The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary

The summary of the selected article appears at the bottom of the page. In order to get back to the contents of the issue this article belongs to you have to access the link from the title. In order to see all the articles of the archive which have as author/co-author one of the authors mentioned below, you have to access the link from the author's name.

  
       
         
    STUDIA THEOLOGIA ORTHODOXA - Issue no. 2 / 2018  
         
  Article:   UNITY AND IDENTITY IN PERSPECTIVE OF THE FREE EVANGELICAL CHURCHES.

Authors:  ANDREAS HEISER. 		 
       
         
  Abstract:  Free evangelical Churches emphasize unity amongst God’s children. To put it in a nut-shell: The Founder of the first Free evangelical Church in Germany, Hermann Heinrich Grafe (1818–1869), performed an ecclesiological balancing act in order to make the unity of the children of God visible: he has founded a particular Church as an expression of the universal Church. The Free evangelical Churches came to life with a creed that preceded the ecumenical word of John 17:21. Their founders were aware of, that even a Protestant particular Church must continue to pursue the goal of reducing confessional egoism through prayer, personal encounters, common ministry, and serious theological discourses, and to discern the unity already existing in Christ “for the world to believe.” This goal remains, even though the numerical growth and confessional fragmentation of the one Church of Jesus Christ over the last two centuries make the visualization of their unity seem impossible. This article shows ecumenical chances and obstacles of the free-evangelical perspective on unity and identity, which are somewhat typical for ecumenical dialogues between free Churches and other Churches.

Keywords: Unity, Identity, Free evangelical Churches, International Federation of Free evangelical Churches. 		 
         
     
         
         
      Back to previous page