Looking forward

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 given downward from above.

I do not think charismatics will be the only ones to catch on to the importance of the new commandment, but they already have a bit of analogous example to work from. I think the matter will over time become clear in practice to any Christian who tries to love others in his own strength and fails, and then tries it instead in terms of God's love understood in the manner of Rom 5:5: "God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."

If you like, God's love is something contagious; we catch it from him before passing it on to others. We take flame from his fire. I am not sure that God's brand of selfless love is even possible to a human heart that is not inspired by him.

My feeling is that I have the broad outlines of the picture of how church unity will make progress, but none of the details drawn in. As I said, this post is a conjecture. All I really know is that the way forward involves increased attention to Christ's new commandment and what it means. We will not get much farther forward than we already have by appointing more of the same kinds of Ecumenical Committees that have poked at questions of doctrine and practice and toleration for so many years. The problem calls for stronger medicine.

Well! I do not know where the road now leads, but at least I can point to its beginning.

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