Copyright holder: Tyndale University, 
3377 Bayview Ave., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M2M 3S4 
Att.: Library Director, J. William Horsey Library

Copyright: This Work has been made available by the authority of the 
copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research 
and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright 
laws of Canada without the written authority from the copyright owner. 

Copyright license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International 
License

Citation: Ladouceur, Paul, Gilles Mongeau and Arnold Neufeldt-Fast. “Canadian 
Council of Churches: Introduction to Working Papers on Doctrine.” Ecumenism 45, 
no. 179-180 (Fall/Winter 2010): 5-6.

***** Begin Content ******


TYNDALE
UNIVERSITY
3377 Bayview Avenue
Toronto, ON
M2M 3S4

TEL: 416.226.6620
www.tyndale.ca

Note: This Work has been made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely
for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced
except as permitted by the copyright laws of Canada without the written authority from
the copyright owner.

Ladouceur, Paul, Gilles Mongeau and Arnold Neufeldt-Fast. “Canadian Council of
Churches: Introduction to Working Papers on Doctrine.” Ecumenism 45, no. 179-180
(Fall/Winter 2010): 5-6.

[ Citation Page ] 



Canadian Council of Churches

Introduction to the Working Papers on Doctrine

   In the spring of 2007, the Faith and
Witness Commission of the Canadian
Council of Churches began a three-year
dialogue on the nature and role of doctrine in
the life of member Churches. Over the course
of these three years, representatives of
member Churches presented working papers
of the position of their Church on the nature
and role of doctrine or dogma in their
respective Church. The presentations to the
Commission were initially guided by four
broad questions:

	1. What is dogma or doctrine in your
	tradition?
	2. What arc considered to be doctrinal
	statements?
	3. Who can make doctrinal statements?
	4. What is the relation between doctrine
	and revelation?

   As the experience of the dialogue
deepened, three new questions began to take
shape:

	5. How docs your tradition view the first
	seven ecumenical councils?
	6. How docs your tradition understand
	the reliability of Scripture?
	7. What are those shared convictions
	without which the Church’s mission
	would be seriously impaired, or even
	become impossible?

   The papers gathered in this volume are
the personal presentations made by members
of the Commission, which served as the basis
of the very rich discussions during the study
period. The styles and methods of each
presenter reflect the nature of his or her
tradition, the point at which the Commission
was engaged in the ongoing conversation, and
the way in which the dialogue itself tends to
enrich the self-understanding of the
participants. Some papers deal with only the
original questions, while others, later in the
dialogue, also address some or all of the three
new questions. Some presenters, coming from
traditions that consider themselves “non-
creedal”, were surprised to discover they
nevertheless had important contributions to
make from the implicit “doctrines” of their
own communities. Members from traditions
with a strong commitment to doctrinal
statements learned that a number of
committed Christian communities function
without formal creeds.

   For a certain approach to dialogue, the
fact that not everyone answered all the same
questions could represent a limitation, but far
from being a limitation this variety of styles,
content and methods gave us a renewed
understanding of the rich “ecology” of the
Christian churches in Canada.

   We must recognize that the Commission
did not, on the basis of this dialogue, arrive at
agreed positions on doctrine. Nevertheless,
there emerged some interesting and fruitful
convergences which merit further
exploration. If we define doctrine broadly and
functionally as “that which a Church must
teach today to be authentic,” then all the
presenters agree that “doctrines” are the fruit
of our attempt to put into human words the
experience of the divine wisdom and will;
doctrine is, in this sense, a response to God,
reaching out to humanity through Jesus
Christ. Though there may be little explicit
commonality to be found on the specifics of
the contents of doctrine of the member
Churches, or the relation of doctrine to
Scripture, to authority, and to the Christian
experience over the centuries, the
presentations capture a number of remarkable
similarities in the process and struggle of
formulating doctrine.

   Every member Church holds to the
necessity of some doctrine, explicit or

Page 5



implicit, as a reference point. In all cases, one
or more documents exist which lay out this
doctrine, though the authority and form of
these documents varies greatly. In all cases,
Scripture, tradition, reason and religious
experience interact in some way in the
emergence of doctrine. Similarly, the role of
some form of reception by the community of
the faithful is a strong component of all of the
traditions represented. Finally, the presenters
of the papers agree that the fullness of truth
resides in God alone, and that the truth of
doctrines is eschatological, that is, oriented to
a future complete fulfillment or plenitude.

   There were, not surprisingly, wide
divergences on how doctrine is appropriately
formulated, on where authority to teach
authentically resides, on whether there is a
hierarchy of truths within doctrine, on the
specific relationship between doctrine and
revelation, on the nature of authority which
doctrine carries in the life of individual
Christians and communities, and on the range
of persons and situations to which doctrine
applies.

   The one doctrine held by all the Churches
represented is that faith in Jesus Christ as
Saviour is the root of all other doctrine,
though the manner in which each conceives
how doctrine derives from faith in Christ as
fundamental to Christianity is different. This
basic convergence gives rise to an important
point about the process of the dialogue over
the last three years: though there are certain
similarities and wide divergences on the level
of ideas and definitions, a survey of all the
papers together reveals a significant aesthetic-
dramatic or existential-experiential gestalt
that holds all the presentations together: all of
the interventions highlight the living and
dynamic reality of God labouring in history,
through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, as
foundational to doctrine. Doctrine happens; it
is to be done; it is truth practiced by and
embodied in persons and communities. Even
traditions that have minimal or even no
formal doctrinal statements express a living
link to Christ, an experience of the Holy
Spirit giving shape to Christian living and
Christian community, and the significance for
worship and service of the Gospel narrative in
all its richness. It involves a living discovery
of the Holy Spirit in the present time,
pointing Io Christ, the Word made flesh. This
is a striking instance of the adage lex orandi,
lex credendi. Within this gestalt, this
concrete-existential form of doctrine as praxis
in worship and service, there are some
important themes and relations that return as
a kind of refrain: doctrine as exegesis of
Scripture; doctrine as the expression of
revelation; the “sacramental”' or “iconic”
proportion and disproportion between human
words and divine truth; doctrine as confession
of faith and worship.

   These themes and relations might serve
as a stalling point for further bilateral
dialogues. We have discovered areas where
potential agreement can be sought, explored,
and tested, “proofed” by the fire of a more
focused exchange between two ecumenical
partners. In this sense, we offer our efforts as
a kind of ground clearing, in the style of the
medieval encyclopaedias or the anthologies
of patristic sayings that collected the data out
of which the great theological developments
of the East and West were born.

   The Faith and Witness Commission
established an editorial sub-committee to
prepare the working papers presented during
the consideration of the issue of doctrine. The
members of the sub-committee offer these
introductory remarks as an orientation to the
collection of working papers.

Paul Ladouceur (Orthodox)
Gilles Mongeau, S.J. (Roman Catholic)
Arnold Ncufeldt-Fast (Mennonite)

Page 6


***** This is the end of the e-text. This e-text was
brought to you by Tyndale University, 
J. William Horsey Library - Tyndale Digital Collections *****