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*To more fully understand the conclusions in this post, see my introductory post on Christian unity, followed by reflections on the meaning, visibility, priority, benefits, and basis of our unity in Jesus.

My modest aim here is to ramble off a few scattered, disjointed implications that flow out of my arguments about unity in previous posts.  They seem to be logical inferences to me, granting of course the legitimacy of the trajectory of this series.  Without further ado, here are some things that strike me as important—even crucial—for Christians to ponder who are interested in pursuing biblical unity.

1.) The Necessity Of Defining The Gospel Rightly

This flows directly out of what I argued about what constitutes the basis of Christian unity—namely, the gospel plus nothing.  I do not mean to minimize or detract from the importance of other secondary theological convictions and disputes withinin the church of Jesus Christ.  These are legitimate and not to be cheaply dismissed.  All truth about God matters practically for the life of the people of God.  Yet only the gospel is central.  Only the gospel binds together sinners within the household of faith.

Therefore, we must be clear on what the gospel is.  What must be held to affirm it, and what must not be rejected in order to possess it?  Few questions, if any, matter more in reality than these if Christianity is true.  Note:  Not what must be held to grasp the ideal gospel, or the gospel in all its glorious fullness, but rather the core thrust of it.  What divides Romans 14 and Galatians 1:6-9?  Finally, we must be equally zealous to prevent both additions to and subtractions from the gospel.  Both will soon suffocate the unity Jesus and his holy apostles call us to.

The gospel is the sole boundary marker of the people of God.  Yet the protective spiritual fence it sets up—keeping out impostors and keeping in the faithful who differ from us in serious ways—is contingent on recognizing its true contours.  If we do not know and love the gospel in all its simplicity and sufficiency, the unity of the body of Christ is doomed.

2.) There Are No Second-Class Christians. 

This may seem an underwhelming thought to many—perhaps even ludicrously obvious—but this maturing conviction has impacted me the most over the past year.  How simple the thought is, yet how profound and far-ranging in its consequences if taken even a little bit seriously.

This category simply does not exist.  There is no gray area here.  There are no “almost” Christians, or 78% Christians, or—most importantly—no “yes, but” Christians.  You know what I mean here—that favored category of so many Western Christians today, referring to the type of professing believer who through gritted teeth we reluctantly admit are probably “in” and therefore our brothers and sisters in Christ, but are so different from us theologically and culturally and practically that we create this third category to place them comfortably in and thus keep them far from our actual lives.  Here, as petty second-class Christians, they can bother and threaten us no longer.  Relegating them to this category, we can rationalize our divisions from them and our lack of fellowship with them.

N. T. Wright has argued lucidly in his writings that justification by faith alone apart from works is the great Christian doctrine of unity.  This truth declares that all those who by faith confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and that God raised him from the dead—whether Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free, Democrat or Republican, black or white—make up one new people in Christ, through Christ, and on the basis of Christ.  They belong at the same table—the very mistake Peter condemned himself with at Antioch in Galatians 2.  We are justified by believing in this Jesus alone, not by believing the exact right thing about justification by faith alone.  All the difference in the world lay between those rival conceptions of fidelity to the gospel.  When we construct extra conditions and barriers to sharing in the right hand of fellowship for other believers, we undermine the very gospel which announces that all Christians are saved by grace alone and by nothing else.

I encourage and challenge you to consider how many of your justifications for withholding fellowship and for prolonging our old, worn out schisms between various denominations are implicitly due to this fictional category being foisted illegitimately upon the New Testament.  A person is either a Christian, or not.  On the basis of the gospel, you are either to embrace them fully as a fellow brother and sister, or not at all.  Let us repent of every other attitude in between, and the denial of the gospel such attitudes must always represent.

3.) We Must Be Balanced In Our Commitment To Both Truth And Unity, Not Resort to Playing Them Off Against One Another

One of the reasons pleas for unity can leave a bad taste in the mouths of orthodox Christians is because they so often see theological liberals parading an ecumenical banner that strongly downplays (if not outright distorting) the truth of the gospel.  This “unity” is founded on something entirely other than Jesus and the gospel, and conservatives rightly reject it.[1]  However, conservative Christians can allow this travesty to send them hurtling in unwarranted reaction towards another false extreme—using love for the “truth” as a get-out-of-jail-free card from ever having to take the demands of our unity in Christ seriously.[2]  There is a way of being “gospel-centered” (to use currently popular terminology) that is actually parochial, sectarian and—in the end—undermining to the gospel itself.

Therefore, we must beware of these twin dangers[3] and strive to steer along the faithful middle course.  As Ben Witherington insightfully notes:

“There is always a tension in the church between unity among believers and truth as it is understood and held by believers.  Protestantism has tended to hold up Truth, with a capital T, while intoning unity with a lowercase u, with the end result that Protestant churches and denominations have proved endlessly divisive and factious.  On the other hand, Catholicism and Orthodoxy have held up Unity with a capital U, and at least from a Protestant viewpoint this has been at the expense of Truth.  In other words, no part of the church has adequately gotten the balance between truth and unity right, it would seem.” (John’s Wisdom: A Commentary on the Fourth Gospel, p. 274)

So for the sake of the truth of the gospel, we must not minimize biblical doctrines on the basis of (merely) pragmatic concerns for superficial unity.  The end game is not worth it, for it simply will not be Christian unity we arrive at.  Yet for the sake of the unity of the body, we must not allow our theological “hobby horses,” focused as they are on secondary albeit important doctrines, to function as perpetual safeguards against actually obeying Jesus.

Practically, this means that we must not endlessly stall our efforts at reunification until we are all exactly on the same page on a thousand doctrinal points.  Not only will this never happen in this age, but it is entirely misguided.  Another way of saying this is that we must learn to appreciate the enormous difference between Luke 9:49-50[4] and Luke 11:23.[5]  That some followers of Jesus are not comprehensively aligned with other believers in their every sentiment and agenda is in no way equivalent to their being against Christ himself, nor is it validation for so treating them.  Only a corrosive party spirit is capable of equating the two scenarios.

“Authentic commitment to unity is always commitment to unity in the truth of faith and doctrine.  When truth and unity are played off against one another, both are misrepresented.” (In One Body Through the Cross: The Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity, p. 44)

Pursue the unity of the church because you love the truth of the gospel.

4.) What Ought We To Do About Denominations?

This is the one “implication” I intentionally write out as a question rather than as an indicative statement, simply because I am not confident I have much to offer by way of answers or a proper perspective here.  On the one hand, I feel the practical usefulness of denominations, and find it hard to disagree with those who contend that they are functionally necessary in the life of the church for doctrinal and practical reasons.  What a grand mess we would be in if they disappeared tomorrow!  Yet on the other hand, I don’t want what feels inevitable and necessary and—yes—even “normal” at this late stage of church history to dictate what the Scriptures can or cannot teach, or what God might be saying to the churches today through the Spirit.

Here are the two primary critiques of denominations I perceive to be unanswerable.  First, they violate the New Testament framework of dividing Christians up into various communities of faith on the basis of only 1.) faith in Christ and 2.) geographical location.  This pattern does not strike me as mere happenstance in the apostolic era, but rather as reflecting a deep and abiding conviction about the nature and spiritual makeup of God’s people.  Yet today, geography plays at best a minor role in the minds of most Western Christians when deciding what community to belong to.  Second, this leads unsurprisingly to the widespread mindset that there are many other matters besides the gospel that ought to divide and separate Christians from one another.  Identifying second-class Christians and erecting new denominations are like fire and smoke.  Given the one, the other can never be far behind.  The willpower needed to keep these two separate eludes most mere mortals.

At the bare minimum, I think we should be able to affirm this conviction: “Whatever value Protestant denominationalism may have conserved, and whatever potency for good it may have had, it is in itself a deformed growth.” (J. I. Packer, “The Doctrine and Expression of Christian Unity,” p. 38).  If the body of Christ had been faithful, this development would never have arisen.

The institutional structure of the church is a notoriously complicated thing.  I freely confess that I have no expertise here, and even less certainty about what to actually do about it.  Yet it seems to me that Christians must be ready to question their most cherished traditions and habits of thought in light of the gospel.  Who among us has ever really taken seriously the idea that denominational divisions might be inherently sinful and opposed to the prayer of Jesus in John 17?  Who among us would be willing to do what was necessary, no matter how difficult and costly, if that indeed turned out to be the case?  Sometimes I muse, in my more idealistic moods, that the most appropriate strategy we could implement would be to insist that individual local churches be divided exclusively along geographical lines, rather than denominational, theological, racial or cultural ones.  I wonder what would it look like if we insisted that all Christians were required to participate in the closest community of believers in their given neighborhoods, and then once gathered simply instructed with this exhortation: now deal with it, with the resources available to you in Christ and through the Spirit.  It would certainly make the New Testament letters come more alive with their problems and promises.

5.) Strive To Balance Idealism With Realism (and vice versa!)

We grasp this principle—sometimes called “incrementalism”—in other spheres of life, such as in politics or economics.  Many of us intuitively feel the tension between the high ideals of the New Testament vision for the people of God, and the counterbalancing reality of the remaining sin and social complexities of life in a fallen world.  What we need is the freedom to hold our ideals without compromise, yet “settle” for making tiny differences one slow step at a time.

This balancing act is further necessitated by the recognition that–as inherently tortuous the actual implementation of Christian unity is in itself–it is that much harder for us today given the veritable mess of modern church history that stands behind us.  The earliest Christians found unity difficult to carry out, in spite of the fact that they were starting from scratch.  How much more so for us who stand on the far side of thousands of denominational rifts and bitter doctrinal controversies.  A parallel (at least to my mind) that is perhaps appropriate to mention here is the Pauline contrast between Adam and Christ.  This is not a proportional contrast, as N. T. Wright adeptly sees:

“Christ did not begin where Adam began…God’s action in the Messiah did not start where Adam’s started, and, as it were, merely get things right this time.  God’s action in the Messiah began at the point where Adam’s ended—with many sins, and many sinners.” (N. T. Wright, Romans, p. 524, 28)

In the same vein, just as Jesus did not get to start with a clean slate but assumed responsibility for the mass sum of human sin in history, we must not only learn the rythms of unity afresh today, but simultaneously unlearn centuries of nasty, unbiblical habits and ways of thinking that have been ingrained in the collective consciousness of the Western church, and surreptitiously bequeathed to us.  None of us are able—let alone in a position to be able to realistically try!—to reunite Protestants and Catholics and Eastern Orthodox tomorrow, merely by virtue of our sincere intentions.  Let’s acknowledge that readily.   Yet we can be satisfied with nothing short of that.  Therefore, let’s get to work in our own local spheres of influence, and seek the unity of the body of Christ in our own local congregations and fellowships.  That is where most of us can have the most long-term, significant influence.

6.) Above All Else, We Must Seek The Face Of The Lord

It is tempting to think that if we could muster up the cleverest techniques and strategies, and also at the same time possess the soundest, sanest theology in the world, unity would therefore automatically follow with ease.  Reality has harshly disproved this sentiment time and time again.  These things are necessary, but not sufficient.  If they were, genuine unity would be possible without genuine followers of Jesus.

Chiefly, we must love Jesus more than anything else.  Just as most of the divisions in the world between Christians arise not from the complexity of the issues (how many lay Christians in any given denomination actually know well, let alone zealously hold to, the doctrinal distinctives of their respective group?), nor legitimate theological differences, but rather from spiritual immaturity, selfishness and misguided priorities,[6] so the opposite holds true.  When Spirit-generated holiness and humility are once more the “normal” mark of Christians when they gather together to worship and serve, unity will be the inevitable byproduct.  Until then, our divisions are symptoms alerting us to a much graver spiritual diagnosis.  Medicate accordingly.

As the sum of the matter, this much is plain: loving God and obeying His commandments will exist together, or not at all.  They are related to each other as the fruit and the root of all Christian living.  If we are not obeying His clearest commands (such as the call for unity) but manufacturing myriad excuses for flagrantly violating them with a pristinely clear conscience, then the most obvious explanation is that we do not really love Him above all other things..  Similarly, if we hope to obey His commands, we must first love Him with all of our hearts.  We cannot skip this step.

If you are one who desires to see the unity of the body of Christ arise with new power and a fresh appearance in this generation, then love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strength, and with all your soul.  Nothing else will avail, and here there are no shortcuts.

[1] “…when the teaching or behavior of other Christians is so captive to worldly powers that the gospel is falsified, true unity demands rejection of such behavior, not accommodation.” (In One Body Through the Cross: The Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity, p. 30)

[2] Here the wise words of C. S. Lewis ought to be heeded: “For my own part I hate and distrust reactions not only in religion but in everything.  Luther surely spoke very good sense when he compared humanity to a drunkard who, after falling off his horse on the right, falls off it next time on the left.” (“The World’s Last Night”)

[3] “The gospel gift and promise of unity exclude both divisive sectarianism and liberal indifference.” (In One Body Through the Cross: The Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity, p. 29)

[4] “John answered, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us.” But Jesus said to him, “Do not stop him, for the one who is not against you is for you.”

[5] “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”

[6]  “It is noticeable that the obstacles to which the New Testament constantly points are not institutional, but personal—lack of love, and care, and forbearance; pride and party spirit; unwillingness to maintain liberty for the other man’s conscience in secondary matters, even though you judge him to be in the wrong.” (J. I. Packer, “The Doctrine and Expression of Christian Unity,” p. 40)

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6 Responses

  2. Jordan Monge

    I’m going to go through each section with my thoughts.

    1) You’re correct that we must define the gospel rightly, but you don’t give a very clear definition of the gospel. There’s no portion of the Bible where they sit down and say, “The five essential points of the gospel are x, y, and z.” The closest we get is 1 Cor 15, where Paul says the issues of “first importance” include the physical facts about Christ’s death, resurrection, and the witnesses to such facts. No where does he mention justification by faith or repentance or baptism or any other important doctrines.

    Then again, the first thing that Christ teaches is “repent for the Kingdom in heaven is near” (Matthew 4:17). Or, in Mark 1:15, he says, “Repent and believe the gospel.” So even though Jesus distinguishes between repentance and the gospel, he preaches repentance first. So is it possible that the mark of a Christian with whom we should be unified is more than simply belief in the gospel? What if a Christian professes belief in the gospel but doesn’t preach repentance?

    Also, it seems like if the gospel is what unites us, then we should accept Christians who take different approaches to hermeneutics which would perhaps lead them to conclude that it is acceptable to have women in leadership or to marry gay couples… so how does one deal with those circumstances?

    2) So even though there are no “second-class” Christians, it seems like there are Christians in danger of not being saved. To the Ephesians, Christ says, “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.” (Revelation 2:5) If there are lukewarm Christians who don’t want to truly take up their cross daily, how should one respond?

    The problem that I encounter is that in the NT, people often listened to each other when there were areas of disagreement. In Acts 18, Apollos appears to listen when Priscilla and Aquila “explained to him the way of God more adequately.” In Acts 19, the disciples in Ephesus listen when Paul tells them about baptism into Christ. What does one do when Christians don’t listen to each other? What if we are in a perpetual state of disagreement? If Apollos or the disciples in Ephesus had not listened, how would they have been treated?

    3) I don’t think that people *want* to stall efforts at unification just to pursue their doctrinal “hobby horses” – it’s rather that they disagree on what doctrines are essential. Most people wouldn’t say we have to agree on THAT many points of doctrine – who cares whether you believe in penal or governmental substitutionary atonement? So again, a lot of it comes down to defining the gospel or what is essential to “truth.”

    4) I actually agree with you that it would be good to divide solely on the basis of geographical lines. I think it would be an interesting experiment and would force us to practice real love a lot more. Also, if we’re called to be brothers and sisters in Christ, I think proximity forces us to practice living as a real family more. (My only concern would be that isolation could cause other problems; I think it’s been good for me to be in a fellowship which draws people from across the Boston area instead of only dealing with Harvard students.)

    5) I’m not sure if Catholics and Protestants could ever be truly united. I, for one, would never accept papal authority, and I know many Catholics who would never give it up. So how do we reconcile?

    6) Also, I think we have to fundamentally love each other. One of the problems with dividing into groups is that the less interaction you have with someone, the more easily you can demonize them (this is why people are way more mean on the internet than they would be in person). So I think if we focus on Jesus and grasp that we are called to love ALL MEN, and especially our brothers in Christ, we will be a lot better off on this issue. At least, even if we don’t unite in the tangible ways that you envision, our spirit will be more harmonious if we focus on our love for one another in spite of the differences.

  3. Nick

    Jordan, thanks for your extensive thoughts! I will say that it seems most of your points are directly connected to the fact that I (very intentionally) did not try to define the gospel here, which in my take on unity is so crucial. Perhaps I’ll do another series at some point on this, but as necessary as this is, I didn’t feel it would be helpful to open up another big can of worms as complicated and intense as that here at the end of this series.

    I think you’re right, too, that a giant problem is that different Christians perceive different doctrines to be worth fighting over to radically differing degrees. Of course no one actually self-consciously THINKS they are beating a hobby horse into the ground, instead of faithfully defending the gospel! 🙂 C. S. Lewis’ line in the intro to Mere Christianity is brilliant here: one of the main disagreements Christians have with each other is how important their disagreements are. This requires a lot of thought, and returns the burden of engagement to thinking very carefully over 1.) what must be absolutely affirmed to possess the gospel and 2.) what absolutely cannot be denied without losing it. I actually do think that we can be fairly certain on both of these questions, given both Scripture and church history.

    As for Catholics and Protestants, I completely agree with you, as do almost all Catholics and all Protestants in the world past and present. My plea would not be to minimize the differences and merge tomorrow, but rather, to point out that we cannot be satisfied until both groups can see eye to eye on enough things to begin fellowshiping again–as unlikely or even impossible that is from a human perspective. Like you, I think papal authority–at least, if taken consistently and seriously–is a clear deal breaker. It was a key reason the Eastern Orthodox broke off from them around 1000 A.D., too. I do think it interesting, however, that many if not most of the reformers did not desire or intend to break off from the Catholic church, but rather aimed to reform it from within. In many ways, it was the Catholics (at least at the earliest stages) who broke unity, and I think we can pursue unity with them in an uncompromising way on these thorny issues, and leave the ball in their court.

    I’m not sure I find your example from Revelation (and other sorts of passages like that, which are abundant in the NT) persuasive, simply because no NT writer makes the leap to encourage other believers to actually break fellowship with or treat in a 2nd class way believers who are struggling or compromised morally in some way. However, I do think how someone responds to a warning like this is crucial–for instance, Paul explicitly says that if someone in Thessalonica does not take heed to what he writes, we are not to recognize them until they do. But again, that leaves us with the stark black and white, in or out model. Perhaps it would be helpful (since I didn’t do this in the post) to logically distinguish between the objective black and white difference between believers and unbelievers, and the subjective gray area or ambiguity of our own knowledge of who fits each category. I certainly think there are many cases in life where it is simply difficult to tell. But that doesn’t mean they are halfway Christians–it just means I’m not sure. And therefore, I need to make a decision and go with it, one way or the other, asking for God’s help and mercy along the way.

    Finally, I would see “repenting” and “believing” in the gospel as–if not strictly synonmous–at least flip sides of the same coin. I certainly do not think that biblically one can ever exist without the other. Faith is much more lively and active than that; it cannot be reduced to assent to propositional doctrines. So I don’t think repentance is adding anything to the basic gospel.

  4. John

    Who is going to define the Gospel “rightly”?

    Look at the post-Reformation (counter-Reformation) religious wars. All of those slaughters and the devastation of much of Europe, done by true believers over which was the “right” definition.

  5. Jordan Monge

    Nick, I look forward to a series on the gospel.

    I would say this, the churches of Christ are known for their “hobby horse” of instrumental worship music. But at what point do we expect Christians to respect the consciences of their brothers? Because there are people who feel uncomfortable worshiping with musical instruments, does this mean that no churches should use instruments? (To avoid violating the consciences of some brothers?)

    I would say this – I don’t think that it’ll ever reach the point where Catholics and Lutherans could fellowship together regularly. But could one maintain “unity” in the sense that you suggest without fellowshipping together? That is, if I’m a Catholic but I say “Lutherans are just as Christian” is that an acceptable compromise? Is there something practical that would demonstrate Christian unity even if we didn’t worship together on Sundays?

    (I’m tempted to suggest looking at the relationship between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, but that’s probably elevating them a bit too highly… in the absence of a clear Biblical example though, it doesn’t seem like a half bad idea?)

  6. Nick

    Jordan, I think you are hitting on a lot of the thornier, on the ground issues in churches today that make unity, practically speaking, so hard. What should we do on non-gospel issues that are nonetheless unavoidably “front and center” in the life of a local church–convictions about gender and leadership, music/worship, practice of the sacraments, etc? I don’t have a good answer here, except perhaps my increasing desire to insist that these things be emphasized less in what makes up our core identity, and replaced by the gospel there instead. Doesn’t solve everything, of course, but I do think disordered affections (to echo Augustine) are a significant aspect of the dilemma here.

    As for Protestants and Catholics…I’m going to have to disagree strongly on that piece! When the NT writers rebuke the early believers for disunity, I don’t see any reason to think anyone was calling someone else’s right standing with God in question in, say, Corinth or Philippi. Rather, WITHIN the church there were divisions shooting up because of arguments, false priorities, or idolatrous attachment to certain leaders. That said, I think this is a sobering reminder for all of us of how far the Western church has fallen from the example of the Scriptures, that we feel it would be a good step forward if we could just get each party to acknowledge the others are legitimate Christians!

    As impossible as it is from a human perspective, and as personally mystified as I am at how to go about this, I am still convinced that the NT call for unity requires not only acknowledgment of the grace of God that is active in another’s life, but actual visible, tangible fellowship and oneness of purpose in the communal life of the kingdom.