Unity is Christianity’s future

UNITY IS ACHIEVED BY SERIOUSLY ENGAGING DIFFERENCES. — RAYMOND DE SOUZA

Oct. 31 was Reformation Day. It’s been five hundred years since Martin Luther began what would become known as the Protestant Reformation, perhaps the most consequential event of the second Christian millennium.

There is a Latin expression, ecclesia semper ref ormanda, which means that the Church is always reforming, always in need of reform. The Church, comprised of men and women marked by sin, is never fully what Jesus intended her to be. Therefore it was not remarkable that the Church was in need of reform in the early 16th century, and it is not controversial today. It was neither the first period of serious ecclesial reform, nor will it be the last. The 16thcentury reforming movement divided the western Church, and subsequently Europe, into Catholic and Protestant. Reform brought division. And division is not willed by Christ for His Church.

The Church is meant to be a sign of the fundamental unity of all peoples, already partially realized. The Christian Church, from its earliest days, was never a national project. This set it apart from most of what we find in the history of religion, and in the religions of the ancient world.

“Go and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” was the great commission of Jesus; the Church was meant to be universal. The roots of that universality are found even in the particularity of God’s chosen people, the Jews. The temple at the heart of the Jewish nation was intended to be a “house of prayer for all peoples.”

History has witnessed that universal reality, more rather than less. Every people and corner of the Earth has been touched by the gospel. And the unity of the Church “catholic” — meaning “universal” — has been an astonishing thing. Even as today’s politics, education and culture so often stresses diversity, genuine unity in diversity eludes us. In the two cultures I have spent a great deal of time in — the university and journalism — diversity almost always means affluent people who think exactly alike.

It is the Christian Church that is the world’s Aboriginal multicultural and multinational reality. The gospel of Jesus Christ is able to take root and transform East and West, rich and poor, ancient and new. That universal reality is expressed differently throughout history, but it remains a precious witness to the unity of the human race.

Looking backward to the 400 th anniversary of the Reformation in 1917, what is most notable in the intervening century is the massive efforts that have been made to heal the wounds of division. Ecumenical relations between Catholics and Protestants have been firmly established. Not only is common prayer now, well, common, but major theological agreements have been reached, not least on the foundational question of the Reformation, justification by faith. It is true, though, that the prospect of formal union is growing less likely, as the mainline Protestant communities are themselves divided over questions of biblical doctrine and morality.

Looking ahead to the next century, in 2117, it is likely that the Christian world will look quite different. Entire Protestant communities will have ceased to exist in Europe, and it is quite possible that Europe will have as Muslim a face as it does now have a Christian one. If at one time Dublin and Montreal were driving engines of global Catholicism, they are now largely spent, no longer major factors in the present and future of Christianity. For the next century, better to look to Lagos or Seoul.

And over t he centur y ahead, will Christianity be able to offer, in the unity of the Church, a great sign and promise of the unity of nations? That cannot be known. True unity is achieved by seriously engaging differences. The dominant cultural tendency today is to treat differences as not being serious at all. But relativism cannot produce authentic unity, only indifference that aspires to tolerance. Enduring unity, on the other hand, can only be achieved in the truth.

The division of the Church remains contrary to God’s will, and therefore it is an obligation of Christian discipleship to work to repair the divisions. It is fair to say that 500 years after the Reformation that obligation is better understood now than over most of the past half millennium. That work of reparation is not only for the sake of the Church, but for the world too, also suffering the lacerations of division.

The Reformation and its aftermath, including the Catholic Reformation or Counter-Reformation, accomplished needed reform. Those reforms achieved, what remains to justify the division?