For the Communion of the Churches: The Contribution of the Groupe des Dombes - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802865321 ISBN 13: 9780802865328

Verlag: Eerdmans, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

Founded by Abbé Paul Couturier in 1937, the Groupe des Dombes is a Protestant-Catholic coalition in French-speaking Europe uniting Reformed, Lutheran, and Catholic scholars in a common spirit of prayer, dialogue, and discernment. Its pioneering work of reconciliation has influenced many other official ecumenical dialogues. This volume presents six statements produced by the Groupe des Dombes from 1971 to 1991, which appear here together in English translation for the first time. These substantial documents express the Groupe’s keen insights into the renewal of theology and church life that is necessary for progress toward full ecclesial unity — and they invite churches to pursue fruitful dialogue, mutual understanding, harmony, and the hopeful vision of a future in full communion. 

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Catherine E. Clifford is associate professor of systematic and historical theology and vice dean of the Faculty of Theology at Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Ontario. She is also the editor of A Century of Prayer for Christian Unity.

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FOR THE COMMUNION OF THE CHURCHES

The Contribution of the Groupe des Dombes

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Copyright © 2010 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8028-6532-8

Contents

Acknowledgments..............................................................viiEditor's Introduction........................................................1Towards a Common Eucharistic Faith (1971)....................................13Towards a Reconciliation of Ministries (1972)................................25The Episcopal Ministry (1976)................................................37The Holy Spirit, the Church, and the Sacraments (1979).......................59The Ministry of Communion in the Universal Church (1985).....................95For the Conversion of the Churches (1991)....................................149

Chapter One

Towards a Common Eucharistic Faith (1971)

Doctrinal Agreement on the Eucharist

* * *

1. Today, when Christians celebrate the eucharist and proclaim the gospel, they feel themselves increasingly to be brothers in the midst of their fellow-men, with a mission and an eagerness to bear witness together to the same Christ, by word and deed and by their eucharistic celebration. That is why, for some years past, the Group meeting at Les Dombes has been scrutinizing the significance of mutual eucharistic hospitality and joint celebration and the conditions on which they depend.

2. One particularly important condition of this sharing of the Lord's table is substantial agreement on what it is, despite theological diversities.

3. The Group takes over the text of the Faith and Order agreement (1968), seeking to clarify, adapt, and amplify it in the light of the interconfessional situation in France today.

I. The Eucharist: The Lord's Supper

4. The eucharist is the sacramental meal, the new paschal meal of God's people, which Christ, having loved his disciples unto the end, gave them before his death that they might celebrate it in the light of the resurrection until his coming.

5. This meal is the effective sign of the gift that Christ made of himself as the bread of life, through the sacrifice of his life and his death and by his resurrection.

6. In the eucharist, Christ fulfills in a surpassing manner his promise to be amongst those who gather together in his name.

II. The Eucharist: Act of Thanksgiving to the Father

7. The eucharist is the great act of thanksgiving to the Father for all that he has accomplished in the creation and redemption of the world, for all that he is now accomplishing in the church and in the world, despite our sin, and for all that he is seeking to accomplish through the coming of his kingdom. Thus, the eucharist is the blessing (berakah) whereby the church expresses gratitude to God for all his benefits.

8. The eucharist is the great sacrifice of praise in which the church speaks in the name of all creation. For the world that God reconciled with himself in Christ is present at each eucharist: in the bread and the wine, in the persons of the faithful, and in the prayers they offer for all mankind. Thus the eucharist opens up to the world the way to its transfiguration.

III. The Eucharist: Memorial of Christ

9. Christ instituted the eucharist as a memorial (anamnesis) of his whole life and above all of his cross and resurrection. Christ, with everything he has accomplished for us and for all creation, is present himself in this memorial, which is also a foretaste of his kingdom. The memorial, in which Christ acts through the joyful celebration of his church, implies this representation and this anticipation. Therefore it is not only a matter of recalling to mind a past event or even its significance. The memorial is the effective proclamation by the church of the great work of God. By its communion with Christ, the church participates in this reality from which it draws its life.

10. The memorial, being at once re-presentation and anticipation, is lived out in thanksgiving and intercession. Making the memorial of the passion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, our High Priest and Mediator, the church presents to the Father the one perfect sacrifice of his Son and asks him to accord every person the benefit of the great work of redemption it proclaims.

11. Thus, united to our Lord, who offers himself to his Father, and in communion with the universal church in heaven and on earth, we are renewed in the covenant sealed with the blood of Christ and we offer ourselves as a living and holy sacrifice that must be expressed in the whole of our daily life.

12. The memorial of Christ is the essential content of the Word proclaimed, as it is of the eucharist. The celebration of the eucharist and the proclamation of the Word go hand in hand, for the ministry of the Word is directed towards the eucharist and the eucharist in turn implies and fulfills the Word.

IV. The Eucharist: Gift of the Spirit

13. The memorial, in the deep sense that we have given to it, implies the invocation of the Spirit (epiclesis). Christ, in his heavenly intercession, asks the Father to send his Spirit to his children. And so the church, living in the new covenant, prays with confidence for the Spirit, in order to be renewed and sanctified by the bread of life, led in truth and strengthened to fulfill its mission in the world.

14. It is the Spirit which, invoked over the congregation, over the bread and wine, makes Christ really present to us, gives him to us and enables us to perceive him. The memorial and the invocation of the Spirit (anamnesis and epiclesis), directed towards our union with Christ, cannot be accomplished independently of the communion.

15. The gift of the Holy Spirit in the eucharist is a foretaste of the kingdom of God: the church receives the life of the new creation and the assurance of our Lord's return.

16. We recognize that the eucharistic prayer as a whole has the character of an epiclesis.

V. The Sacramental Presence of Christ

17. The act of the eucharist is the gift of Christ's person. The Lord said: "Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you." "Drink ye all of this, for this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins." We accordingly confess unanimously the real, living, and effective presence of Christ in this sacrament.

18. To discern the body and blood of Christ requires faith. However, the presence of Christ revealed to his church in the eucharist does not depend on the faith of the individual, for it is Christ who binds himself in his words and in the Spirit to the sacramental act, the sign of his presence given.

19. Christ's act being the gift of his body and blood, that is to say, of himself, the reality given in the signs of the bread and wine is his body and his blood. It is by virtue of Christ's creative word and by the power of the Holy Spirit that the bread and wine are made a sacrament and hence a "sharing of the body and blood of Christ" (1 Cor. 10:16). They are henceforth, in their ultimate truth, beneath the outward sign, the given reality, and so they remain, since their purpose is to be consumed. What is given as the body and blood of Christ remains given as his body and blood and requires to be treated as such.

20. Noting the diversity of practice among Christian...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Eerdmans
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0802865321
• ISBN 13: 9780802865328
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 232
• Herausgeber: Clifford Catherine E.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland