Terms of communion and unity

This concludes some cursory comments on the subject of terms of communion and visible unity. It is a matter of emphasis elsewhere in the New Testament besides what we have noted already.  "And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers" (Acts 2:42).

Where unity is broken by open and persistent disobedience to God's Word there is a necessity to suspend communion. "If any man obey not our word by this epistle" (2 Thessalonians 3:14). "Who concerning the truth have erred" (2 Timothy 2:18). "Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof from such turn away" (2 Timothy 3:5).  "Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us" (2 Thessalonians 3:6). Paul commands us to "withdraw from every brother that walketh disorderly." That withdrawal relates to church communion. Yet the man is a brother, a professing Christian. He is walking disorderly and breaking unity however gracious his state may be. He must be withdrawn from. "And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother" (2 Thessalonians 3:14-15). Again he is to be treated as a brother but to publicly "note" such a man must mean church censure. "Now, I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them" (Romans 16:17)

In the context of discussing the Lord’s Supper, the apostle Paul speaks of divisions of practice and doctrine. It cannot be right that "when ye come together in the Church, I hear that division exist among you” (1 Corinthians 11:18). Yet he goes on to say in verse 19 that "there must be also factions among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you." There must be a distinction made between those that accord to the truth and those that do not. In other words terms of communion are necessary in order to uphold unity and order. "Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ, that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel." (Philippians 1:27)

"Whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing" (Philippians 3:16). There is to be a unity of mind in the truth which is to be shown in Church communion.  "Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment" (1 Corinthians 1:10)

Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be like-minded one toward another according to Christ Jesus; that ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 15:5) 

Some other helpful articles may be found here and here.

The unity of the visible church and terms of communion #3

Acts 15:22-23 "Then pleased it the apostles and elders, with the whole church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas; namely, Judas surnamed Barsabas, and Silas, chief men among the brethren: And they wrote letters by them after this manner; The apostles and elders and brethren send greeting unto the brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia"

• Unity can be established by settling questions using the God ordained means of church courts
• Voting is a scriptural and necessary element of this
• Individual church members ("the whole church") are to assure themselves that the decrees of church courts are in accord with Scripture

v24 "Forasmuch as we have heard, that certain which went out from us have troubled you with words, subverting your souls, saying, Ye must be circumcised, and keep the law: to whom we gave no such commandment"

• unbiblical terms of communion are not only unsettling but also subverting and destructive to the Church

v28 "For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things"

• when Church courts settle questions based upon the Word of God it can be said to be the mind of the Holy Spirit
• Church courts possess only ministerial authority i.e. limited by the authority of Scripture to declare the revealed will of God contained in Scripture
• Terms of communion are necessary things
• Terms of church communion are a burden meant to be demanding and not light
• the burden must be no heavier but also no lighter than the Word of God requires (Revelation 2:24)
• Prohibition and discipline as well as teaching is required in order to attain unity and order

v29 "That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well."

• Terms of communion may restrain certain elements of everyday life as directed by Scripture. It is not exceeding the bounds of Scripture or Church authority to restrain certain aspects of our conduct
• Terms of communion will involve separation from idolatry
• Terms of communion may involve things indifferent or not expressly sinful in themselves but which would breach the bond of love and peace through stumbling and offending others. Romans 14 speaks of receiving those weak in the faith, not scandalising them and preventing them from having communion with us on the basis of something that we believe to be indifferent in itself.
• Terms of communion will involve avoiding the appearance of evil 
• Terms of communion may involve temporary application of permanent principles

v30-31 "So when they were dismissed, they came to Antioch: and when they had gathered the multitude together, they delivered the epistle: Which when they had read, they rejoiced for the consolation".

• decisions of Church courts should bring encouragement to believers. It is encouraging when matters are clearly settled rather than left as open questions

Acts 16:4-5 "And as they went through the cities, they delivered them the decrees for to keep, that were ordained of the apostles and elders which were at Jerusalem. And so were the churches established in the faith, and increased in number daily".

• the decisions of church courts are binding and can be described as decrees to be kept
• the authority of church courts can extend over national and regional boundaries
• Uniformity in terms of communion is necessary for unity
• Such terms are to be taught and preached
• This leads to increasing in numbers
• It is not divisive to assert and maintain scriptural terms of communion
• Terms of communion are necessary "Can two walk together except they be agreed?" Action is required where there is disobedience to the Word of God.

The unity of the visible church and terms of communion #2

"And when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church, and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that God had done with them". (Acts 15:4)

• the work of salvation cannot be separated from the nature of church communion, there must be qualifications for the latter 

"And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter" (v6)

• the unity and government of the church in the new testament follows on directly from that of the Old Testament. We have a passing reference to the office of elder as assumed to be continued in the New Testament together with church courts. 
• Deliberation and decision on matters relating to terms of communion rest with representative presbyters in church courts.

"Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they". (vv10-11)

• the terms of communion under the mosaic administration involved a burden that was too heavy to bear

"Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up: That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things." (v14-17)

• Scripture must be the ultimate authority to appeal to in order to confirm experience
• the church is a people named with the name of God and under his authority and his possession
• the church is the continuation of the church of Israel under the Old Testament
• there is now no separation between Jew and gentile in the communion of the church

"Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God" (v19)

• unscriptural terms of communion trouble the people of God 

Guest Post: The Establishment Principle and the Unity of the Church #2

Mark Hausam's second post. 

THE ESTABLISHMENT PRINCIPLE AND THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH

At this point we can begin to see how the Establishment Principle (EP) supports the unity of the church of Christ.  We can see this partly by recognizing how societies that have abandoned (either explicitly or in practice) the EP and instead embraced a voluntaristic view of the relationship between church and state have correspondingly had trouble maintaining the unity of the church.

In the United States of America, for example, abandonment of the EP has gone hand in hand with abandonment of the concept of the formal unity of the church.  This can be seen by taking a look at the revised version of the Westminster Confession embraced by the mainstream Presbyterian tradition in the United States, in particular the section on the civil magistrate that corresponds to the quotation from the original version of the Confession quoted at the very beginning of this article:

Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger. And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance (Westminster Confession 23:3 as revised by American Presbyterian synods in 1788).

Notice the intertwining here of two ideas, 1. that the civil magistrate ought not to establish or even show any favoritism to any particular Christian denomination, and 2. that there are multiple legitimate denominations.  Historically, the embracing of denominationalism--the idea that there can be multiple, legitimate, de jure denominations--is what led to opposition to the EP.  If there is more than one legitimate denomination, then it wouldn't make sense for the civil magistrate to establish only one of them.  And yet the civil magistrate can't establish all of them, because they are not in full formal communion with each other and have contradictory teachings and practices.  An attempt to formally recognize all of them fully would result in a contradictory position for the civil government.  So the only solution was to disestablish them all and treat them all, in effect, as private organizations no different in principle from the Boy Scouts or a country club or any other purely voluntary, not-officially-recognized organization.

Disestablishmentarianism (that is, the abandonment of the principles of the EP) and denominationalism tend to reinforce each other in a society.  Historically, in Britain and in the United States in particular, the pattern seems to have worked in this way:  Before 1690, most Christians were opposed both to denominationalism and to disestablishmentarianism.  They believed firmly that the church of Christ is one and that the nature of the church is incompatible with idea of multiple de jure denominations, and they also believed firmly that the state should formally acknowledge the legitimate denominational church.  However, in 1690, toleration begin to be established in Britain.  Multiple churches were allowed to exist without hindrance.  This contributed more and more over time to the advancement of an agnostic attitude in British society, and people became more and more indifferent to the truth claims of the various churches.  This attitude of indifferentism, in turn, created a lack of concern for the unity of the church.  "Agreeing to disagree in a friendly and charitable manner" came to replace biblical unity as the ideal for the people of God.  Toleration and indifferentism combined led to the setting up of more and more denominations until the point was reached that most of the church and the broader society became used to having multiple churches and thought nothing of it, even embracing it as the ideal--the state we are in today, except that we've now gone even further and embraced non-Protestant forms of Christianity and even non-Christian religions and Atheism and Agnosticism into the mix.  Denominationalism and indifferentism, in turn, serve to reinforce the idea that the civil government should not establish a particular church, which then continues to reinforce denominationalism, which continues to reinforce disestablishmentarianism, and so on.

It is easy to see how an embracing of the EP would tend to be a scourge for denominationalism and would encourage concern for the formal unity of the church.  We don't tend to have a problem similar to denominationalism in the civil sphere.  That is, we don't live in societies where people go around joining themselves to a whole host of different civil magistrates based on their personal taste, agreeing happily to disagree:  "Oh, David Cameron is your Prime Minister?  That's nice!  My personal Prime Minister is Ed Miliband!"  This doesn't happen because we understand the concept that there is an officially recognized civil government.  A person doesn't get to be a civil magistrate simply be standing up and declaring himself to be one.  He has to be properly appointed and legitimately recognized.  Otherwise, he is not legitimate, however much he may protest that he is or wish to be.  Similarly, in the EP system, the church is formally recognized by the society.  One cannot simply decide to start a new denomination and have it be recognized as legitimate.  One has to go through the proper channels, and if one doesn't do so, one cannot be recognized as having any legitimate authority.  If a session, or a presbytery, decides to break from the rest of the established church, the society will view that session or presbytery as having forfeited its legitimate authority to function and will treat it accordingly.

Thus, an EP way of looking at things, in contrast with voluntarism, will make it impossible for a situation to arise in which the legitimate church can come to be viewed as being made up of multiple independent denominations.  Just as the fact that the federal government of the United States has an official position on who the legitimate governor of Utah actually is prevents multiple governors from being considered to be legitimate and accepted by different people in Utah, so the formal recognition of the true church by the civil government will have the effect of preventing multiple independent ecclesiastical organizations from being considered all to be legitimate, de jure churches (though it may still be recognized that those who are not members of the established, legitimate church may be, in fact, regenerated members of Christ's Body de facto or informally).  The question of the de jure legitimacy and authority of the various existing denominations and the mandate of the unity of the church must be faced whether or not the civil magistrate does his part by formally recognizing and establishing Christianity and the church, but if he does do his part, it makes it much harder for the society to forget the importance of these principles and these questions and for the indifferentism that allows denominationalism to flourish to become established.  In this way, the civil magistrate has a major role to play in taking order "that unity and peace be preserved in the Church."

Guest Posts

Two new guest posts on Mark Hausam's blog - http://freethoughtforchrist.blogspot.com
Part 1 and Part 2. These add to his 40 posts on the subject of schism and visible church unity and 36 posts on presbyterian church government.

Unity: Real or Synthetic?

This post also appears on www.ourconfession.org - an online meeting place for folk who profess to be reformed in doctrine, worship and practice. It picks up on current discussions and debates in relation to issues of unity.

There is a synthetic substitute for real unity within the visible Church. It is created within the parachurch through organisations formed for evangelical or reformed unity. Many of these parachurch organisations go as far as to have representatives and delegates from denominations and to all appearance may be like a council of churches. This is however a substitute for real, organic unity.The irony is that such bodies (including NAPARC and ICRC) actually facilitate schism rather than union and inadvertently serve to undermine presbyterian principles. Mark Hausam writes of this scenario on his blog:

‘The Christian churches today are in a deplorable state of division. One of the things that hinders the resolution of these divisions, or lessens the motivations of those in the church to work diligently for the sort of reform that would lead to their elimination if followed through, is a sense of complacency held by many in Reformed churches today. Many people will confess that there are divisions, and that we ought to work for their elimination, but they are lulled into thinking the situation better than it is by the feeling that we don't really need to have organic union among all the churches of Christ. Just as congregationalists/independents lull themselves into security regarding the disunity of the church (and thus split into thousands of mini-denominations) by their erroneous doctrine that church power does not extend beyond the local congregation (so that they hold that gatherings beyond the congregational level have only advisory and not binding authority), so many Presbyterian/Reformed people today have been lulled into security by the sense that the organic unity of the church need only extend up to a certain level, and after that we can adopt the model of the independents.’

Reformed churches have grown so comfortable with fraternal relations that they think that they can settle down with it as the real thing. The irony is that holding out for real union and unity rather than mere fraternal relations is dismissed as narrow, exclusive, separatist, etc– perhaps even schismatic according to a false understanding of schism. Actually striving for something more than fraternal relations is the bigger, more principled and more catholic (in a good sense) vision and position. When the Westminster Divines were offered a synthetic unity by Independents, to them it was no option at all and one which they roundly denounced as schism.

There are also inherent contradictions in synthetic unity because it means that you must recognise multiple denominations with very different standards and contradictory claims, including both sides of a division (as though there had been a no fault divorce). The main contradiction, however, is what we might call ‘pretend recognition.’ Mark Hausam describes this in another contribution:

‘Whenever there are multiple denominations, each denomination, by virtue of its existence separate from other denominations, is making a two-pronged statement: “We possess legitimate authority, and other denominations don’t.’

To recognise other denominations whilst in reality sayingby our actions that they have no legitimacy is a mere pretence. All these non-denominational structures look like what Baptists and Congregationalists do with their parachurch associations. It's not presbyterianism. This point is made by Carl Trueman:

‘I do not think that evangelical unity is particularly important or something to which we should aspire. Christian unity is; but Christian unity, if it is to be achieved this side of glory, will be a churchly unity. Evangelicalism is a non-churchly category. It does not organize churches. It does not ordain people. It does not disciple people. All these things are done by specific churches in specific places under specific leadership (both in terms of structure and personalities). The church is a creation of God; the parachurch is not. And Christian unity, if it is ever to be achieved on earth, requires churches talking to each other as churches. Being a pessimist, I myself doubt that such unity will ever be achieved this side of glory; but formal churchly interaction is the necessary precondition even for making it hypothetically conceivable.

In fact, to the extent that evangelical groups see themselves as instruments of moving churches along towards the achievement of true Christian unity (as opposed merely to providing support for churches and a forum for limited co-belligerence), to that extent they are playing a trick with gospel-centred smoke and mirrors. If we see Christian unity as something achieved by such parachurch coalitions, then what we are really seeing is a church unity which is essentially independent in ecclesiology and baptistic in practice. Every single evangelical group of which I am aware which sees itself as the key to real unity ultimately defaults in practice to privileging Baptist independency. That is, of course, absolutely fine for the Baptist independent; but if one is Presbyterian or paedobaptist by conviction, such ecumenism amounts to being told “Abandon much of what you hold dear and everything that makes you different to us and - hey presto! - we have unity. Oh, and by the way, if you are not prepared to do that, remember whose fault it is that we are still hopelessly divided.'

Trueman’s points are well made, but churches talking to each other would have to go beyond the kind of fraternal relations where we exchange greetings but always avoid the issues that divide. In that way we can keep up a charitable schism for ever.

Unity: Real, realisable and future

Real, organic unity may seem impossible to achieve. Doubts about the possibility of unity are, however, misplaced when it is promised in Scripture. We are to believe that the Scriptures prophesy of a time in the latter days when the visible Church shall be entirely united in time,‘to serve him with one consent’ (Zeph 3:9). ‘Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing: for they shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall bring again Zion’ (Isa 52:8). George Gillespie believed Scripture on this: ‘Brethren, it is not impossible, pray for it, endeavour it, press hard toward the mark of accommodation.’. Christ's prayer will be answered:‘That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us’ (John 17:21). ‘They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea’ (Isa 11:9).

This is something to be looked for by faith: ‘Thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down, not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken’ (Isa 33:20). There shall be one people of God even as they have one king. ‘I will make them one nation ... and David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd’ (Ezek 37:22, 24). ‘And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one’ (Zeph 14:9). Christ as king shall gather his Church into a visible unity. ‘He shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the enmity of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim’ (Isa 11:12-13).