Perspectief 2015-29

2015-29 The Making of an Ecumenical Text 23 Reag eer Mission of the Church . It put strong emphasis on contextual perspectives and responses to the text. Six papers were presented and group work produced twelve group reports. One of the main papers, a critical assessment of the text written and presented by Metropolitan Geevarghese Mar Coorilos, an Orthodox theologian from India, was welcomed with an ovation. The paper concluded in the following way: “In sum, TNMC is appreciated for its philosophical imagination, but it needs to be complimented with sociological and poetic imagination where the text (the Word) takes on flesh, and enters the realm of the pain and pathos that the poor and their earth endure” 48 . Thirdly, an Orthodox response to The Nature and Mission of the Church was made possible by an inter-Orthodox consultation facilitated by the WCC and held in Aghia Napa, Cyprus, early in March 2011. The consultation was attended by some forty Orthodox theologians. Twenty papers on different aspects of The Nature and Mission of the Church were presented. A report summarising the main findings of the consultation was produced and informed the drafting work in its very final stage. According to the Orthodox theologians, “the problem at the foundation of the NMC text is that it continually speaks of the Church in a way that is ambiguous and therefore amenable to different and sometimes opposing ecclesiologies.” And they go on to note that “potentially, everyone might be pleased, yet there is no true convergence represented”. Several paragraphs presume a denominationalist ecclesiology, “one inconsistent with Orthodox ecclesiology”. The text oscillates between saying that Church is the community of believers (§10) or saying that it is not merely that (§13). It introduces the nature of the Church by referring to the Church as creatura verbi , which is “confessionally idiosyncratic, deriving exclusively from the Reformed [sic] tradition”. It refers to “local churches” to designate “the various denominational bodies”. In its use of koinonia the text remains vague; it fails to note “the genuine ontological source of communion/koinonia within the Holy Trinity”. Orthodoxy distinguishes between the hierarchical ministry of the ordained and the ministry of the faithful. The text concludes: 48 Metr. G. Mar Coorilos, “The Nature and Mission of the Church: An Indian Perspective”, in J. Gibaut (ed.), Called to be The One Church – Faith and Order at Crete – Report of the 2009 Meeting of the Plenary Commission . Geneva, WCC, 2012, 188-193.