Nicaea and Ecumenism: A Response to Paul Gavrilyuk

This essay responds to a proposal for the re-union of the Churches put forward by Paul Gavrilyuk in his “The Faith of Nicaea, the Hierarchy of Truths and the Restoration of Eucharistic Communion between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.” It proceeds in four sections, the first of which summarizes Gavrilyuk's essay both appreciatively and critically. The second section moves beyond Gavrilyuk's essay to discuss similar proposals by Karl Rahner and Heinrich Fries, and, in the eighteenth century, by Beda Mayr. The key point of agreement in these various proposals is the idea that full re-union of the Churches should require nothing more than shared agreement on the truth of the articles of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. The third section of the essay, by way of comparison, explores Kevin Vanhoozer's distinctive approach to determining which doctrines are Church-dividing. The essay then concludes with some reflections on the future of Catholic–Orthodox dialogue.