in Heidegger’s sense of the term) of Christian truth.10 Believers ‘wander’ in its orbit, giving shape to representations of the truth which mark the segments of Christian time. These figures or ‘wanderings’ of the truth convey the toil of conversion to the Lord of those who have listened to his voice, the difficulty of ‘submitting’ the different human conceptualities to the adoration of the Crucified One. Certainly an important work of disentanglement has been achieved when [14] there is a move from the primacy of ‘confession’ and invocation to that of the ‘determination of the truth’. This is the epoch particularly studied in Schultz’s article.
Another ‘epoch’, another ‘wandering’ in the orbit of Christian truth was that of the rise of theology as ‘science’.11 In this way the new urban culture was integrated into Christian knowledge. But this operation contained within itself a risk to which subsequent generations did not pay sufficient attention: the loss of the connotation of knowledge of the truth as an experience made possible by the sense of communion with Christ.12 In later theological reflection the truth would be thought of under the ‘burden of the schism’13 between the doctrinal theological element and the experience of communion with Christ, the Christian life in its spiritual dimension. Thus theologians almost completely lost sight of the fact that ‘the full concept of truth offered by the gospel consists only in the living representation of theory in praxis, of knowledge in action. "If you keep my word ... you will know the truth" (John 8.32)’.14
Finally, it is necessary here to refer to another ‘epoch’ of truth, that which culminates in the modern Catholic concept of dogma. This is a product of the division of the Western church. The most significant feature of the conception of truth now does not lie in the determination of its content but in the determination of its genesis, the way in which it can be obtained. ‘In other words, the reply to the question of what a dogma is, is determined by the reply to the question of what can become a dogma within the Catholic Church.’15 And in this way an answer developed above all in the climate of the anti-Protestant controversy, through Stapleton, Bellarmine, Gotti and others. The so to speak ‘ultimate’ definition of dogma in modern Catholic theology which was then taken up by Vatican I was that of Philipp Nero Chrismann, who, influenced by the Jesuit François Veron, said that the ‘dogma of faith is none other than a doctrine or a truth revealed by God which is proposed to be believed in with (an act of ) divine faith through a public judgment of the church in such a way that the contrary doctrine is condemned as heretical’.16 In other words, here the truth is conceived of as a defence of one’s own specific character (the authority of ‘public judgment’, i.e. that of the magisterium of the Catholic Church) with a view to marking out heresy. A concept of truth as a boundary aimed at marking out what differentiates one from others emerges here. But this concept is possible only in the context of a break in communion and has the function of maintaining this break.
The material presented in the last of the articles relating to the past (Di Bernardino) is more functional; again our intention is that it should [15] differentiate between the ministries and the channels of unity in the church. Our age, with its increased speed of communication, here runs the risk of doing away with this multiplicity of times and procedures which served to resolve conflicts in the early church. This obliteration of such features closely resembles that brought about by the excessive Roman centralization in the second millennium.
Practical prospects
The second part of this issue is devoted to ‘practical prospects’. The attempt here is to show how some achievements are waiting to be put into practice, and how it is possible to recognize the unity in process.
However, in this respect first of all we have to point out a gap in this issue. The author contacted to discuss ‘the faith expressed in the worship of the churches as the greatest factor in their divisions’ failed to produce his article. It did seem to us that this was an important topic in understanding what is called the ‘ecumenical structuring of the churches’. This is not in fact an unrealistic programme, but primarily a recognition of what exists. This was an aspect which was very dear to that great ecumenical theologian E. Schlink, who emphasized among ‘the fundamental structures of universal unity’ at least two facts which we do well to remember by quoting directly from his magnum opus:17
1. Since Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, is truly present and gives himself in the liturgy of every local church, the local church does not come into being through the sum of the local churches but is a reality in every local church. 2. The unity of the universal church does not consist in the quality of its confessional formula, its liturgical order and its ministries, but in the fact that every church with its confession and in the ordering of its liturgy and its ministries serves the one Lord of the church.
The invitation to look hopefully at other communities, without limiting oneself to dogmatic affirmations, but taking into account the global features of their life, liturgy, testimony, piety and so on, was therefore in accord with these premises.
If worship, what could be called the concrete presence of the Spirit of the Risen Christ in the midst of believers, is one of the main places in which the unity which is in process of the churches, despite the differences, can be recognized, we must not forget the other achievements: Vatican II’s conviction of a hierarchy of truths arising from the relationship between the [16] foundation and the end on the one hand, and the means on the other (O. H. Pesch); the ecumenical openings made possible by the new legal Codes of the Catholic Church, above all in the light of the new ecumenical Directory of 1993 (A. Borras and A. Kaptijn); and the presence in the actual practices of the churches, including the Catholic Church, of a synodicality which involves not only the bishops but all the believing people, if only in an initial and timid way (P. Vallin).
Alongside these achievements we need to record others, of a rather different kind, those which consist of ‘actions’. The term ‘actions’ appears in a central passage of the Vatican II constitution Dei Verbum 2, where it is said that the economy of the divine revelation is realized in ‘actions and words’. The reference of this sentence was to the celebration of the sacrament, where the symbolic actions, together with the words which accompany them, are meant to denote the res, the reality for which the celebration is ordained.18 In history these are the actions in which, in a way analogous to what happens in the celebration of the sacraments, the Spirit makes possible a communication from God to human beings. It is no exaggeration to see the World Day of Prayer for Peace held at Assisi in October 1986 (cf. the article by F. Teixera in this issue) as one of these actions. In our view Assisi remains an action the whole richness of which has still to be understood. In Assisi an event which was somehow paradoxical took place.
Without going so far as a common prayer for peace, the representatives of the religions all prayed at the same time and in the same mode of space, for the same aim, peace, but following the canons, rites and contents of the religious tradition which was proper to each of them. The diversity was thus transformed into a network of common actions, aimed at making something sacred and intangible of the diversity. And all this was on the initiative of the Bishop of Rome.
However, Assisi has not been the only action in which a positive recognition of diversity has appeared. It was directed towards religious diversity as such. But the papacy of John XXIII and the council inaugurated a series of actions in an opposite sense to those predominating in the great season of enmity between the churches, above all in the second Christian millennium, by means of which a communion between the churches greater than that ‘formally’ recognized in doctrine was recognized. What ‘theological’ weight do these actions have? That is the question which runs through the article by A. Melloni.19
Finally, the theme of the Petrine service had to be included in this issue. By common recognition, shared also by Paul VI and the current Bishop of Rome, the papacy is one of the main obstacles on the way to the achievement [17] of a visible unity of the Christian churches. However, John Paul II has also invited not only Catholics but also other Christians to rethink the mode in which the Petrine service is exercised. So recognizing unity in process in the churches implies welcoming this invitation. As such it is a grace given today to all the churches. Thus looking forward to new forms in which the Petrine ministry can be exercised (cf. G. Alberigo’s article) is a course which must be taken to bring about an ecumenical structuring of the churches.
An omen
The publication of the document Dominus Iesus has set all Christians talking. Even some circles of the Roman Curia have expressed their perplexity. So here we have made room for a documentation on the reception of the document, above all in the German-speaking world.
It has been rightly observed that, taken one by one, all the affirmations of Dominus Iesus can be derived literally from one or other of the texts of Vatican II. And it can also be recognized that it is right, when confronted with so many flights forward, to affirm some convictions, albeit with exasperation. But this document seems to lack above all a recognition of what the Spirit has brought about in the churches over the past decades, in the power of the conciliar event which should have been read in the sense of inspiration which governs it. A recognition of the event cannot be limited to formal admissions but must be understood as a joyful adherence to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. The omen is thus that the dialectic which this document maintains is a useful summons to an even greater welcome to the greatness of God in history.
Translated by John Bowden
Notes
1. Osservatore Romano, 12 November 1994, our emphasis.
2. Cf. above all the review by J-M. R. Tillard in Il Regno documenti 45, 2000, pp. 596–600.
3. Paris 1947.
4. Cf. R. Roques, L’univers dionysien. Structure hiérarchique du monde selon le Pseudo-Denys, Paris 1954
5. Cf. G. Alberigo, ‘Teologia fra tradizione e rinnovamento nel magistero del patriarca Roncalli’, in Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli. Dal patriarcato di Venezia alla cattedra di San Pietro, ed V. Branca and S. Rosso-Mazzinghi, Florence 1985, pp. 15-28; G. Pattaro, ‘La "teologia" the ispira il pensiero pastoral del cardinale Roncalli a Venezia’, ibid., pp.149-55; G. Ruggieri, ‘Appunti per una teologia in [18] papa Roncalli’, in Papa Giovanni, ed G. Alberigo, Rome and Bari 1987, pp. 245–71. For an overall view cf. already G. Lercaro, ‘Linee per una ricerca su Giovanni XXIII’, in Per la forza dello Spirito. Discorsi conciliari del card. Giacomo Lercaro, produced by the Institute for Religious Sciences, Bologna 1984, pp. 267–310.
6. Now in J. Ratzinger, Theologische Prinzipienlehre. Bausteine zur Fundamentaltheologie, Munich 1982, p. 209. Because of what we have said above, we shall not refer here to the further remarks in id., Kirche, Ökumene, Politik, Einsiedeln 1987, pp. 76ff., 81ff., on the misunderstandings to be avoided in the understanding of this formula, almost as if it wanted to propose an ecumenism of a return to the past.
7. J.-M. R. Tillard, L’Eglise locale. Ecclisiologie de communion et catholicité, Paris 1995, p. 53.
8. W. Kasper, ‘Das Verhältnis von Universalkirche and Ortskirche. Freundschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit der Kritik von Joseph Kardinal Ratzinger’, Stimme der Zeit 218, 2000, pp. 795–804. But see also Ratzinger’s own reaction, ‘Die grosse Gottesidee "Kirche" ist keine Schwärmerei’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 22 December 2000.
9. For a broader treatment of this subject than is possible here cf. G. Ruggieri, ‘La verita crocifissa fra Trinità e storia. Per una determinazione del rapporto tra verita e comunione’, Cristianesimo nella Storia 16, 1995, pp. 383-406.
10. G. Alberigo, ‘Communione e verita’, in L’alteritd. Concezioni ed esperienze nel cristianesimo contemporaneo, ed A. Melloni and G. La Bella, Bologna 1995, pp. 235–54, gives a brief synthesis of the development of the concept of truth at the Western Latin councils.
11. The basic study on the question is still that by M. D. Chenu. La théologie comme science au XIIIe-siècle, Paris 31969.
12. It is enough to cite two classic studies to understand the difference in the theology which developed as an alternative to monastic theology: M. Grabmann, Geschichte der scholastischen Methode (2 vols), Freiburg 1909 1911; J. Leclercq, Initiation aux auteurs monastiques du Moyen Age. L’amour des lettres et le desir de Dieu, Paris 21957. It is even impossible to discover among the subjects discussed by Grabmann the central nuclei of monastic theology as these are presented by Leclercq: from compunctio to otium, from simplicitas to the mea grammatica Christus of Damian.
13. ‘Die Last der Gezweiung’: the expression comes from H. U. von Balthasar, ‘Theologie and Heiligkeit’, in Verbum caro, pp. 195–225, esp. p. 201.
14. Ibid.
15. G. Söll, Dogma and Dogmenentwicklung, HDG I/5, Freiburg, Basel and Vienna 1971, p. 13.
16. De fide divina, Kempten 1792, §5; cf. Söll, Dogma (n.15), p.16.
17. E. Schlink, Ökumenische Dogmatik. Grundzüge, Göttingen 1983, p. 559; but cf. above all his account of the value of liturgical reunion (ibid., pp. 572–8).
[19] 18. Cf. H. de Lubac, ‘Commentaire du préambule et du chapitre I’, in B. D. Dupuy, La révélation divine I: Constitution dogmatique Dei Verbum Paris 1968, pp. 175–9.
19. Other topics which we were not able to discuss in this issue were those of ‘The primacy of obedience to the Word of God and the confession of sin, with respect to the proclamation of identity’, and ‘Communion of the service of charity, of ministries, of preaching and the eucharistic table’.