Why does the Chinese church want to return to the ecumenical tradition?

More than ten years ago, the church in my country suffered a major shock due to government pressure. It can be said that one stone caused a thousand waves, which also caused me to ponder on the tradition of ecumenism.

The church I belong to refuses to be forced to scatter gatherings due to the power of the government, but chooses to gather together because of the vision of the "city on a hill", even if it is forced to worship outdoors. Looking back on the situation at that time, on the surface, what we adhere to is the vision of the church, but in fact it is a kind of meditation on ecclesiology in the public sphere, and a little deeper, it is a deep search for the identity of the ecumenical tradition.

The Chinese church longs for the ecumenical tradition, because that is its truest identity, because that is where it came from. In a way, my resolute choice to study at Holy Cross Seminary is a response to this nostalgia and longing for the ecumenical tradition.

There is no doubt that the Chinese church will return to the ecumenical tradition. Just as the child returns to its mother's arms and the prodigal son returns home, its identity is always there and nowhere else. Just as Moses was in Egypt, Moses did not forget his identity as an Israeli because he was in the Egyptian palace, and chose to be an Egyptian willingly; in the same way, the Chinese church in China should not forget his identity as a Christian because he was in China, and become a Christian. Appendices to the regime or some kind of patriotic sentiment. The Chinese church should find its identity in the ecumenical tradition. Once it has found it, it is like having established its unshakable foundation and can stand it.

There is a kind of nostalgia in the Chinese church. Whether this nostalgia has to drift to Martin Luther, John Calvin, or continue to drift forward, it counts where it goes, and how wide it goes. The question is still undecided.

Two stumbling blocks hindering the Chinese church's search for ecumenical tradition: "the theory of church depravity after Constantine" and the view of the sectarian portal

If the churches established by Martin Luther, John Calvin, can truly represent the ecumenical tradition of the church, then there is only one explanation that the churches before them were totally depraved at some point. "The doctrine of the fall of the church after Constantine" was born for this reason. On the one hand, it advocates returning to the era of the apostles and godfathers[1]. On the other hand, it can justifiably ignore all the churches after Constantine and before the Reformation. Literature (except, of course, the godfathers admired by the Reformers).

According to the author's special article " After Constantine, Has the Church Fallen?" "the opinion of. The church after Constantine was not depraved, but corrupted, and the church also prescribed three powerful medicines to curb the corruption of the church: the formation of spiritual traditions, canons and rituals.

If the church did not degenerate after Constantine, then our pursuit of the ecumenical tradition cannot stop at the time of Martin Luther, John Calvin, or the church history spanning thousands of years, jumping directly from the era of the Reformation to the Apostolic Fathers Age (although I still feel that our study of the period of the Apostolic Fathers is still limited).

We should retrieve this history from Constantine to the Reformation era, but from what angle? How wide are you looking? What exactly is the ecumenical tradition? These problems need to be solved one by one, otherwise, facing such a long time span, such a wide area, and such a large amount of church documents, we will be overwhelmed and unable to start.

Another obstacle to finding ecumenical traditions is sectarianism, sectarian distinctions, and more extreme, believers calling each other's sects heresies (I also wrote the article " Is Protestantism Heresy? " refuting this view of easily categorizing people or sects as heresies, here not detailed). This sectarian view leads some to think that the documents I study are either the property of the Orthodox Church or the Nestorian Church and have nothing to do with the ecumenical tradition. The view of church history that emerges from this kind of sectarian view is often black-and-white and extremely simplistic, but the real history is often much more complicated than this.

For example, the time when the Syrian Church and the Greek Church really did not communicate with each other was after the Arab invasion in the seventh century. Although there was a Council of Chalcedon before that, the Greek Church still recognized many Syrian saints, especially Saint Isaac of Nineveh. The Syrian Church also translated many Greek philosophical, theological and spiritual texts.

I once spoke to a Jesuit at Boston College, one of my mentors, and he said that the Latin and Greek traditions are inseparable, and perhaps a little further from Syria. I was shocked, knowing that he wouldn't say that lightly. It can be seen that even in the Church after Constantine, no matter what language they speak, they have close contacts with each other as far as politics, economy and geography allow, and they recognize the contributions made by the church fathers, No matter where he is from, what language he speaks. This certainly shows that the ecumenical tradition is not limited to one particular language and region.

After rejecting "the Fall of the Church after Constantine" and the view of sectarian portals, our view of the ecumenical tradition becomes clear. At present, for the Chinese church, due to its origin in the West, the research and translation of the Western tradition has already begun, and many scholars have studied it (it is inevitable that we all look at the problem from a Western perspective); As far as the church is concerned, it is not even a beginning. There are only a handful of people who study it academically, and most of them look at it from the perspective of philosophy and non-believers. Nestorianism is also an appendage of Dunhuang and Turpan studies. Therefore, both academically and in terms of importance, the Eastern Church tradition has not received enough attention from the Chinese Church. That's why I started this website and built these ministries.

So the question is, what is the ecumenical tradition? How can the Chinese church return to the ecumenical tradition? What is the first step at least? The author will write a special article to discuss this issue, so stay tuned.

[1] In fact, the church literature before Constantine was very limited. On the one hand, it was confused with Judaism and did not gain much recognition; on the other hand, it was not supported by the regime, and its publication and circulation were extremely limited. If you look at the publishing situation of the Chinese church today, it is even worse. Nonetheless, our study of the writings of the Apostolic Fathers is limited.