Subversive Christian Unity

Matt. 20:25-28 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” We have failed at this, as abjectly as we have failed at unity. Theories of who has authority in the church are as numerous as church denominations. Of course it is a point church leaders are unwilling to debate. Their own authority and prestige are at stake, so it's quickly on to another topic when this one comes up. The Pope using for an official title "Servant of the servants of God" is unconvincing to Protestants, especially so because the phrase sometimes has prefaced declarations not very servant-like. There is no cause and no need to single out ...

Here's a question about our hidden assumptions. If we reason using our God-given faculty for reasoned argument, does the premise bless the outcome? That is to say, if our premise is revealed truth from God, does our conclusion take on the character of revealed truth? Or is it still just human reason, having for its subject something God revealed? This question is a knife with a greasy handle. You must be careful with it or you will cut yourself. You can answer either yes or no to the above challenge, but is your answer consistently carried out in all your beliefs? My thought on the matter is that twenty centuries on from the start, theologians still argue. It is in their job description; they devise and defend arguments. Rather than grace and peace, this has brought us strife and division, or at the least prolonged them. Thus it seems to me a hopeless hope to wait for theologians to solve our differences, for that is so very far from the work they do and the tools they ...

One is saved by seeing that Jesus told the truth about himself and his mission. The joy of that is something we can celebrate in common. In this entry I rehash some points I have already made. The idea is to try to stir up some interest in a thought experiment. What would happen if all the churches of Christendom agreed that all public preaching and discussion would be limited to only the kerygmatic core of Christianity? Discussion of any further matters would take place only among believers, and then only if it could be done respectfully. For reasons detailed elsewhere in this blog, and touched upon in this post, I think that is an essential step toward Christian unity. As matters now stand, the unsaved have a hard time understanding what the gospel is and isn't, because different churches preach it differently, with various amounts of extraneous detail. If we all spoke one message, leaving out the extraneous points on which we differ, it would at least be clearer to t...

Prophecies are oftentimes clearer after their fulfillment than before. Consider the many Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah. What reader of those words, in the days when they were written, could have predicted precisely what would happen to fulfill them? In Jesus' earthly ministry, some people disbelieved him because he did not quite match what they expected from their reading of the prophets. There are several responsibly held views about the thousand year period spoken of in Rev. ch. 20. What we read there is a prophecy that surely will be a good deal clearer after the fact. I suggest people stop arguing about it, except in a friendly fashion and in private. I suggest we wait and see. It is the kind of dispute that we should never air before unbelievers. It does not help them. It tells them nothing of what they really need to know if they are to be saved. It distracts them from the idea that there really is one Lord whom all real...

Can a Christian be a socialist? Of course, for anyone may become a Christian. But with conversion comes growth and change. One's old ideas are all on the line. One's former beliefs and tenets are challenged. A well grounded Christian exposes all his views to God's critique and finds that no man can serve two masters. Mammon, whether wearing the mask of capitalism or socialism, must not hold sway. Socialism begins in covetousness and ends in misery. It is Mammon's cleverest mask. Socialism is obsessed with money--other people's money, and how to demand it from them and spend it for them. Its hallmark is boundless enthusiasm for society's future, but the glorious socialist future never arrives. If you look at socialism in history, you see that it promises comfort to the poor, but ends up oppressing everybody. We must not imagine that supporting socialism absolves a Christian of his responsibility for personal giving; care for the poor is not a matter where we...

The key question in church unity is whether our love for Christ will ever be reflected in our love for one another. We have not placed our unseen spiritual kinship ahead of our earthly differences. In essence, I am talking about overvaluing our theology and church politics and undervaluing one other. When we all get to heaven we will know that we have each made mistakes on religious questions, of just the sorts on which we now judge one another, and separate ourselves from one another. Jesus gave us a new commandment, that we love one another. If we do that fully, it will simplify a great many questions that now divide us, because it will be less important to insist that you are right and everyone else is wrong. Do you do that with members of your own family? Shout always that you are right? And what is the result?

No theological question is more divisive among Christians than the question of Holy Communion. It is celebrated in different ways and explained in different ways. I would like to show that there is a viewpoint from which three different views of the rite are compatible. I explain this in terms of subsets. The simpler views of Protestants are included within the higher understanding claimed by the Catholic. Thus the Catholic cannot say the Protestants are altogether wrong, only that their views are incomplete. The Protestants, for their part, can say that they agree with much of what the Catholic believes, but find the doctrine of transubstantiation a bridge too far for their own way of understanding things. The Orthodox churches are similarly in the position of believing much of what the Catholics believe, but not all of it. They stop short of endorsing the Catholic view of transubstantiation, saying that at some point the question disappears into the realm of holy mys...

The pope has retired, in a move that is unusual but not unprecedented. It is certainly right to pass on the mantle to another when you know you have given all you can, your efforts are flagging and your own exhaustion limits your effectiveness. I've felt that way too, and as one of fewer years and much narrower responsibilities. I wish him a blessed and peaceful retirement. I hope he will be able to do some writing. I would like to read more from him, particularly on Christian unity. He surprised me by taking a profound interest in the matter. I was expecting that Joseph Ratzinger, the hard line theologian, would be rigidly doctrinaire as pope. But as Benedict he opened his arms outward and acknowledged, to a degree that surprised me, that there is one Lord, of faith, one baptism. My Latin is so appallingly bad that at first I misread the title of the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus , thinking it concerned English rocketry. Fortunately there is an English translat...

The "home to Rome" approach to unity has something wrong with it, and it is that commonality of confession and worship did not produce true unity when we had them. In working toward Christian unity, we should frequently examine what the goal is. Here is what Christ prayed for us (John ch. 17): My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Some see in this the need for unity in the official understanding of all main points of doctrine, in the celebration of sacraments and in the form of worship, but I think that view of unity can at least...

Here is, perhaps, something all Christians can agree on. The highest good is to honor God in all you do. Few of us manage to do that by more than fits and starts, none of us manages to do it full time, but that is the ideal. As it turns out, honoring God in our actions works out to our own good. Some people may question this.  If we are patient and kindly rather than harsh and cruel, generous rather than grasping and greedy, honest and forthright rather than shifty and deceptive, how will we ever get ahead in life that way? I suppose the answer depends upon whom you are trying to get ahead of. The leading runner in the rat race is still a rat. When we practice virtue, the advantage to us is that we become in the process something beautiful, little signs or harbingers of God's kingdom, clues to the clueless that there is something beyond this life and its cares; we are people "in the world but not of it." We see the world in a truer light. Its pains and woes are ligh...