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Index > Interconfessional Dialogues > M-RC > Paris (Singapore) Rep. 1991 | CONT. > Part One
 
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I. Word and Church

   9. "In many and various ways God spoke of old to our ancestors by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by the Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world" (Heb 1:1-2). The Church of God has been brought into being by the same creative and self-revealing activity of God. In the Son, God has spoken definitively to us: the Son who is so completely the expression of his heavenly Father that he is called God's Word (Jn 1:1-18). He makes known God's purpose and carries it out. For the Word of God, now made flesh, speech and action are intrinsically connected; his words take effect and his deeds have meaning.

    10. It is the Cross and Resurrection of Christ that supremely reveal him to us, achieving his purpose and making him our Savior. When the apostles preached Christ, they proclaimed Christ crucified and risen. When the Church preaches Christ today, it is the same proclamation that is made. Christ, the Word of God incarnate, still has the same message for us and the same gifts of grace by which he saves us.

    11. The apostolic mission, the charge laid on the apostles to transmit the message of Jesus Christ to their own and to all successive generations, is precisely the service of the Word. The person of Christ, his teaching and his work for us: it was to all this that the apostles bore witness, for all this is God's Word.

    12. As the Gospel was preached by the apostles, the Church was called together and built up. Service of the Word was their overriding responsibility (Acts 6:2-4), a service of Christ himself and of the community that by faith came to be identified with him (Acts 6:7, 12:24, 19:20).

    13. A profound understanding of the Church must begin with a reflection on the Word of God, who brings the Church into being and continues to make the Church what it is. The Word spoken to us in Christ calls forth our response. Thus, the Church is sustained by a conversation, initiated by the Lord. God, who called all worlds into being by the power of his Word, speaks to us kindly and with sternness, gently and with thunderous warnings, with laws and with love, in proclamation to his people and heart-to-heart to each and every one. By calling together a messianic community in which the promises were fulfilled, Christ made himself known as Messiah. As he called his flock to follow him, he showed himself to be the Good Shepherd.

    14. That which the Church was to become as a consequence of the apostolic mission is discernible in its first coming to birth, and to discern that coming to birth, one must be aware of the extent to which Christ by deed and by word engaged his followers in communication with himself.

    15. Christ was content to speak with other audiences and with later generations through those who became his first disciples. Only this degree of confidence invested by Christ in his followers could match the free self-communication of God to the world and to those whom he has made in his own image. To draw all to himself, the Son died upon the Cross. He gave us his words and his very self, and waits patiently for us to understand. Any other way would have frustrated his own purpose: to draw us to love him. In order to fulfil this saving purpose, he called into being the Church where the Word's recreating power is evident, remaking people into a community that could share his life and live in harmonious relationships with one another. Thus the Church is the place where the Word of God is spoken, heard, responded to, and confessed (Rom 10:8-17). The Law of God, so the prophets said, was to become a law not written externally on tablets of stone, but written on our hearts, taken in and made heart-knowledge: it was to be our second nature (Jer 31:31-34).

    16. The Tradition received by the apostles itself continues an unbroken process of communication between God and human beings. Every possible human resource is employed to sustain and deepen this process: linguistic, ritual, artistic, social and constitutional. The written word of Scripture is its permanent norm. Through the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist the memory of the events whereby the Church came into being is preserved. The living Word has made a living community in which men and women converse with God and speak their faith to one another. Guided by its pastors and teachers, the Church continues to communicate with all generations, preserves its own identity and message, and is daily renewed in its obedience.

    17. Through the living Word, recalling and renewing the acts of Christ's life for us, his history becomes our history. We celebrate our new birth, we are forgiven, strengthened and healed, we are united with one another, we find our vocation for ministry, and we give thanks to God through the power of Christ's death and living victory. In his life on earth, the Word confirmed his words by his actions for us; the same is true today.

    18. The growth of the Church comes about through a continued hearing and assimilation of the Word of God. To be sure that we are hearing the Word, we maintain communion with those who have heard and obeyed the Word before us. But we will not be saved simply by repeating what other generations have said and done. We must express for ourselves, act for ourselves and ourselves be transformed through the renewal of our minds and hearts, if the living Tradition of Christ and his apostles is to be continued. The faith must be handed on.

    19. In every time and in every place, the Church lives and moves by calling to mind all that it has seen and heard of the marvels of God's Word in his created world and in the history he is making with us. But we do not live in the past. Memory enables us to recognize the Lord as he comes to us today. His presence in the events of our lives proves to us that his words are true. His deeds for us today make possible our own words of praise and our own acts of service by which God is glorified.

    20. But the Word of God, with us today, does not tell us, any more than the apostles were told, what comes next in our story. Since the Gospel Tradition looks to the future, we live in hope. And Christian hope is the strength that enables us, claiming his promises, to be totally committed to the present. We know that we are traveling towards the One whose memory we cherish and whose presence we know. By confessing our faith in living words, we learn how to die with Christ, to hide our life in him, so that when he appears we too will be made known in glory.

    21. In conclusion, we recall that the search for ecumenical reconciliation has revealed only too clearly the difficulty of reuniting Scripture and Tradition once they have been notionally separated. Scripture was written within Tradition, yet Scripture is normative for Tradition. The one is only intelligible in terms of the other. We do not claim to have resolved here all the ecumenical problems that arise in relation to this issue. What we have sought to do is to ask ourselves how the Christian of today can confess with Christians of all time the one true faith in Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever separated. Scripture was written within Tradition, yet Scripture is normative for Tradition. The one is only intelligible in terms of the other. We do not claim to have resolved here all the ecumenical problems that arise in relation to this issue. What we have sought to do is to ask ourselves how the Christian of today can confess with Christians of all time the one true faith in Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and for ever.


 
 

 
 
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