Subversive Christian Unity

Some people's reaction to the ideas I talk about here is that I must be a latitudinarian indifferentist . I deny the charge. I think there is exactly one right answer to any theological proposition. That said, we Christians do not seem to be very good at agreeing on what the answers are. I think of myself as a realist. Unity is of a higher priority than uniformity. We can't get uniformity, in the sense of lockstep agreement on every doctrinal question someone may think up and claim is important to him. Can we get to unity without that sort of uniformity? It must be possible. Christ would not call us to unity if there were no way for it to happen. We should extend to each other a bit more charity and tolerance when our reasoning does not line up, one's with another's. There are great questions on which all Christians are bound to agree, else we are not Christians at all, and then there are lesser questions. "In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, and in...

What would theology look like if it were predicated upon the idea that good theology is of service to the laity?  Most Christian lay people do not have a deep understanding of the doctrinal disagreements among the various Christian churches. They are able to parrot some points distinctive to their own church denominations, and they know that on those points they stand opposed to others, but it is often without deep reflection on what they are saying. Their practical and applied theology is rather simpler. The faith-in-action of the lay Christian, of any denomination, is to try to avoid evildoing, accomplish some welldoing and trust in Christ for the outcome. It is rather as in James Ch. 1: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. Or as in Micah Ch 6: [God] has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act ...

There are times when it does no harm to leave questions unanswered. The apostolic church in the first century had a far slimmer set of beliefs than any church today. They did not have any doctrine about the exact trajectory and detailed fate of souls after death, the metaphysical details of communion celebrations or of a hundred other matters that we take quite seriously today. We take such matters so seriously that we divide our church denominations one from another on account of them. Some of our added doctrines arise only in the desire to answer, sometimes to criticize, the beliefs held in other churches. I call these counter-beliefs, because they are invented in answer to questions like, "Well, we believe this  in our church, what do you believe about the matter in your church?" For example, the Lutherans need a highly developed theory of communion because the Catholics have one. They feel the need to answer the Catholics, and to do it in kind. I was not there to ...

Q. How many Christians does it take to change a lightbulb? A. Eleven: one to change the lightbulb and ten to criticize, saying "We do it differently in our churches."