1. See Bert Hoedemaker, "Introductory Reflections on JPIC and Koinonia," and Lukas Vischer, "Koinonia in a Time of Threats to Life," in Costly Unity, Thomas F. Best and Wesley Granberg-Michalson, eds., Geneva, WCC, 1993, pp. 1ff. and 70ff. See also Konrad Raiser, "Ecumenical Discussion of Ethics and Ecclesiology", The Ecumenical Review, Vol. 48, No. 1, January 1996, pp. 3ff.

2. This analysis is adapted from Konrad Raiser, op. cit., p. 7.

3. The term "thickness," popularized by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, is now widely used by human scientists to mean the full and multi-layered complexity of cultures. It admirably links up with the concept of "formation." We are "formed" in rich and enveloping environments, not merely by the "thin" concepts scholars derive from those environments.

4. See, for example, Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1989, pp. 211ff.

5. The question of the moral attitude the church should take toward homosexuality--especially where ordination is concerned--has already been divisive. The action of Orthodox leadership in suspending their churches' membership in the American National Council of the Churches of Christ a few years ago over the issue of the Council's entertaining (the matter never reached the point of accepting) a membership application from the Council of Metropolitan Community Churches shows how quickly a moral question can take on ecclesiological significance.

6. Minutes of the Faith and Order Standing Commission, Aleppo, Syria, 5-12 January 1995, Faith and Order Paper No. 170, Faith and Order Commission, 1995, pp. 97-98. The corresponding paragraphs in the Costly Commitment report are 72 and 73.

7. Thus many American congregations seem today to suppose that a message of personal freedom and self-development lived out in an individualistic consumerist culture is a tolerable translation of the gospel. This assemption is, in fact, a form of captivity. It limits, if it does not negate, the potential witness of a Christian moral formation.

8. This material is adapted in part from Larry Rasmussen, "Moral Community and Moral Formation," in Costly Commitment, Thomas F. Best and Martin Robra, eds., Geneva, 1995, p. 56.

9. Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper No. 111, Geneva, WCC, 1982, "Eucharist," para. 20, p. 14.

10. Ibid., "Baptism," para. 4, p. 2.

11. Ibid., para. 10, p. 4.

12. It is not to be overlooked that both Faith and Order and Life and Work have consciously sought to overcome this dichotomy in a variety of theological formulas: the church as sign, sacrament and instrument, intercontextual method, the church as mystery and prophetic sign, the notion of the status confessionis, and so forth. See, for example, Thomas F. Best, "From Seoul to Santiago: The Unity of the Church and JPIC," in Between the Flood and the Rainbow, comp. D. Preman Niles, Geneva, WCC Publications, 1992, pp. 128ff., Peter Lodberg, "The History of Ecumenical Work on Ecclesiology and Ethics," in Costly Commitment, op. cit., pp. 1ff.

13. See "Costly Unity", op. cit., paras. 42-46.

14. See "Costly Commitment", op. cit., section III, paras. 35-42.

15. See "Costly Unity", paras. 35-37, esp. the following from para. 36: "The ‘local' means different things in different circumstances. It may mean a neighbourhood, or a nation, or a region of the world. And sometimes an issue may be global in its importance, yet not susceptible of any single explanation or formula so varied are its ramifications in different places. Sometimes a global issue is such that it comes to expression most clearly in some particular locality, whose Christian people then have special responsibility for defining its significance for the rest of the oikoumene. Sometimes an essentially local issue can only be clearly seen when its global aspects are grasped."

16. These ideas are adapted in part from the thought of Michael Welker, whose name surfaced several times in discussion. See his article "The Holy Spirit", translated by John Hoffmeyer, Theology Today, 46, April 1969, pp. 4-20. Welker writes that the Spirit "restores solidarity, loyalty, and capacity for common action among the people." Likewise it generates a realm of "poly-concreteness" in which there can be a "multifaceted, reciprocally strengthened and strengthening process of cooperation..." We find this an excellent desciption of relationships within the oikoumene.

17. Terms such as "justice" and "peace" of course also have rich contexts of meaning in secular moral and political philosophy, as well as in the common parlance of journalists, politicians and diplomats. While it is indispensable, as we have said, for Christians to be in touch with these secular worlds, there is danger that their terminology represents a covert hegemony of Western thought-categories in one way or another related to Western political and economic interests. The idea of deriving the meanings of "justice" and "peace," (and of course the "integrity of creation" as well) from an ecumenical sharing of contextual moral engagements is intended to help us escape the hegemony of interests disguised as moral principles.

18. These oft-spoken words echo inexactly the language of Unitatis Redintegratio, the "Decree on Ecumenism" of Vatican II: "For [those] who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are brought into a certain, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church." See Walter M. Abbott, S.J., Documents of Vatican II, New York, Guild Press, 1966, p. 345.

19. Deep and divisive ecclesiological issues are involved, and behind them lie philosophical questions concerning the relationship of act and being. It could turn out that such questions are not resolvable in the terms in which they are currently posed, and that only in sharing a new moral life and language, responding to the working of the Holy Spirit in our time, can we move beyond our current impasse.

20. Martin Robra, "Theology of Life: Justice, Peace, Creation," The Ecumenical Review, Vol. 48, No. 1, January 1996, p. 35.

21. See, on the image of oikodomé or "mutual upbuilding," the treatment by Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz in God's Spirit: Transforming a World in Crisis, New York, Continuum, and Geneva, WCC, 1995, pp. 108ff.

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