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New Church Constitutions and Diakonia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

C. E. B. Cranfield
Affiliation:
Durham

Extract

In the course of his extremely valuable and stimulating study, ‘Diakonia: Today's Task’, Dr Hans Christoph von Hase draws attention to the explicit reference to the Church's diaconal responsibility contained in the 1948 Constitution of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, Article 15 of which declares:The Evangelische Kirche in Germany and member churches are called to proclaim Christ's love in word and deed. This love obliges all members of the Church to undertake service and takes form in a special way in the Diaconate of the Church. In accordance with this the Church's diaconalmissionary activities are part of its very being and life.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1967

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References

page 338 note 1 in S.J.T. xx, pp. 57–74.

page 338 note 2 op. cit., p. 58.

page 338 note 3 I have already drawn attention in a letter to The British Weekly (30th March 1967) to the absence of any such explicit statement from the Proposed Basis for Union of The Congregational Church in England and Wales and The Presbyterian Church of England (1967).

page 339 note 1 Reference may be made to the following: Beyer's, H. W. article in the Kittel-Friedrich Theologisches Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament, II, pp. 8193Google Scholar; Rahner, K. and Vorgrimmler, H., Diaconia in Christo (Freiburg, 1962)Google Scholar; Krimm, H., Quellen Zur Geschichte der Diakonie (Stuttgart, 19601963)Google Scholar; Vischer, L., ‘The Problem of the Diaconate’, in Encounter (Indianapolis, 19641965), pp. 84104Google Scholar; The Ministry of Deacons (World Council Studies 2, Geneva, 1965)Google Scholar; Krimm, H. (ed.), Das Diakonische Amt der Kirche (2nd ed. Stuttgart, 1965)Google Scholar; Cranfield, C. E. B., The Service of God (London, 1965), pp. 2334Google Scholar; McCord, J. I. and Parker, T. H. L. (eds.), Service in Christ: Essays presented to Karl Barth on his Both birthday (London, 1966)Google Scholar; and the study by H. von Hase already cited.

page 340 note 1 Institutes of the Christian Religion, III.xx.38 (Battles', F. L. translation).Google Scholar

page 340 note 2 This phrase occurs a number of times in the Congregational-Presbyterian Proposed Basis for Union (e.g. in paragraphs 11, 16, 19 and 21).

page 340 note 3 So, for example, we would suggest that it should be written into paragraphs 11, 32, 33, 34 35 and 36 of the Congregational-Presbyterian Proposed Basis for Union.

page 341 note 1 Cf. Biéler, A., Calvin, prophète de I'ère industrielle (Geneva, 1964)Google Scholar; Report on the Bièler proposal’, in The Reformed and Presbyterian World, xxix (1966), pp. 113119Google Scholar; Visser't Hooft, W. A., ‘World Conference on Church and Society’, in The Ecumenical Review, xviii (1966), pp. 417425CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the Papal encyclical, Populorum Progressio, of March 1967.

page 341 note 2 Cardinal Heenan's call to his diocese (as reported in The Observer of 30th April 1967) deserves honourable mention; but it scarcely goes for enough.