RESOURCING THE CHURCH FOR ECUMENICAL MINISTRy A ...

eligious and political world. Early followers of
Jesus saw themselves as vulnerable to persecution
and suffering from without; at the same time, Paul,
Irenaeus, and others depicted the communities they
knew as reliable, if earthen, vessels that could bear
the grace and glory of God.
As persecution lessened and Christianity gained
status in society, theologians and church leaders
increasingly became concerned with immorality
and laxity in the church, and ultimately, with
securing the church as a means of salvation. Could
churches bear God’s grace when truth and falsehood
were mixed within them? Faced with internal
threats more than external ones, theologians and
church leaders began to stress the unity of the
church and to develop strategies of institutional,
dogmatic, and moral invulnerability. At the turn of
the fifth century, Augustine introduced the distinction
between the visible and invisible church as
a way to affirm that actual churches exhaust neither
the reality of Christian communion nor the glory of
God. At the same time, Augustine’s thought
consolidated the authority of the church. He
pictured the visible church as a properly-ordered
institution that minimized discord and bolstered
human unity through the hierarchical rule of the
church.
I’m not suggesting that we can divest ourselves of
hierarchy (or heteronomy) by simply returning to
Paul’s vision of earthen vessels or by somehow
rejecting institutions and order. Moreover,
Augustine’s theology broadened the horizon of
transformation to the whole world and to all history—
and that gain ought not to be lost. However,
hierarchical authority, especially heteronomous
authority, may rightly prompt a hermeneutics of
suspicion. Contemporary Disciples should ask: Is
unity serving institutional stability or the transformation
of life before God? Is unity serving to
bolster invulnerability rather than to attune us to
creaturely vulnerability and a living God? Does the
affirmation of unity grow from a sense of human
vulnerability to devastation—and to transformation—
or does it stifle awareness of shared creaturely plights
and possibilities?
Accordingly, we might distinguish the question of
the unity of the church from Christian unity, and
then interpret Christian unity in relation to the
unity of humanity. The Bible gives us many pictures
of the unity of humanity, one being that we are earth
creatures, fashioned from dust and the bones of
Culp • Christian Unity, Prophetic Witness, and the Unity of Humanity
30
others. Paul’s teaching that human creatures are
capable of bearing the grace and glory of God in the
clay vessels of shared life and worship remains
crucial. Along with these biblical depictions, we
must also attend to basic human needs. There are
some universals: all persons need food, shelter,
clothing, care, community, and dignity. Both the
Bible and human need attest that we humans are
creatures who are susceptible to pain, hunger,
suffering, harm, and death; we are also susceptible
to transformation. Such needs unite us and
moreover, must test any notion of Christian unity.
That responsiveness to creaturely need ought to test
the adequacy of shared faith, is not a new affirmation.
The words of the prophets and of Matthew
28 come to mind. Likewise, Martin Luther trained
his attention to the hungry poor and contrasted
their plight with that of the wealthy church. Luther
rejected any notion of the church or of Christian
unity that was built on the consolidation of visible
organizational and clerical authority. “The church
is a high, deep, hidden thing which one may
neither perceive nor see, but grasp only through
faith, through baptism, sacrament, and Word,”
Luther wrote. He continued: “Human doctrine,
ceremonies, tonsures, long robes, miters, and all
the pomp of popery only lead far away from it into
hell—still less are they signs of the church. Naked
children, men, women, farmers, citizens, who
possess no tonsures, miters, or priestly vestments
also belong to the church.” 3 Although divine grace
and glory can never be fully known, Luther taught
that Christian people—humble and privileged
alike—can be confident that the fullness of grace is
hidden in God rather than contained in church
hierarchies and ceremonies.
Luther contrasted the structural unity of churches
with a spiritual unity in Christ. 4 He taught that: 1)
true Christianity is neither primarily a structure
nor an institution; it is a spiritual communion of
one faith; 2) “external matters of worship” such as
vestments, rites, special masses, are not essential to
Christianity; what the scriptures and the creeds
teach is faith alone, which is inward and spiritual;
3) Christianity is not built up to the pope as its head,
only Christ can be the source of life for the body;
and finally, 4) Christian faith is not limited by the
inequalities of material bodies—that is, those who
are stronger, healthier, richer, or more powerful are
not superior Christians. Luther’s insistence that
Christianity is not determined by the inequalities of