212 PART TWO: AN EMPIRICAL ACCOUNT denominational identity, no? And, it's the Baptismal that comes first, and so on.478 Again, the historical churches are not insignificant because they are the concrete manifestation through which one participates in the life of the church. As such, it does not strike me as if the monastics understand church membership as strictly spiritual. It does, however, affect the way they understand the relationships between denominations. BF thinks along similar lines, referring to the Lima Report: “I think we have not yet grasped, uh, in the full way, what does it mean that I recognize your Baptism?”479 Brother TC rather eloquently connects a number of themes that have emerged so far: the priority of a Baptismal identity, the complementarity of Christian traditions, a theology of abundance, trust in Christ and the resurrection, all culminating in the idea that in the exchange of gifts something of the undivided church can surface. Let me quote this part of his interview in full: But it is of course a little bit of a surprising statement, hey, really to say that, the undivided church can become visible again, that's a... .... uh... But I think, if you studied um... the history of Vatican II... and the... the approach to the text on ecumenism based on Baptism, you would find something like that, no, that, that uh... and we talked about that last time too, our first identity is Baptismal, no? And then, and then of course we have, history, that has created denominations and created separations, but our first identity is there, you know, so... so in a way, it's not... ... ... it's not totally surprising to say that, no, that the undivided Christ can appear, no? If we... if we go... ... into the death and resurrection of Christ. And in the spirit of… the death and resurrection, it means that you are no longer on the defensive, no? That you don't need an enemy to exist, I think I used that, with Olivier Clement used to like to say that as well, some people need enemies to know that they exist. Otherwise, they're not sure they exist, no? So, they have this kind of adversarial identity, without an adversary they don't know they exist. And so, the spirit of resurrection liberates you from that, no? You don't need an adversary to exist, you don't need to. It's not a zero-sum game, doesn't have to be a winner and a loser, we can... work there to go towards fullness, which is something which Congar says also, I quoted that passage, that our only interest is 478 TC-1,8b. *Godfried Hamann. 479 BF-2,8.
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