‘Churches Are Entering Into Unity, Not Union’

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29378, 3 December 1960, Page 13

‘Churches Are Entering Into Unity, Not Union’

ROME, December 1. Dr. Fisher said in a sermon in Rome last evening that he had come to Rome neither to boast nor to complain, but only to greet Pope John “in courtesy of Christian brotherhood.”

Preaching at the Anglican Church of All Saints, he said this could only happen and he could only have suggested his visit “because the Pope, on his side, had made it clear that he would receive me in a similar spirit.” Dr. Fisher said that in this day of a commonwealth of churches within the one Church “we are rediscovering the vast heritage of the riches of Christ and of the gifts of the Holy Spirit which we have in common, a vast heritage ”

But, he said, all kinds of obstacles and inherited antagonisms lay ahead—ignorance in all the churches of one another’s spiritual and sacramental realities, doctrinal friction, rules of behaviour or procedure in one church which inflicted real spiritual or even civil hardships on members of another church, deep-rooted loyalties and prejudices. and clashes of conscience. “But that should daunt no one who calls Christ Lord and Matter in Whose lands are all rule and authority and jurisdiction.” he said.-

“In every church there is and must be a constant altarnation between the withdrawal of worship and the outgoing of witness to the world. History has brought it about that the Orthodox churches have found their greatest strength in their withdrawal into worship while the churches of the Roman communion have found their greatest calling in the strength and authority of their witness in tbe world.

“And we of the Anglican communion. and indeed all Christians, must ever be grateful for what the Church of Rome has done for us all by that strength and authority.”

In the West, Dr. Fisher said, there had arisen a bitter strife, not yet healed or ended, between the conception of an imperial church and the more ancient and Apostolic conception of a commonwealth of churches. The strife, fought out for long in terms of doctrine against doctrine, formula against formula, phrase against phrase, came to a head with the Reformation.

Doctrines could never be settled by strife. Each church had the duty to judge for itself so long as it sought to be true to the Apostolic record and aim always to live in such harmony with its fellow churches that together they could glorify God with one voice. A far more difficult and divisive matter was that of juris diction. Dr. Fisher said. The churches in the West had grown up in a system of imperialism—and however great and beneficial the contributions of an imperial power might be, that power "must in the end accept its subjects as partners and its sons or adopted sons as equals. If there is not a passage from paternalism to comradeship, in time there will be either repression by force or a breakdown of all relations.” One of the "potent causes” which led to the breach between the Church of England and the Church of Rome was the English love of freedom, and at the root lay the questions of authority and jurisdiction. The period of the cold war between churches was not altogether past, but it was passing—not yet by agreements about jurisdiction or about authorities, but by the discovery that these things were really secondary to and consequential upon something else. But, Dr. Fisher added, “rival jurisdictions can coexist in peace, once they cease to be in competition and become co-operative; cease to be set as contraries the

one to the other, and so become creative.

“If we are not against one another any longer, we are for one another, and so can be gloriously free to be altogether for Christ and for the true unity of His Church.

“I say deliberately ’unity,’ not union, for church union or reunion rests upon the reconciliation of jurisdictions and authorities. so that within the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church the particular churches of Christendom may be duly related to one another in terms of co-ordination and full communion.

“But unity is of the spirit, and into that unity of discipleship and mutual love the churches can enter already and are entering now.”