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