Sentences with phrase «ecumenical spirit»

A third paradox: denominations themselves generated much of the ecumenical ethos that led many to predict that the denominational form would wither as the ecumenical spirit prospered.

Clearly there is an ecumenical spirit, but are the hard materials present that can allow evangelical churches to progress toward Christian unity?

In place of the absolutism of exclusive claims to finality, an ecumenical spirit would acknowledge a plurality of significant religious models, without lapsing into a complete relativism which would undercut all concern for truth.

In place of the absolutism of exclusive claims of finality, an ecumenical spirit would acknowledge a plurality of significant religious models without lapsing into a complete relativism which would undercut all concern for truth.

How is it that some congregations turn their concerns away from their own survival toward the needs of their local situation, mount credible programs of education and retain an ecumenical spirit to the point of dialogue with Jewish and other faiths?

As one of the outstanding «signs of the times,» pluralism invites a courageous and generous ecumenical spirit and action.

The «ecumenical spirit» in the schools today is indeed remarkable but the distance still to be traversed is more impressive than the distance covered.)

(0ne school characterizes its attitude toward other denominations as magnanimous; another recognizes only two church bodies — one of these in Europe — as soundly Christian; some denominational programs for the development of theological education move easily from praise of the ecumenical spirit to exclusive concern for the advancement of the denominational ministry.

A member of the Advisory Committee, commenting on this section of the report, writes: «When you write of the denominational seminaries you seem to fail to grasp the ecumenical spirit that characterizes so many of them.

This fact of the ecumenical spirit in the denominational school is a tremendous thing with great possibilities for the future.

These men and women were invited to grapple with a massive, urgent issue currently confronting the whole Christian community and contemporary culture — in an ecumenical spirit of worship and dialogue, within an atmosphere of the warm hospitality of a great Christian university.

Only journalists very badly instructed in theology could therefore suppose that Vatican II might cancel the doctrine defined by Vatican I regarding the papal primacy of jurisdiction and teaching authority, or out of ecumenical spirit and desire to please, might revoke the dogma of the Immaculate Conception or the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Yet the visitor might also marvel that the Christian faith has taken root in an amazing variety of cultures, although it has to be said that such an ecumenical spirit has seldom been characteristic of the churches.

Like many ecumenical spirits, Bonhoeffer bridged different worlds.

A Lutheran, he was one of the great New Testament scholars and ecumenical spirits of the century.

Not exact matches

Many participants had hoped this Assembly would effect the unveiling of a «new, comprehensive, ecumenical theology» built upon creation consciousness and a broadly defined work of the Spirit, but the effort ran headlong into established political and theological commitments.

This commitment to coalition - building fostered in LaHaye's case a new «ecumenical» spirit.

He refused to believe that Vatican II, the ecumenical council he had experienced as a powerful work of the Holy Spirit, could only lead to permanent incoherence and division in Catholicism; and by providing an authoritative interpretation of the Council, John Paul II's pontificate energized the living parts of the Church and made Vatican II the launch platform for the new evangelization and for the Church's rediscovery of itself as a missionary enterprise.

It also places it in continuity with the experiences of the early church, and within the continuing narrative of the development of Christian thought — as people have struggled to make sense of and articulate their lived experience of God — which produced the great ecumenical creeds (with their clear progression of understanding about God, Christ and the Holy Spirit)- and which continues on today.

Faith is also ecumenical in spirit.

Religiously, it is better to speak of the loss of an ecumenical, theological confidence and the possession of the body politic by a host of conflicting spirits.

Our ambience is denominational; our outlook and spirit are ecumenical.

We also discovered a second agreement, variously expressed: that theology in the Wesleyan spirit must be truly ecumenical, or it is not truly Wesleyan.

But our work together thus far has already established several points that may have an important bearing on the future of theological education in America: (1) the party - strife between «evangelicals» and «charismatics» and «ecumenicals» is not divinely preordained and need not last forever; (2) the Wesleyan tradition has a place of its own in the theological forum along with all the others; (3) «pluralism» need not signify «indifferentism»; (4) «evangelism» and «social gospel» are aspects of the same evangel; (5) in terms of any sort of cost - benefit analysis, a partnership like AFTE represents a high - yield investment in Christian mission; and (6) the Holy Spirit has still more surprises in store for the openhearted.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the name of the Triune God, revealed to us by the incarnate Word Himself and the Holy Spirit, through Holy Tradition and Scripture, the Church Fathers, and the first seven Ecumenical Councils.

The Spirit of the Soil: Agricultural and Ecumenical Ethics (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 3, 5.

More than one historian has commented on how in this respect the Christian movement was responsible for producing for the first time a truly global, ecumenical version of world history, with the meaning and significance of history to be found where the spirit moves and blows, typically among those considered outcasts, the lowly, the oppressed or socially insignificant.

All that I maintain is that an ecumenical council of 1975 ought to give as much attention to the Spirit of God as the ecumenical council of 325 gave to the Son of God.

When Pope Benedict XVI was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he said on several much - quoted occasions that further major ecumenical progress depended on a new «depth of faith» worked by a new initiative of the Spirit.

On the road of the Church's missionary obedience, the Holy Spirit will reveal the form of ecumenical organization which is most in harmony with the reality of the Church as a world community which seeks to be loyal to its mission and unity.43

An evangelical spirit, together with an ecumenical openness, could get lost in piety and obscurity; but properly witnessed it is not only compatible with denominational identity: it is perhaps the best way to motivate people to make their faith a part of their lives.

In this winter of ecumenical discontent and disillusionment, we await the stirring of the Holy Spirit, praying with John Paul II that the third millennium will be «the springtime of Christian unity.»

Yet because of the recognition that those who are filled with the Holy Spirit are empowered to testify about their experience of the Spirit, official Pentecostal leaders often view the involvement of Pentecostal scholars and theologians in the ecumenical arena as a legitimate form of witness.

The same Directory also speaks of the spiritual climate in which alone there can be a successful ecumenical reception: «The life of faith and the prayer of faith, no less than reflection on the doctrine of faith, enter «into this process of reception, by which the whole Church, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit... makes her own the fruits of a dialogue, in a process of listening, of testing, of judging and of living.»

With a clarity he himself attributed to an unanticipated illumination of the Holy Spirit, the newly elected Pope John XXIII announced in early 1959 that he intended to summon an ecumenical council.

An independent or ecumenical option is thus seen as a threat, not as an opportunity, even by more progressive spirits on both faculties.

As an example from within the ecumenical movement, the Orthodox position on the interrelationship between the Spirit and Baptism can be quoted from an article entitled «Orthodox Reflections on the Assembly Theme,» where it is affirmed that

Küng hopes that his ecumenical theology will continue to be a viable alternative to Rome even within the Catholic tradition, thus demonstrating that the life and spirit of the church are broader than the official posture of the hierarchy.

The Eucharist is by ecumenical consensus the corporate act in which «the community of God's people is manifested,» and it is of crucial importance that the identity - defining rite of the Christian community is precisely a rite of remembrance, an act in which the many are united in a common turning in the Spirit to one in particular, to the Palestinian Jew Jesus, through whose life and in whose person the salvation of the God of Israel is confessed to have been conclusively bestowed on humankind.

There are three ecumenical creeds, and they draw attention to God, to our need, to the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

The oldline churches are ecumenical in spirit and support the work of the World Council of Churches.

Here, in fact, we may be in the presence of one of the most necessary of all Devils: the Ecumenical Unifier, champion of all efforts to remove invidious distinctions between nature and nurture, body and spirit, interdiction and impulse, time and eternity, individual and community, male and female, Hell and Heaven — and ultimately, of course, between man and God.

The opening to noncommunicants appears to reflect a spirit not so much ecumenical as indifferent.

Thus in 1829 John Henry Newman — still at that stage an Anglican — affirmed that Christians become entitled to the gift of the Holy Spirit «by belonging to the body of his Church; and we belong to his Church by being baptised into it».24 And more than a century later, Michael Ramsay, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1960s — whose meeting with Paul VI in the 1960s was a central moment in the ecumenical movement of that era — took a generally Catholic approach to baptism, if expressed in a somewhat vague, «Anglican» way: «The life of a Christian is a continual response to the fact of his baptism; he continually learns that he has died and risen with Christ, and that his life is a part of the life of the one family.»

The final denouement will reflect, no doubt, not only the spirited rebellion of an unrepentant world order and the overruling providence of God, but also both evangelical and ecumenical causal factors.

The spirit of openness to dialogue in frankness and fairness has been received with warm appreciation, as well as especially the emphasis on prayer with and for each other and the positive focus on ecumenical texts of the scriptures.

The methods of work of the ecumenical movement will surely continue to change, but the Holy Spirit's call to the churches for unity and renewal remains ever present to us.

So, for instance, the landmark ecumenical document Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, developed by the World Council of Churches» Faith and Order Commission, treats the meaning of the Lord's Supper under five headings: thanksgiving, memorial of Christ's death and resurrection, invocation of the Spirit, communion of the faithful, and feast of the future fulfillment of God's reign.

In its stead, Klaatu answers, with ecumenical sensitivity: «No, that power is reservedfor the almighty spirit.»

Orleans, MA About Blog The Community of Jesus is an ecumenical Christian community in the Benedictine monastic tradition whose mission is to be a faithful witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to glorify God through worship, the common life, and the creative arts.