United in mind and judgment?

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 centuries made it easier to have disagreements. As details were filled in during the creation of various theological points of view or schools of thought, there were more and more points to ponder and more objections became possible. If there are a thousand points to consider, that invites more disagreements than a hundred points.

Fast-forward to the twenty-first century: We find we have over the centuries picked up quite a lot of religious thought as baggage along the way and, while much of it shows a certain coherence, many different thinkers asking the same questions, some of the answers differ. Doubtless our differences are, in the main, heartfelt and sincere, but they are differences. They easily become points of division and in past eras were the cause of much strife.

For some people the answer here is easy, the elaborated reasonings of their own church or faction are the right ones. To have peace on the matter everyone should embrace that theology and throw away the rest. I am not so sure. I think it likely that the problem is the elaboration itself. Things have gotten too complicated. Notice that Paul's plea for unity is to all the Christians in Corinth. Surely not all of them were capable of following complex theological reasoning of the kinds found in much later eras of the church. They did not need to, to do what Paul said. Corinth's Christians would have included the ordinary people and the unsophisticated thinkers that make up most of Christendom in any era.

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. . . (1 Cor 1:26-27)

My point here is not based in anti-intellectualism. I think thinking about things is great. I think the type of thinking we've tended to do, though, is the wrong type. We should seek simplicity not elaboration. We should look for points of unquestionable truth, and not unquestionable because we have declared them so: I mean the truth we are looking for is simple and profound.