Christian Unity
A quick post before we head out (roads are finally cooperating).
Christian unity. Probably the biggest passion I have. The fragmented nature of the Christian world troubles me like nothing else on Earth. I pray for unity every day. I pray the Christ will heal His church.
Christ wanted unity. From John 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. "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. "Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them."
The apostles commanded unity. From I Cor 1:
I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.
We should want the same thing.
But Paul here highlights the right way (and therefore excludes the wrong way) to achieve unity. It isn't through a "it doesn't matter what you believe, God will accept us all, let's just ignore our differences and be brothers" sort of thing. I mean, yes, we should still interact in brotherhood despite our differences, but we cannot achieve unity through relativism. Through saying there is no real Truth, so your truth is good for you, my truth is good for me, and our differences don't matter.
Paul says, instead, to achieve unity be all speaking the same thing. Perfectly united in mind and thought. As John MacArthur put it once, there can be no unity without doctrinal integrity.
How do we possibly do that with the massive variety of doctrinal issues and opinions out there separating us?
Garry Wills in his book Why I am a Catholic pointed out (and other authors I've read have said the same thing, he just put it far more compactly then most) that when the 2nd century church was being torn apart through doctrinal divisions it created 4 things to pull the church back together. To keep people all speaking the same things. Those things were all there in some fashion before this, but became institutionalized so to speak in order to define what constitutes Christ's church and it's true doctrine.
Those four things were: apostolic tradition, the creed, the canon, organizational structure.
Of these, the first three are the most important today. Scratch that, the last one is what I pray for at all times because for us all to actually be one church at this point -- merging all our various organizations together -- we would have to have first achieved unity of thought. The first three are, I believe, the road to that.
But the first step even of these must be the canon. The whole point of the canon was that some writings were authoritative while others were not. Some people's opinions were doctrinally defining while others were not. The whole concept of a canon is exclusitory. Those things not authoritative are not canonical. Therefore, it defines something unique and uniquely authoritative.
The canon -- the Bible -- should be far and away the thing that holds us together. If we could just agree to all listen to the Bible first and other opinions later we would be 90% of the way to agreeing. Most of our divisions come because people want to put other things ahead of the Bible. People want to elevate something else above the authority of the scriptures.
I'm not advocating a system of sola scriptura in its most extreme sense -- as you can tell as I also call attention to tradition, the creeds (and therefore the councils), and church structure. But the scripture must be put ahead of all that. Nothing else can be equivalent. Not if the idea of "canon" is to have any meaning.
And here is where I get so very, very depressed. So discouraged. Because few people actually believe the Bible to be authoritative anymore. It seems like EVERYONE has bought into the enlightenment's "higher criticism" of the Bible. Even the Catholic church -- who is so very, very conservative is so many respects -- has embraced much of this.
For the record, I have studied Biblical literary criticism pretty deeply. It isn't nearly all it is made out to be. When someone says they've "proven" that the Pastorals weren't actually written by Paul they have done no such thing. They've made some conclusions based on a lot of speculation, a lot of shaky evidence, and a lot of very shaky pre-conceived assumptions. Most of the assumptions take as their foundation a lack of belief in any supernatural actions by the Holy Spirit, and of a very liberal idea of how early Christianity developed.
The major problem is that there really isn't enough actual material for the techniques to work properly. The holes have to be filled in with assumptions. Which turns the whole process into a big literary rorschach test. You see what you want to see. If you don't like Paul's statements in I Timothy about women in church leadership then you'll probably find I Timothy to be "deutero-Pauline." A fraud with Paul's name attached.
The evidence really isn't there. The various issues raised by the internal evidence are nothing that cannot be resolved fairly easily without resorting to calling half the books of the Bible frauds. And then there is always the external evidence. You can resolve the internal evidence to the testimony of the external evidence. You can not do the result. These books were believed to be legit from the first moment we here them mentioned (with the exceptions of II Peter because it's kind of weird, Hebrews because it doesn't claim an author, and Revelation because nobody really knew what to make of it -- these exceptions were not people disbelieving their authenticity so much as just being very careful and very thorough before giving ANY writing the authority of the canon). We have them mentioned by name and quoted in the earliest of non-canonical writings.
It's interesting. In my studies on literary criticism, the only stuff that seemed to me to carry any real weight was the conclusions drawn about the Torah. It seemed to me that the arguments for a documentary approach to the Torah were a LOT more firmly grounded in something real then any of the other Biblical criticisms -- especially those related to the New Testament. Not that the evidence was overwhelming even here, but it seemed to rest on a bit more solid ground.
Which makes the episode of The Naked Archaeologist I watched last night even more important. Jacobovici proved to my satisfaction with archaeological evidence that the Torah WAS one book as far back as we can tell, and NOT the collaborative work of many people over the course of many centuries. The biggest criticism -- that the "style" of the writing shows many authors -- he answered pretty simply by saying, "It doesn't seem that way to me. Hmmm... If this is supposed to be scientific level 'evidence' shouldn't it be repeatable? Shouldn't people who read it all reach the same conclusions? Judging style is too subjective to really hold water."
The criticism that the Biblical writings have just changed so much through the years of copying he blew up by going to the Dead Sea scrolls and showing how that, over the past 2000 years, they really haven't changed at all.
The idea that the Bible can't be as old as it claims -- going back to Moses -- because the Hebrews were illiterate until 800 BC he destroyed by showing early Hebrew inscriptions in caves going back to 1500 BC.
And the idea that there were several Hebrew traditions that got edited together he proved wrong by showing the little silver scrolls discovered in a tomb 30 years ago. They were created around 600 BC and have, side-by-side, a quote from Numbers and a quote from Deuteronomy -- both exactly as we have them today -- despite the fact that the documentary hypothesis says these two quotes were not part of the same tradition until 1 to 2 centuries later.
The literary evidence is absolutely NOT evidence. It is speculation. So why have so many Christians bought into it? Even the Vatican said they no longer believe Moses wrote the Torah.
If you don't have faith in the canon you really have nothing objective. You have nothing to tie us together. It is the foundation of ALL Christian doctrine and all Christian unity. Until people can realize the absolute blind arrogance of the 18th century where they thought they could "prove" the Bible a fake, until they can get over their doubts, until they can swallow their pride and accept these writings as legitimate even if they don't like what they say, until we can once more have a CANON, there can be no unity.
And I despair.
Until then, the creeds have no real authority to back them up. Tradition has nothing to tie itself to -- nothing to interpret -- and denying the canon is denying tradition anyway as tradition universally asserted the authenticity and legitimacy and authority of the canon. And without the canon and faith in it no church hierarchy can do more than offer the opinions of man.
So, this post began as a call to unity. It ends with a bit of despair and a pleading to look closely at the opinions people have bought into too much over the last couple centuries. Look closely at what is asserted, at what is assumed. Look closely and you'll see that it is a house of cards. That belief in the authenticity and therefore the authority of the scriptures is NOT a denial of reason or some out-of-date and no longer valid Biblical scholarship that can't be taken seriously any more. It is grounded in far greater evidence than anything its opponents can muster.
Believing in legit apostolic authorship of the NT, and a legit tradition for the OT going to Moses and the prophets is the necessary first step before the next one -- believing by faith in Biblical inerrency. You can't believe it is true if you believe that it makes false claim to who wrote it. Certainly, believing in authentic authorship doesn't lead inevitably to believing its also true -- the first is a matter of scholarship, the latter a matter of faith. But we have to get over this "no, he really didn't write those things so don't believe them" before we can move anywhere else.
I'm out. I'm actually going to make this a serious of sorts. Next time (which might be after New Years) I'll take on Biblical interpretation, the creeds, and tradition. These are the three components I believe that will bring us together. I'll probably step on EVERYBODY's toes, but I think we all need our toes stepped on here. The major problem I see is that EVERY Christian group tends to be waaaaay to arrogant. "Our claims are completely and totally true and you are wrong, so be just like me and we'll finally be unified." I think that if we really examine the evidence we'll see that NO Christian group is 100% right at this point. No Christian group or tradition or scholarship is infallible and we've all made mistakes. We all need a big does of humility. That way we CAN have unity with doctrinal integrity. We all throw away our own, human-based opinions and conform ourselves to God and His revelation.
Christian unity. Probably the biggest passion I have. The fragmented nature of the Christian world troubles me like nothing else on Earth. I pray for unity every day. I pray the Christ will heal His church.
Christ wanted unity. From John 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. "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. "Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them."
The apostles commanded unity. From I Cor 1:
I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.
We should want the same thing.
But Paul here highlights the right way (and therefore excludes the wrong way) to achieve unity. It isn't through a "it doesn't matter what you believe, God will accept us all, let's just ignore our differences and be brothers" sort of thing. I mean, yes, we should still interact in brotherhood despite our differences, but we cannot achieve unity through relativism. Through saying there is no real Truth, so your truth is good for you, my truth is good for me, and our differences don't matter.
Paul says, instead, to achieve unity be all speaking the same thing. Perfectly united in mind and thought. As John MacArthur put it once, there can be no unity without doctrinal integrity.
How do we possibly do that with the massive variety of doctrinal issues and opinions out there separating us?
Garry Wills in his book Why I am a Catholic pointed out (and other authors I've read have said the same thing, he just put it far more compactly then most) that when the 2nd century church was being torn apart through doctrinal divisions it created 4 things to pull the church back together. To keep people all speaking the same things. Those things were all there in some fashion before this, but became institutionalized so to speak in order to define what constitutes Christ's church and it's true doctrine.
Those four things were: apostolic tradition, the creed, the canon, organizational structure.
Of these, the first three are the most important today. Scratch that, the last one is what I pray for at all times because for us all to actually be one church at this point -- merging all our various organizations together -- we would have to have first achieved unity of thought. The first three are, I believe, the road to that.
But the first step even of these must be the canon. The whole point of the canon was that some writings were authoritative while others were not. Some people's opinions were doctrinally defining while others were not. The whole concept of a canon is exclusitory. Those things not authoritative are not canonical. Therefore, it defines something unique and uniquely authoritative.
The canon -- the Bible -- should be far and away the thing that holds us together. If we could just agree to all listen to the Bible first and other opinions later we would be 90% of the way to agreeing. Most of our divisions come because people want to put other things ahead of the Bible. People want to elevate something else above the authority of the scriptures.
I'm not advocating a system of sola scriptura in its most extreme sense -- as you can tell as I also call attention to tradition, the creeds (and therefore the councils), and church structure. But the scripture must be put ahead of all that. Nothing else can be equivalent. Not if the idea of "canon" is to have any meaning.
And here is where I get so very, very depressed. So discouraged. Because few people actually believe the Bible to be authoritative anymore. It seems like EVERYONE has bought into the enlightenment's "higher criticism" of the Bible. Even the Catholic church -- who is so very, very conservative is so many respects -- has embraced much of this.
For the record, I have studied Biblical literary criticism pretty deeply. It isn't nearly all it is made out to be. When someone says they've "proven" that the Pastorals weren't actually written by Paul they have done no such thing. They've made some conclusions based on a lot of speculation, a lot of shaky evidence, and a lot of very shaky pre-conceived assumptions. Most of the assumptions take as their foundation a lack of belief in any supernatural actions by the Holy Spirit, and of a very liberal idea of how early Christianity developed.
The major problem is that there really isn't enough actual material for the techniques to work properly. The holes have to be filled in with assumptions. Which turns the whole process into a big literary rorschach test. You see what you want to see. If you don't like Paul's statements in I Timothy about women in church leadership then you'll probably find I Timothy to be "deutero-Pauline." A fraud with Paul's name attached.
The evidence really isn't there. The various issues raised by the internal evidence are nothing that cannot be resolved fairly easily without resorting to calling half the books of the Bible frauds. And then there is always the external evidence. You can resolve the internal evidence to the testimony of the external evidence. You can not do the result. These books were believed to be legit from the first moment we here them mentioned (with the exceptions of II Peter because it's kind of weird, Hebrews because it doesn't claim an author, and Revelation because nobody really knew what to make of it -- these exceptions were not people disbelieving their authenticity so much as just being very careful and very thorough before giving ANY writing the authority of the canon). We have them mentioned by name and quoted in the earliest of non-canonical writings.
It's interesting. In my studies on literary criticism, the only stuff that seemed to me to carry any real weight was the conclusions drawn about the Torah. It seemed to me that the arguments for a documentary approach to the Torah were a LOT more firmly grounded in something real then any of the other Biblical criticisms -- especially those related to the New Testament. Not that the evidence was overwhelming even here, but it seemed to rest on a bit more solid ground.
Which makes the episode of The Naked Archaeologist I watched last night even more important. Jacobovici proved to my satisfaction with archaeological evidence that the Torah WAS one book as far back as we can tell, and NOT the collaborative work of many people over the course of many centuries. The biggest criticism -- that the "style" of the writing shows many authors -- he answered pretty simply by saying, "It doesn't seem that way to me. Hmmm... If this is supposed to be scientific level 'evidence' shouldn't it be repeatable? Shouldn't people who read it all reach the same conclusions? Judging style is too subjective to really hold water."
The criticism that the Biblical writings have just changed so much through the years of copying he blew up by going to the Dead Sea scrolls and showing how that, over the past 2000 years, they really haven't changed at all.
The idea that the Bible can't be as old as it claims -- going back to Moses -- because the Hebrews were illiterate until 800 BC he destroyed by showing early Hebrew inscriptions in caves going back to 1500 BC.
And the idea that there were several Hebrew traditions that got edited together he proved wrong by showing the little silver scrolls discovered in a tomb 30 years ago. They were created around 600 BC and have, side-by-side, a quote from Numbers and a quote from Deuteronomy -- both exactly as we have them today -- despite the fact that the documentary hypothesis says these two quotes were not part of the same tradition until 1 to 2 centuries later.
The literary evidence is absolutely NOT evidence. It is speculation. So why have so many Christians bought into it? Even the Vatican said they no longer believe Moses wrote the Torah.
If you don't have faith in the canon you really have nothing objective. You have nothing to tie us together. It is the foundation of ALL Christian doctrine and all Christian unity. Until people can realize the absolute blind arrogance of the 18th century where they thought they could "prove" the Bible a fake, until they can get over their doubts, until they can swallow their pride and accept these writings as legitimate even if they don't like what they say, until we can once more have a CANON, there can be no unity.
And I despair.
Until then, the creeds have no real authority to back them up. Tradition has nothing to tie itself to -- nothing to interpret -- and denying the canon is denying tradition anyway as tradition universally asserted the authenticity and legitimacy and authority of the canon. And without the canon and faith in it no church hierarchy can do more than offer the opinions of man.
So, this post began as a call to unity. It ends with a bit of despair and a pleading to look closely at the opinions people have bought into too much over the last couple centuries. Look closely at what is asserted, at what is assumed. Look closely and you'll see that it is a house of cards. That belief in the authenticity and therefore the authority of the scriptures is NOT a denial of reason or some out-of-date and no longer valid Biblical scholarship that can't be taken seriously any more. It is grounded in far greater evidence than anything its opponents can muster.
Believing in legit apostolic authorship of the NT, and a legit tradition for the OT going to Moses and the prophets is the necessary first step before the next one -- believing by faith in Biblical inerrency. You can't believe it is true if you believe that it makes false claim to who wrote it. Certainly, believing in authentic authorship doesn't lead inevitably to believing its also true -- the first is a matter of scholarship, the latter a matter of faith. But we have to get over this "no, he really didn't write those things so don't believe them" before we can move anywhere else.
I'm out. I'm actually going to make this a serious of sorts. Next time (which might be after New Years) I'll take on Biblical interpretation, the creeds, and tradition. These are the three components I believe that will bring us together. I'll probably step on EVERYBODY's toes, but I think we all need our toes stepped on here. The major problem I see is that EVERY Christian group tends to be waaaaay to arrogant. "Our claims are completely and totally true and you are wrong, so be just like me and we'll finally be unified." I think that if we really examine the evidence we'll see that NO Christian group is 100% right at this point. No Christian group or tradition or scholarship is infallible and we've all made mistakes. We all need a big does of humility. That way we CAN have unity with doctrinal integrity. We all throw away our own, human-based opinions and conform ourselves to God and His revelation.
posted by Christian Husband at 8:17 AM
8 Comments:
Like you, XH, I am passionate for Christian Unity. It is absolutely a scandal before the watching eyes of the world that we Christians are so fragmented and disunified.
One of the things I cherish about the Christian community to which I belong is that we are 'ecumenical' - we come from all manner of different Christian traditions (to which we remain faithful), and yet we manage to have a Christian life together that's built on the hard core of 'Mere Christianity' that we all hold in common. As Lewis said, "It is at the core, where her truest disciples live, that each Christian tradition is closest to every other." The simple fact that we can recognize each other as brothers and sisters in Christ is huge.
Now, as to your comments on Scripture and the Canon. . . I agree with most of what you say, especially your comments on 'literary criticism'. You can keep preaching that, and I will keep saying "Amen".
What you really point to, though, is that we Christians differ on the locus of authority. In the Catholic (and, for that matter, Orthodox) mind, the Church is the locus of authority, and the authority of the Scriptures ultimately derives from the authority of the Church. I expect that we'll be discussing that as we go along, so I'll just leave it at that for now.
But - Christian Unity! Amen! May it come, as our Lord prayed it would!
I couldn't agree more with the sentiment of Christian unity. So when are all you prodigal children going to come back to the Catholic Church??!! :)
Oh, and - quick post?
Hahahahahahahahaha!!!
Well, I will be checking in on your series - I get the feeling I will be disagreeing with most of what you say, but I will still enjoy reading it!
And, you never know, you might convince me :-)
In all honesty, I think what we need for greater unity is less doctrinal unity than focusing on the important stuff we DO have in common - there is a lot that Christians from different denominations etc can do together that doesn't require any agreement on doctrine - pray together, worship together, encourage each other, listen to each other and love other people.
I mean, do we really need to agree on the exact authority of specific bits of the bible to get together to put in practice some of the main themes of the gospels?
I'm at my in-laws and we are about to head out again to my parents' so I have to be quick (and I actually we be this time).
First, the church is certainly part of the locus of authority -- hence the brief mention of organization. But if unity depends on mere men then men will never have unity. The 2nd century church established the canon for a reason. They didn't include the writings of the patristic church fathers in it. The letter of Clement to the Corithians was considered for a while because it WAS from the 1st century but was rejected because it was non-apostolic. The authority of all these pieces -- canon, tradition, creed, and church -- was all seen as just extensions of the only real Christian authority -- that of the apostles.
As such, the church doesn't have a higher authority than the canon. Both derive their authority from the apostles. The canon as the written record from the apostles (and their close associates) must be considered the most pure form of their testimony we have available and therefore must be considered the must pure and unadulterated form of their authority we have access to today.
I had more to respond, but I'll have to do it later.
Peace out
Can you imagine how wonderful it would be if all Christians were united? That is a passion of our current pope. I don’t hope that in our lifetime we will see that dream come to fruition, but I do hope we can at least see steps taken in that direction.
“It isn't through a "it doesn't matter what you believe, God will accept us all, let's just ignore our differences and be brothers" sort of thing. I mean, yes, we should still interact in brotherhood despite our differences, but we cannot achieve unity through relativism. Through saying there is no real Truth, so your truth is good for you, my truth is good for me, and our differences don't matter.”
I couldn’t agree with this statement more. Relativism is so dangerous because on the surface it sounds very appealing, such a great facilitator for peace! I am reminded of the X-Files episode “Signs and Wonders” (yes, I’m a dork) that compared two Christian communities; one into a very strict and literal interpretation of the Bible that also practiced snake handling, and the other, a liberal Christian community that was very accepting and non-judgmental, very much the philosophy you just mentioned, XH. In the end we find out that it was actually the Devil running that community. Christians really can’t believe in relativism.
While I agree that the Bible is very important (of course!) I think a problem that Christians run into in general is a varying interpretation of the scripture (that and so many different versions and translations). As Catholics, we believe in the Real Presence of the Eucharist as well as the primacy of Peter and believe that scripture supports these beliefs (I’m not trying to start a debate on those particular points, just using them as an example). Catholics view scripture from a “both/and” approach instead of “either/or” because sometimes it does seem that different passages contradict each other. Obviously, Protestants interpret those particular points very differently than we do.
Even if we all accepted the exact same translation of the Bible as well as what books are a part of it, I don’t see us ever overcoming our wide range of interpretations. And I think this is another difficulty that Christians have in settling our differences among ourselves: One side is not always 100% wrong and often both sides have at least pieces of the truth so it gets confusing ( though we’re all working towards the fullness of truth, blah, blah, blah :)).
A book on my personal “to read” list is “Where we got the Bible” by Henry Graham. I admit that I don’t know as much about the evolution of the Bible as I would like. It was very powerful to me, though, to visit the Dead Sea and see the site where the scrolls were found. Speaking of books, you might get something out of Mark Shea’s “By What Authority?”. It ties directly into this current discussion.
Well, that’s probably a long enough response and I'll likely add more when you continue your series. You sure do make your readers work to comment! :) (Though it probably would have been easier if I didn’t have “50 Bluebells” by Jimmy Shand vs. 50 Cent running through my head)
Just a quickie, while it's still in my mind -
Jaroslav Pelikan's 'Whose Bible Is It?' is an excellent on book on the whole topic of the canon, and where it came from, and how different Christians (and Jews) use the same scriptures. FYI. . .
Well, there you have it, XH. A perfect example of why Christian unity will never gain any meaningful traction. It's because our different traditions hold differing parts more sacred than others.
I could agree to certain essentials, as Desmond alluded to ala "Mere Christianity." However, Lewis was making that argument (basic and essential elements of mere Christianity) almost exclusively from a body's own naturalistic and intellectual steam. Scripture barely entered into it!
I richly enjoyed your treatment of Biblical criticism, tho. Bravo!
D.
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