I would like to introduce to you today a very interesting and important ecumenical institution, dedicated to the theological dialogue between the Evangelical (in the narrow, but especially the larger sense) and the Catholic traditions. Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson are among the initiators and most important leaders of this institution (you may find HERE the complete list of theologians involved).
Here is how this centre is described on their website:
The Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology is an ecumenical organization that seeks to cultivate faithfulness to the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the churches. The Center nurtures theology that is catholic and evangelical, obedient to Holy Scripture and committed to the dogmatic, liturgical, ethical and institutional continuity of the Church.
The Center challenges the churches to claim their identity as members of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. It affirms the Great Tradition and seeks to stimulate fresh thinking and passion for mission. To achieve this goal the Center sponsors projects, conferences and publications.
Among other things, this ecumenical centre publishes a very solid theological journal, called Pro Ecclesia and has also pulished a much discussed proposal for church unity, titled In One Body Through the Cross. The Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity. Here is a short description of this ecumenical project (I wish some day we would be able to have it translated into Romanian).
The Princeton Proposal is a landmark statement on the present situation and future possibilities of modern ecumenism. Drafted by sixteen theologians and ecumenists from various church traditions, who met over a period of three years in Princeton, New Jersey, this document seeks to steer contemporary efforts at church unity away from social and political agendas, which are themselves divisive, and back to the chief goal of the modern ecumenical movement — the visible unity of Christian worldwide, of all those who are reconciled “in one body through the cross.”
Since the study group that produced this statement was instituted and its participants were chosen by an independent ecumenical foundation, the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, their “unofficial” work presents especially profound and creative reflection on the ecumenical task. With this report the study group members do not claim to speak for their churches, but hope to speak to all the churches out of shared concern for the founding ecumenical imperative “that they all may be one … so that the world may believe.”
Available from
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Grand Rapids/Cambridge
ISBN 0-8028-2298-3
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