Finding bilateral agreement: the rules of the game

Ecumenical Review, The, July, 2003 by Oliver Schuegraf

(12) The Vienna christological formula helped to clear christological misunderstandings between the Roman Catholic Church and the pre-Chalcedonian Oriental Orthodox churches in 1971. See Pro Oriente, ed., First Ecumenical Consultation between the Theologians of the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Roman Catholic Church, Papers and Minutes, Vienna 1973 (supplementary issue no. 1 of the periodical Wort und Wahrheit).

(13) For a helpful introduction into the complicated christological discussions with the Assyrian Church of the East see D. Winkler, "Theologische Notizen zu den okumenisehen Dialogen mit der Assyrischen Kirche des Ostens", in Okumenisches Forum, 17, 1994, pp.243-66.

(14) O. Schuegraf, "1st der Freund meines Freundes auch mein Freund? Strukturelle Probleme okumenischer 'Dreiecksverhaltnisse'", in Okumenische Rundschau, 48, 1999, pp.347-60.

(15) See Schuegraf, op. cit. (note 1), pp.73-75,137-43,151f.

(16) There are, for example, deliberately no checking procedures for an application for membership to be granted. Lutheran, Reformed, United or pre-Reformation churches able to consent, by formal signature to the Leuenberg Agreement and its understanding of the gospel, will be accepted as member churches. The already participating churches are not able to express approval or rejection of the new member. The Leuenberg Church Fellowship understands itself as a fellowship "designed for growth".

(17) After preliminary meetings, the first round of talks between the LCF and the European Baptist Federation was held in 1999 and 2000. In 2001, the fifth general assembly of the LCF agreed that representatives of the Baptist Union should be invited to attend as participant observers and permanent guests within the future programme of doctrinal conversations held by the LCF. The assembly also asked to launch a new theological dialogue with the aim of discovering whether a basis can be found to deepen and extend the communion which already exists between the churches of the LCF and of the European Baptist Federation. The first of such meetings took place in October 2002.

(18) See Schuegraf, op. cir. (note 1), pp.301-305.

(19) It may be noted that the movement of united and uniting churches, whose story does not fall under the rubric of bilateral dialogue, provides yet another pattern of progress towards church unity.

Oliver Schuegraf serves in the chaplaincy of Coventry university in the United Kingdom. This paper is a revised translation of the closing chapter of O. Schuegraf, Der einen Kirche Gestalt geben. Ekklesiologie in den Dokumenten der bilateralen Konsensokumene, Jerusalemer Theologisches Forum, vol. 3, Munster, Forum Studienjahr Jerusalem e.V., 2001.