Response to The Nature and Purpose of the Church

Faith and Order Paper #181 (1998) of the World Council of Churches

By the Christian and Interfaith Relations Committee, Friends General Conference, 25 Tenth Month 2001

Prefatory Comments: Friends General Conference is a charter member of the World Council of Churches. FGC's membership and participation in the World Council of Churches is just one of several ways in which FGC reaches out to other faith communities, both within the Christian tradition and among the religions of the world, nationally and internationally. The World Council of Churches has welcomed Friends' participation from the beginning and at its last World Assembly appointed Eden Grace (New England Yearly Meeting), representing Friends United Meeting, to be on its Executive Committee, succeeding Barbara Bazett (Canadian Yearly Meeting) in that position.

In the wake of the scandal that the Christian nations of Europe unleashed two world wars within four decades in the 20th Century, the World Council of Churches has sought to address peace and justice concerns and to address church dividing issues. It has, for example, explored church understandings of baptism, eucharist and ministry, and received clear and forceful accounts of Friends' positions, most famously London Yearly Meeting's To Lima with Love (1987) [See "Links to Resources" at bottom of page]. The Christian and Interfaith Relations Committee is, among other things, that committee through which Friends General Conference responds to working papers of the World Council of Churches.

In 1998 The World Council of Churches issued its Faith and Order Paper #181: The Nature and Purpose of the Church. This paper, like its predecessors, was issued to advance ecumenical dialogue by seeking "to give expression to what the churches can now say together about the nature and purpose of the Church." "What is the Church?" has, and continues to be, a church-dividing question, separating those that would understand the church in terms of historical continuity from those who understand it in other terms, for example, the "invisible" body of believers. The Paper was issued with an invitation to "churches, commissions, colleges, institutes, and individuals" to respond to the Paper so as to further the mutual understanding of the churches. At least one Friend has submitted her own response. In addition, responses were submitted by Britain Yearly Meeting and Friends United Meeting.

The Christian and Interfaith Relations Committee accepted the invitation and submitted the response reproduced below. It was written so as to be descriptive of FGC yearly meetings' positions as found in their books of Faith and Practice in general, though CIRC recognizes that some Friends General Conference Friends do not think of themselves as members of the Church. The response is written in language familiar to participants in the ecumenical dialogue, rather than in traditional idioms of Friends. It also urges the other respondents to free themselves from their traditional idioms so as to communicate as clearly as possible with others in the ecumenical dialogue.

CIRC's response was written for the WCC and addresses the text of the Faith and Order Paper, referring to specific sections of the paper without reproducing them. The response was not written to be distributed to those unfamiliar with the document which it addresses. The Committee hopes that readers will be able to discern the main points of the response nonetheless. Those interested can consult the Faith and Order Paper #181 on the WCC web site.

Response to The Nature and Purpose of the Church

Introduction: Drawn together by the Spirit and God's Light within each person, the Religious Society of Friends has been guided by the Bible and Quaker and Christian traditions. This response has been prepared by the Christian and Interfaith Relations Committee of Friends General Conference.

Friends General Conference is a consultative body to its membership. It carries out its activities through program committees. The Christian and Interfaith Relations Committee is charged to coordinate and encourage relations with Quaker and other Religious bodies including the World Council of Churches. The Christian and Interfaith Relations Committee is authorized, after consultation, to respond to statements of the World Council of Churches.

A. The Nature of the Church: We find the document's understanding of the Church in terms of koinonia ascommunity and communion congenial to our experience of being drawn together by the Spirit for worship and service. Thus we welcome this document as moving beyond Faith & Order's Lima statement on Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, in response to statements on koinonia drafted at Canberra and Santiago de Compostela.

(i) That the Church is the Creation of God's Word and Holy Spirit, and cannot live for or by itself, we too know. For us God's Word is a living voice within each person. Despite human limits and admixtures, it is the direct source of all true ministry in worship. Human abilities to recognize and respond to truth are themselves God's gift, challenging our pride and self-deceit. Human words and even the Scriptures can transmit but are not in themselves the Word of God. Friends believe that the presence of God is central in worship, but does not depend on the "outward and visible signs" of the sacramental elements. We find that our worshipers often sense the "real presence" in the silence of our meetings for worship. We fully unite with section 13.

(ii) We would affirm of the Church the images of the people of God, the body of Christ, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit offered in section (ii); for us, the primary and most useful image of the church continues to be koinonia. We would understand koinonia, and indeed all dimensions of the Church's relation to God to refer to and include each of the three manifestations of God.

B. God's Purpose for the Church: We unite with sections 28 and 32, which express well our understanding of the purpose of the Church.

III. The Church as Koinonia

A. Real but not fully realized. We wish to strongly affirm this section of the text. The notion of koinonia, of communion and participation, is we believe indeed "key to understanding the nature and purpose of the Church." (§ 48) We believe the relationship among the members of each churchly community with God and between themselves, among the diverse communities and between these communities and the whole of creation can well be expressed in this notion.

To a large extent we affirm as well the manner in which this notion is unfolded in the text as it now stands. We would affirm that having something in common, sharing, participating, being part of, and acting together are proper expression of the true and deep participation of those gathered by God into a community among themselves and a community with God. (§ 52) We particularly appreciate the passage from I John used here to emphasize that the koinonia of which we speak is not an idea but a living experience: "We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard" (I Jn 1:3). (§ 56) We would concur that "there is a genuine enjoyment of new life here and now." (§60)

We would not be among those who question whether the notion of koinonia is being called to bear more weight than it can carry. (koinonia box) However, we do have questions, including questions among ourselves, about the right understanding of koinonia among the churches, as discussed in this same box.

On the one hand, we recognize communities committed to the life of Truth as participating really, but not completely, in one another's lives. On the other hand, we would be cautious of forms of ecumenical koinonia understood as placing us "in a contractual relationship involving obligations of mutual accountability." (§52)

We believe that our church order and worship life are a particular "way" enjoined upon us by God. Human contracts of mutual accountability, which might not be based in participation in God's own will, would seem to have potential to allow one or more groups to pressure others to come into humanly based construals of koinonia. Our own ecumenical tradition is based in the conviction that differing communities may be called by God to live the one life in different "ways." Using the words of early Friend Isaac Penington, we would claim: "[One] that keeps not a day may unite in the same spirit, in the same life, in the same love, with [one] that keeps a day.... And oh how sweet and pleasant it is to the truly spiritual eye to see several sorts of believers, several forms of Christians in the school of Christ, everyone learning their own lesson, performing their own peculiar service, and knowing, owning, and loving one another in their several places and different performances to their master." We look for visible expressions of our koinonia, of our "knowing, owning, and loving one another," that are based in what the spiritual eye can see, in discernment, rather than in purely human contracts.

B. Communion and Diversity. We recognize the diverse and complementary gifts that God bestows on us and struggle to understand how to embrace the fulness that diversity brings. The Church's unity has always transcended a common language or culture.

C. The Communion of Local Churches: We affirm human endeavor, including such actions as "collections, exchange of letters, visits, and tangible expressions of solidarity." But we would like to see more explicit language recognizing God's own actions in maintaining and sustaining the communion of local churches.

IV. Life in Communion:

A. Apostolic Faith: The document's statements recognize the role of God guiding within history, and "conditioned by time & context," as well as the ancient Nicene-Chalcedonian tradition in the "Ecumenical Creeds." Friends recognize "the permanent characteristics of the Church of the Apostles," as "Gospel Order" in mutual moral guidance (as in Matthew 18). The message of "living the faith of the Church" fits Friends' call to "let your lives speak." We are challenged to recognize the same faith in one another's preaching, worship, sacraments, life and mission" (box, p. 36) but also we are challenged to recognize it among ourselves.

We believe that the Holy Spirit or Inward Light works in all faiths. Friends from our beginnings have insisted that Socrates and the Stoics -- nowadays also Mahatma Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh -- are 'saved' among the saints, following here early Fathers such as Justin Martyr. The centrality of self-emptying (kenosis) needs to be lifed up and repeated, as central to the apostolic faith.

Baptism: Friends believe that the one Baptism is of and by the Spirit, and need not be by water. Most experience the Spirit's work as preceding and undergirding awareness of sin, conversion of heart, and inner cleansing. The document's balance of emphases on all humans' sharing the "privilege of God's adopted children" and nevertheless on participating in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is welcome.

A current statement by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting reads: "The absence from Friends' worship of the outward observance of the Lord's Supper, water baptism, and other sacraments emphasizes the realities of inward experience. Friends are aware of the power of a true, inward baptism of the Holy Spirit; in meeting for worship at its best they know direct communion with God and fellowship with one another. These experiences make the outward rites seem unnecessary, and, to some Friends, a hindrance. However, just as rituals and forms may become ends in themselves, ...so doctrinaire repudiation of form and ritual may become an end in itself, devoid of life.

"Friends affirm the sacramental nature of the whole of life when it is under the leading of the Spirit. ...Our very lives may thus serve for others as the outward and visible evidence of inward and invisible communion." (Cf. the official report of the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order (Santiago de Compestelo) § 65 (p. 283).)

Entry into membership in the Society of Friends, like the churches' sacraments of baptism and confirmation "commits a person to the daily pursuit of truth after the manner of Friends, commits the Meeting to support the member in that pursuit [and] includes a willingness to live in spiritual unity with other members. "

Eucharist: We believe the communion in worship which we experience when gathered by the power of God's loving and immediate Presence to be the same mystery of communion experienced in the Eucharistic celebrations of all Christian communities. In speaking of the mystery of God's healing and renewing Presence, that "objective, dynamic Presence which enfolds us all, nourishes our souls, speaks glad unutterable comfort within us, and quickens in us depths that had before been slumbering" (Thomas Kelly), our emphasis is most usually on how little adequacy words have to describe the truth of this living experience. Because we believe that God is the initiator of God's own self-giving to the "gathered" community and, further, that God will act to feed God's own despite the limits of our faithfulness and understanding, we believe that a wide variety of liturgical forms can be faithful Eucharistic occasions.

For us, the communion of the Gathered Meeting is central to all that we are and do. Rather than beginning by speaking of communion as established in initiation or baptism and subsequently focused and brought to expression in the "gathered" Meeting, placing the communion of the Meeting as in some sense secondary, we would speak of the communion of the "gathered" Meeting as the core of our community life. (Cf. § 78)

We recognize in § 79 the language of BEM which has been helpful to our ability to see our own austere worship style as an expression and experience of the same understandings of communion, and indeed the same communion, as are found in the self-understandings and worship experiences of Christian communities with more externally elaborated worship styles.

We would be among those who would emphasize the work of the Holy Spirit in the whole of worship. It is, we believe, the Spirit who draws and "gathers" us into a community in communion with one another and with God. It is the Spirit who recalls to our memory all that has been accomplished in creation and in our inward renewal, who makes lively and nourishing the outward story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ, who prompts our gratitude and who leads us into the Peaceable Kingdom.

We would strongly affirm the connection between worship and service noted in § 80. We would note a favorite Quaker phrase, drawn from the first letter of John, "walking in the Light" (1 John 1:6-7; 2:6-10). It is by "walking in the Light," by

participating in the in-breaking of God's reign of truth, justice, and harmony that we truly confess our faith and appropriate that life and Light which God offers us in the "gathered" Meeting.

Important as we understand service and witness to be, we would wish to be cautious against a too narrowly literal and physical understanding of loving service, in a way analogous to our caution against a too narrowly literal understanding of the body and blood of the Lord which are received. Those who in prayer "hold in the Light" our wounded world serve and bear witness as truly as those with the health, freedom, and material circumstances that allow more outward forms of love.

Ministry: The priesthood of the whole people of God is an anchor of Quaker belief, and includes the ministry of the Word and mutual reconciliation of humans to God as well as sharing in God's self-offering, and preaching the Gospel as the Spirit may lead and the hearers may guide. We do not ordain our ministry of local pastors and skilled staff, but have processes for recording spiritual gifts and for transmitting our recognition to others. The "apostolic continuity of the Church" is served among Friends by our writings, by openness to prophetic challenges from our members, and by lives which we believe contine the life of faith of the Apostolic community. Friends are thus radical regarding continually renewed prophecy and apostolicity, expecting continuing guidance, as Jesus says, "when the Spirit of Truth comes he will guide you into all the Truth" (John 16:13). Our prophets and traveling apostles have often been women, who also regularly are led by the Spirit to spoken ministry. Our leaders, men or women called "clerks," are chosen for their ability to sense, discern, and record what each Meeting senses as the shared leadings of the Spirit. We see our understandings of ministry as very similar to § 32 and § 33 of BEM.

Oversight: Communal, Personal and Collegial. We welcome this re-translation of the title of Bishop. The group of Overseers or Elders or of bodies of Ministry and Counsel in each of our Meetings are chosen and feel called both to encourage and to guide or restrain individual ministry and moral choices as well as the life and worship of the Meeting as a whole. We ask ourselves how far individuals are called for life to any of these collegial roles or to ministry or mission. Our own "apostolic succession" includes reformers and churches persecuted by rulers of church and state. The "true Church" has often been "hidden in the wilderness."

Conciliarity and Primacy: We affirm eagerly that "no function, no gift, no charisma is exercised outside or above the communion through the one Spirit." The communal ministry of discernment plays a central role for Friends, whose "Gospel Order" reflects Matthew 18. In the absence of doctrinal boundaries, we hope to be guided by the Spirit in such discernments. Friends maintain the need not to foreclose discussion (indeed to go beyond it to incorporate all true insights offered on each problem). Committees of Clearness are increasingly chosen for individuals and their decisions. We have three centuries of practice in the process of discerning and articulating the "Sense of the Meeting" as guided by the Spirit. The "Sense of the Meeting" is sought in all our major decisions and in "clearing" applicants' readiness for membership. Personal gifts of oversight need cultivation by lives of prayer and humility. Responsibility for social and evangelistic needs is laid by the Spirit upon groups of leaders as well as members and individuals. We have "weighty Friends" from whom we seek guidance, and we have lately tried to train "servant leadership."

V. Service In and For the World. We understand service to be part of discipleship based in the life and teachings of Jesus and the empowerment of the Spirit. We welcome the reminder that such service involves "concrete actions for justice, peace and integrity of creation... often undertaken with those outside the community of faith" (§112), and add to this that such actions are also undertaken, especially, with persons and communities suffering injustice and violence and where possible also with those who victimize them.

Friends have taken individual and corporate action on issues of ethical concern in our effort to live in the realized heavenly community. We regard it as an obligation of the Church for faithfulness to the Peaceable Kingdom (Isaiah 9:207, 11:1-9, 61; Luke 4:16-21). We interpret this obligation in terms of what Friends call our historical testimonies. "Friends have traditionally identified peace and nonviolence, equality, simplicity, stewardship, community, and integrity as their practical principles" (Faith and Practice, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, p. 221).

We particularly appreciate in § 116 the reference to the constant probing of the gospel tradition "for moral inspiration and insight" as being central to koinonia. We test ourselves individually and corporately through "queries" to provoke reflection on our faithfulness.

Faith and Ethics. The relationships among faith, grace, and moral conduct to which the draft WCC statement points, reflect our understanding both that human beings are "justified by faith quite apart from success in keeping the law" (Rom. 3:28 NEB) and that "faith apart from works is dead" (James 2:26 RSV). For from early on Friends distinguished the works of the law from the "works of the Spirit of grace in the heart," as Robert Barclay put it, which "faith working through love" (Gal. 5:6 RSV) is the manifestation of that grace by which we are justified. But this "working through love" is a working of concrete acts in particular circumstances and contexts. The church is in the world, and it is a varied, changing, and broken world.

Because the world is so varied and changing, there will be levels of moral judgment that are specific to complex and limited circumstances, however universal fundamental moral principles may be. Because faith and ethics are so intimately connected, ethical issues can prove church dividing. The consequent challenge to unity arises not only in the Church but in the several churches, including the different bodies of the Religious Society of Friends. The challenge is inevitable, but the search for unity is imperative. How does each member church endeavor to achieve integrity in the face of both the ethical differences and the differences in approach found within itself to answering ethical questions?

Friends insist, as above, on the link between faith and life. We would uphold the peace proclaimed in the life and teachings of Jesus, the priority of Gospel Order over socio-political order in case of conflict, and the necessity of moral discernment while fully under the recognition of human fallibility. As an example, Friends historically have testified to the centrality of the peace witness to the Apostolic faith but for most of our history have not laid that witness on members as a law compelling obedience, but as a guide to each member for his or her own discernment, guided by the Spirit, of God's will for that individual. While the individual's discernment is tested by the faith community, the strength of the expectation that individuals would yield to the greater weight of the living tradition and collective discernment has varied over time. When it was strong, those who did not yield were disowned to protect the integrity of the Religious Society of Friends. An underlying tension concerns the degree to which we are to live in God's not yet fully realized heavenly community and the degree to which accommodations should be allowed in view of its incomplete realization. Friends have traditionally emphasized the former.

VI. Following our Callings: from converging Understandings to Mutual Recognition: Responding to the Document's concluding Queries:

• We do recognize in this document a convergence of the churches' experiences & beliefs, and are glad of the many Quaker insights included.
• We wish such a document could consider at least marginally the work of God's Spirit today in non-christian faith communities and individuals of good will. We noticed with concern that the World Council's own work on the relationship between the Christian Church and other world religions does not appear.
• The implications of Faith & Order's document and long discussion process has already led to Friends' increased eagerness to understand and at appropriate times to share in the worship of other Christian churches.
• We urge an amplified discussion of the Spirit's relation to the work of Christ.
• We appreciate the many occasions in the present text where new, unifying language appears and urge continued effort in identifying and developing fresh expressions that promote unity.