ABSTRACT
The World Council of Churches’ Faith and Order Commission paper, The Church: Towards a Common Vision (2013), which took twenty years to prepare, represents ‘an extraordinary ecumenical achievement’ in ecclesiology. 1 One of the subjects it addresses is the Christian faithful. For Common Vision, the Church (universal) consists of Christ’s followers (the people of God), with ‘obligations of responsibility’, all of whom are ‘interrelated’; and each institutional church has its own ‘membership’, for which faith in Christ is essential, their discipleship sustained by the Holy Spirit. 2 The faithful share ‘communion’ (koinonia), a key concept embracing ‘participation, fellowship, [and] sharing’ – ‘As a divinely established communion, the Church belongs to God and does not exist for itself’, but is ‘missionary’, called and sent ‘to witness to that communion which God intends for all humanity’ (para. 13); and the Holy Spirit ‘equips the Church with its essential gifts, qualities and order’ (para. 16). The purpose of this chapter is to explore the legal systems of various Christian traditions worldwide, and how they reflect, but indicate substantially deeper agreement beyond, these Common Vision propositions about the faithful and the communion they share. While ‘communion’ is a theological category (central to Common Vision), it also has normative-juridical aspects, particularly apposite in light of the Common Vision focus on communion as shared action and order – as spiritual communion is about relationships, so juridical systems seek to facilitate and order the communion of the faithful associated together in a church. 3
