Path: christian
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
From: stevenst@iaserv.b1.ingr.com (Todd Stevens)
Subject: The One Body of Christ
Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu

"I ask not only on behalf of these (disciples), but also on behalf of those
who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.  As
you, Father, 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." - Jesus Christ (John 17:20-21)

"Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions
among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose."
- Apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 1:10)

"...making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of
peace.  There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the
one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and
Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all." - Apostle Paul
(Ephesians 4:3-6)

"Would God that all party names and unscriptural phrases and forms which
have divided the Christian world were forgotten, and that we, as humble,
loving disciples, might sit down at the Master's feet, read His Holy Word,
imbibe His Spirit and transcribe His life into our own. ... With regard to
the name Christian, I would say, there is none like it; give it to me, and
in life and in death I would glorify God in this name." - John Wesley

"I pray to you, leave my name alone; and not to call yourselves Lutherans,
but Christians.  Who is Luther?  My doctrine is not mine.  I have not been
crucified for any one.  St. Paul, I Cor. 1:13, would not that any should
call themselves of Paul, nor of Peter, but of Christ.  How, then, does it
befit me, a miserable bag of dust and ashes, to give my name to the
children of Christ?  Cease, my dear friends, to cling to these party names
and distinctions.  Away with them all, and let us call ourselves only
Christians, after Him from whom our doctrine comes." - Martin Luther

It is my belief that each of these individuals (Jesus, Paul, Wesley,
Luther) were expressing the same fundamental goal.  In my opinion, the one
goal that is the greatest and yet the most difficult for imperfect
Christians to achieve.  The goal of being the one body of Jesus Christ upon
this earth.  I believe the miserable failure to achieve this goal has been
Satan's greatest victory.  How can we expect Jesus to accept a dismembered,
mutilated bride?  How can we even look forward to our home in Heaven when
we cannot fellowship with each other here and now on "Church Street"?  Do
we want Jesus to have a sunken-chested emaciated body with, maybe, ten
hands but no feet?  Or, even more realistic, a hundred million severed,
unmoving, useless heads with mouths quick to pronounce doctrine and
judgement but no eyes, ears, hands, and feet to see, hear, and help one
another much less perceive the one true head of Jesus lost in all the
cacophony.

How do we become the one true body of Christ?  I don't claim to have it all
figured out!  What I would like to do is open this up for discussion.  I
believe that the fellowship of believers to which I belong (Churches of
Christ) began as a movement dedicated to this goal through eliminating
every practice that could not be supported by scripture alone, and pleading
with the rest of the denominational world to do the same so that we could
somehow, through God's help, meet and unite as one body.  It deeply saddens
me that in the intervening 150+ years since the Stone-Campbell movement
began, I cannot see any apparent progress.  Actually, what I see is more
denominationalism from this movement (Disciples of Christ, Christian
Church, Church of Christ, and various sub-sects of each).

This post is getting very large.  I would appreciate any open, honest
discussion of this topic.  Maybe God can work through s.r.c. to make some
headway.  If there is enough interest (and the moderator allows!), I would
like to present Barton Stone's "Last Will and Testament of the Springfield
Presbytery" and Thomas Campbell's "Declaration and Address" in future posts
as examples of how this undenominational ideal has been voiced in the past.

I would like to conclude with a quote from Rubel Shelly in his book "I Just
Want to Be a Christian":

"Those of us identified in the Yellow Pages as 'Churches of Christ' do not
see ourselves as a denomination trying to outstrip other denominations.  We
are trying to be a church in the New Testament sense of that term.  The
essence of our plea is that people should believe that Jesus is the Son of
God and seek salvation by grace through faith in him.  We are not promoting
ourselves or our opinions on certain important topics.  We are seeking to
preach and practice the things that are universal and essential to the
Christian religion.  We plead for all who believe in the atonement of
Jesus' blood and who have been baptized in his name to stand together as
one body in him to proclaim Christ to an unbelieving world.  That plea is
neither narrow nor bigoted.  It is as broad as the great heart of God."


~~~Todd Stevens~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~stevenst@iaserv.b1.ingr.com~~~
"The religion of Heaven, for centuries past, has fallen far below the
excellency and glory of primitive Christianity.  We seek to have these
errors corrected and removed from the church; and to have truth restored
in her heavenly, captivating robes, unadorned with the tinsel of human
wisdom."  - Barton W. Stone (1826)

[Past discussions on this topic have made it clear that this question
is more complex than it looks.  My point of view is quite consistent
with what you say, but if you look where it actually leads, many
Christians are unwilling to follow.  If you actually believe that
everyone who accepts Jesus as savior should stand together without
dividing lines such as denominations, there are ways to implement
this.  Examples of implications:

 - communion in your church should be open to all Christians
 - you should cooperate with all the other churches in your area
	on issues of local significance.  (Most communities have
	informal coordinating groups in which all churches and
	often synagogues participate.)
 - where possible you should conduct activities such as mission,
	preparation of Sunday School materials, in multi-denominational
	or non-denominations groups.

This is the approach that is traditionally called "ecumenical".  The
underlying philosophy is that human denominations and doctrines are of
secondary importance -- the reality is that we are all part of one
body of Christ, and we should be willing to make that visible by
worshipping together and working together across denominational
boundaries.

The problem is that the divisions exist because people disagree on
things that they think really matter.  People from groups as widely
separated as Roman Catholics and Lutherans have explained that they
can't open their communion to other Christians because they have
radically different views of what communion is.

The statement that you quote from Shelly may in itself be a problem:
It talks about people who believe in Christ's atonement and are
baptized in his name.  Some groups that call themselves "Church of
Christ" consider that baptism must be done with the words "in the name
of Jesus Christ", and the baptisms using the words "in the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit" are not valid.  For them, this
seemingly innocent statement actually restricts the number of people
who meet its requirements to a few percent of all Christians (and
that's generous).

The American scene has seen a couple of groups saying that
denominations are a bad idea, and claiming to found churches that are
free of denominationalism.  But separate denominations exist because
people disagree about things to the extent that they can't work
together fully.  In order to be free of denominationalism, you'd have
to convince everybody either to adopt one view on all controversial
issues, or to work and worship together freely despite these
differences.  The first seems impossible.  And many people are not
prepared to do the second.  Just consider -- are you really prepared
to accept in your "non-denominational" group people who believe that
homosexuality is acceptable? people who believe that you have to speak
in tongues before you can be fully Christian (or if that's your view,
people who believe that speaking in tongues is from Satan)?  people
who venerate Mary?  If so, fine.  I welcome you to the ranks of
ecumenically-minded Christians.  But generally it turns out that
groups who oppose denominations really want denominations to vanish by
having everyone agree on what *they* think is right.

The problem is not the existence of denominations as organizations.
No one that I know of believes that the Presbyterian Church or the
Methodist Church as an organization is holy.  If we had 100
denominations, but they all agreed, we would have no problem.  They
would simply be administrative conveniences, a way of avoiding the
super-bureacracy that would result if there were a single organization
with 100 million members.  The problem is not the denominations, but
the fact that Christians disagree on important things, to the extent
that they can't work together fully.

I believe there are things we can do to show unity to some extent.
Some of the examples appear above: cooperation among churches in each
community, joint worship services, using multi-denominational and
non-denominational organizations for as many activities as possible.
But there are going to be limits to how far this can go.  The
multi-denominational organizations will only involve people from a
certain range of viewpoints.  The history of the National and World
Councils shows that Christians simply have different ideas of how
world mission should be done.  It's going to be hard for people who
believe in liberation theology to cooperate fully with traditional
evangelicals.  Liturgical cooperation will be limited to groups with
compatible concepts of baptism, communion, or whatever.  I still think
it's important to have as much cooperation and joint activity as
possible.  But I'm afraid a full realization of our unity is not going
to happen until we are united with Christ at the End.

This is a grudging admission from me.  I come from one of those groups
whose orientation is ecumenical.  I had hoped that people would see
that our common commitment to Christ is more important than our own
theology and interpretation of Scripture, and that we could at least
worship together.  But this seems not to be possible.

--clh]