full communion among its member churches through a declaration
in which the theological paragraph starts with‘we acknowledge’:
(i) We acknowledge one another’s churches as churches belonging to
the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ and truly
participating in the apostolic mission of the whole people of God; (ii) we
acknowledge that in all our churches the Word of God is authentically
preached, and the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist are duly
administered; (iii) we acknowledge that all our churches share in the
common confession of the apostolic faith; (iv) we acknowledge that one
another’s ordained ministries are given by God...^299Such passages indicate that the churches have a deep instinctive trust
in the performative acts of recognition and acknowledgement even
when the precise nature of these acts is not reflected. Although the
Porvoo Common Statement represents Protestant Christianity, it
brings about a communion and is not administrative but spiritual
in its nature. The passage also employs the idea that Fries labels
‘common ground’, in which the churches do not merely recognize
one another but they refer to the one church, the whole people of
God, and to the common confession. Such common ground is con-
sidered to be found in the midst of the communion thus created.
Moreover, the ecumenical movement represents some long-term
traditions of religious recognition. The legal and administrative
senses of recognition appear as the oldest proposal for building
church unity. After 1945, the insights of the longer Latin theological
tradition start to resurface because of the founding of the World
Council of Churches, the Second Vatican Council, and Catholic
ecumenical involvement. The Catholic–Lutheran plan of ecumenical
recognition of the Augsburg Confession gives a prominent place to
the German idea of performative Anerkennung. The ecumenical
movement thus rather reintroduces older traditions than presents
anything entirely new.
There may, however, be one original and innovative idea in these
ecumenical texts. When the Toronto Statement of 1950 says, among
other similar things, that the churches‘recognize one another as
serving the One Lord’,^300 it introduces a sort of third party to the
event of recognition. While the churches A and B cannot directly
(^299) Together in Mission and Ministry, 30 (Porvoo 58a).
(^300) Documentary History, 173.
The Modern Era 181