A short summary of my views

My stance basically stated is that the way forward to unity in the church world is Christ's New Commandment: Love one another as he loved us. We need to work on that first within our own fellowships; in some church congregations the members already do rather well at loving one another, some other churches need to do more in that direction, but I don't think anyone has perfected it. Perhaps it is always a work in progress. Then we need to expand our scope to love those who are "not like us," by loving Christians outside our particular denominations. This is a matter of seeing our spiritual kinship and honoring it for the amazing thing it is, and also a matter of serving one another in worldly and practical ways. (Read what the New Testament has to say about serving the brethren, and then read that as all the brethren.)

Doing all that will lead us to a better understanding of our dogma divisions, simply because we are rubbing shoulders with one another. I think we will positively influence the direction of one another's thinking. Realizing with other Christians a unity like unto Christ's unity with the Father will, I think, militate against a merely memorialist view of holy communion, for the things are related. But questions about uniting believers in matters of administration and church government, such as the quest for formal intercommunion, can be left for a later time. First, we need to love and serve.

In some matters, we may decide that the differences in dogma that have separated us are not so weighty as, historically, the separated church denominations have thought them to be. There is room to live and let live, within many topics. It is difficult to argue that something is an essential of the faith when you see Christians around you, loving the Lord and building his kingdom, who do so without embracing that particular doctrine. It may be that they are in error, but it is not a fatal error. For example, I do not believe as Roman Catholics do about purgatory. I do not believe there is such a place, but my Catholic friends assure me that I will when I get there.

I think that the test I proposed in a previous post is a good one. If a belief comes to us from the first-century apostolic community and is necessary to salvation, that is something we can expect any Christian to believe. Anyone who holds the Christian essentials to be found in the first-century message is doing something wonderful, for he is a new creation, and your brother.

I ought to show the distinction between my view and the view called primitivism or restorationism. I don't think the way forward is to try to return the church to somebody's idea of first-century practice in a limiting sense: the idea that we should view later practices and theological insights as things to turn away from. Too many people see value in aspects of their particular Christian heritages for primitivism ever to work as a scheme for uniting the church world. All of them would complain that their favorite parts of tradition had been thrown out.

Instead, what I am saying is that the faith once for all delivered to the saints is still at the core of any variety of Christianity that can save you. That does not mean that nothing useful or interesting has developed since the first century. My devotional life is enriched by the Book of Common Prayer, but the first Christians never heard of it, for it came out in the sixteenth century. I intend to keep my book, for it distills valuable lessons of the preceding Christian centuries and makes them accessible. If I cannot think what to pray, I generally can find something useful in there. Likewise, some other developments since the first century may help us along the narrow way; the Eastern Orthodox derive much godly inspiration from their hagiographies, for example. But such things would lack validity and force without their foundation in the faith of the apostles.

There are many obstacles to loving one another as Christ would have us do it. But I cannot think he has asked us for the impossible. He has, instead, called us to something wonderful.

For more detail on these matters, please have a look at https://subversiveunity.blogspot.com/2019/07/roundup-time.html .