Subversive Christian Unity

In previous posts, here  and here , I put forth the problem of unrequited love between man and woman as analogous to people's rejection of God's love, and their condemnation to an eternity without God's favor as the result. It is not a perfect analogy but I think it is a sensible one. If the church is the bride of Christ, it is safe to say that those who reject him hold no such status--they could if they would, but they won't. This is rather like the situation of my unhappy young friend Jack. Anna could be the bride of Jack, if she would have it so, but she simply won't. Who in this world is (are) the bride of Christ? I would say, in a genial and ecumenical spirit, that it is all who love the Lord in sincerity. (Eph. 6:24) No narrower definition, such as just Catholics or just Protestants or only left handed evangelical Baptists, really does justice to what scripture is trying to tell us. Christ loves you. Love him back--the real Christ and not some false image o...

No church unity movement will be able to unify the true body of believers with the heretical sect, the petty doctrinaire know-it-all church or the church existing as a cultural artifact not a spiritual body. The problem is that the wheat and chaff are different, in important ways that make them impossible to reunite once you have separated them. In the so-called Christian West, some churches are going to be left behind on the road to unity. But is unity really unity if some are left out of it? I am going out on a limb and saying that it is indeed valid unity if some do not participate. Things alike cannot be made one with unlike things. Jesus' prayer "that they all may be one" requires some limitation on who and what "they" are and close attention to what "one" means.  If we make the mandate endlessly expansive we find ourselves embarked on a journey through the land of paradox. Faithful and faithless are two things, and two things cannot be made on...

Some people's reaction to the ideas I talk about here is that I must be a latitudinarian indifferentist . I deny the charge. I think there is exactly one right answer to any theological proposition. That said, we Christians do not seem to be very good at agreeing on what the answers are. I think of myself as a realist. Unity is of a higher priority than uniformity. We can't get uniformity, in the sense of lockstep agreement on every doctrinal question someone may think up and claim is important to him. Can we get to unity without that sort of uniformity? It must be possible. Christ would not call us to unity if there were no way for it to happen. We should extend to each other a bit more charity and tolerance when our reasoning does not line up, one's with another's. There are great questions on which all Christians are bound to agree, else we are not Christians at all, and then there are lesser questions. "In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, and in...