Early in the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement, one of the phrases that was used to shape our community was the expression, "In essentials, unity, in non-essentials diversity, in all things charity." These are noble words – words meant to unify, words intended to bring a people together and keep them together.
In reality and irony, these words are first attributed to Augustine. Augustine is one of the most well-known century church fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries because so much that he wrote still affects how so many Christians think. Yet Augustine lived in a time of great controversy. The controversy was not about what kind of music to have in worship, or the roles of women in the church. The arguments of the age were about the nature of Jesus Christ. Is he God? Is he human? The majority of the church decided that, if they were to be consistent with scripture, the words of Jesus, and the tradition of the church, Jesus was God in human flesh. If he is both God and human, how does this work? Serious thinkers spent a serious amount of time and ink over this.
But if only ink had been spilled, that would have been enough. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very long before more blood than ink had been wasted. Christians began the practice of banishing and eventually executing other believers – all in the name of unity, because of their inability to deal with diversity, and a general lack of charity. When the Reformation movement came along, Protestant Christians didn’t do much better. Anabaptists, who believed in baptism much the same as do we, were executed by Protestants. Ironically and cruelly, Protestants executed these baptism-believing Christians by drowning them.
Are we any different? I wonder. We humans have a problem: ideas are dangerous things. Ideas are powerful. Because they are powerful, they have the potential to reshape our thinking, our life, and our world. Yet, because we humans have the ability to misperceive, misunderstand, and misrepresent reality, not all ideas are useful, good, or true. Consequently, we feel the need to protect people, especially certain classes of people (children, students) from ideas that are dangerous in the negative sense of that word. That is where our quote really comes into play.
What is important enough to be essential? When do we cross over the line into the non-essential? Aren’t those questions that we disagree about, too? What is essential for me might very well seem a non-essential to you. How are we to negotiate our differences? Charity would seem to remain the guiding principle. Our conversation should display the virtue of love in our lives – both action and word.
Where are these conversations to take place? If we can’t have them in elementary Bible school class (and I don’t think that anyone would propose this), then where is a safe place that we can have conversations of disagreement that allow for the exchange of ideas and make persuasion possible? I think that it’s important to note that it is not so much location as attitude. Both parties have to feel safe for conversation. Yet persuasion requires compassion (love) for the other person, where debate seems, by its very definition, to involve disdain. Because Augustine engaged more in debate with his opponents than persuasion, his stance caused him to reject certain secondary ideas held by his opponent (the nature of humanity, for example) which weren’t necessary for him to reject. That’s one of the reasons we still have to worry with the doctrines of total depravity and original sin.
Once again, this has been a problem for us. When the Pentecostal churches began to emerge with an unusual view of the Holy Spirit, many within the Churches of Christ found it easier to disavow any contemporary activity or presence of the Spirit than to sort out just what it was that the Spirit might or might not be doing. As a result, we ended up with two groups: one saying the Spirit caused everything that they did, and one denying that the Spirit had done anything for 2,000 years. Both groups disconnected themselves from the truth and from each other. That’s a shame.
Today, it is inevitable that we are going to disagree with someone about something. It may not be the nature of Christ, or baptism, or the Holy Spirit, but it’s bound to be important. Let’s see if we can’t figure out how to prayerfully, lovingly, and truthfully apply this godly saying:
"In essentials, unity, in non-essentials diversity, in all things charity."
Blessings,
Ron
