Character for Communion: Ecumenical Habits of the Heart from Berkouwer and Echeverria

Several years ago, I had a chance encounter that felt like the start of a joke: two Presbyterians, one Anglo-Catholic, one Lutheran, and one Baptist, all ministers, walked into a coffee shop. 

We were there for different meetings, but as clergyman after clergyman walked in the door, we couldn’t help but laugh. Handshakes and hugs were exchanged, and one crowned the occasion with a pronouncement: “this is ecumenism in action.” Well, leave it to the Presbyterian to make a categorical correction; my friend responded, with a bit of a wry smile: “yes, but not BS ecumenism.” 

His words hit home. 

In Northern Virginia, ministerial associations abound. In my “secular-but-pluralistic, white-collar” culture, it’s considered good form to meet with other church leaders. The county even hosts annual clergy conversations, aimed at gathering church leaders with department officials to discuss community concerns. Non-profits court local congregations regularly, looking for partnerships. And if your church tries to host a booth at the local county fair, you’re likely to get lumped in with the rest of the faith-based organizations in “church row,” presumably because we’re offering similar things. 

In this region, such “ecumenism” is socially acceptable, even seemingly virtuous: we join hands for the common good, and we stay silent about the doctrines that offend. While there are certain social and organizational benefits to knowing leaders from other denominations, these sorts of culturally-approved gatherings ultimately fall short of real ecumenical work. By papering over our real differences and deepest convictions, we embrace the shallowest form of unity, which in turn erases true diversity. Our proximity to one another may increase, but our communion with one another withers. 

Of course, a reactionary response doesn’t solve the problem. In the face of cultural pressure to diminish distinctives, many churches simply double-down on partisanship, associating only with the rare few that approach near conformity to their own doctrinal, or cultural, ideals. But given Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer in John 17, and our credal commitment to “one holy catholic church, the communion of saints,” circling the wagons isn’t a viable solution either. As Christians, we need each other. And considering the spiritual needs and hungers of modern society, the world needs us, too, together. We need real, not BS, “ecumenism in action.”

What would that look like, in practice? In good Presbyterian fashion, let me recommend a book.

Eduardo Echeverria’s remarkable 2013 ecumenical study, Berkouwer and Catholicism: Disputed Questions, is one exceptional model for meaningful ecumenism. Though brimming with academic rigor, the book is, at heart, a conversation: scholar to scholar, Christian to Christian. 

Echeverria first presents the world of Vatican II Catholicism, an era of Roman Catholic renewal amidst a culture of vast social and technological change. In this environment, theologians such as Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Karl Rahner worked to recover ancient sources to re-articulate Catholic distinctives for this new age. And as the Roman Catholic Church wrestled with its identity, we find the Dutch Reformed theologian G. C. Berkouwer listening in, laboring to understand, engage, and respond faithfully. His sustained engagement with Catholic dogma offers the main substance of the book. Throughout the work, Echeverria, himself a Roman Catholic scholar with a Neo-Calvinist background, presents Berkouwer’s theological treatment of several primary doctrinal disputes, and then he continues the conversation, probing for areas of agreement and disagreement, and offering constructive criticism to advance the conversation. What emerges is a study in ecumenical character, where two Christians strive to “get rid of misunderstanding as well as to arrive at real and abiding differences,” a process that promises to “deepen [both] self-understanding and…communion.”

In this spirit, I will highlight the ecumenical habits of the heart that are modeled in this scholarly discussion. Once we see such ecumenical character on display between a Protestant and a Catholic, we can begin to imagine the possibility and promise of real ecumenism for Christians of all traditions in pluralistic, progressive, and secular societies.

What becomes immediately apparent is that ecumenism is not easy. It may be an “adventure,” as Berkouwer terms it, but healthy ecumenism requires effort. For both Berkouwer and Echeverria, this adventure cost a lifetime of study and hundreds of pages of text. What drove such a “blood, sweat, and tears” labor of love? 

Commitment to Unity

First and foremost: both share a deeply theological commitment to unity. Both Berkouwer and Echeverria allow themselves to feel the burden of ecclesial division. Both are moved by Jesus’s Upper Room teaching. Both begin the story of the Church with God’s intention to gather one people together in worship. In light of God’s plan, Berkouwer laments this division, saying “the severance of unity is a catastrophe for the world.”

At the same time, unity cannot be purchased by erasing theological distinction. In Berkouwer’s words, “we cannot make believe the differences do not exist [between the churches].” This leaves Christians in an uncomfortable theological and missiological middle-ground, with only one clear way forward: pressing on toward unity by engaging our differences in real relationships.

In this, Echeverria invokes John Paul II’s vision of healthy ecumenism: a movement from “antagonism and conflict to a situation where each party recognizes the other as a partner. When undertaking dialogue, each side must presuppose in the other a desire for reconciliation, for unity in truth.” In this way, ecumenical dialogue is marked, first of all, by Christian hope, a holy longing to see Jesus’s prayer for unity bear fruit in real time. Driven by such hope, the ecumenical project takes on a spirit of optimism and openness of one Christian for another. 

Epistemic Humility

This move toward one another requires a second commitment: epistemic humility. Theological honesty requires us to acknowledge that our doctrinal commitments emerge from within the confines of the human experience. Thus, Christians of all convictions are faced with a perpetual challenge: communicating timeless truths within the constraints of time and space. As Berkouwer says himself, “the historical-factual process...does not transcend the times, but is entangled with them in all sorts of ways. It cannot be denied that one encounters the undeniable fact of the situated setting of the various pronouncements made by the Church in any given era.”

This does not diminish the truth of the Church’s confessions, but it does increase our appreciation of the divine mystery. As Echeverria helpfully puts it, at all times, “we know much more than we can tell.” Propositional statements may accurately encapsulate aspects of divine reality, but they do not capture the total abundance of God. Therefore, humility is always required.

As an example of epistemic humility, Berkouwer does not immediately denigrate Roman Catholics for believing that dogmas can develop over time. He accepts the fact that the “historical-factual process” impacts all Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant. As Herman Bavinck demonstrates in his Reformed Dogmatics, the Reformed tradition takes our embodied limitations seriously, but opts for a different solution. Rather than opening the door to dogmatic development, our human limitations require us to lean more fully on the sufficiency of Scripture. But the different direction does not erase the shared starting point—as created and fallen humans, we do know more than we can tell—so both parties enter dialogue with a sense of epistemic humility.

Responsible Listening

Such humility raises the need for the third commitment of ecumenical character: responsible listening. In his dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, Berkouwer was convinced that his task carried “the responsibility first of all to understand Catholic doctrine in its most prominent and fundamental thoughts.”  Such understanding required sustained study. As Echeverria shows throughout the book, Berkouwer read the works of the major nouvelle théologie academics, actively engaged with the documents of Vatican I and II, and even traveled to Rome as an invited observer of the Vatican II proceedings. 

As well, he wrote and re-wrote various assessments of the renewal movements and theological developments throughout his career. At every step in his journey, Berkouwer took Roman Catholicism seriously, and sought to understand it as a complex system, worthy of respectful cross-examination. In Echeverria’s assessment, Berkouwer “always listened seriously to the other before he responded, and once he responded it was not as if everything that could be said about theological differences between Rome and the Reformation had now been said, and thus the discussion with Catholicism was over.”

Echeverria’s response shows a similar commitment to responsible listening. Indeed, this is one of the book’s commendable strengths: it is both a master-class in Catholic dogmatics and in Neo-Calvinism itself. For example, in his discussion of faith and reason, Echeverria demonstrates a detailed knowledge of the inner workings of Dutch Reformed epistemology, probing the significance of Herman Dooyeweerd on the Neo-Calvinist suspicion of natural law, and of the separation of classical theism from the biblical storyline, which rendered the “structure/direction” explanation of creation and fall, popularized by Al Wolters. This detailed study not only offers valuable insights for both Reformed and Catholic Christians; it also showcases the biblical virtue of a willingness to listen, being “quick to hear, slow to speak” (James 1:19) when assessing the theological commitments of another tradition.

Charitable Evaluation

Having listened thoroughly, the fourth component of ecumenical character is charitable evaluation. As compared to his more-critical pre-Vatican II writings, Berkouwer’s later work seeks to affirm as much common ground as possible, before highlighting areas of continued disagreement. Then, when highlighting disagreement, he worked to get to the real root of the difference, offering a critique as true as possible to the source material, for the sake of growth. As he puts it, ecumenical dialogue, at its best, 

[gets] at the real meaning of past controversy so that popular caricatures that each side holds of the other can be corrected. But the desire to get rid of misunderstanding is motivated by an equally strong will to get at the real and abiding differences. And it is at these points of differences that the ecumenical dialogue comes alive with both urgency and desire.

A good example of charitable evaluation is Berkouwer’s treatment of the traditional Protestant dogmatic punching-bag: the Catholic exaltation of Mary. Rather than settling for a caricature claiming that Rome deified Mary, Berkouwer was able to pin-point the real concern: “her disputed function as co-redemptrix.” Pursuing this specific trajectory required an earnest engagement with the dominant Catholic approaches to Mary—dogmatic maximalism and minimalism—evaluating their core motivations and concerns. Only then did he move to critique. 

In short, Berkouwer sought both common ground and dogmatic specificity. He agreed with the Catholics—they were not mingling Mary with deity any more than the early church did when calling Mary the “God-bearer.” Further, he agreed with the minimalist Catholics—whatever Mary’s role, Christ must be the sole agent of salvation, and Scripture must be the guide for doctrine. Having found the bedrock of the debate, Berkouwer then moved to offer the Reformed critique: Scripture simply does not exalt Mary the way Catholicism does, whether maximalist or minimalist.

Biblical Conviction

Thus, charitable evaluation leads to the final commitment of ecumenical character: biblical conviction. Since the Scriptures are the final authority in any doctrinal dispute, once the lines of dialogue have been drawn and the real issue established, the Scriptures must be allowed to speak. This is the final move in Berkouwer’s doctrinal debates. 

For instance, when discussing the relationship of reason and faith in Christianity, Berkouwer establishes his Reformed anthropology on the foundation of the Bible: “we never encounter such a man—man-as-reason…—in Scripture.” This, of course, is not meant as a simplistic “slam dunk” against Catholic dogma; Berkouwer understands that his fellow interlocutors are also dealing with Scripture. Nonetheless, the final appeal in any dispute must be made according to Scripture; on this foundation we stand.

This commitment to speak with biblical conviction set Berkouwer’s course with the aforementioned debate about Mary. At multiple points in his writing, he engages Marian theology with a final appeal to Scripture. As Berkouwer reads them, the Scriptures do not present Mary as co-redemptrix, nor indicate that she saw herself as anything of the sort. Nor do they assign a mediatorial role in any aspect of redemption to anyone other than Christ. Thus, while the Scriptures lead us to appreciate the example of Mary’s faithfulness, they do not permit us to view her as anything more than an exemplar of humble faith, a “blessed sister,” yes, but not an “exalted mother.”

To this, the Catholic may reply, as Echeverria does, that there are biblical resources for an exalted view of Mary, via typological readings of Genesis 3:15, John 19:26, Revelation 12:1, and other texts. But, far from being the end of the debate, this biblical back-and-forth is really just the beginning of a rich and multifaceted conversation, as we engage God’s “living and active” Word (Hebrews 4:12), the unfolding drama of redemption with Christ at the center. In this way, the debate moves from propositional, doctrinal statements to Scripture itself, with both Catholic and Protestant holding our blessed book, and saying “this is how we read God’s Word.” 

Total agreement is unlikely, but this doesn’t render the endeavor fruitless. Our ultimate goal is not simply intellectual agreement, but genuine spiritual communion with fellow Christians, as far as our differences allow, this side of heaven. And the best path to spiritual communion is to wrestle earnestly, in good faith, with Scripture itself, together. 

This is where ecumenical character leads us, no matter which denomination we engage with. We begin with a fundamental commitment to unity, which opens the desire to pursue spiritual and theological fellowship. From this commitment, we embrace our own epistemic humility, acknowledging that we all “see through a glass, darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12), no matter how rigorous our confession. This humility allows us to lean into the relationship with responsible listening and charitable understanding, seeking to thoroughly understand the tradition (and the person) with whom we are dealing, and to celebrate our commonalities before confronting our differences.  Then, finally, we speak with biblical conviction, bringing the truth of the Scriptures to bear. 

Of course, this kind of ecumenical pursuit has its risks. In our openness to others, we may cede too much ground, or fail to acknowledge the true extent of our differences. Echeverria even wonders if Berkouwer goes too far at times. Concerning the historically-contingent nature of human language, Berkouwer asks, “May we simply remain where Chalcedon stood, or shouldn’t we much rather regard Chalcedon as a beginning, as pointing the way, as protection against a specific heresy in order to subsequently direct us once again to the full gospel?” It is a provocative question, indeed, and unfortunately, Berkouwer never gives an answer. And without great care, this line of questioning easily becomes a wholesale abandonment of the church’s creeds and canons, under the auspices of faithful progress. Thus, it is not without cause that some conservative evangelicals correlate ecumenical dialogue with doctrinal drift. Caution is needed.

But when ecumenical character is exercised to the fullest, “the adventure in ecumenicity” reaps great rewards. By listening carefully to a different ecclesial tradition, you come to a greater appreciation of your own. The “gifts and graces” (to quote the Westminster Confession of Faith) of the other tradition sharpen your own grasp of God’s truth and push toward greater faithfulness. The disagreements renew gratitude for the gifts of God present in your own denominational home. On the missional front, our network for outreach is strengthened. And on the personal side, the work of bridge-building generates friendship, partnership, and spiritual communion among believers. In this way, “ecumenism in action,” conducted with healthy ecumenical character, brings blessing, as “iron sharpens iron” (Proverbs 27:17), and as fellow disciples are drawn toward one another in love.