Lecture - The Church - by William Henn

12 [10] The report then proceeded to list several major ecclesiological themes that could profitably be taken up for further study: the role of the Church in God’s saving purpose; koinonia ; the Church as a gift of the Word of God ( creatura verbi ); the Church as mystery or sacrament of God’s love for the world; the Church as the pilgrim people of God; the Church as prophetic sign and servant of God’s coming kingdom. 8 Stage One occurred during the five years following the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order held at Santiago de Compostela (1993-1998) and developed a first attempt to integrate the six themes just mentioned into a a preliminary statement of six chapters entitled [11] The Nature and Purpose of the Church (1998). 9 Its first chapter – “The Church of the Triune God” – was highly biblical and related the existence of the Christian community to God’s gifts of Word ( creatura Verbi ) and Spirit ( creatura Spiritus ). A second chapter concerning the Church in history explored its human dimension and emphasized the struggles and failures of the community to be faithful to its nature as one, holy, catholic and apostolic. It also treated the Church’s reality as sign and instrument (sacrament) of God’s design in history. Chapter Three considered the nature of the Church as Koinonia (Communion) and again was very biblical, emphasizing that communion includes the legitimate diversity of the churches in their local settings. A fourth chapter entitled “Life in 8 Baptism, Eucharist & Ministry 1982-1990 , 148-151. 9 “Faith and Order Paper No. 181,” Geneva: WCC Publications, 1998. This first fruit of the post-BEM work on ecclesiology was presented to the eighth General Assembly of the WCC, held at Harare on 3-14 December 1998. Its subtitle was “A stage on the way to a common statement.”