Introduction to the Symposium

Abstract

Shortly after World War II, the British Baptist theologian Robert C. Walton spoke powerfully about how Baptists and all Christians might see themselves as members one of another. This required, he argued, a “return to historical Christianity which is concerned not with what a man does with his solitariness, but with a distinctive type of communal life, largely created by and lived within a distinctive society—the Church.” Walton’s use and understanding of Church—and elsewhere “One Catholic Church”—did not negate his conviction that various traditions had unique contributions to make to the whole. Indeed, Walton urged Baptists not to “minimize the contribution which God has given us...” Walton’s poignant call for unity and the sharing of ecclesial contributions anticipated a key emphasis of Pope John Paul II. In Ut unum sint, the Pope describes ecumenism as not “simply an exchange of ideas,” but in some way always as an “exchange of gifts.”