Subversive Christian Unity

At the close of AD 2018, these are the ten most popular posts to appear on the blog: The deconstruction of love   Sep 15, 2015 Reality, fantasy and ecumenism   Oct 17, 2015 Science versus religion is   a phony issue   Jul 14, 2014 Differently rational   Nov 8, 2018 The true bride and the bimbos   Apr 3, 2015 Cessationism on the duck farm   Aug 24, 2015 Urgency of the present day   Nov 5, 2018 The brand new, very old Didache   Mar 15, 2016 Pop Christianity   Mar 15, 2016 Jesus the Commie   May 8, 2014 Happy New Year to my readers around the globe: Grace to you and peace!

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.  (1 Cor 1:10) That was an easier thing to ask in the first century than in our day, because the problem was simpler.  The early church's doctrine was the kerygma , a call to faith based on news of what Christ said and did. This is the material that went into the four canonical gospels that have come down to us. To round out that teaching, the apostles wrote letters clarifying how to be a Christian, these were saved and circulated in the early church, and are now our New Testament epistles. The Old Testament was prized in the early church for its wisdom and for its prophecies of the Messiah. It was a time before formalistically systematized theologies were composed, denominational distinctives defined, and the associated battle lines drawn. Elaboration of Christian doctrine in later ce

It is essential, and shall remain so while the world stands, to "contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints." The church world is, though, full of contentious arguments that do not rise to that level. We sometimes say we are attacking heresy when what we are really doing is defending our tribal prejudices. We fuel division and maintain it when we attack one another over matters that are not really essential. To be sure, there are real heresies abroad in today's church world, and heretics who need to be called out for what they are, but let us ground our contending on bedrock. And what is the faith once delivered? I think Jesus tells us. We are to teach others to obey all the things he commanded. That is what he said in the Great Commission; I do not see where we have a warrant beyond that one. What, then, of the doctrines in the New Testament epistles? If I am reading the epistles aright, they are the apostolic community's guidance on h

In real life I program computers. Programmers have favorite computer languages. Mine is C, and I can always start an argument by saying we don't really need other languages. People who have other favorites then take umbrage and start a debate. It is common in the tech community to refer to such kerfluffles as religious conflicts, and that is unfortunately apropos. The parallelism with religious debates is striking. People describing the same things in different ways, pursuing the same answers by different means, instinctively see one another as doing something wrong. I say that a program variable is, in reality, simply a numbered position in the computer's memory, what is called in computerese an address. That is the wrong way to look at it, say proponents of the higher levels of abstract symbolism. What is important, they say, is meaning.  We sound like a bunch of theologians. I am coming round to the conclusion, after years of thinking about it, that Christianity's em

Rather makes nonsense of Christian history, does it not? The schisms, the wars, the polemics and the ostracisms, wrongs answering wrongs, and all of it given the holiest of excuses.

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In the Bible, there is just one Christian church. The people belonging to it are various, different languages and races and backgrounds. They have different talents or giftings. They are supposed to use their various gifts and insights, all together but in differing ways, to advance God's kingdom on earth. In the telephone book, there are dozens of Christian churches, separated by language or culture or race, or by the particular insights held (or lacked) by the opinion makers, and all of them with reasons to offer as to why they are not the same as the other Christians down the street. It's confusing. When you check into a motel you get only two books with your room, and they contradict each another. One church, many churches. Which book are you going to believe? In moving our thinking beyond our present notions about denominational division, it is useful to note that the division is all man's doing. God wants us pulling together instead. We have our common cause; c

By Charles Marsh A great many people, I see, are approaching ecumenism by asking how we can achieve intercommunion and by asking the related question of how we can achieve uniformity in church government. It is not the right kind of question. Those are concerns to be addressed last of all. Before we ever get to them, we need something else to happen first. We need not think about unity on the administrative level before we find it spiritually, by really loving and serving one another across denominational boundary lines. Before that happens, our divines have nothing to work with when it comes to questions of intercommunion or administrative structure.  They can point to our historical schisms, and the theological differences that played into those splits, but that tells them nothing about how to unscramble those eggs. They can talk about what now is, and give us an intelligent account of how it happened, but that is as far as they know how to proceed. Something new needs to hap

In the previous post, I touched in passing on the concept of someone being minimally Christian: one who believes what is necessary for salvation but nothing further. It is doubtful such a creature can be found in real life. We all have some theological or reflective ideas about the faith. We have among us different practices regarding food and drink and holy days. We have further differences in all manner of grey areas and matters of interpretation. What is minimally Christian? I'm going to go along with Jesus on this one. Whoever hears his words and believes God who sent him has already passed from death to life. Of course, there is more to attend to after that. Someone good-hearted about it will see to honoring Christ's teaching in real life--being a doer, not only a hearer, of the word that gives life. But the ways of doing that might not look exactly alike for every person. We should all try to judge others by the standards of the minimum, for if we judge others more s

By Charles Marsh "I have come to believe that when people do not agree with certain views, often it is not because they will not but because they cannot. Their minds do not frame the questions in such a way. It is of no use to charge people with willfulness in the matter."  I have touched upon this point before . People, in general, are rational, but their minds work differently. I have difficulty crediting some points of Roman Catholic "popular pieties." Relics and reliquaries leave me thinking the worshipers have missed the point, and a whole dead saint on display strikes me as macabre. I cannot pride myself, though. I have beliefs that are as disquieting to some of my fellow Christians: Some Christians think my own Charismatic orientation is something akin to delusional belief. The examples go on and on and throughout the church world. Calvinism is seen by some as an essential belief of true and correct Christianity, but only by some. There are more such

Christianity is rapidly losing the favored status in Western culture that it enjoyed for centuries. Looking forward, we can hope for God's grace as we find ourselves in situations comparable to what is experienced by Christians living elsewhere, under regimes hostile to the faith. We can no longer afford the luxury of bickering with one another over religious disputes now centuries old. We must join forces across denominational boundary lines. The simplest way to do that is to serve each other mutually and with mutual love, in practical ways that silence theological objections. Every faction will have to set aside some cherished prejudice or other: That is called humility. Christ's call to us is to love one another as he loves us. Let us all give thanks that he loves the imperfect follower and the flawed theologian. Who among us is perfect? If you refuse your aid to fellow Christians because they do not agree with everything in the Westminster Confession, or they do not un

"All three matters, that is, the prime importance of Christ's New Commandment, a need for de-escalation of theological disputes and a need for a robust definition of adiaphora seem to me the key points in seeking a united Christendom." "Elevator pitch" is business slang for a very short verbal presentation that explains a product or service you offer, or an idea you are trying to promote into reality. Your pitch should be to the point, as memorable as you can make it, and it should not attempt to close a sale then and there. Nor should it attempt to answer every possible question. Instead, you want to leave your hearer with something to think about. The scenario around which you frame your presentation, and from which the elevator pitch takes its name, is that you may find yourself riding an elevator with someone who potentially is interested in what you are selling. You want to convey to him a clear and arresting idea of what you have to offer before he rea

I return to my occasional subject of men, women and marriage, earthly mirror of Christ and the church, that great mystery. I do it with diffidence.  I cannot say I understand the mystery from either side. The heavenly mystery of the church as Christ's bride is difficult to understand. It could be I do not quite understand the earthly and commonplace side of it either. Women can be confusing to men: I expect that to pass muster as a self-evident proposition. When I do not understand something, storytelling may be more helpful to me than logical exposition. Here are some stories that seem cogent. The knight Fairhands (Beaumains) and Lady Linet From Malory's Arthur, the story of a knight assigned to serve and protect a woman who thinks he does nothing right. She nags and belittles and says King Arthur should have assigned her a better knight. He succeeds in his quest anyway, and weds her more appreciative sister, the noblewoman on whose behalf the nagging sister sought hel

Paradox, much beloved by critics of the faith and heretics, intentionally poses a question hard to answer. Can God create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it? The purpose is, of course, to say God is hemmed in: not capable of just anything he chooses. Score one for doubt. The above question is the same as the question of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. That is supposed to be an impressive question, but it has never happened, so it is only interesting to collectors of the pathological proposition type known as the paradox. I do not say paradox is paradoxical, for infinite recursion is a circular argument. Paradox, as I said at the outset, is a question hard to answer, or more properly, impossible to answer in its presented form. I would like to alert my readers to something very important about any paradox. No paradox can be a part of a logical argument. A paradox cannot have a truth value. That is the very reason it is a paradox. Thus it can

This is another of the wildly conjectural posts that my readers have come to know, and a few of them to love. I suppose it is clear to everyone in the West that Christianity no longer holds the favored status in society it once did.  The privileged place we held since Constantine is ours no more. I see some good in this. To begin with, a certain amount of cultural Christianity was always sham, for when you award social bonus points for piety, some will be pious merely for the points. As Christianity loses its place as a cultural institution and becomes countercultural, we shall shed a good many of our hypocrites. Another good aspect is that the power of the state will no longer align itself behind one side or the other in factional fights among Christians, something that historically did much harm, not least to the cause of Christian unity. Some denominations will not survive the loss of favored status that Christianity as a whole is experiencing. They will dry and wither and f

I now feel that any substantive progress toward unity in Christendom will involve our increased attention to Christ's new commandment, that we love one another as he has loved us. But I do not know what form that progress shall take, or the timing of it--dramatic revival and renewal now or slow progress over hundreds of years. What I have to say is, therefore, conjecture. Love on such a level is in the nature of a charism, and charismatic Christians will have an easier time understanding it than the rest of us. Perhaps they shall be the bellwethers in events to come. They are already aware of the idea of a charism as something you get from God to pass on to someone else, rather than generating it out of your own cleverness. Thus a word of knowledge or of wisdom, an utterance in tongues or its interpretation, or a contemporary prophecy, or any other spiritual gift, is in the nature of making a delivery of something that is good but not yours to start with--a gift is something gi

Interesting blog post from L'Espresso My reflection: The pope may not feel he has delegitimized China's underground Catholics, but that is exactly how the Beijing government will look at it in time to come. Losing and gaining face is an inscrutable concept lost on the popularity pope. 'via Blog this'

Don't leave home without it. If you do not forgive others, God will not forgive your errors. There is an odd aspect here that I think bears a look. It is not quite accurate to say that we forgive God, for he surely does no wrong, but we may become very angry at what he does or leaves undone. There are examples in the Bible of people bitter or angry at God, lest you think yourself the first. If we think hard enough about it, we will see that we already know that God works all things to good and when we cross the divide of death and see things from his eternal perspective, we will agree he did the right thing. We will see our anger at him as smallminded and shortsighted. Essentially we are trusting him to pay off the balance due. Of the harms and hurts we have endured he has said, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay." But to us, those who turn to him, he has promised his forgiveness for the sake of his son. Further, he has promised us that in the world to come he will w

I find my ideas have grown and changed in the years since I took up the question of Christian unity. I have found a consolidating theme for my reasoning, and single point of focus, in Christ's new commandment that we love one another as he has loved us. I now take as first principles that this commandment is an achievable goal and that in general, we are failing to achieve it. Starting from that point makes a clear question for us to examine. How and why are we failing? One or more of the following reasons may be at work in the lives and faiths of various people. I do not suppose the list is complete but it is a fair start. I may add to this list from time to time as more reasons occur to me. I should point out that I am guilty of any charge I make, below, or a great many of them, so this is not a matter of criticising from a superior stance. I would say we are all in this together. Reasons we fail at Christ's new commandment: We don't believe success is possible.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Wikipedia on Hanlon's razor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor On razor principles in general:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_(philosophy)

In the medieval era, Roman Catholicism became fascinated by elaborate reasoned arguments and took them to be the gold standard of theological truth. When the Protestant Reformation happened, the Protestant sects carried forward this tendency. Now there were several strands of argument, each claiming superiority. There is an underlying assumption in all of this that having the better argument means you have the better truth. I see this as an error of the Roman church, inherited by her Protestant daughter churches. Or, to put it another way, Protestants felt that in answering Rome they needed to be sophisticated in their arguments. It was, in their understanding, the way that theology needed to be done, with lots of complicated details worked out. The result? Root and branch, Western Christianity is obsessed with the intellect. Where this becomes a problem is at the point where intellectual justification supports unloving attitudes and actions. In the name of reasoned arguments, C

Well, well. I sought God for the answer to a thousand-year-old defect in the life of the church, he pointed me to a single verse in scripture that explains and solves the problem, and the answer was so simple that it took me a while to see it. He then pointed me to the echoes of that verse in the rest of scripture. Yes, it is official Christian doctrine that we are to love one another as Christ loves us. We don't, by and large. Well, there is my answer to the question I took up some years ago, the question of why we have a disunified Christendom and what we can do about it. I am going to take this ball and run with it, make it a personal crusade to show my answer to the brethren, for it seems to be an answer that has eluded the wise and learned but is the right one. Some, doubtless, are going to think me a crazy old man. While they may be right on other grounds, it is not crazy to say that the matter is in the scriptures, right there on the page, and our failures are obvious.

I have previously praised the Anglican demarcation of adiaphora, the most robust in all Christendom. I think everyone should adopt it, for it does not oppress minority views or unduly elevate the importance of the majority. Whatever else that church has gotten wrong, they are right about this. If a thing is not plain in scripture, it cannot be claimed as necessary to salvation, for the scriptures are clear about their claims in the matter. If we say something is necessary beyond what the apostles preached, we make them out to be false. In these pages I have used the phrase "enlightened ignorance" for the commendable practice of not supposing one's own understanding is going to be acceptable to everyone. Cultural differences and epistemic tendencies that vary with era, place and education mean that what is convincing to one person may not be to another. "One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be

There are various ideas in Christendom about just how Christ's death reconciles us to God. I find that to be expected and not a cause for concern. It is a big topic with more than a few loose ends in our knowledge. Our actual antagonists in the argument are those who deny any such reconciliation occurred. They say that Christ was only a political troublemaker the authorities did away with, and his followers sometimes still make trouble, or that Christ did not die on the cross at all, someone else did, and Christ was really a crypto-Moslem. The essential thing to know about the atonement is that it happened. Is it within our mental powers to say just how?

Many in today's church world do not fully honor Christ's new commandment to us. If we did, it would have the result he stated. Christ calls on us to love other Christians as he has loved us, and said that by this sign all people would know we are his disciples. He prayed that we all would be one, so that the world would know that the Father sent him. Applying Christ's standard makes theological disputes look different. The Thomist and the Reformed may never agree with one another, but they will characterize their differences differently if they love one another as Christ does. We should all hope fervently that Christ does not reject us when we have imperfect theological understandings! So the new commandment impacts theological differences, not to make any stance right that is wrong in fact, but to make whatever wrongness there is a matter between brothers not foes. There is no room for nonsense about torturing you for your own good, or burning you at the stake for th

Deconsider: To remove from further consideration; to treat something as an irrelevancy. Ex: "It is time to deconsider a number of ideas we formerly thought essential." The word looks very useful and I hope its use catches on. The church world is going to need to deconsider a number of cherished divisive notions. Re considering our baggage from the Great Schism, the Dark Ages and the Reformation does not seem to do much good. We just go round and round and end up at the same loggerheads we started at. The East will not have a papacy of supreme power, the Protestants think church history began in 1517, or at least did something very important in that year, the Catholics think themselves unassailably right because, well, they're Catholics, and going over all of that again is a waste of time for everyone.

I think most posts I make here from now on will be on the following pillar concepts. While it is always possible for God to surprise me, I think that future progress toward a unified Christendom, whatever shape that progress may take, will require our attention to these points. Learn the limits of intellect. If our strivings at wisdom result in division, just how wise does that show us to be?  Honor Christ's new commandment. Stop evading it by conflating it with "Love your neighbor as yourself." It's a different and more challenging concept.  Make the visible unification of Christendom your honest goal. Some people, if they were honest, would prefer keeping their own fiefdoms.

Tha apostle Paul assures us that God works all things to good for those who love the Lord, who are the called according to his purpose. On its face that is at times hard to believe.  Much happens that seems productive not of good but ill. The thing was written to encourage faith but it is capable of stirring doubts as well. But what if, in some circumstance, the good produced is not your own good? A friend of yours sees you bearing up under grievous trials, is impressed thinking that Christians have courage, and becomes a Christian himself. You have gained a friend for heaven and the future, and one would surely call that good. Or perhaps troubles that seem, in the present day, to be only harm and hurt are teaching you some lesson that will useful in the future. Perhaps when young you get injured badly and learn lessons in wound care in the worst way (but the way that teaches best), and later on, you will comfort someone else who is hurt or even save his life. Of course these mus

The angel said to John, "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." I always find that idea staggering, though I can see in the abstract that it has to be true. I and you and all the rest of the Christians are carrying around something holy and world-changing. The gospel's power to change hearts and lives is in God's Spirit, and we are charged with carrying the message around. No angel ever said that the reasoned disputations of theologians are the spirit of prophecy. I suppose my point lately has been that God's truth works sometimes through, but sometimes despite our human understandings, for it is higher than our thoughts and our ways, and we should be pleased if only our intellects do not draw us too often into an embarrassing lack of real insight. Did you ever wonder why the apostle Paul said the peace of God passes all understanding? What he said is a clue to something I try sometimes to say in these pages. There is more going on than we account 

Our Lord Jesus had something very revealing to say about false prophets: You shall know them by their fruits. He did not urge us to analyze the fine points of their reasoning or fault their grasp of systematic theology. Whatever they say, what they do won't turn out right. Notice that by pointing us to a test on that basis, he levels the intellectual playing field. Believers who might be fooled by a glib spokesman for a false idea need not be. They need only watch the result. I put a lot of stock in the test of results. I have seen Christians whose grasp of theology I find a bit lacking do works of mercy and kindness that make me take my hat off. I have also seen clever theologians support ideas that are unwholesome in practice when you look at what interests are actually served. In this connection I would cite recent Episcopalian revisions to the rite of marriage, which appear to be unhelpful even to those the revisions are meant to gratify. So even after we have reasoned wi

We cannot say "In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, and in all things charity" until we agree on what is, or isn't, a nonessential. Only one church has had the courage and foresight to hold an ironclad definition of adiaphora. I have now been thinking long enough about the problem of Christian unity to see the way forward to a solution. The first step on the journey is to find out what an essential of the faith is, and what is nonessential. Christians everywhere, and particularly those in the West, way overthink things. We have taken the simple offers and assurances made by the Savior and over-complicated them, sometimes in efforts to reassure ourselves that we really can believe them. The heavy-handed scholasticism of the medieval era gave way to a free-for-all in the Reformation era, as churches defined their differences from Rome, and each other, by means of often tedious philosophical demonstrations that, often, left Christians farther from one anoth

My thinking has veered in an odd direction due to some life trials that made no sense. If we are to trust God even when life takes on an absurdist air, when try as we might we cannot make sense of what is happening, we should ask what that says about our rationality and the role of intellect. There are times when our understanding fails us and only faith avails us anything. Finding that out has changed the way in which I approach ecumenism, and everything else. I was dropped into a series of circumstances that were on an objective level unreasonable, by which I mean they made no sense to me and would make no sense to anyone. I was tempted by the falsehood I have already described in these pages as the "bad daddy argument," in which we ask something like "where is God when things are so messed up?" One may even cry out, "Oh God, how could you?" Then the tempter invites us to conclude that God is not really there, or if he is, not on our side after all.