When to unite and when to divide

Have you noticed the way in which ‘divisiveness’ has become a completely negative word? If an idea, a statement, a strategy, a proposal is judged to be ‘divisive’ then it is unwelcome. For example in my part of the world, in the Anglican denomination, there is a proposal to authorise lay persons to administer the Lord's Supper in church, just as lay persons may be authorized to preach God's Word. This is opposed by some who have no fundamental objection to it, except that it would be ‘divisive’. Therefore it ought not to be pursued.

I suspect that our confusion is exacerbated today because the culture in which we find ourselves has enthroned what it calls ‘tolerance’ as the highest virtue. There is a tendency to welcome whatever unites and reject whatever divides. Unity is good. Division is bad. Perhaps there is a tendency among some of us who are determined not to be shaped by the world around us to take the opposite position and think that division is good and unity is bad.

But a moment's reflection tells any Christian person that neither position, as I have crudely expressed them, can be right. And I do not think any Christian really operates consistently with either outlook.

The truths that I hope to explore here are as follows:

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• there is unity that is godly. Jesus prayed for it: “that they may be one as we are one” (John 17:11, 22).
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• there is unity that is ungodly. The tower-builders of Genesis sought it: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth” (Gen 11:4).
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• there is division that is godly. The one who prayed, “that they may be one” also said, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division” (Luke 12:51).
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• there is division that is ungodly. Paul warned us, “watch out for those who cause divisions” (Rom 16:17).
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There are policies, actions and words which cause division and in the process honour God. There are policies, actions and words which cause division and grieve the Holy Spirit (Eph 4:30). There are policies, actions and words which promote and express the unity that pleases God. And there are policies, actions and words which advance a unity which God hates.

I do not believe that we evangelicals are very good at distinguishing these things. We confuse them. Before we look at some ways in which this quest for unity has occurred in evangelical churches, organizations and denominations, we will endeavour to sketch out a brief biblical theology of the concept of ‘one’.

Oneness in Scripture

The significance of the concept of ‘oneness’—unity—begins with the fact that there is one God. The basis for the concept of unity is seen in the Bible's first sentence: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). One God is the creator of all things, and therefore there is a unity to all things, a solidarity and interconnectedness, by virtue of the fact that all things are the creation of one God.

Our understanding of unity must begin with the biblical monotheism expressed in the first commandment to God's people Israel: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exod 20:3). The implications of biblical monotheism are highly significant. If there are many gods, or no god, it is difficult to see why one would expect to find unity in the world: why should there be any coherent relationship between things, between races, between people? A particular interest of the Scriptures is the unity of humanity.

a. One God and human unity

The unity of mankind is presented in Genesis 1-2 on the basis of the one God's creation of humanity (Hebrew adam) “in his image”. The creation of adam/humanity in Genesis 1 presents the unity of male and female:

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So God created man (adam) in his own image,
_in the image of God he created him;
_male and female he created them. (Gen 1:27; cf. 5:2)

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In Genesis 2 this is expressed in the unity of marriage where the two “become one flesh” (Gen 2:24).

It is important for us to observe that the unity does not consist simply in sameness or equality. There is sameness (“bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”), but there is also distinction (“male and female”).

This unity is of profound significance. Some see an allusion to the persons of the Trinity in the grammatical plurals of Genesis 1:26. The “image” and “likeness” of the God who said “Let us” is a being in relationship: adam who is one, yet plural.

Whether or not it can be deduced from the wording of Genesis 1:26, the New Testament teaches that the restored human relationships of believers are to reflect the relationships within the triune God. In particular Jesus prayed that “all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you” (John 17:21).

Humanity's unity destroyed

The consequences of disobedience to God include the shattering of human unity. Man accuses woman (Gen 3:12). Brother hates and murders brother (Gen 4). The earth becomes “corrupt in God's sight and full of violence” (Gen 6:11).

Humanity's unity promised

The unity that was the will of God in the creation of adam is, however, not abandoned. This is clearly implied in the promise—“the gospel preached in advance” (Gal 3:8)—to Abram (Gen 12:1-3). From Abram there will be one “great nation” through whom all the families of the earth will be blessed. There will be not many different sources of blessing, but one.

Israel at Sinai

When the people of Israel assembled at Mount Sinai (Exod 19) after the exodus, we see the beginnings of the restoration of that unity. God told Moses:

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“Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children.” (Deut 4:10)

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The day became remembered as “the day of the assembly”, the day of the gathering together (Deut 9:10; 10:4). In Greek, it is the day of the ekklesia. Here, Israel was together before the Lord.

One at last

The final realization of this purpose of God is seen in the vision of Revelation 7:9:

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After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.

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Our understanding of unity must be in this biblical context: the unity of creation, the fall into disunity, and the unity of humanity which is to come. The Bible'smessage, of course, is centrally about what God, in his wisdom, grace and power has done to accomplish this.

b. Human unity without God

The fallen human race has not abandoned the quest for unity. Instead, it has sought for ways to be united without God. The biblical ideal of unity is opposed to such alternative understandings.

The Greeks and the Romans developed various concepts of the unity of humanity. There were arguments about whether there was a common human nature, and if so what constituted it. There was a view that human unity was effected by the bonds of society, particularly of law. The Romans had an idea of a world community, united militarily, centred on Rome. There was considerable thought and argument related to such concepts of unity in New Testament times.¹

But we see godless quests for unity within Scripture, too. The great flawed project of the Tower of Babel is a prime example. It was a scheme to build a united human race, one society, united by joint achievement, by shared greatness, by mutual protection:

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Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth. (Gen 11:4)

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God judged this effort by scattering the participants and confusing their language. Their attempt to form a godless unity led to even greater disunity at the hand of God.

There is, however, a unity that godless humanity shares—it is unity in sin and death.

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... just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned. (Rom 5:12)

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The usual distinctions in humanity do not break this unity: “There is no difference [between Jew and Greek], for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:22b-23).

c. Gospel division and gospel unity

We have, now, the fundamental concepts of human unity under God and human unity without God. The latter may have all the impressiveness of the tower in Babylon, with the accompanying hubris, but it is still a unity in sin and death, a unity in Adam.

The answer to the quest for unity is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. He fulfils the promise to Abram, in which God builds a great nation—the ‘nation’ of believers. It is a gathering of those who were scattered, restoring the ‘oneness’ that sin had corrupted. John comments on the unintended prophecy of Caiaphas:

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He did not say this_on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. (John 11:51-52)

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The startling truth of Scripture is that unity was accomplished by Jesus' death. The gospel—the word of the cross—is at the same time a word of unity.

We have taken a long path to get to this point, but I hope that we can see that the whole Bible leads to the news of the unity that has now been established by an act of God in the death of Jesus.² The unity the gospel proclaims is not itself visible now—any more than forgiveness or justification is visible now. It is the unity created by Christ's demolition of the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile—demolished by his death (Eph 2:14-18). It is the unity created by the access we all enjoy to the Father, because of Christ's death, by one Spirit. It is, therefore, “the unity of the Spirit” (Eph 4:3).

Just as the gospel proclaims forgiveness and then demands forgiveness, so the gospel proclaims unity and then demands unity. That is to say, it demands conduct and behaviour consistent with the reality of the unity proclaimed. Ephesians 4:17-6:9 then spells out some of the details of this expression of unity.

It is also taught in the New Testament that the word of the cross creates a deep division, for it is foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is the power of God to those who are being saved (1 Cor 1:18). This is the only division that the gospel will allow. In 1 Corinthians, Paul contrasts this cross-based division with divisions that arise out of human pride. The divisions among the Corinthians were not gospel divisions; they were man-made divisions. They were like the divisions that exist among those who are perishing, to whom the word of the cross is weak and foolish. This kind of division is unacceptable in the body of Christ.

The evangelical ‘quest’ for unity

The unity which is proclaimed and demanded by the gospel is a key to unravelling at least some of the present evangelical confusion.

There are many recent analyses of evangelicalism that are bewildered by the diversity that now calls itself “evangelical”. There are various attempts to describe evangelical Christianity, by observing the characteristics of those who accept that label. David Bebbington's description is one of the most widely accepted:

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There are four qualities that have been the special marks of Evangelical religion: conversionism, the belief that lives need to be changed; activism, the expression of the gospel in effort; biblicism, a particular regard for the Bible; and what may be called crucicentrism, a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Together they form a quadrilateral of priorities that is the basis of Evangelicalism.³

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Whatever value there no doubt is in this kind of ‘objective’ description, I would suggest that it is not the evangelical understanding of evangelicalism. From the inside, an evangelical understands the evangelical ‘movement’ (and I am not sure that is the right word) to be centred on the gospel, the biblical gospel, the only gospel (Gal 1:6-9). It was the gospel that drew people from various backgrounds and traditions and denominations together. I do not dispute the truthfulness of Bebbington's description as far as it goes, but an evangelical must insist that the things he mentions are nothing other than the necessary outworking of the gospel of Christ. This gospel is focused on the cross, learnt from the Bible, demands the effort of obedience and calls for and promises changed lives. Evangelical religion is the religion brought into being and shaped by the gospel. It is (as evangelicals have always claimed) authentic, apostolic, New Testament Christianity.

Does that mean that evangelicals agree on everything? No. However what binds evangelicals together has always been, and must always be, the gospel. Only the gospel a person believes gives him or her the right to be called ‘evangelical’. There is plenty of room for diversity of practice among us in things that we all agree are unimportant. But we must never put the gospel itself, or aspects of the gospel, in that category.

The history of evangelicalism is not the history of the use of that word, but the history of the gospel itself. It is true that we recognize a very significant rediscovery of the gospel in the sixteenth century Reformation, but we cannot believe that evangelicalism began then and there. We also thank God for the marvellous and extraordinary impact of the gospel in the seventeenth century on both sides of the Atlantic. But the gospel preached by Wesley, Whitfield and Edwards had been at work since the day of Pentecost. Wherever that gospel is preached and wherever it is believed, there is evangelicalism. That is the evangelical understanding of evangelicalism.

Over the last 50 years or so, various organizations and denominations which came into being under the influence of the gospel, and therefore rightly called themselves “evangelical”, have become remarkably diverse in both practice and theology. This diversity is misunderstood if it is seen as variations within one ‘movement’ called ‘evangelical’. The diversity is in significant part the result of persons, organizations and associations moving in various directions away from the gospel and therefore away from evangelicalism.

At least that is how I believe it must be seen by gospel people, that is, evangelicals.

a. Unity in agreement

David Wells has put up an hypothesis which I have found very helpful.⁴ He argues that from the early 1940s through to the 1970s evangelicals (British and American) sought to define themselves doctrinally, that is, in terms of truth (in my words, gospel truth). This was, of course, a period in which a number of very significant personalities had a great impact on evangelicals in both countries: Billy Graham, Carl Henry, John Stott, James Packer. These men were united in their agreement. No, they did not agree on every point of theology. But what united them was what they did agree about. And their agreement was substantial. Their influence helped evangelicals to see themselves confessionally (to use Davis Wells' term) to be people united by the one gospel.

This unity is not just a sociological phenomenon: a group or a movement that has something in common, in this case a set of religious beliefs called ‘the gospel’. The unity that evangelicals believed they shared was the unity of which the gospel spoke. It was the unity for which Jesus prayed, the unity for which he died. Unity in the gospel is the unity of the gospel! The unity expressed by shared faith in the one gospel is of an utterly different order from any other kind of unity, because it is the unity that the gospel itself creates!

It is this understanding of evangelicalism which motivated the drafting of doctrinal statements as the basis for and expression of gospel unity. Such statements attempted to express the truth in a way that united those who believed it, but would be rejected by those who did not believe the same gospel.

b. Unity despite disagreement

Wells suggests that in the late 1970s, as a result of the ‘success’ of the evangelicals, a discernible shift began to take place “from confessional substance to simple organizational fraternity”. Evangelicals had become an organization of sorts, a kind of bureaucracy, and to be somewhere within this ‘righteous empire’ was to be evangelical.

In this period, a very substantial body of Anglican evangelicals in Britain was rethinking its relationship to the Church of England and to non-Anglican evangelicals. The significant second National Evangelical Anglican Congress (NEAC2) was held in Nottingham in 1977. Here evangelicals discussed, among other things, the importance of visible church unity. Steps towards such unity were envisaged despite a “low degree of doctrinal unity.”⁵ In the United States, the evangelicalism sometimes called “neo-evangelicalism” had successfully distanced itself from what was called “fundamentalism”, and was engaging with the wider “church” world from a position of perceived strength. Evangelicals were becoming less conscious of being united by a gospel that distanced them from others. As evangelicals sought to influence the denominations and other organizations in which they found themselves, the importance of theological belief became displaced by the importance of such things as effective strategy.⁶ An institutional mindset emerged.

c. Unity in experience

In the early 1960s, another shift was taking place which complicated the picture through the emergence of the charismatic movement. Wells proposes that in this movement theological confession is secondary to what is understood to be the experience of the Holy Spirit. This experience unites those of various doctrinal beliefs, whether Catholic or Protestant.

If Wells is right (and I must say it seems to me he is roughly right) and if the comments I have made are generally sound, we have a crisis on our hands. If we have rightly understood the Bible, we must recover a sense of gospel unity and gospel division. God is uniting people by the gospel, and dividing people by the gospel. If we are not committed to that unity, and, yes, that division, we have ceased to be gospel people. We no longer have the right to the name ‘evangelical’ (though that would be the least of our worries!).

Conclusion

The main argument of this article is that we must distinguish between various kinds of unity and various kinds of division. Let me summarize as follows.

Two kinds of unity

There are two kinds of unity.

The unity that matters to us supremely must be the unity of the new humanity God has created by the death of his Son, and that he is bringing into being by the one true gospel. This gospel unity is unity in the gospel, unity in the Christ of the gospel, unity in the Father and the Son by the Spirit.

The other unity is what humans in their pride and arrogance create. It is worse than worthless. It is unity in Babylon, and will fall under God's judgment.

Two kinds of diversity

I have noted that unity is not the same thing as equivalence or sameness. The expression “unity in diversity” is valid. However, what makes all the difference in the world is: unity in what? And diversity in what? Being united in Anglicanism with diversity in faith is Babylonian unity. Being united in the one gospel with diversity of church order and other similar things is surely the unity God has created.

Two kinds of division

Finally, there are two kinds of division.

There is division caused by the gospel between those to whom the word of the cross is foolishness and those to whom it is the power of God. And there is division based on human boasting, which is a denial of the gospel.

Those who care about gospel unity must care about gospel truth, in full recognition that this concern will both unite and divide.

This article is part of a series by John Woodhouse based on addresses given at the Reform National Conference in Swanick, UK, in October 2001. The second article, published in Briefing #281, looks at the issues of unity which face today's church and the third article, published in Briefing #284, looks at unity and denominations.

Endnotes

¹ W. F. Taylor, ‘Unity, Unity of Humanity’, The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 6:746-749.

² See J. em> Packer, ‘The Doctrine and Expression of Christian Unity’, Churchman 80 (1966), reprinted in Serving the People of God: The Collected Shorter Writings of J.I. Packer (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998).

³ D. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (Grand Rapids: Backer, 1992), 2-3; frequently cited. For example: M. Noll, American Evangelical Christianity: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 13; S. J. Grenz, Renewing the Center: Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Era (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 15.

⁴ D. Wells in ‘On Being Evangelical: Some Theological Differences and Similarities’, in M. A. Noll, D. W. Bebbington and G. A. Rawlyk (eds.), Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles, and Beyond, 1700-1990 (New York, Oxford: OUP, 1994), pp. 389-410.

⁵ J. Capon, Evangelicals Tomorrow (Glasgow: Collins, 1977), p. 84.

⁶ Ibid., pp. 391-392.