Many Of Us Rejoice That Almost All The Churches Of The world have been able to unite and form a World Council of Churches. Many others—and also many of those who rejoice—are a little puzzled. To-day Baptists and Quakers and Salvation Army leaders unite in worship and discussion with old Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. A century ago they tended to look at one another as dangerous heretics or even as allies of anti-Christ. We find ourselves asking: Are we to rejoice because the ancient animosities have been laid aside or are we to hesitate in the fear that all this has happened through lack of insight into the great differences which divide us? Has the Holy Spirit so changed men's hearts that they can unite or has the spirit of the world so invaded the Church that she can no longer distinguish between light and darkness?

I regard it as a privilege to have been invited to write about the meeting of the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam in the Scottish Journal of Theology which already in its short life has gained a widespread reputation by the high standard of the articles in it. I went to Amsterdam as the only delegate of the Episcopal Church in Scotland and was fortunate in having with me as alternate Canon N. J. Cockburn whose experience in ecumenical affairs is far greater than my own and to whom I am indebted for useful suggestions on certain points in this essay.

The Universal Church in God's Design, and The Church's Witness to God's Design, the first two volumes written in preparation for the meeting of the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam, are an ecumenical event in themselves. They form the most significant attempt at combined thinking about the nature and mission of the Church that has yet taken place. The stage is now set for a fresh and exhaustive inquiry behind the present divisions among the Churches into a Biblical and Christological doctrine of the Church which may yet knit into a theological unity the agreement of the Churches reached at Amsterdam. After all “the only valid argument for the union of the Churches is theological, a belief that unity is the will of God for His Church, and that the Church as the Body of Christ ought to represent on earth the mysterious unity of the Godhead” (Vol. II, p. 202). The purpose of this essay is not so much to review the actual material presented in these volumes as to face the questions they raise and, if possible, to point the discussion further along the road to that theological unity.

IT is not easy to know how best to deal with the two notable volumes named above. Some attempt ought certainly to be made to present their contents and message to readers of the Journal. But many of them must already themselves have studied the volumes; and no doubt the best thing to say to those who have not done so is to emphasise their importance and plead for their being read. The Archbishop of Canterbury in a closing address, we are told, remarked that the total number of words spoken at the Assembly must have attained to the fantastic region of the numbers used to represent distance between the earth and the farthest stars. All these words were recorded—but not, one hastens to add, in the four volumes of preparatory studies and the single volume of the Official Report. But even so the scope of the volumes is prodigious, and the weight of the contributions most imposing.

The words Presbyterian and Presbyterianism are so familiar as applied to our Scottish ecclesiastical system as to seem almost to belong to its essence or at least to indicate its essence. Nevertheless there is a certain diversity of view as to how Presbyterianism is to be defined. It is perhaps a not entirely insignificant fact that the term is familiar only in the English-speaking branches of the Reformed Church family. Among the sister Reformed Churches of the Continent it is not in common use. Continental theologians addressing ecumenical assemblies, whenever they use the word Presbyterian, seem instinctively to interpret it by the addition of the explanatory word “synodal”, evidently regarded as synonymous. The Presbyterian Alliance bridges this gulf in nomenclature by means of a rather cumbrous official title. It is officially The Alliance of Reformed Churches holding the Presbyterian form of Church Government. It would appear that our familiar denominational designation is due to some accident of Scottish or British history.

In the foregoing number of this Journal Dr. J. A. T. Robinson has done us the service of raising once again the question of universalism in a way that both merits admiration and challenges discussion. Rarely has the case for universalism been stated so adroitly and so persuasively, but when even that statement rests upon deep inconsistencies one has less hesitation in turning away from the formidable authorities which he cites to the voice of the Catholic Church which throughout all ages has consistently judged universalism as a heresy for faith and a menace to the Gospel. Without doubt however there is a great truth here and that must be disentangled from the dangerous untruth.