444 - Christian Unity: What I Hope For

Christian Unity: What I Hope For
By Leroy Garrett

MY DESIRE for Christian unity is something like Mark Twain's description of spring fever: "You don't know quite what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache you want it so." While my heart aches over the divided state of the Body of Christ upon earth and while it yearns for the oneness of all believers, I must confess, as Mark Twain did about spring fever, that I do not know exactly what it is that I want.

But I want what our Lord prayed for when he said: "Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one" (Jn. 17:11). That Jesus would expect a union between his disciples comparable to that which existed between himself and God is impressive, but it is no less than astounding that he would go on to include you and me in that prayer: "I do not pray for these [disciples] only, but also for those who are to believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us."

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Is it to expect too much that all believers in Christ the world over, should be united in a common bond not unlike that which united God and Christ?

That prayer is all the more remarkable in that it points to both the purpose and the means of unity. Jesus did not desire unity as an end in itself, for he said: "so that the world may believe that thou has sent me." There is thus a crucial relationship between the unity of believers and the church's mission to the world. It is hardly the case that a divided church can win a lost world for Christ.

While there was no limit to our Lord's expectations for the unity of his followers--even saying "that they may become perfectly one"--he nonetheless gave the means for this miracle of oneness: "The glory which thou has given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one." It is therefore the glory of Christ, his presence and his likeness in each of us, that unites us in a common bond. This must be what St. Paul meant by "the unity of the Spirit," which shows that unity is not made in ecumenical councils and conclaves, however helpful these may be, but it is the cultivation of the Holy Guest of heaven in each believer.

Leroy Garrett is Professor of Philosophy at Texas Woman's University, Denton, Texas. A doctoral graduate from Harvard, he is a member of the Church of Christ and delivered the substance of this article as a chapel talk at Union Theological Seminary, Richmond.

445 - Christian Unity: What I Hope For

This is to say that unity is a given, the Spirit's gift to the church, and that we are one already, made so by the likeness of Christ in each of us. It becomes a matter of the catholic church of Jesus Christ realizing and appropriating the gift of oneness that God has given her. The old creedal formula, We believe in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, is as sound as it is ancient. If indeed the church is the Body of Christ upon earth, it is one and cannot be other than one, just as it cannot be provincial, parochial, or profane. St. Paul's rhetorical question, "Is Christ divided?" reminds us that the unity of believers is real even if not yet realized.

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What I want in Christian unity is not only influenced by Scripture but by my heritage in the denomination known as Churches of Christ, which is shared by Christian Churches and Disciples of Christ. These three churches had their origin in a nineteenth century American movement, sometimes called "the American Restoration Movement," but which because of the ambiguity of that term might better be called simply the Stone-Campbell movement.

There is an oddity about the beginning of my denomination. It was not supposed to happen, for it was an effort to unite Christians in all the sects, with no intention of starting still more sects. That it did not turn out that way takes nothing from the noble intentions of the pioneers of the effort, particularly those of Barton W. Stone and Thomas Campbell, both of whom because of their reformatory efforts were disenfranchised Presbyterians.

So at the outset it is evident that my heritage has something going for it, for if it comes upon hard times the God of heaven can start another such effort since there are still plenty of Presbyterians.

Barton W. Stone and other Presbyterian clergy created their own presbytery as a base of operation for their unity efforts, but so suspicious were they of anything that smacked of sectarianism that they resolved to lay their innocuous creation to rest. This they did in The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery. Composed in 1804, it remains one of the significant documents of our history, and it gives us one of our most salient principles: "Let this body die," they wrote, "and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large, for there is but one Body and one Spirit."

We learn from those old pioneers that anything that stands in the way of a united church must be sacrificed. All forms of sectarianism must die the death. We can never realize our oneness so long as we are proud of our separate identities. Real unity is costly. Are we all willing to say if need be, "Let this body die and sink into union with the Body of Christ"?

Stone realized that unity is but the means to a higher mission, for his motto was "Let the union of Christians be our polar star." Those words are cut in stone on a cenotaph that stands in the courtyard of the

446 - Christian Unity: What I Hope For

Disciples of Christ Historical Society in Nashville, and they serve as the sine qua non of my own heritage. As the polar star led the ancient mariner across stormy seas to his destiny, the unity of Christians will bear the old ship Zion on its intended course, the redemption of a lost world.

Thomas Campbell, once he migrated from his native Ireland to the American frontier in 1807, was no less discerning in his understanding of the essential unity of the church. In his Declaration and Address (1809) he gave us the most famous quotation of our history: "The Church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one." This ideal of the essential unity of the church has inspired those of my heritage to insist that "Christian unity is our business."

Stone and Campbell insisted that both truth and freedom are essential to unity, They saw believers as one because of their common loyalty to the truth of Jesus Christ, and they shared the conviction of the early church that there should be but one creed, Jesus is Lord. What a tragedy it is that the church ever made anything else a condition of Christian fellowship than that great confession made by St. Peter, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Christ our only creed.

But fellowship can be real and unifying only when believers are free to differ with each other in love. This led Stone and Campbell to say, "In essentials [that is, in truth] unity; in opinions liberty; in all things, love."

Whether we draw from Scripture or history, our plea for unity must reach beyond theory to the practical. So let me list what I conceive to be possible applications of these principles, a unity that is compatible with freedom.

(1) All Christians can accept each other as equals in spite of differences, and we can love each other even as Christ loves us, the bond of unity being the Lordship of Christ. Without this, unity has no meaning.

(2) Christians are to be able to move freely from one church to another without doctrinal tests. This must be our rule: while members are free to choose a congregation, no congregation is free to choose its members.

(3) There can be a shared ministry. For the foreseeable future there will be differences regarding ordination and kinds of ministry, and so congregations will prefer ministers after their own order. But all ministers will nonetheless be accepted as ministers of the Gospel, and to some degree there can be a shared ministry now. A united church must have an open pulpit, open communion, and open membership.

(4) There can be a mutual sharing of the church's mission in the world, whether in evangelizing or alleviating human suffering. Just because we cannot do everything together does not mean that we cannot do some things together. The agencies and structures through which

447 - Christian Unity: What I Hope For

these things are done can exist independently but harmoniously in the church uniting.

We can rejoice that in recent decades considerable progress has been made in these directions, but we are yet far from that unity for which our Lord prayed. As I implied at the outset, none of us can know precisely what character the united church of Christ upon earth wilt take, for we do not know how our Lord's prayer will be answered. But we can all apply our hearts and minds to those absolute essentials for a church uniting: a common loyalty to Jesus Christ as the truth of God, mutual love and acceptance in an atmosphere of freedom, and shared responsibilities in executing the mission of the church.