A Prophetic, Polysemic and Proleptic Prompt

The Church: Towards a Common Vision comes as an invitation to rejoice over, and both re-affirm and re-visit, the call to be "one, holy, catholic and apostolic" church today. With a comprehensiveness which is vital for it to be characterized as a convergence text, the text helps us to engage critically, creatively and constructively with a number of important aspects of "what has long been identified as the most elemental theological objective in the quest for Christian unity" namely "agreement on ecclesiology" (p. viii). As someone whose area of ecumenical engagement involves inter-religious dialogue and cooperation, I found this text an encouragement to ponder afresh the impact and implications of visible ecclesial unity in religiously pluralistic contexts on (a) Christian self-understanding and (b) Christian witness - two areas which the programme in Inter-Religious Dialogue and Cooperation of the World Council of Churches has been thinking theologically about.