"...But the Spirit blows where the Spirit wills and holiness in the sense of enlightenment and glorification can be received by all people everywhere.... Dialogue for truth can be established. Christian adherence to Christ as the truth should not obscure the truths scattered in the religious traditions surrounding them. All these truths spring from the same Divine source. We should welcome all spiritual life-giving nourishment, not as a human word but as bread from Heaven. All discourse resists different discourse, and all scriptures resist different scriptures. That is why the aim of dialogue is above all, by going beyond religious traditions, to seek the Divine truth latent beneath different words and symbols. That is not to relativize the Christian message: it is not syncretism, it is the same Christ we worship as he journeys through the infinite spaces of other religions. This requires us to have a kenotic [sic] attitude. Kenosis [sic] is witness without words and can be fruitful. In dialogue the Church opens up, goes deeper and comes to know itself...."
- Metropolitan Georges (Khodr) of Mount Lebanon, at the WCC's Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order in the Spanish city of Santiago de Compostella (August 3-14, 1993); speech: "Koinonia in Witness," in Thomas Best and Gunther Gassman (eds.), On the Way to Fuller Koinonia: Official Report of the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order, Santiago de Compostella, 1993 (Faith and Order Paper No. 166; Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1994), pp. 124 and 126.
Archbishop Gregory P.O. Box 3177 Buena Vista, CO 81211-3177 USA Email: ArchbishopGregory@starband.net
Copyright 2005.
