Some Thoughts About Schism

Protestants are prone to schism.  It has always been one of our fundamental characteristics.  Every generation has had disagreements about Christian belief and practice, and enormous time and expense has been devoted to Christian denominations splitting, forming, and reforming.

Paul's Letter to the Galatians provides a good lens through which we should perceive the question of "to schism or not to schism." Paul wrote the letter to address a major problem that had arisen in the infant Christian communities in Galatia.  Paul discovered that a false gospel was being preached there, and wrote to the Galatians to get them back on the right track.

The false gospel was not being proclaimed by someone who was evil and out to destroy the churches.  It was proclaimed by Peter.  Yes, that Peter.  The one who was the leader of the disciples, the one on whom Jesus said that the Church would be built.  The one who preached at Pentecost.  Peter and the original Jerusalem disciples took the position that you needed to practice the regulations and rules of Judaism in order to be a follower of Jesus.  This was contrary to Paul's position.

Peter was operating out of a fundamentally flawed understanding of Christian belief and practice, and was seeking to spread this understanding to Paul's communities.  And yet Peter was also a faithful disciple who remained one until his martyrdom in Rome.  Peter was, and remained an instrument through which the gospel was proclaimed.

God works through those who have a fundamentally flawed understanding of Christian belief and practice.  It doesn't make their position any less flawed.  It just means that the fact that they are in error does not obviate the truth of their calling.  And while we are at it, whenever it comes to an issue where there is disagreement, those who are right are going to be wrong about something else.  Paul was just as flawed as Peter.  Paul himself acknowledges his own flaws again and again in his epistles.

Getting Things Backwards at Pentecost

The Day of Pentecost celebrates the birth of the Church.  The Church was given birth out of the theological grounding of knowing who God is and who we are: God is our parent who has sought us out, redeemed, us, and adopted us.  We are thereby God's children, and using Paul's terminology from Romans, we are heirs of God's infinite creativity and redemptive power.

God's Spirit did not show up for the first time on the Day of Pentecost.  The Day of Pentecost was the day when the community realized who they were and who God was, recognizing that God's Spirit had always been present, was present, and always would be present, and that God's presence was deep inside the souls of every human being.

Paul says in Romans that the Church, as usual, gets things backwards.  God's Spirit does not enter us when we become God's children.  Instead, when we become conscious that we have already been adopted by God and are thereby children of God and heirs of everything that God is, we understand who we are for the first time and discern the Spirit of God that has always been in the world and inside us.

The Church universal is the invisible community of those faithful who know who God is and know who they are.  Any institutional manifestation of the Church universal is incidental and ultimately ineffectual in fully giving articulation to the wonder of what the Church truly is.

The true Church universal will be manifest by endless creativity, joy, and wonder.  As Paul reminds us in Romans, it will not be characterized by a Spirit of fear, but under-girded by the knowledge of who we are.

God's Vision for the World's 206 Sovereign Nations

There are approximately 206 sovereign nations in the world; the number is somewhat difficult to ascertain because certain nations do not recognize some and those nations that are not recognized by others don't recognize some others that are recognized by others.  Curiously, every sovereign nation, including those that others don't consider legitimate, consider themselves legitimate.

The Book of Revelation has typically been read to mean that God's plan is to destroy the "bad" nations (which never include the reader's own nation whatever it is) and to redeem the "good" nations.  This reading is inconsistent with John's vision.  First, we are told that all the nations of the world (yes, all 206 of them) have been deceived by the dragon that is present in the world.  However, we are told that the gates to the New Jerusalem are always open to everyone, and the kings of the world (and therefore their subjects) will enter their gates once they see God's light.  God's vision is for all the nations of the world, and all the citizens of the nations of the world to be redeemed.  It is both a realistic vision (recognizing that the nations of the world have been deceived) and optimistic (all the nations of the world need to be redeemed is to see God's light).

The Church exists in and for the world to bring about the world's salvation.  The Church; the faithful remnant who have been reborn into the vision that God was revealed in the one who gave his life for all humankind; is called to reveal God's light, which will cause the nations to see that they have been deceived and be drawn to the light.  The gates to the New Jerusalem are always open and the center of the city is the lamb, the very symbol of sacrificial love.  God does not seek to draw us out of the insanity of the world, but to empower us through the Spirit that we might shine God's light in the world's darkness for the redemption and salvation of the nations.  Yes, all 206 of them.