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A memento for the once dominant multi-clergy trivia team created
by my wife Nicole (our one non-clergy member on the team,
but representing yet another faith tradition). |
John 17:20-23 New International Version
20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 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. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
Recently a wise Christian brother from my parents' generation wrote this to me: "I have always been puzzled that the Father never answered Christ’s prayer for Christian unity in John 17". After reading the email I came back to that statement. If Christian unity was a debate topic, it seems you would have plenty of people willing to argue that the Church is not now, nor rarely has been, unified. But that sentence stuck with me, and I wrote him back that I just might want to argue the opposite in a blog post, so here we are.
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One of the community wide ecumenical planning meetings
that would soon lead to the founding of Emmaus Haven
(Note: Clara Powell ready to share her input) |
Is the Church 'one' and does that level of unity encourage others to believe that the Father sent the Son?
To begin to answer such a wide ranging question we must first ponder its basis. What would unity look like among followers of Jesus Christ, and how would that differ from disunity? Peaceful co-existence vs. violent antagonism is one measure, and we can consider how much of that those claiming to be Christians have shown to each other. But what other measures should we consider? What about commonality of Authority? Creeds? What about leadership structure, is unity defined by having one ecclesiastical flow chart, or by having a variety of entities that all more/less follow Paul's writings on how a church ought to be governed? Is unity of worship style part of the discussion, or is that a cultural manifestation instead? {I would argue that cultural unity of style was never Jesus' intention} In the end, how much unity or disunity one finds in the Church today or in various points in its history, will depend to an extent upon how many factors are being considered and which ones receive the most emphasis. In brief, then, let me offer the following marks of unity for consideration:
1. The functional unity of the Early Church
While our evidence is somewhat scanty, the period from the founding of the Church by the generation that witnessed Jesus' life, death, and resurrection firsthand, until the years of great persecution by the Roman Emperor Trajan (AD 250-260) saw the Church functionally as one unit with a loose and developing ecclesiastical structure that began with virtual local church autonomy in the first few generations, and then in succeeding generations saw the bishops of the great Christian communities like Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome gain authority in their areas, all without significant schism or heretical movements. As the Church's leadership structure and connectivity was developing (organically, not by the will of any one person of group), the Church was also able to informally develop a common canon of authoritative scripture with remarkable levels of agreement regarding its contents.
Following Trajan's persecutions there some cracks in the unity of the Church began to develop. That these developments became more acute following the embrace of Christianity by Constantine and the Church's quick turn from being a persecuted minority to having the world's most powerful man as a benefactor is noteworthy. How much of a factor acquiring power in this world was on straining Church unity is open for debate, that it had a negative impact is not. Following Trajan's persecutions Christians in North Africa who had refused to denounce their faith in the face of persecution, refused to allow 'lapsed' Christians who had done so to save their lives to return to fellowship without the express forgiveness of a bishop. This led to what is called the Donatist Controversy involving rival claimants to be the rightful bishop, an argument that Saint Augustine joined on the side of those advocating amnesty for those who had renounced out of fear. After Constantine's embrace of Christianity, Augustine approved of using Imperial troops to force the Donatists to rejoin the 'rightful' Church. The effort failed, and the Church in North Africa remained divided until the region was conquered by Islamic armies nearly four centuries later. Localized rifts like that of the Donatists aside, the Church remained a remarkably unified organization, and despite a growing East/West divergence (cultural more than theological) it remains one unit until the Great Schism's dual excommunications by the Roman Pope and Patriarch of Constantinople in 1054. Thus for the first thousand years of its existence, for the vast majority of its adherents, the Church was functionally and technically one. Remember that this period saw not only the break-up of Rome which led to generations of chaos, but also the rise of a massive external threat from Islam which threatened both East and West alike. Given how far and wide the Church spread in its first 1,000 years, and the massive disruptions it faced, that unity lasted as long as it did, and functioned as well as it did, seems rather evidence of divine guidance and mercy than of human failing for the schism that eventually occurred.
2. The acceptance of the Nicene Creed (the triumph of the trinitarian viewpoint)
The development of trinitarian orthodoxy, and with it the complex questions of the dual nature of Jesus as both God and Man, certainly seems like an area where a disunited Church would have faltered and fractured. The discussions among theologians were both deep and technical, opinions were deeply held, and there was the added confusion of translations of theological terms between Greek and Latin to contend with. In the end, however, the vast majority of the Church, both ancient and modern, has been and continues to be in full agreement with the decisions of the Council of Nicaea (AD 325) which led to the nearly universally accepted and acclaimed Nicene Creed, which with the exception of three words added later in the West, holds to this day for Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians. Thus even in that great three-way divide, there remains unity of belief about the most essential questions of the nature of God. Were there some who refused to accept Nicaea's dictates? Yes, but statistically a small minority that grew smaller over time. There remain some who reprise the heresy of Arius, notably the Jehovah's Witnesses fit this bill, but they, like the Mormons who also askew trinitarian belief, are not properly a part of the Church and thus fall outside the scope of Jesus prayer for unity among his followers (they also constitute less than 1% of those claiming to be Christians in our world today).
3. The triumph of the Gospel's emphasis on the death and resurrection of Jesus
This may seem to be a given, but when Jesus prayed for unity among his future followers he had not yet gone to the Cross. That his future followers would universally proclaim that the foundation of their belief was the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, a death he entered into willingly on their behalf, is a remarkable level of consistency. Down through the centuries, when other issues drove a wedge between Catholic and Orthodox, and later between Protestant and Catholic, no significant portion of anything that could be called the universal Church has embraced any other aspect of the life of Jesus as the cornerstone of their faith, nor has any significant portion of the Church attempted to replace Jesus with any other Savior. It may seem like a stretch to consider adherence to Jesus and his work on the Cross as a mark of unity, for we take that belief as a given among anyone who follows Jesus, but who is to say that this outcome had to be? As the Gospel spread throughout the world, and new peoples, cultures, and languages were added to the great diversity of the Church, the focus on Jesus Christ and his sacrifice remained front and center. While Christians across time and cultures would have difficulty understanding each other, they would have common ground on the one thing that brings that matters most: Jesus Christ died to save sinners who have faith in him.
4. The healing of schism's animosity has begun
While it is unlikely (and unnecessary) that the Church will again be one ecclesiastical unit with all roads leading to a common human leadership, it has been remarkable how much healing has taken place in recent history of both the Great Schism (now 1,000 years old) and the Protestant/Catholic divide (now 500 years old). It would have seemed unlikely, even 100 years ago, but in 1965 Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I formally withdrew their predecessors' excommunications. In the decades that followed, ongoing outreach between Orthodox and Catholic Christians have continued. Likewise, the Second Vatican Council (known as Vatican II, 1962-65) saw the formal adoption by the Vatican of recognition that God is working with his Church beyond Catholicism, that true followers of Jesus are to be found in the Protestant and Orthodox churches.
In the end, my answer to the question of whether or not God answered Jesus' prayer for unity is as personal as it is historical. I serve an American Baptist Church as an ordained Baptist minister. Baptists are famous for being separatists, for being willing to disfellowship each other over things as minor as the use of a guitar in worship (how dare they!!), but here in Franklin, PA where I serve that history seems to matter very little. We have a ecumenical county-wide ministerium that organizes joint worship each year on Palm Sunday and the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Those services are attended by Christians representing, on average, thirty churches from nearly a dozen denominations. Our differences and peculiarities are nowhere near anyone's minds as we worship, pray, and fellowship together. Similarly, I am the President of Mustard Seed Missions, a para-church ministry supported by volunteers and donations from dozens of area churches, and throughout our ten years of existence helping for than 5,000 clients we have never encountered an issue that was a stumbling block because of the differences between Methodist and Lutherans, or Catholics and Brethren. The mission of helping others in the name of Christ overshadows the things we do and believe that are different. The more recent Emmaus Haven, whose building renovations Mustard Seed Missions had a large hand in making happen, also has the same ecumenical history and support.
Did the Father answer Jesus' prayer for unity? Yes he did. It may not always look like what we would expect unity to look like, and it hasn't always been supported by people claiming to be Christians (some genuine, some not), but it has endured, and in our world today it is once more gaining momentum.
