The unity of the visible church and terms of communion #1

In what follows I would like to endeavour to reflect upon Acts 15 and what we can we can learn about the unity of the visible church and terms of communion by good and necessary consequence.

Acts 15v1 "And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved"

• The church will often face those who wish to add to, diminish from or over extend the terms of communion established by the word of God. The principles of Acts 15 can be applied to all and any of these situations also. It is just as unscriptural to diminish from as to add to what God requires.
• In this case there was addition to, but in much of the New Testament e.g. Corinth and Churches of Asia there was a laxity on these matters i.e. participation in idolatry and immorality. 
• Differences in relation to terms of communion may often relate to correct interpretation of scripture including the prohibitions of the mosaic law and the degree of continuity between old and new treatments
• Sometimes this may even impact upon and distort the teaching of the gospel and v24 subverts and plunders souls 
• This will also subvert the foundations of the church

v.2-3 "When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question. And being brought on their way by the church, they passed through Phenice and Samaria, declaring the conversion of the Gentiles: and they caused great joy unto all the brethren."

• Where terms of communion are distorted in this way division and strife inevitably results
• Which will lead to permanent disunity (Rom 14:1)
• It is our duty to resist and oppose false teaching and practice that subverts the unity of the church and the purity of the gospel in this area 
• It is the role of church courts to handle such questions and to assert the scriptural view upon it.
• Ignoring such questions or making them a matter of individual conscience will not settle them as they concern the whole church

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.

Some of the 20th Century Attempts at Union

The principles of the presbyterian view of unity and schism were firmly applied in 1893. The fathers of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland witnessed many sad and serious defections in doctrine, discipline and worship but it was only once they were compelled to sin that they separated. This point came when it was clear that they would be compelled to administer the Declaratory Act and thereby breach the ordination vows that they had made to God that they would assert, maintain and defend the truth. They could not discipline those who adhered to and preached Declaratory Act doctrines. They could not refuse to license, induct or ordain them, indeed they could not be confident of who did or did not make mental appeal to the Act.

The doctrinal constitution of the Church had been changed. As Thomas McCrie observed: “When a church once reformed and faithful not only departs from what she had professed and received, and persists in this by a series of public acts, but ...adopts doctrines inconsistent with her former scriptural profession and engagements, and imposes these by the perverted exercise of authority and discipline, separation from her communion is lawful. When the public profession and administrations of a church have been settled conformably to the laws of Christ, and sanctioned by the most solemn engagements, if the majority shall set these aside, and erect a new constitution sinfully defective, and involving a material renunciation of the former, the minority refusing to accede to this, adhering to their engagements, and continuing to maintain communion on the original terms, cannot justly be charged with schism”.

The FP Church maintained the constitution of the Free Church of 1843 while there was now a new body maintaining a different constitution. Rather than joining with the body maintaining the Free Church 1843 constitution, the minority of 1900 continued the new Declaratory Act body with the changed constitution and eventually in 1906 they decided to repeal the Declaratory Act. There was no doubt an opportunity here for them to agree terms with the FP Church.

It has been said that the repeal of the Declaratory Act by the Free Church removed any basis for a separate FP position. The Declaratory Act had only been removed as a "dead law" and not as a real defection - this was untrue and dangerous.   In fact the very repealing Act erected a barrier (still maintained) against union by recording a constitutional rejection of the Free Presbyterian position in 1893.  This directly inferred the Free Presbyterian separation to be sinfully schismatic. This provided an insuperable obstacle that would have required the Free Presbyterians to cast away the testimony raised in 1893 for a constitution that implicitly condemned their actions as schism. This was something that was not only part of their constitution but something concerning which they had vowed their approval to God. To dissolve the Free Presbyterian Church within the Free Church would have been sinful because it would imply that 1893 had been sinful.

In his first paper on union, Rev. Kenneth Stewart made reference to this fact and acknowledged that "the Free Church made a very bad mistake in claiming that she had ‘always adhered’ to her Confession – that is, that she had adhered to it in the intervening years between the passing of the Act and its repeal (1892-1905)". He notes that "the insistence on including this claim helped to scupper reunification".  He goes on "However, it is hard to avoid the impression that, later, it seemed to be the case that FP’s would work hard to find reasons for remaining separate even if they didn’t immediately seem to spring to mind". This is unsubstantiated, there was sufficient in the condemnation mentioned above to prevent union. JR Mackay wanted the phrase deleted by the Free Church; he did not get this but still joined. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Free Church overtures for union were largely opportunistic.

No one (whoever they might be), however, who had vowed their approval of the Deed of Separation m(1893) could abandon this constitution for a constitution that condemned clear statements of that Deed (and therefore constitution) without sinning. The FPs believed that the constitution had been changed legally but that the effect of this was that it created a new body with a new, altered constitution. They were now being asked to abandon the true representative of 1843 for a body whose constitution now condemned the separate position adopted in 1893. 

To reiterate the matters already discussed, the fundamental issue was that it would have been sinful for the FPs to have returned because the FCS had a constitutional condemnation of 1893 and while no one was going to impose that on individuals it meant that they would have been abandoning the truth for a constitution that implicitly condemned their actions as schism. To return would have been sinful because it implied that the 1893 separation had been sinful. 

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).