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+title: On Practical Ecumenism; the reply to Carl R. Trueman
+date: 2014-06-05T12:00:00
+tags:
+  - faith
+categories:
+  - ecumenism
+  - firstthings
+---
+
+
+(reply to `a nice article about ecumenism on The First
+Things <http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/05/more-questions-than-answers>`__)
+
+Good article! Thank you. It is really good to think not only about
+general platitudes and ecumenical Kumbaya but about the real life impact
+of our hope for unity.
+
+I think what’s crucial is to disentangle couple of things which got
+meshed together in the last couple of thousand years. First of all, my
+personal pet peeve, “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is
+necessary that he hold  the catholic faith. Which faith except every one
+do keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish
+everlastingly.” It seems to me that this implies that a right Christian
+is the one who rationally agrees with some particular articles of faith.
+Without ANY article missing, which leads us to the crazy scenes, where
+my beloved compatriots Hussites are declared pagans because they require
+(under the penalty of damnation!) that every Christian accepts both body
+and blood of Jesus in the Lord’s Supper, because of course the other
+party claimed that (under the penalty of damnation!) every Christian
+must agree with whatever The Council of Constance agreed upon.
+
+And because this obviously didn’t lead to anything good, but because we
+still keep this faith being an intellectual assent with the articles of
+faith, we started to limit the articles which really matters. And so
+we’ve got to your “Nicene/Chalcedonian church” and feeling I have from
+your article that whichever Nicene/Chalcedonian church should be equal
+to other.
+
+And of course when I don't ascribe to the intellectual assent as the
+foundation of the Christian unity, I even less accept the idea of
+institutional unity as required (which BTW is a complete myth in my
+opinion … since St. Paul’s times there have never been completely
+institutionally unified Church and that is The Good Thing).
+
+I don’t think it leads anywhere. I think we have to really accept the
+idea that faith is something else than just an intellectual assent
+(what? that's a good question for which I don’t have well articulated
+answer), and that we can accept each other as a Christian (and for
+example accept from each other The Lord’s Supper as a visible sign of
+the Unity of this faith) even though we disagree on some matters which
+are really really important to us (Marian devotion, trust to the Roman
+bishop, or from the other side freedom of conscience and plurality of
+thought, equality of sexes, yes, even the unity of opinion).
+
+That’s the one thing (inclusivity in diversity), but than from the other
+side I don’t think any Christian Church is a good substitute for the
+other one. Let me say an example from my life. I am a Czech Protestant
+with a strong tradition of intellectualism and high culture, but also
+with inclinations for the Charismatic movement. Then I’ve got to live
+for two semesters in San Francisco. Before the first Sunday in town I
+have opened my Yellow Pages on the Church section and I was looking for
+the church to attend to in the morning. I found all kinds of
+denominations and of course I found that even two different
+congregations from one denomination are not the same (all-white
+intellectual Baptist church on the one side of the city and really wild
+super-excited Black Baptist Church on the other one). I had to admit
+that although I agree with theological propositions of almost all
+congregations I've attended to (I guess, I haven't checked that
+thoroughly) there were some congregations which were just clearly not
+working for me well, For example that Black Baptist church was just too
+loud for me (I couldn't even understand the sermon so my opinions about
+their theology are rather limited). In the end we stayed in a nice
+Presbyterian church (St. John on the Lake Street) not far from my school
+(yes, even that was the factor, that other Baptist church was awesome,
+but too far from my school and I didn’t have a car) and we’ve found
+there awesome friends.
+
+My point is that even though there could be a nice Orthodox (or in
+Czechia more likely Roman-Catholic) church down the road, and although I
+fully support that they are fully Christians, it doesn't mean that my
+Prague Christian Fellowship should shut down.
+
+Blessings.