Possession or Dispossession?

Abstract

object: Does this mean thatinstead of sticking faithfully to the once and for always delivered Gospel truthwe are roaming enthusiastically in all directions, according to our taste and temperament? Certainly there are people who understand ecumenical fellowship like this. The World Council does not understand itself like this. The World Council says yes to the debate, the battlenot about the truthbut towards the truth. Peter and Paul did not refrain from openly debating their basically different missionary approaches. The attentive Bible reader will soon realize that the contradictions in the New Testament cannot be solved logically. The truth of the Bible cannot be formulated in a rational and logical formula. But the fact that something is not logical does not mean that it is not true. Or was the war in Vietnam logical?If then the common faith in the Church and between the churches cannot be articulated in logical formulas, how then should the unity of Christians be made visible'? It is here that the independent churches from the Third World can show us alterna-tive solutions. They express their common creed not in confessions (be they from Frankfurt, Barmen or Westminster), but in stories and testimonies; not in liturgical litanies, but in new spontaneously created songs; not in theses, but in jokes; not in systematic theologies, but in dances. Their forms of expression are nearer to the Biblical ones than ours. We Europeans have taken a one-sided stand for Paul's argumentative approach and have neglected the style of the other Biblical writers. The independent Christians from the Third World tell us stories, they celebrate, dance, eat, sing, work, laugh and pray together. Only afterwards do they try the interpretative reflection. And from them we will have to learn that the right doctrine is not primarily judged on the confessions of the past, but on their power to be understood, on their communicability to the Christians and the world. What does it help to win the whole world of thinking and lose the soul of communication'? What does it help to have a common confession, which cannot be communicated because only a few specialists understand it'? 16 The quotation is from R.

Spirituality and personal values: Neglected components of trauma treatment.

“…Once earlier in my career I appealed without response to the clergy to account for their practices when they counteracted evil spiritsTaylor (1975). At the time the film Exorcist, based on W.P.Blatty's book with the same title, had made its first box-office hit in New Zealand, and it induced a few bizarre reactions that brought a few people to psychiatric attention.…”