Subversive Christian Unity

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...

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...

Didache. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (translation Roberts-Donaldson). : The Didache is a short manual of Christian practice from the first century (or possibly the second). It is still of significance because it gives us important clues about the continuity of what we do and say in our times with what early Christians did and said. Christians back then had many of the same moral concerns as we do now: You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.   (Ch. 2) They recognized, perhaps more clearly than we do today, the problems associated with money-grubbing false teachers: Let every apostle who comes to you be received as the Lord. But he shall not remain more than one day; or two days, if there's a need. But if he remains ...

This is a duck. I, of course, as a Christian with Pentecostal leanings, am hard to sell on cessationism . It is like explaining to a duck farmer that ducks are extinct, like the dodo. So, what is that pudgy bird I just saw waddling by and quacking? The cessationist can only answer that what I saw isn't really a duck. On such a view, a word of knowledge that proves true and useful was just a really good hunch. Something similar is said of a prophetic utterance that brings clearer light to a situation--it was just really good extemporaneous preaching manufactured by the speaker's subconscious. Tongues in contemporary use are simply gibberish and interpretations are the same, or at best, like the so-called prophecy, a sensitive use of intuition. A great concern of cessationist theology is that new prophecy might somehow undermine the authority of scripture. But how can that be, when real deal Pentecostals and charismatics use scripture as their yardstick? The canon is clo...

Pope Francis has veered  all over the place in his public statements, making some remarks that are later walked back by his church. These statements have been, in general, political ploys, to garner headlines and popularity: about gays, about socialism, about capitalism, and so on. Here, though, he is not playing to the grandstand of political opinion but speaking on a spiritual topic. He is here addressing Catholicism's Charismatic Renewal in remarks made earlier this month. I do not think this one will need walking back. Read his full remarks at the link below; I have quoted the parts I find most interesting with respect to this blog's mission and focus. Pope's Address to Charismatic Renewal | ZENIT - The World Seen From Rome : (Excerpt) "There is another strong sign of the Spirit in Charismatic Renewal: the search for unity of the Body of Christ. You, Charismatics, have a special grace to pray and work for Christian unity, because the current of grace go...

Charismatic believers have a great deal to offer, in the area of Christian unity and in others. The problem is that much of the rest of the church world looks at charismatic Christianity askance, knowing all about the aberrations but little about the sincere and, indeed, holy people who represent the movement at its best. I previously described a general structural problem with the charismatic movement, its failure to keep its own house in order. When some preacher (perhaps self appointed) starts spewing nonsense from his pulpit, the voices rising against him are few and easily drowned out in the general hubbub. What the public hears is the nonsense: The service of God requires that the preacher have a fast and fancy Gulfstream bizjet. You will be blessed if you give. That kind of thing owes to a lack of hierarchy and accountability; in the charismatic church world, preachers are often autonomous. There is no wise bishop to step in and tell an aberrant preacher to take a year in...

I'd like to build upon an idea I kicked around previously, and expand on it a bit. If the presence of the true church can be detected when you see believers cooperatively using their spiritual gifts, thus manifesting the body of Christ on earth, it points to an avenue to consider in the journey toward church unity. Like so many things I discuss, my idea here will not get us all the way to our goal, but I think this idea may well give us all a healthy push in the right direction. It would look something like unity, if a rough and ready kind of unity, if people used their gifts together across the boundary lines of church denomination, communion membership, theological predilection and other such impediments. You see a bit of this already, but most instances of it relate to short term responses to singular events like a disaster relief or the crusade of a famous evangelist coming to town. What I am thinking of is established, stable ministry cooperatives, interde...

Every now and then I find it useful to pause and consider what I think about various topics. What is useful about it is that I separate my own judgment from what I have been told. I know what my church believes about ecclesiology, and I may even  have a pretty good grasp of what various other churches think. But what do I think? The question takes in what I can fully endorse based on the limits of my own grasp of matters. It could be that a wiser man or a better informed one would have a better opinion, but that is not the issue here. What can I confidently affirm, with the light I possess at this point in my life? The church, in the sense of the mystical body of Christ on earth, consists in Christians cooperatively using their spiritual gifts to advance the work of God's kingdom on earth. And that is all. If there is more to it I can't see it. By implication, wherever you have Christians serving together in the Spirit and by their gifts, there is the church. The contr...

For a long time I hoped the charismatic movement would spur all the churches forward toward greater unity, since there are Protestants, Orthodox and Catholics who are charismatics. That should, one would think, produce a cadre of people who have a shared context to discuss the work of God's people and the direction God is leading his one church, for centuries divided. As a charismatic anthem has it, We are one in the Spirit. We are one in the Lord. And we pray that all unity May one day be restored, And they'll know we are Christians By our love, by our love. Yes, they'll know we are Christians By our love. The problem is that the charismatics have not kept their house in order. False prophecies, fake faith healers, and several eruptions of doctrinal nonsense of self serving kinds, mar the movement's image in the eyes of the rest of Christendom, and shake whatever unity the charismatics have among themselves. The only solution I see is for the charisma...