Dreaming Dreams

In the preface to Receptive Ecumenism, Paul Murray describes the three “voices” of the collection of essays in these terms: “(1) the dreaming of dreams; (2) the testing of such dreams for their viability; and (3) the discerning together of what might either hinder or promote their embodied ecclesial realization. These are the three voices, the three concerns, in which and in accordance with which the volume unfolds. We might refer to them respectively as the poetic, the analytic, and the pragmatic; or, alternatively, as the imaginative– constructive, the critical–constructive, and the practical–organizational” (xi).

The point of highlighting the poetic dream-dreaming dimension is to to “neglect that the greater part of theological labour is carried out in considerably more sober mood than that might otherwise suggest. . . . The point in leading with the constructive, the poetic, is neither to diminish nor to marginalize such patient labours” (xii).

Yet, dreams must be dreamt: “this dreaming of dreams is neither detached from reality nor does it stand as an end in itself. It presupposes both life in the church in all its historical specificity and a great deal of sustained patient labour of understanding and action, much of which is mediated to us through the work of others. It departs from such patient labour only in the sense that it takes off from it; not in the sense that it denies it. It is, we might say, what becomes possible when ecclesial intellectual activity ‘grows wings’” (xii).

Later, in his essay in the volume, Murray emphasizes the need to move beyond attempts to reconcile conflicting formulations and languages: “unless this commitment to transformational receptivity be made the explicit driving-motor of ecumenical engagement then no amount of refined conceptual clarification and reconciliation of differing theological languages alone will lead to real practical growth and change in the respective lives of the participating churches. Indeed, the conviction is that the strategy of conceptual and grammatical clarification, if pursued in isolation, is in danger of simply reinforcing each sponsoring church within its own current logic, even whilst clarifying that it need not be seen as being in necessary conflict with the differently expressed logic of other traditions. In this manner, a problem-driven strategy of conceptual and grammatical clarification would, on its own, basically leave the respective churches continuing on their separate ways, relatively unchanged apart from enjoying better terms and greater mutual understanding than before.” What is needed for unity is not merely translation; what’s needed is “conversion” by reception of the goods that other traditions have to offer (14).

Without the poetic and imaginative, in short, ecumenism will never take off, and we’ll be stuck in the mud of our divisions forever.