From a Uniform to a Multiform Understanding of Church. Foundations of Exchange in the Preconciliar Missiology of Jean Bruls

Abstract

During the first half of the 20th century, genuine exchange between the churches within Roman Catholicism was virtually non-existent. Church was conceived of as the one Roman Catholic Church, and the relationship between churches was one of a Western unilateralism. Shortly after the Second World War, the Belgian Catholic missiologist Jean Bruls (1911–1982), editor-in-chief of the missiological journal Église Vivante, pointed to the necessity of an exchange (“échange”) between the Western church and the non-Western churches. This article argues that Bruls’ early attention to interchurch exchange was the result of a new conceptualization of Church. The article shows to what extent Bruls’ missiology was an anticipation of the mission doctrine of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).