Gesa E. Thiessen lectured for many years at Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, Dublin. An Adjunct Assistant Professor at the School of Religion at Trinity College Dublin, Visiting Scholar at Sarum College, Salisbury, and a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa, she has published widely on theology and the arts and on ecumenical ecclesiology. She is a non-stipendiary minister in the Lutheran Church in Ireland.

• CONTENTS Acknowledgements Contributors Preface Linda Hogan Introduction Gesa E. Thiessen Part I Perspectives on Contemporary Ecumenical Ecclesiology 1. Driving the Haywain: Where Stands the Church 'catholic' Today? Gerard Mannion 2. Seeking Unity: Reflecting on Methods in Contemporary Ecumenical Dialogue Gesa E. Thiessen 3. The Struggle for an Organic, Conciliar and Diverse Church - Models of Church Unity in Earlier Stages of the Ecumenical Dialogue Miriam Haar 4. Church and Covenant: Theological Resources for Divided Denominations Edwin C. van Driel 5. Comprehensive Vision: The Ecumenical Potential of a Lost Ideal Andrew Pierce 6. Integrity, Alternative Aggressions, and Impaired Communion Wendy Dackson Part II Communion Ecclesiology and Otherness 7. The Church and the 'Other': Questions of Ecclesial and Divine Communion Paul M. Collins 8. Being Church: A Critique of Zizioulas' Communion Ecclesiology Travis E. Ables 9. Retrieving Eucharistic Ecclesiology Radu Bordeianu 10. Communion Ecclesiology and Ecumenical Experience: Resources for Inner-Denominational Otherness Brian P. Flanagan 11. Evangelical Ecclesiology as an Answer to Ethnic Impaired Christian Community? An Inquiry into the Theology of Miroslav Volf Eddy Van der Borght Part III Ecclesiology in Global Contexts 12. On Being a European Catholic: The Politics of Inclusion Encounters an Ecclesiology of Exclusion Julie Clague 13. Instruments of Faith and Unity in Canon Law: The Church of Nigeria Constitutional Revision of 2005 Evan Kuehn 14. Sacral Authority and Pastoral Ministry: A Shamanistic Inculturation of the Protestant Church in Korea Hak Joon Lee 15. Confucianism, Internationalism, Patriotism and Protestantism: The Ecclesiological Matrix of Japanese Christian Activists in Japan and the U.S. Diaspora Madeline Duntley Index

Guided by an editor at once theologically critical and ecumenically compassionate, these authors follow her lead in bringing historically informed theory to bear on the contemporary contexts and practices of ecclesial bodies. The volume delivers what the best of such collections achieve: a range of provocative questions sure to incite further academic inquiry with confidence and newfound ecumenical purpose.