Is a Common Vision on the Church no longer a Realistic Option within Faith & Order? A Study on the Redaction and the Reception Process of The Church: Towards a Common Vision.

The convergence statement on the Church titled, The Church: Towards a Common Vision (TCTCV-2013) is the fruit of a collaboration of nearly two decades by the members of the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches. The drafters, who belong to various confessional traditions, have composed the document incorporating the insights from the ecumenical dialogue texts – both bilateral and multilateral – and the responses from churches, ecumenical institutes and individual theologians to the two earlier draft versions, The Nature and Purpose of the Church (1998) and The Nature and Mission of the Church (2005). The present research seeks to study the redaction and the reception process of TCTCV, with the objective of highlighting the significance of the responses in the making of an ecumenical text and pointing to consequences of this important document for the future of ecumenism.