Many readers will have access to J. Armitage Robinson's valuable note on the meaning of pleroma in his Ephesians (Macmillan, 1903), containing not only some important illustrative quotations from secular writers and from the Old Testament, but also a famous critique of the findings of previous scholars, in particular of J. B. Lightfoot.1 The present article is an attempt to consider once more, but only in outline, the meaning of the root pler-(“fill”, “fulness”, etc.), and to show, in rather more detail, its bearing on the theology of the New Testament.

The Secretary has asked me, when inviting me to this meeting, to speak “of the nature of Methodism's contribution to Church Unity, or at any rate something with a definite Methodist tinge”. In trying to comply with this request, let me make it clear that I shall speak as a Methodist, but only on my own behalf and without any kind of, or even hope for, official sanction; and I shall try to be definite. The Anglo-Saxon art of understatement is not easily mastered by one who is not British-born; to say, for instance, “I don't want to hurry you”, when you are anxious to get rid of your visitor quickly, or “I shall not be a moment”, when you intend to keep him waiting for the next few hours, or “I don't want to be uncharitable”, when introducing the most devastating criticism of your opponent's view—in short, to indulge in what a recent article in Lilliput called “phrops”, is a charisma, which, alas has not been given to me. Yet I will endeavour to speak the truth in love. My thoughts go back to one who, nearly ten years ago, spoke to the Methodist Society in this room and, though not a Methodist himself, gave me my earliest and most valued introduction to the Wesley hymns; who, second to none in his determination and outspokenness as a Free Churchman, yet commanded the affection and respect of Christians in many different camps and even had a requiem mass said for him in a Roman Catholic Church: the late Bernard Manning.

At the end of February 1950 there was published a directive from the Vatican concerning the rules to be observed by Roman Catholics on the occasion of ecumenical conversations. These show clearly how seriously such conversations are taken in that quarter. The line of thought developed in the following pages is not intended as a critical analysis and discussion of the Vatican declaration; it was complete in writing before that was published. Our aim here is rather to consider in a general way elements of difficulty and promise in ecumenical conversations. Of course the following reflections are purely private in character although they do endeavour to give due weight to a variety of experience gained within the Ecumenical Movement and also in the struggle of the Confessional Church in Germany. It would perhaps be in the interest of the Ecumenical Movement if we can come to see clearly and without illusions what are the limits that are set here to all human efforts and at the same time try to direct our view to the Lord of the Church, who alone can bring about the unification of Christendom.

This article contains a brief account of the way in which the eucharistic liturgy of the Church of South India was drawn up and indicates some of the points about which opinions differed among the representatives of the different traditions sharing in this task.

In introducing this subject I recognise that some degree of objectivity and dispassionateness is prescribed by regard for the inter-Church membership of the society which I address. This limitation is not, however, to the disadvantage of the discussion any more than it is separable from the historical situation which lies behind the problem, and therefore I make no apology for soliciting the privilege of the occasion for the observations which I have to make on “Church and Intercommunion”. The subject is one which needs for its setting a really ecumenical atmosphere. What has become regular and normal on the platform of the Faith and Order Conference should not be out of place in the more intimate arena of the present or similar fellowships. The representatives of the Churches must think together the nature of the ecumenical problem. They must seek together the lines of a practicable solution. The theologians and philosophers of the Churches should take responsibility for the straightening out of our ideas in the very tangled situation which history has produced and which it presents for our unravelling. The World Ecumenical Conference has signalled for an advance in this direction, and a theology divorced from interest in the Unity of the Church is not any longer justifiable.

The Christian understanding of time is characterised by an event which is the very centre of the Christian message, and of which it is said that it happened once and for all. This ephapax is evidently an essential part of the theology of St. Paul and of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Christian conceives of time like everything else from this centre, i.e. from Jesus Christ, and therefore it is from this centre that our reflection upon the essence of time has to start. This must be stated explicitly because another point of departure has been suggested by traditional theology. Certainly it was an act of great intuition on the part of St. Augustine when in his Confessions he dared, for the first time in history, to put forward the idea that the world was neither timeless and eternal, nor created at a certain point in the time-series, but that the world and time were created together. Therefore if the world and time have the same beginning in creation, it becomes meaningless to ask what God did before the creation of the world. The whole schema of before and after, the framework of time, cannot be regarded as existing before creation, but as coming into being with creation, itself a temporal fact.

Christianity is essentially a historical religion. It is not primarily a system of beliefs, nor is it just a perfect code of morality. Christianity is first of all a vigorous appeal to history, a witness of faith to certain particular events or facts of history. For these events were truly eventful, and these historical moments or “instants” were utterly momentous. For, by faith, we identify and acknowledge them as “mighty deeds” of God, as His intimate interventions into the course of human destiny. Already under the Old Dispensation the Living God has established His Covenant with the Chosen People, Israel, and has admitted her, the only nation of the earth, into a fellowship with Him. The God of the Old Testament did not communicate to men abstract metaphysical ideas about Himself, but He met man and challenged him in the midst of his daily existence, “amid toil and tribulation”. The Old Testament was truly a Covenant, a sacred fellowship, not primarily the Law and the doctrine. True, it was but a provisional fellowship, a shadow and a figure of the Good Things to come. It was a Covenant of hope and expectation, a Covenant of prophecy and promise. The consummation was ahead. Yet, it was a real Covenant indeed. And in due course it was fulfilled and thereby superseded; perfected and accomplished, and thereby abrogated.