This is the fourth in a series of articles in this periodical on the ecumenical problem. The first, by Rev. J. H . Piersma, sketched the history of the ecumenical movement. The second, by Dr. L. Praamsma, dealt especially with the Growth and Objectives of the World Council. The third was on the Basis of the World Council was written by Rev. Henry J. Kuiper. The present article by Professor R. B. Kuiper goes to the heart of the ecumenical question. Other articles of this same series will appear D.V., in future 1962 issues.
In pleas for ecumenism few passages of Scripture, if indeed any, are wont to be quoted as frequently as are the Saviour’s petitions, recorded in John 17: “Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are” (vs. 11); “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (vss. 20, 21 ); “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me” (vss. 22, 23).
Sad to say, in many instances these petitions are cited loosely. Without as much as a feeble attempt at exegesis the conclusion is drawn that it is the expressed will of the Head of the church that all existing denominations be merged into one ecclesiastical organization.
It is the aim of this article to set forth a few obvious, yet ofttimes neglected, aspects of the unity for which Jesus prayed in John 17. That unity, it will be shown, is
1. both inclusive and exclusive,
2. both actual and ideal,
3. both spiritual and visible.
INCLUSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE
Jesus prayed for the unity of God’s elect: “those whom thou hast given me.” That is equivalent to saying that he prayed for the unity of believers: his apostles and “them also which shall believe on me through their word.” It need not be argued that the elect and believers are the same, for faith is both the fruit and the proof of election.
Christ prayed not merely for the unity of those believers who would live on earth at a given time, for example in the seventh decade of the twentieth century after his birth, but for the unity of all believers of all time. Nor are those believers excluded who have been or will be translated from the militant church to the church triumphant. It follows that, when the church of all ages sings the psalms of David and when we today sing hymns composed by Clement of Alexandria of the third century, John of Damascus of the eighth, Bernard of Clairvaux of the twelfth, Martin Luther of the sixteenth, and Charles Wesley of the eighteenth, expression is given to a truly comprehensive ecumenicity. The same may be said of the sincere confession of its faith, by any church anywhere and at any time, in the words of the Apostles’ Creed.
Attention must here be called to a strange phenomenon. It is not unusual for advocates of ecumenism to belittle the creeds of Christendom, both such ecumenical confessions as the Nicene Creed and the so-called Athanasian Creed and such products of the Protestant Reformation as, for instance, the Augsburg Confession, the Canons of Dart, and the Westminster Confession of Faith. Young churches in the mission fields of the world are advised to formulate their faith anew with scant, if indeed any, heed to the creeds of past centuries. How such counsel can be given in the name of ecumenism is difficult to understand. To be sure, every creed is to some extent historically conditioned, but that is no cause for disparagement. God’s infallible Word, too, bears marks of the times in which its various books were composed. The fact may never be neglected that in answer to Jesus’ prayer for unity the Holy Spirit has guided the historic church into the truth, of which guidance the great creeds of Christendom are the precious fruits. For the church of the present, and of the future too, to prize those creeds highly is a significant aspect of true ecumenism.
An obvious reason why many of today’s advocates of church union disparage the historic creeds is that they cannot in good conscience subscribe to them. They have departed from the faith once for all delivered to the saints. More than a few of them boldly deny the supernatural inspiration and consequent infallibility of the Bible, the eternal Trinity, the eternal and essential deity of Christ, and the cardinal truth that Christ’s death on the cross was a substitutionary sacrifice by which he satisfied for his own the divine penal justice. Such deniers of the faith hold positions of leadership in both the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America and the World Council of Churches. Those organizations, then, represent a union of believers and outspoken unbelievers. Surely Jesus did not pray for such a union. Did he not say expressly, “I pray not for the world but for those which thou hast given me” (vs. 9)? To be sure, unbelievers may by the grace of God become believers, but those who persist in unbelief are of the world, no matter how prominent they may be in the church.
In fact, the aforesaid sort of union is condemned by Cod in his Word. The passage “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? and what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?” (II Cor. 6:14–16 ) is often misapplied. It does not disallow all association of believers with unbelievers. It does not forbid the membership of believers in any and every organization with unbelievers. Only by implication can it be said to rule out mixed marriages. What it does explicitly condemn is the religious fellowship of believers with unbelievers, and it does that in uncompromisingly absolute terminology.
In summary, Jesus prayed for the unity of all believers and for the unity of believers only.
ACTUAL AND IDEAL
The Bible teaches emphatically that believers are as a matter of fact one. Together they constitute the one body of Christ (I Cor. 12). They arc said to have “one hope, one Lord, one truth, one baptism, one God and Father” (Eph.4:4–6). In the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, “Believers, all and every one, as members of Christ, are partakers of him.” In consequence they constitute “the communion of saints” (Answer 55).
If believers are actually one, why did Christ pray for their oneness? That question can hardly be suppressed and is deserving of a considered answer.
The unity of believers, however real, is not perfect. The obvious reason is that not a single believer on earth is perfect. The very best Christian is still a poor one. Their numerous imperfections separate believers from one another. Because the perfection of individual believers is prerequisite to the perfect unity of all believers, Jesus prayed for their sanctification. He pleaded, “Sanctify them through thy truth,” and he added, “Thy word is truth” (vs. 17).
Exceedingly prominent and potent among the factors that separate believers from believers is a lack of proper understanding of the truth as revealed in the Word of God. The most learned of them knows only in part. The most pious of them is subject to confusion. And the most orthodox of them harbors some error. The first and foremost requisite for the unity of believers is the elimination of doctrinal error or, expressed positively, agreement on the truth. Jesus prayed for unity based on truth; more precisely. for unity in the truth.
It follows that ecumenism of the lowest common doctrinal denominator type is at odds with Jesus’ prayer for unity. It would contravene that prayer. Jesus did not pray that his disciples might agree on a few doctrines and agree to disagree on many others. He did not pray for a mere minimum of doctrinal agreement but for a maximum, even for full agreement. On that score the National Council and the World Council stand condemned. The addition to its doctrinal statement recently made by the latter at New Delhi has not materially altered the situation, for that statement remains open to a wide divergence of interpretation. And, regrettably, not even the so-called evangelical councils such as the American Council of Christian Churches, the International Council of Christian Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the World Evangelical Fellowship are wholly without fault in this matter. Instead of striving unremittingly for a maximum of orthodoxy, they tend to rest satisfied with something less.
Let no one think that the doctrinal differences among evangelicals are insignificant. The pedobaptist not only teaches that the children of believers may be baptized, he insists that the Biblical doctrine of the covenant of grace demands their baptism. The divergence between the Lutheran and the Reformed views of Christ’s presence in the Holy Supper is rooted in different conceptions of Christ’s divine and human natures. Modem Dispensationalism is charged by the Reformed theologian with disrupting not only the unity of the church of Cod in the Old and New Testaments, but also the unity of the Bible. According to the Calvinist the Arminian teachings that foreseen faith was the ground of divine election and that unregenerate man is capable of exercising saving faith do serious violence to the central Scriptural doctrine of salvation by grace.
Instead of belittling such differences evangelicals must earnestly strive for unanimity. They must both venture to teach one another and condescend to learn from one an· other. To relegate such differences to the limbo of the non-essential or to ridicule them as hair-splitting is at complete variance with true ecumenism. To struggle without ceasing toward their resolution on the basis of God’s infallible Word is a demand of Scriptural ecumenism, for thus believers may contribute to the perfecting of their unity. It was for this that Jesus prayed.
SPIRITUAL AND VISIBLE
That Jesus prayed for the spiritual unity of believers is self-evident and incontrovertible. He prayed to the Father, “That they may be one as we are” (vs. 11); “that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (vs. 21); “that they may be one even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may he made perfect in one” (vs. 22, 23). The unity of believers for which the Saviour prayed is as spiritual as is the unity of God the Father and God the Son.
It may be reiterated that Jesus prayed for the unity of believers, the unity of his disciples in truth and in faith, faith in the truth (vss. 14, 17, 19, 20). Clearly, that unity in its very nature is spiritual.
It is no less clear that Jesus prayed that the spiritual unity of his own might be visible. And significantly, it was his prayer that unity might be visible, not only to believers themselves, but to the world. He petitioned the Father that believers might be one to the end “that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (vs. 21) and “that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me” (v. 23).
Mark well! Jesus did not pray for a unity which is visible without being spiritual. Such a unity is false, hypocritical. But neither did he pray for a unity which is spiritual without being visible. He prayed for a unity which is both spiritual and visible. He prayed that the spiritual unity of believers might be manifest—even to the world.
Today many equate visible unity with organizational unity. That conception of visible unity is narrow indeed. The unity of believers can and must become manifest in countless other ways.
To be sure, believers collectively constitute the one body of Christ, his church. It is both invisible and visible. Because we human beings cannot tell infallibly who are believers and who are not, the church is properly described as invisible. The church is also a visible organization. However, it is important to note that there are not two churches, an invisible and a visible. Invisibility and visibility are two aspects of the one church. Hence the visible church must manifest the attributes of the invisible, with the obvious exception of invisibility. And since Scripture teaches the unity of the invisible church, oneness ought also to characterize the church as an organization. That this is not actually the case is due largely to the imperfections of church members. This is not to say that denominationalism is in every such instance sin, for not every consequence of imperfection is itself sinful. Yet, ideally speaking, all believers on earth should constitute one ecclesiastical organization. And, no matter how unlikely it may be that this will come to pass before Christ’s return, the ideal may never be lost out of sight.
However, as was said, oneness of organization is but one of many ways in which the spiritual unity of Christ’s own should come to visible expression. Some other ways, each of them indicated in John 17, may well be specified.
When believers, although scattered throughout many denominations, unitedly confess the truth, both the personal Word, the Son of God (vs. 1), and the written Word of God (vs. 17), and willingly acknowledge as members of the body of Christ all who confess the truth, they give visible evidence of their spiritual unity.
When believers, although scattered throughout many denominations, unitedly uphold the truth of God, fearing not to convict as a false church any church so-called which tolerates denial of the Bible as the Word of God (vs. 17 ) and of Jesus as the eternal Son of God (vss. 1, 5) and hates those who love and defend the truth (vs. 14), they give visible evidence of their spiritual unity.
When believers, although scattered throughout many denominations, unitedly obey the truth of God, walking in holiness (vss. 17, 19) and love (vs. 28), they give visible evidence of their spiritual unity.
And when believers, although scattered throughout many denominations, unitedly publish the truth of God to the world, to worldly churches too, in allegiance to him who sent them into the world even as he himself was sent by the Father into the world (vs. 18), they give visible evidence of their spiritual unity.