Subversive Christian Unity

Matt. 20:25-28 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” We have failed at this, as abjectly as we have failed at unity. Theories of who has authority in the church are as numerous as church denominations. Of course it is a point church leaders are unwilling to debate. Their own authority and prestige are at stake, so it's quickly on to another topic when this one comes up. The Pope using for an official title "Servant of the servants of God" is unconvincing to Protestants, especially so because the phrase sometimes has prefaced declarations not very servant-like. There is no cause and no need to single out ...

Here's a question about our hidden assumptions. If we reason using our God-given faculty for reasoned argument, does the premise bless the outcome? That is to say, if our premise is revealed truth from God, does our conclusion take on the character of revealed truth? Or is it still just human reason, having for its subject something God revealed? This question is a knife with a greasy handle. You must be careful with it or you will cut yourself. You can answer either yes or no to the above challenge, but is your answer consistently carried out in all your beliefs? My thought on the matter is that twenty centuries on from the start, theologians still argue. It is in their job description; they devise and defend arguments. Rather than grace and peace, this has brought us strife and division, or at the least prolonged them. Thus it seems to me a hopeless hope to wait for theologians to solve our differences, for that is so very far from the work they do and the tools they ...

One is saved by seeing that Jesus told the truth about himself and his mission. The joy of that is something we can celebrate in common. In this entry I rehash some points I have already made. The idea is to try to stir up some interest in a thought experiment. What would happen if all the churches of Christendom agreed that all public preaching and discussion would be limited to only the kerygmatic core of Christianity? Discussion of any further matters would take place only among believers, and then only if it could be done respectfully. For reasons detailed elsewhere in this blog, and touched upon in this post, I think that is an essential step toward Christian unity. As matters now stand, the unsaved have a hard time understanding what the gospel is and isn't, because different churches preach it differently, with various amounts of extraneous detail. If we all spoke one message, leaving out the extraneous points on which we differ, it would at least be clearer to t...

Prophecies are oftentimes clearer after their fulfillment than before. Consider the many Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah. What reader of those words, in the days when they were written, could have predicted precisely what would happen to fulfill them? In Jesus' earthly ministry, some people disbelieved him because he did not quite match what they expected from their reading of the prophets. There are several responsibly held views about the thousand year period spoken of in Rev. ch. 20. What we read there is a prophecy that surely will be a good deal clearer after the fact. I suggest people stop arguing about it, except in a friendly fashion and in private. I suggest we wait and see. It is the kind of dispute that we should never air before unbelievers. It does not help them. It tells them nothing of what they really need to know if they are to be saved. It distracts them from the idea that there really is one Lord whom all real...