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Perspectief 10 Odair Pedroso Mateus But the limits of this approach and the establishment of the World Council of Churches, which embodies the experience and recognition of a certain oneness in Christ despite church divisions, called for a method of doing ecumenical theology more adapted to the new ecumenical situation in which, while remaining divided, the churches realise that they confess together some essentials of the apostolic faith and are called to grow in fellowship by doing separately only what their commitment to the truth of the Gospel would prevent them from doing together. According to this method, theologians from the divided churches address together a controversial issue by returning to Scriptures and tradition and trying to reach the highest possible level of fundamental convergence on that issue 6 . This is the methodological background of Faith and Order texts produced in the second part of last century, such as the well-known Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry 7 (BEM), or Confessing the One Faith: An Ecumenical Explication of the Apostolic Faith as It is Confessed in the Nicene- Constantinopolitan Creed (381) 8 . This is also the ecumenical method that informed The Church: Towards a Common Vision 9 . Towards the end of the 1980s, the Commission on Faith and Order was working on a series of interrelated theological projects: It was analysing some 180 official churches responses to the convergence document Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry ; it was engaged in clarifying the theological relation between the search for the visible unity of the Church and the Second World Conference on Faith and Order held at Edinburgh, August 3-18, 1937 . London, Student Christian Movement Press, 1938. A volume on comparative ecclesiology was published in preparation for the third world conference on Faith and Order: R. N. Flew (ed.). The Nature of the Church – Papers Presented to the Theological Commission Appointed by the Continuation Committee of the world Conference on Faith and Order . London, SCM Press, 1952. 6 For a formulation of this ecumenical methodological change that reflects the recognition of bonds of fellowship expressed in the establishment of the World Council of Churches in 1948, see O. Tomkins (ed.). The Third World Conference on Faith and Order Held at Lund – August 15 th to 28 th , 1952. London, SCM Press, 1953, 15. 7 Geneva, WCC, 1982. 8 Confessing the One Faith: An Ecumenical Explication of the apostolic Faith as it is Confessed in the Nicene- Constantinopolitan Creed (381). Geneva, WCC, 1991. 9 The Church: Towards a Common Vision . Geneva, WCC, 2013.