EI SEs Siu eet aking in the Church PAUL VALLIERE CAMBRIDGECONCILIARISM A History of Decision-Making in the Church PAUL VALLIERE Butler University, Indianapolis CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESSCambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, ape Town, Singapore, Sio Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge en rv, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, wow.cambridge.org, Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/y781107015746 © Paul Valliere 2012 “This publication isin copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, xno reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press First published 2012 Printed in the Uinited Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from: the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Valliere, Paul cision-makking,in the church / Paul Vallicre. pages em Includes bibliographic Haan 97Bt107-01574-6 1. Conciliar theory-History. L. Title. BV720N95 2012 262" 5-dde2s Conciliarism :a history of references and index. 2011044365 isan 978-1-107-01574-6 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred co In this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.Contents Acknowledgments List of abbreviations Introduction By schisms rent asunder Conciliar fellowship “The Anglican case 1 ‘The conciliar testament Early Christianity as a proto-conciliar network of churches Early Christian cosmopolitanism Diversity and unity in easly Christianity The New ‘Testament as a conciliar phenomenon Acts 10-15: decision-making in the church 2 ‘The conciliar tradition the origin of councils Conflicts, councils and catholicism Coneiliarism and the Christian state Councils as a tradition Coneiliar spirituality 3 The conciliar theory Councils and the papacy in the early Middle Ages Legal rationality and papal lawgivers Eastern conciliarism in the Middle Ages the Coneciliarist challenge Catholic concordance 4 Conciliarism in Anglican experience Conciliarism in the English Reformation Conciliarism and the making of the Anglican Communion ‘The problem of authority in Anglicanism vii page ix xiviii Contents 5 ‘The Pan-Anglican Council Councils and conscience Councils and constitutionalism The Pan-Anglican Council Condusion 245 Bibliography Indeximage not availableimage not availableimage not availableMaterial com direitos autoraisimage not availableimage not availableimage not available4 Introduction and ethnic Russians to find a common ground in Orthodoxy itself. In the diocese of the Moscow patriarchate in England, the decision of the bishop to transfer his loyalty from Moscow to Constantinople divided his small community. As for the Americas, a maze of multiple jurisdictions continues to obscure Orthodox unity. ‘The flight from fellowship is evident in the continuing practice of epis- copal boycott and refusal of hospitality on the part of Orthodox hierarchs. So, for example, the ecumenical patriarch (patriarch of Constantinople), Demetrius I, did not see fit to attend the millennial council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1988, lest he be overshadowed by the patriarch of Moscow ~ a stunning example of failure to rejoice with those who rejoice A few years later, the patriarch of Moscow, Aleksii II, engaged in similar behavior by refusing the request of Pope John Paul II to visit the Russian Church, The reason most often cited for Aleksii’s coldness was Moscow’s suspicion of Roman Catholic ambitions in Russia, but the weightier factor was the Moscow patriarchate’s fear of alienating its own anti-ecumenical right wing, In any case, a historic opportunity was missed. ‘The leaders of the two largest churches in the post-Communist East found it impossible to sit down together, celebrate the moment and promote the Gospel. In contemporary Protestantism, too, the forces of traditionalism and progressivism impede the cultivation of fellowship. ‘Ihe Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church affords an example. ‘The denomination exists both in Latvia and in Latvian communities abroad. A half-century of Communism in Latvia (1940-91) led to the cteation of separate eccle- siastical jurisdictions in the emigration, but the doctrine and polity of the Latvian church remained unified, Since the fall of Communism, however, the leaders of the domestic Latvian church have embraced a species of traditionalism that puts them at odds with their coreligionists abroad. To ensure the triumph of traditionalism, they revised their church constitu tion in 2007 in a rather un-Lutheran way by centralizing authority in the office of the archbishop and two newly created regional bishops. ‘This epis- copal triumvirate decides all issues of doctrine and liturgical practice for the church.’ So, for example, the archbishop and his colleagues refuse to accept female clergy even though ordained women serve Latvian Lutheran churches in the emigration and could serve churches in Latvia, too, at an earlier time. A small, linguistically distinctive religious community such as the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church has every reason to foster unity Information on the organization of the church, including the text of the consticution (Satverarte) of 2007, may be found on the church’s website, ww.lelb.lvimage not availableimage not availableimage not available8 Introduction history of the church. Councils may be standing bodies or occasional gatherings. ‘They may be clerical assemblies or mixed assemblies of clergy and laity. They may be parts of a composite polity or the defining element of a polity. They may record their actions or not record their actions. They may be large and influential, or small and uninfluential. They may also be large and uninfluential, or small and influential. Whatever form they take, however, councils are necessarily collaborative. ‘They engage many voices, embodying what Bulgakov called the “multi-unity” of the Yet councils are not constituted by collaboration alone. To be concil- church.'* iar, collaboration must have a trans-local dimension. A family is not a council. A single congregation can be conciliar to the extent chat it is trans-domestic and in so far as its decision-making institutions are collab- orative. But if other congregations professing the same faith exist, a con- gregation cannot be conciliar unless it makes decisions in collaboration with the other congregations, in other words, unless it steps beyond the local level. Conciliarism is one of the oldest means of decision-making in the his- tory of the Christian church. Indeed, the most distinguished Orthodox ecclesiologist of the twentieth century argued that ‘at the moment of its establishment the Church contained within itself a potential council.” Alexander Schmemann, another leading Orthodox theologian, stated the case in the same way: “Before we understand the place and the function of the council the Church, we must, therefore, see the Church herself as a council.” ‘The first team of Protestant and Orthodox scholars commis- sioned by the World Council of Churches to study conciliarism started from the same assumptio By conciliarity we mean the fact that the Church in all times needs assemblies to represent it and has in fact felt this need. These assemblies may differ greatly from one another; however, conciliarity, the necessity that they take place, is a constant structure of the Church, a dimension which belongs to its nature. As the Church itself is an many other expressions of its life, so it needs both at the local and on all other possible levels representative assemblies in order to answer the questions which it faces." assembly” and appears as assembly both in worship and Sergius Bulgakoy, The Orthodox Church, rev. tans. Lydia Kesich, Foreword by Themas Hopko (Cres:wood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1988). 66 Nikolai Afinasey, Terkounye sebory i ikb proiskhozhdenie (Moscow: Sviato-Pilaretovskii Pravoslavao-Khristianskii Institut, 2003), 42 Alexander Schmemann, “Towards a Theology of Councils” in Church. World. Mission: Reflection: on Orthodoxy in the West (Crestwood, NY: St. Viadimir's Seminary Press, 197), 153 ® Councils and the Eeuraenical Movement, World Council of Churches Studies 5 (Genevat World Council of Churches, 1968), 10image not availableimage not availableimage not available2 Introduction first modern parliament, the State Duma, in 1906. But the conciliar movement in the church faltered, Setting aside the extensive preparations of the Pre-Conciliar Assembly, Tsar Nicholas II refused to call a council. Nevertheless, support for conciliar government continued to be strong in the Russian church. When the monarchy collapsed in 1917, the church promptly organized a council, Delegates, more than half of them laity, were elected in the summer of 1917. ‘The Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church opened in August, 1917 and met until September, 1918, leaving behind a rich record of deliberations and formal acts. It was the greatest Orthodox assembly of the second millennium and one of the two greatest conciliar gatherings of the twentieth century, the other being Vatican 11 (1962-65)." Protestantism’s contribution to the twentieth-century coneiliar revival took the form of the Ecumenical Movement.? Rooted in Evangelical activism and the global missionary enterprise, Protestant ecumenism gained momentum in the 1920s following the catastrophe of World War 1. In 1927, at a conference in Lausanne, the leaders of the movement, which by now included distinguished Orthodox churchmen, laid the groundwork for the creation of the World Council of Churches, which became a reality in 1948 following a second, even more disastrous global conflict. ‘The meaning of the term “council” in the name of the World Council of Churches is anomalous in that membership in the WCC does not directly affect the polity of its members. ‘Ihe Council is a venue for interchurch dialogue and collaborative ministries, not an instrument of church government. Still, dialogue and collaboration are conciliar values even if they do not add up to a finished conciliarism, and by promot- ing them, the WCC fostered mutual understanding among its member churches. This, in curn, inspired numerous bilateral dialogues, resulting Ins Oeheidoiyy 6 aelobal hte cotinell 1g called local beeause le Iocal with napece ee ehe worldwide Orthodox fellowship. On che conciliar movement in modern Russian Orthodoxy, sec Alexander A. Bogolepov, Church Reforms in Russia, 1905-1918 (Bridgeport, CT: Publications Commitee of the Metropolitan Council of the Russian Orthodox Church of America, 1966); James W. Cunningham, A Vanguished Hope: The Movement for Church Renewal in Russia, 10s 4906 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1981); Hyacinthe Destivelle, Le Cencile de Moscow (sp17-1918): La création des institutions concitiaires de VEglise orthodoxe russe, Fe by Bishop Hilarion, Preface by Hervé Legrand (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 2006): H Destivelle, “Le Concile local de Moscow et la corciliarité. La question de la participation des laies au concile local dans les débats préconciliaires,” in Melloni and Scatena, eds, Synod and mmodatity, 187-99; and Ginther Schulz, “the Local Council (Pomestny Sobor) of the Orthodox Church in Russia, Moscow 1917/i8 as a Case of Synodal Decision on Synodal Structures,” in Melloni and Scatena, eds., Synod and Synodality, 201-12, For a concise survey of the Ecumenical Movement, see ‘Thomas B. Fitzgerald. The Ecumenical Movement: An Introductory History (Westport, CT, and London: Praeger, 2004).image not availableimage not availableimage not available16 Introduction contemporary Anglicans and Protestants to deal with problems through schism makes the need for new lessons in conciliarism plainer than ever. In Orthodoxy, meanwhile, the idealization of ancient conciliarism masks the uneven practice of conciliarism in modern times. Like Vatican 11, the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917 stands as a promising but unfinished experiment in conciliar government. ‘The long Soviet winter made the practical realization of conciliar institutions in Russia impos century, while the conciliar ism practiced by the post-Soviet Russian church falls notably short of the ble for most of the twentieth vision of 1917. The struggle to realize the promise of conciliarism is going on in other Orthodox churches as well. At the me time, jurisdictional conflicts, regional schisms and many other challenges to ministry sug- gest the need for a worldwide Orthodox gathering, The idea of a Pan- Orthodox Council was discussed occasionally in the twentieth century without practical effect. In recent years, however, the proposal has been gaining momentum, a matter to which we will return in the Conclusion of this study. THE ANGLIGAN CASE Claiming to represent a middle way between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, Anglicans tead to regard their form of church govern- meat as the ideal synthesis of Protestant Christian liberty and catholic ecclesial tradition. As an ideal, such a synthesis might indeed be the optimal one. But the Christian church is not in the business of ide- als as such. It is in the business of the Word made flesh, the business of putting ideals into pra of the church. Ang ‘ice in the mission, ministry and fellows ans are right to take pride in the comprehe ness of their ecclesial ideal. They have been slower to recognize that the more comprehensive an ideal is in theory, the more demanding it will be in practice. Far from requiring less discipline than the alternatives, Anglican comprehensiveness requires more. As Richard Hooker saw so clearly, Anglican comprehensiveness requires laws of ecclesiastical pol- ity. Without them, Anglicanism hangs in the air of theological abstrac- tion or enshrines a particular social and political ethos as the definitive ecclesial community. Conciliarism can help here. As the analysis of Anglican decision-making in this book will show, the laws of ecclesiastical polity that Anglicanism needs today are laws of coneiliar polity. That contemporary Anglicanism needs some sort of laws would seem to be proved by the prospect of aimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableCHAPTER I The conciliar testament The concept of fellowship, or koindnia, has as many dimensions in the New Testament as it had in the church communities that produced the New Tes ate Christian worship the house churches, were fellowships. Developing the connection between ment. The eucharistic meal that stood at the center of corpor 2s a fellowship. ‘The original Christian assemblies, fellowship and houschold, some scholars have suggested that the early church was a surrogate family.’ Familial or otherwise, metaphors of unity and belonging in the description of the church in the New Testament suggest an intense communalism. ‘Almost all of these descriptions pertain to the local Christian com- munity, for the local community was the primary context of Christian fellowship. One could even say that it is redundant to speak of the local church in the first century because all churches were local. Nevertheless, if we do not qualify the localist paradigm in at least one respect, we will overlook the dimension of firs-century Christian fellowship that was not local. Early Christianity was a movement, and as a movement it involved did not appear by autogenesis. They were planted by missionaries from other trans-local as well as local fellowship. Early Christian churche: communities, and their connection with those missionaries and commu- nities formed part of their experience of koinévia. "The trans-local reality of early Christian fellowship was the earliest form of conciliarism. EARLY CHRISTIANITY AS A PROTO-CONCILIAR NETWORK OF CHURCHES Early Christianity was not centralized. The first Christian churches were tight-knit local fellowships, neither created nor governed by a central Joseph H. Hellerman, The 7 Ralph P. Martin, The Family and the Fellowship: New Testament bn Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980). nciens Church as Family (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), and sof the Church (Grand 20image not availableimage not availableimage not available24 The conciliar testament movement was not a congerics of isolated, essentially introverted com- munities but a sociable “holy Internet” stretching from one end of the Mediterranean world to the other already in the first century: ‘The networking instinct of the early church appears nowhere more plainly than in the Acts of the Apostles, a work that has often been inter- preted as a document of early catholicism."° While one must be careful not to read Acts in terms of the structures of the later second-century church, the characterization of the work as early catholic is justified to the extent that the emergence and mission of a worldwide church is indeed the theme of the book. ‘The first chapter of Acts is the hinge on which the composite work Luke-Acts turns. In Acts 1, the resurrected Jesus explains to the apos tles that, while the period of his personal presence mong them is end- ing, a new dispensation is about to begin: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (1:8). Immediately thereafter Jesus is lifted up into heaven, “and a cloud took him out of their sight” (1:9). The details of the narrative unders threat posed by the loss of Jesus’ personal direction of his movement. A shaky interregnum ensues, the dangers of the situation emphasized by the narrator's attention to the betrayal of the movement by one of its own, the lapsed apostle Judas (1:15-26). At Peter’s suggestion, the apostles select a replacement for Judas, putting two candidates forward and deciding between them by casting lots, They cast lots prayerfully, appealing to their ascended Lord: “Show us waich one of these two you have chosen” (1:24). ‘This was not a game of chance. Nevertheless, the episode underscores the precariousness of the situation, Since one of the apostles had abandoned his ministry, could the rest be sure that such apostasy might not happen ‘ore the again? And were prayerful lots a satisfactory means of steering the move- ment now that Jesus had withdrawn to heaven? ‘The resolution of the tension comes with the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2). ‘This event puts an end to the interregnum by inaugurating a new phase of the See Michael B. ‘Thompson, “The Holy Internet: Communication between Churches in the First Christian Generation,” in Bauckham, ed., The Gospel for All Christians, 49-70. a New ‘Testament eritics in the ewentieth the term “early catholicism” was introduced by Germ century to denote the outlook of presumably post-apostolic compositions in the New Testament including the Acts of the Apostles. For a characterization and bibliography, see Dictionary of the Later New Testament and les Develepments, ed. Martin and Davids, s. v. “Early Catholicism” (RP. Martin), 310-73image not availableimage not availableimage not available28 The conciliar testament the point invites the suspicion that the break might have been final. On the other hand, we have seen that the abrupt disappearance of leading figures is a typical compositional feature of Acts. Also, Paul’s reference , dating from a period after the break to Barnabas in 1 Corinthians 9: described by Luke, suggests that Barnabas had not become a nonperson for Paul, even if the two were no longer collaborating. For Luke, the sterling example of ecclesial connectedness is found in the relationship between the churches on the missionary frontier and and elders of the Jerusalem church. Luke assumes that the the apostle Jerusalem church was kept informed about new developments in the life of the church, such as the Samaritan mission, the conversion of Saul and the first conversions among the Gentiles. The Jerusalem connection is also crucial to the account of the debate over the status of Gentile Christians in Acts 15, the crux of the Acts of the Apostles. The gathering depicted there, traditionally known as the Council of Jerusalem, confirms the continuity of the worldwide mission of the church with the mission of Jesus and of all Israel before him. While che chapters following Acts 15 are devoted to the missionary journeys of Paul, Jerusalem remains in the picture. Luke carefully notes Paul’s visits to the holy city following his missionary journeys (18:22; 21:1-26). Interestingly, Luke’s account of Paul’s final visit to Jecusalem makes no mention of the charitable donation to the Jerusalem church that Paul cites as the purpose of his visit (Rom. 15:25-28} 1 Cor. 16:1-43 2 Cor. 8-93 Gal. 2:10). Luke does not show Paul delivering a purse but making a “After greeting them [James and the elders], he related one by one ir Phe repor the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his min (Acts 21219). Luke’s shift of focus from the charitable contribution, was aware of it, to a report on ministry emphasizes the theme of connect edness in the church. By placing the Council of Jerusalem at the center of his story, Luke affirms the fellowship principle in the early church in a way that can be termed proto-conciliar, ‘The term is meant to convey how decision-making in the church of Luke's day adumbrated subsequent conciliar practice even though the formal conciliar institutions of later times did not yet exist. As far as we know, the Council of Jerusalem was a unique event in the first-century church; if there were other gatherings of the same type, the New Testament did not record them."! Hence one cannot argue that Some seholats explain the discrepancies between the reporte of Lukeand Paul on the Jerusalem council (Acts 15 and Galatians 2; ef, Acts 11:27-40) by suggesting that two different visits to Jerusalem by Paul and Barnabas were involved. See David Wenham, “Acts and the Paulineimage not availableimage not availableimage not available5 The conciliar testament unknown god” (17:23) was no less quaint than the Lycaonians’ super- stitious awe. ‘To be sure, the Athenians were vastly more sophisticated than the rustics of Lycaonia. Their altar expressed the refined relativism of a philosophical metropolis (“Epicurean and Stoic philosophers” are mentioned in 17:18). But compared with the Gospel, Athenian intellec- tuality was as limited as Lycaonian religiosity. Provincialism does not have to be boorish; it can take sophisticated forms. But Luke is clear: whether in Lycaonia or in Achens or anywhere els cosmopolitan. The Gospel is the message destined for “the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). ‘The cosmopolitanism of the church and its message is evident not just ¢, Paul is the true letters in Acts but throughout the Book of the Church. We see it in Pa The communities represented in the Pauline corpus stretch from Galatia ven far-off to Rome, spanning the divide between Asia and Europe. F Spain is on the map (Rom. 15:23~29), suggesting Paul’s yearning to take his mission beyond the Greek-speaking East. Cosmopolitanism is less evident in the non-Pauline letters, In part this is because several of these documents are not letters at all, and because the Johannine letters are inward-looking missives addressed primarily to the Johannine commu- nity itself. As we have noted, however, the seven non-Pauline letters were eventually grouped together as Catholic Epistles, directed not to particu- lar congregations but to the world church. In this way, documents that were not cosmopolitan to begin with became cosmopolitanized. Such was the force field of Christian cosmopoli ‘anism. The magic of literary context was not required to establish the cosmo- politanism of the final book of the New Testament. The vision of Revelation is cosmopolitan throughout. Ironically, it emerges in an iso- lated setting: waditionally, from @ prophet imprisoned on an island. But the church that the seer of Revelation knows is “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from alll tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev. 7:9: cf. 5:9). ‘The propher's mission is likewise cosmo- politan. ‘The angels tell him, “You must prophesy again about many peo- ples and nations and languages and kings” (to:11). The message itself is nothing less than “an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth — to every nation and tribe and language and people” (14:6) Wickedness, too, is cosmopolitan: Satan’s earthly henchman, the beast of Rev. 13, “was given authority over every tribe and people and language and nation, and all the inhabitants of the earth will worship it” (13:7-8). The prostitute associated with the beast is seated upon “peoples and mul- titudes and nations and languages” (17:15; cf. 17:1-2). The cosmic battleimage not availableimage not availableimage not available36 The conciliar testament The uaity here is a unity of belief, a convergence of all the sources upon a “christological centre." We might call this a Protestant solution to the question of Christian unity in that it is based on a confessional rather than an ecclesial foun- dation. Not surprisingly, then, Dunn offers a rather guarded appraisal of the phenomenon of early catholicism in the New ‘Testament. He agrees that early catholicism is discernible, most clearly in the Pastoral Epistles. He is also willing co speak of early catholicism in Luke-Acts, but only as part of a more complex synthesis. Dunn believes that a Spirit-centered “enthusiasm” was fused with the carly catholic element in Luke—Acts; hence, “Like is both early catholic and enthusiastic in outlook — however strange the paradox." Dunn also wonders “whether, from the per- spective of Christi n origins, early catholicism should have been seen to be capable of heretical expression” through the hypertrophy of some of its elements. ‘That is to say, just as elements of Jewish Christianity, Hellenistic Christianity and Apocalyptic Christianity “could be over- emphasized and cause the whole to become unacceptably lopsided,” as in Ebionism, Gnosticism and Montanism, so early catholicism could distort the faith — by muffling the apocalyptic hope, quenching the Spirit, overstructuring the church or overformalizing belief. If the New ‘Testament in all its diversity is to be our guide, perhaps “the biggest her esy of all is the insistence that there is only one ecclesiastical obedience, only one orthodoxy.” Many Protestants would agree. Even in Protestant circles, however, Dunn's distillation of a christological center seems to some to be “a more ‘minimal unity’ than most Christians expect and experience.” Brown takes a different approach to the question of unity in early Christianity. Without constructing a full-scale theory of the subject, since s not the theme of The Churches the Apostles Left Bebind, he sees a commitment to keindnia (communion, fellowship) operating throughout the early church. Without minimizing the diversity of New Testament ecclesiologies, Brown cautions against construing this diversity as a radi- cal plura unity Robert Morgan, “Unity and Diversity in New ‘Testament Talk of the Spirit,” in Graham N. Stanton, Bruce W. Longenecker and Stephen C. Barton, eds, The Holy Spirit and Christian Origins: Essays in Honor of Janes D. G. Dann (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 2. Dunn, Unity and Diversity, 357 Did. 365-66. Morgan, “Unity and Diversity in New Testament Talk of the Spirit,” 10.image not availableimage not availableimage not available40 The conciliar testament In the case of the New Testament, a canonical or scripturalizing process must be assumed if we are to make sense of the outcome. Most New Testament writings are first-century compositions, while a stabilized New ‘Testament canon emerged sometime between the late second and the mid fourth century. To get from the starting point to the end point, we have to assume a continuous transmission of texts beginning in the first cen- tury, Otherwise there would have been nothing to canonize. Moreover, the transmitters had to be the early church communities themselves, since nobody else was interested in the material in question, But as soon as we posit a canonical or scripturalizing process, we also posit an inter communal dialogue, for everyone a Testament were not centrally produced bur written by different hands in different centers of a diverse Christian movement. .es that the components of the New Delineating the course of the canonical process requires a highly technical analysis of second- and third-century Christian sources, and there are many open questions. But two points are clear, First, the New Testament was not promulgated: it was gathered over several genera- tions as first-century and early second-century testimonies ro the Gospel acquired authority in the church through use, circulation and citation. Second, the gathering process cannot have been governed by the deter- mination to harmonize or systematize the contents of the canon, for in that case we would have a more consistent New ‘Testament canon than we have, In the gathering of the New ‘Testament we see the approach we have noted elsewhere in early Christianity: a way of organizing the y that was neither radically mon ly pluralis- tic. A monistic interpretation is ruled out by the diversity of the New tic nor radic: commu: Testament, while radical pluralism is ruled out by the gathering process itself, a process predicated on the mutual relevance of the materials being gathered. How, then, might we characterize the canonical process and its prod- uct? We could invent a term and speak of the mono-plurality of the New abstract way of stating the point. Or we could turn to organic metaphors and speak of the growth or evolution of the New Testament, These metaphors are common enough, but they can be faulted for minimizing the element of sel conscious decision-making in the canonical process, We are talking about human communities, after all. ‘The New ‘Testament grew, bur not through the unfolding of a gen- etic code. Early church communities were agents; they talked with each other, shared documents with each other, criticized each other. In a word, Testament. This is an accurate they were in dialogue with each other, and they produced “a dialogicalimage not availableimage not availableimage not available44 The conciliar testament encounter but an occasion when two communities were called together Cornelius’ “household” in 10:1 suggesting the house churches that were typical of the early church). In his address to the assembled, Peter notes the bold step he has taken in visiting a Gentile household. Cornelius responds with his own report on the unusual circumstances leading him to summon Peter and, speak- ing for his household, declares, “So now all of us are here in the pres- ence of God to listen to all thar the Lord has commanded you to say.” By now, Peter seems to have figured out the meaning of his vision and affirms, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” He then tells the story of Jesus, and while he was speaking, “the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word,” astonishing the brethren who had accompanied Peter. Seeing no reason to withhold baptism from the Spirit-possessed Gentiles, Peter “ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.” The story ends with Peter accepting the invitation to stay with the converts “for several days.” What began as an exceptional visit ends in a new fellowship. Now if Luke had not been an ecclesial writer, he could have ended his account of the origins of Gentile Christianity at this point. Peter ha had his epinoia — his moment of spiritual illumination — and Comelius and his household have received saving knowledge and the living Spirit. We can easily imagine a circle of adepts headed by Peter and Cornelius leading spiritual lives from this point on by remembering and communi- cating what they have personally experienced. But this is not Luke’s story He is not interested in a Gnostic fraternity but in the worldwide church. So he presses on, thickening his plot by getting into the messy business of opposition to the Gentile mission. When Pever goes to Jerusalem and reports on the Cornelius episode, he is greeted not with expressions of joy and admiration but with riti- cism. He has to tell the story of his vision all over again, in even greater derail, to convince his Jewish Chri sion is a divine gift. For the time being, his account makes a positive ‘s that the Gentile mis tian ci impression. Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit continues expanding the bound- aries of the church. ‘The church of Antioch is founded. The missionary careers of Paul, Barnabas and John Mark get under way, and the Gospel is preached as far away as Pisidian Antioch in central Asia Minor. But as the church expands, so does the tension between Jewish and Gentile converts. Obviously, the issue has not been resolved, at least not in world- wide ecclesial terms. Such a settlement is achieved only at the Councilimage not availableimage not availableimage not available48 The conciliar testament apostolic and evangelistic minds. Or to put it more positively, the mind of Christ brings the various apostolic and evangelistic minds together, uniting them in the fellowship of the church. The mind of Christ in this r mind. sense is an interapostolic mind, or as we are calling it, a concili It is also a supra-apostolic divine mind, of course, but we cannot possess it in that dimension short of our theasis in the world to come. By asking us to put on the mind of Christ, Paul is calling us to do something we can do — namely, to seek and build up the fellowship of the church. To the eyes of the world, including the worldly-wise in the church, unity in the church might seem to be unattainable, or attainable only through the repression of diversity. But the incarnate mind of Christ works through “what is foolish in the world to shame the wise” (1 Cor. 1:27). It is a mind renounces equality with God and humbles itself, taking the form of a slave (Phil. 2:5-8). The mind of Christ is a kenotic mind, a mind that empties itself for the sake of fellowship with others. If Christ was foolish enough to seek fellowship with us, presumably we can be foolish enough to seek fellowship with him, and foolish enough to preserve a fellowship that has been given to us in spite of ourselves th:image not availableimage not availableimage not available5 The conciliar tradition of bishops at the conclusion of a meeting on the issue. ‘The letter was preserved by Serapion of Antioch, who occupied his see at the turn of the third century.” Also in the early third century, again in connection with Montanism, the African theologian Tertullian reported that “in cer- tain places in the Greek provinces, councils of all the churches are con- ducted where the weightier issues of the day are treated in common and a representation of the whole Christian community is celebrated with great reverence.”® Tertullian’s report represents the first documented occur- rence of the Latin word concilium with reference to an ecclesiastical gath- cting, In the passage, ‘Tertullian also uses the verb that would become the standard Latin term for holding a council: celebrare. Councils were not merely held but “celebrated.” The bureaucratic spirit that often afflicted conciliarism in later times was not present at the creation. The Greek word synodos appears a little later, in letters to Rome by Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria.'! Dionysius applies the word to a num- ber of gatherings that took place before his time. Interestingly, the two synods he mentions by name (Iconium and Synnada) took place in o near Phrygia, the heartland of Montanism. We know thet the Synod of Iconium had an anti-Montanist objective because one of the participants, Bishop Firmilian of Caesarea, tells us so in a letter he wrote to Bishop Cyprian of Carthage in 256, about twenty-five years after the meeting in Iconium.' * Eusebius, The History of the Church, ed. Louth, 167-68 (He. 5193 PG, vol. xx, 481-84). Fischer and Lumpe, Die Synoden von den Anfingen bis sum Vorabend des Nicaentms, 3-41, attribute the letter to a synod chaited by Serapion around 200. The leading authority on the dacumencation of Montanism, William Tabbernee, makes an argument for regarding the letter as the product ofan earlier meeting, which would have taken place ducing the 170s. He also thinks it likely that synod on Montanism was held in Lyons not long before the martyrdoms of 177 in that city. See William Tabbernee, Fake Prephecy and Polluted Sacraments: Feclesiastical and Iuperial Reactions to Montanisms (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2607), 15-20, 28-36 fora quacque in commune tractantus, et ipsa repraesentatio torius nominis Christiani magna rneratione celebratur.” Tertullian, De jejuniis (De teiunio| 13 (PL, vol. 1, 1024). For a discus- sion, sce Fischer and Lumpe, Die Synoden won den Anfiingen bir xam Vorubend des Nicsensms, 42-45. For an English translation of De seiunio, see On Fasting, In Opposition to the Psychics, trans. S, Thelwall, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, rev. A. Cleveland Coxe, repr. edn, 10 vols. (Grand Rapids, Ml: William B. Berdmans Publishing Company, 1978-82), vol. rv, 102-14 “ Eusebius, Zhe History of the Church, ed. Louth, 222 (“synods of bishops”), 224 (“Church synods” lic. “synods of the brethren”) (Fhe PG, vol. Xx, 645, 649). See also Fischer and Lumpe, Die Synoden von den Anfingen bis eum Vorabend des Nicaenums, 55-6. * Letter 75 (Firmilian to Cyprian), in The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage, 4 vols., ed. and trans. G. W, Clarke, Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation 43~44, 4-47 (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Newman Press, 1984-80), vol. 1v, 78-94. Latin text in PE. vol. 111, 201-26.