98. How do we make room on earth for this oikoumene of mutually recognized resonance among our ways of concrete moral-ecclesial being-in-the-world? The moral communion we have been talking about has as yet no obvious seat in space. No ecclesiastical jurisdiction exists as a place where the universal church in this moral sense comes to expression. All existing jurisdictions are partial both in what they include and in the depth of moral being they signify.

99. But some form of visible expression is needed if we are to nurture towards fulfillment the "real but imperfect" moral communion that already exists among Christian communities of faith. Some community which marks its possibility, which makes articulated space for its appearing in fullness, is needed. The World Council of Churches may well come closer than any other entity to being that mark and offering that space. It is not the moral communion of which we have spoken, but it is a community of churches praying to receive the spiritual gifts which such communion in moral witnessing will require.

1. Rethinking the Nature of the Council

100. Current discussion of the nature of the Council runs between seeing it as a purely programmatic instrument of the churches (thereby denying it ecclesial status) and seeing it as the reality of churches-in-relation (thus suggesting that it has an as yet undefined ecclesial character). But may not the choice between these alternatives be confusing and in the end false? Programmatic initiatives can interpret and express the ecclesio-moral realities of WCC member churches. And churches-in-relation may fail to realize the ecclesial intentionality inherent in their relationship. Can we move beyond the perennial dichotomy between the ecclesial and the programmatic, especially in the moral realm?

101. Perhaps we can in principle. It is not our task to become directly involved in the Council's current "common vision and understanding process". But it would be disingenuous to deny that our work is relevant to that effort. If we have anything to say on this subject we want to stay at the level of vision. Consequences for budget, structure and staffing are not our business. That said, we have some broad suggestions to make concerning the perspective in which all these matters might be considered.

102. The WCC needs to mark, maintain, indeed be a space where the ecclesio-moral communion of which we have been speaking can come to expression, where language is constantly sought to express the reality more fully, where common actions are conceived which embody the needed moral witness, and where an ecumenical formation takes place which gives growing density, increasing fullness, to it.

2. Moral communion and sacramental communion

103. But here a question arises which needs careful treatment. We have consistently connected moral formation in this report with the sacraments of baptism and eucharist. That, indeed, is our basis for calling the goal of this enterprise a moral communion. But many of our churches, despite cordial relationships, are not yet in sacramental communion with one another. Can there then be such a thing as an "ecclesio-moral" communion which avoids, or transcends, our dividedness in the sacramental origins of moral formation? Do such deep divisions not call in question, at least for now, the very idea of a universal moral communion as much as they do the idea of a universal sacramental communion? Do we not have to wait for moral communion until our divisions at the level of ministry and sacraments have been overcome? And if at the sacramental level no moral communion is as yet possible it makes no sense to suggest that the WCC should, as a present programmatic initiative, "mark" or offer "space" for such a thing, much less claim some sort of sacramental moral character itself.

104. Our responses to questions like these will depend on our ecclesiological commitments. For some there is no doubt a deep dilemma. The more closely we tie moral formation to the sacraments the less easy it becomes to argue that something called "moral communion" can unite us while sacramental communion among us is not yet attained. Yet it is also possible to argue that the notion of moral communion, despite its connection with the sacraments, need not stand or fall with the degree of our unity in the eucharist. There is enough moral substance lodged in the reality of our common baptism to justify some sort of ecumenical space-making right now for that shared spiritual gift. And if this is so it follows that the World Council of Churches should help make actively visible this given, already existing, baptismal-moral communion among its member churches.

105. It can also be argued that moral communion is distinguishable from eucharistic communion in another important way. Moral communion has a worldly telos: it can only be fulfilled in some form of public witness which requires us to be in touch with broad human questions belonging to the realm of "ethics". Such questions today, as we have seen, are both radical in their import and global in their character. There is a commonality in the human questions that can only be addressed through an equally common Christian witness. Only an organization like the World Council of Churches can help its member bodies discern and act out the comprehensive human implications of their particular sacramental-moral-formational processes. The effort to do this can itself generate a koinonia of thoughtful, daring, costly witnessing. A kind of communion can come into being through this grace-enabled work itself.

106. There is a difference between seeing the Council as a eucharistic community in its own right, which few want to do, and seeing it as a place for this koinonia-generating response to the grace we have already received in baptism: this effort to think through what our different morally formative communions can mean to the world. And if, in fact, the member churches of the Council can be brought to make such a commitment, the Council's very existence then "marks" or locates the reality of a growing moral communion: working out in concrete terms the meaning of mutual resonance in the Spirit marked by discipleship to Jesus Christ.

107. Some will wish to say even more. Some theologians will argue that an organization making space for such a communion in moral formation for worldly ethical engagement cannot stand entirely outside the reality it enables to exist. For those who take this view it follows that the Council participates somehow in the communion it helps to foster. The Council becomes an instance of that communion in a peculiarly comprehensive and communicative mode. It is a mark of the ecumenical community it gathers, and therefore in some sense is of the church, even if not churchly in the fullest sense.

3. Koinonia in the struggle for common witness: ecumenical affirmations

108. It is not possible to decide this last question in these pages, and for our purposes it is not necessary.19 What is clear is that the question of the status of the Council as marker of a growing moral communion has a practical side. Can we do what needs to be done? The whole matter of communion in moral witness is moot if we cannot find enough agreement about the content of that witness to make the question relevant. Here a deeply ecclesiological question becomes in one respect a programmatic question as well. What happens when we try to give our hope for moral communion a moral substance? What can be learned from the history of attempts to do so? We will learn most for our purposes by looking briefly at the history of the "ten affirmations" produced by the 1990 Seoul conference and now carried over as a point of entry in the "Theology of Life" project.

109. The Seoul conference was intended by its organizers to help build a stronger conciliar fellowship in the ecumenical community around shared moral principles. Indeed, for some, the intention was to give such principles status as marks of the mutual commitment implied in WCC membership. The meeting was presented at the outset with an analytical document dealing with the challenges facing the people of our planet: a document thought by many to propose overly ambitious global reality-definitions couched in Western academic language too abstract to make contact with local experience in all its variety and profusion. The conference instead produced a set of affirmations reflecting the contextual and ecumenical experience of the people present. Yet even this effort did not wholly succeed. In the aftermath a feeling arose that the "ten affirmations", grounded in actual experience as they were, still could not be given clear (i.e. unequivocal) meanings across a variety of contexts: that in different cultural and confessional situations their implications could not be foreseen.

110. One of the reasons for this reluctance to take affirmations home from ecumenical meetings is that, once we do, every proposition, even every preposition, connects or disconnects with local issues, both churchly and secular, and therefore with the power interests tied up in those issues. However subtle our reports from the ecumenical front, the defence back home of affirmations grandly adopted at world conferences can make us seem to be taking sides on matters never envisioned when the affirmations were drafted, battling on one side or the other of dominant local dichotomies, opting for this or that alternative with all its ecclesiastical or worldly political consequences. This may well be the last thing we want to do and in fact may distort the intention of the original affirmations. Here may be a hazard impossible to avoid completely. It may be part of the cost of obedient witnessing. But the experience needs to be understood. It is an aspect of the koinonia-generating struggle which the search for moral communion can involve.

111. Do lists of moral affirmations still have a positive role to play? At their best, they have a sort of heuristic power. They help us find the shared concreteness of our actual moral commitments in facing the most characteristic problems of our time. Lists of principles can help us discover the essence of the moral commitment that is present among serious formational communities at any given moment. They can help instigate the forming of more such communities and help deepen the communion among them. They can be carefully designed to resource local readings of what they mean. Skillfully interpreted by leadership, such affirmations can help churches at a distance from serious moral encounters concretize their solidarity with fellow Christians around specific acts of witness, for example the German womens' boycott of South African products during the period of apartheid.

112. But experience in this area has taught us to proceed with caution. Any such list of moral generalizations or affirmations must be guarded against being merely a list, merely a talisman to be repeated by those who pride themselves on being alert to the world's ills and possibilities. Furthermore, moral catechisms can get out of date even faster than theological ones. There is always the danger of over-generalizing certain historical moments and analytical paradigms. This has happened, for example, in the widespread use made of the experience of the German Confessing Church and the Barmen Declaration. The differences between one situation and another may be overlooked. Indeed historical paradigms, as well as moral principles, can be used covertly to defend and protect certain power centres or programmatic interests in the church rather than to illumine our moral paths. Even to make normative the transition to democracy in South Africa could be dangerous if used as a paradigm where it does not fit.

113. Finally, the impulse to issue lists of moral principles designed to address the signs of the times raises a question about our implied eschatology. What, over all, do we think is happening in the world? Where, if anywhere, are there signs that the reign of God has come nearer? Do we find such signs in the seeming extension of human rights, or in the apparent advance of democracy, or in successes claimed by peacemakers, or in the dire warnings of environmentalists? Indeed, it is not easy to discern, from this ambiguous moment in history, whether the household of life is anywhere taking form, or the holy city of God described in Revelation 21 is in any way drawing nearer. Yet these images of the household and the city can stand as eschatological metaphors or regulative ideas to guide us as we try to find our way.

114. The "ten affirmations" live up to their affirmative name. They are profoundly hopeful because they presuppose that by God's grace something can be done about the state of creation and of the human condition. They are valuable indications of the content that ought to be found in a moral communion of ethical engagement with the world. But, above all, they themselves help create the kind of space needed for an effort to think out and live out what such a communion could require, an effort koinonia-generating in its own right. As entry points for the wide range of local case studies in the "Theology of Life" programme, they "serve as a preliminary definition of the framework and space in which people can build up confidence and trust".20 If "space" has any meaning in this argument it is a territory in which we trust one another and have confidence that by God's grace something will come of our efforts. In this powerful sense, the "ten affirmations" and other affirmations like them help create moral space for the "mutual upbuilding" or oikodomé towards a common witness that now becomes a primary calling for the Christian churches of the world 21.

4. The community of oikodomé: a communicative "third force" in the world

115. The World Council of Churches, if possible in concert with other ecumenical bodies, should continue to promote the mutual upbuilding of such a visible moral communion, towards a vision of the church as moral "household of life". For this purpose we need an enhanced communications system among churches, congregations, and persons committed to this vision. We are challenged by the world economic system's ability to send and receive virtually instantaneous messages concerning financial transactions across the globe. We face the obsolete yet still powerful system of nation states. A nexus of another kind needs to have its place in the world. A network of moral communication among the churches could begin to function as a kind of "third force" to counter the hegemony of purely economic and political energies. The initiative to create such a "third force" could include critical, provisional, alliances with others who seek compatible goals. The emergence of the very idea of such a liturgically formed ecclesio-moral community could give the ecumenical movement a new energy and substance.

116. At stake here is not merely the future of a particular ecumenical organization. At stake is the future of the church itself. For the vision we have sketched to have substance and staying power we need to give urgent attention to the renewal in our churches of the work of moral formation in obedient discipleship and of the kinds of costly ethical witnessing in the world that depend upon it. Such renewal needs to be sought in every congregation, in every confessional family or communion, in every place, in every morally perplexing situation across this deeply threatened but beloved planet, our home and the home of all the living things we know.

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