The doctrine of infant baptism is not a secondary or tertiary roadblock on the highway to Zion-it is a necessary theological building block to the one and a tyrannical violation of human conscience to the other. The doctrine of papal primacy is not a mere inconvenience keeping Christians from learning to worship together-it is a sublime Spirit-given truth to the one and a gross human imposition to the other. The divisions between the various Christian traditions persist due to apparently irreconcilable historical, theological and ecclesiological foundations. On the one hand, there is the hope that Christian divisions may be overcome on the other hand, there is the constant reminder that significant differences remain. When engaged from a realistic viewpoint, ecumenical conversations clarify both convergences and divergences between the various Christian traditions, helping to shed light on the glories and inadequacies of each.Īnd that viewpoint-let us call it 'Christian realism'-provides for difficult though beneficial conversations. Ecumenical conversations have proven beneficial for my own theological development because they allow one to hear from other Christian traditions and to reflect upon one's own tradition, from within and from without. I have been involved in a number of ecumenical conversations over the years, somewhat formally between world Baptists and Anglicans and between American evangelicals and Roman Catholics, as well as many informal conversations at Duke and Oxford universities and elsewhere. Nonetheless, I would like to discuss one critical subject that arose in that paper and that came into sharper focus for me during my short sojourn in France: Christian unity.
The subject provided by my hosts was "Baptists: Are We Calvinists or Non-Calvinists?" That lecture will be published in their journal, so I have refrained from disseminating it.
Late last month, I was in Paris, France, to deliver a lecture for La Société d'Histoire et de Documentation Baptistes de France (SHDBF), co-sponsored by the Centre Mennonite de Paris.
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