The Psychology of Unity

B. J. Humble’s article “The Influence of the Civil War” examines the role the Civil War played in precipitating the eventual division of the Stone-Campbell Movement into the Disciples of Christ and the Churches of Christ. Traditional historiography with its hagiographical bent painted the movement’s post-war unity as an anomaly on the American religious landscape. Humble, however, probes beneath the surface in line with more recent revisions in the traditional approach. He examines the rhetoric of the anti-society Disciples before the outbreak of the war and after. Tolbert Fanning is a noteworthy example, as a prominent even the premier voice of the Disciples in the South. Before the war he was opposed to the missionary society but professed spiritual unity with its members nonetheless. What changed after the war for Fanning, and for many of the anti-society Disciples in the South, was not the stance toward American Christian Missionary Society itself but a subtler shift in the way that opposition manifested itself. Fanning wrote later of the pro-society Disciples in the North: “Should we ever meet them in the flesh, can we fraternize with them as brethren?” He shifted from calling the members of the Society “brothers” to referring to them as “monsters in intention, if not in very deed.”

Fanning’s behavior and Humble’s observations have interesting implications for understanding the nature of division. It is notable that an issue which existed before and after the war should be treated so radically differently over time. The doctrinal reasons for opposing missionary societies had not changed, but the issue suddenly became so divisive that it became a lightning rod for splitting a movement that had not even a generation earlier come together for the common purpose of Christianity unity. The relevant change came when an issue of doctrinal opinion took on personal overtones.

Of course that is an oversimplification. It is equally true that the issue of missionary societies had not fully come to a head until after the Civil War. Certainly the actions of the American Christian Missionary Society during the war had confirmed many of the fears of anti-society Christians that were merely theoretical prior to the war. The political endorsement of the union by the Society—which in the South amounted to a wholesale endorsement of war, tyranny, and the slaughter of Christians—could only reinforce and intensify anti-society sentiments wherever they already existed. More importantly still, the issue of missionary societies should not be isolated as the sole cause of division. The factors were multiple and complex.

It is nevertheless telling how radically the Civil War and the personal animosity it engendered altered the way doctrinal heterogeneity was treated. Gregory E. McKinzie, in his article “Barton Stone’s Unorthodox Christology,” recounts the early Christological controversy that threatened the proposed unity of Stone’s and Campbell’s movements. These two great fathers of the movement differed publicly and vocally on so basic and critical an issue as whether or not Jesus was God. Campbell published an article in response to Stone in which he stated “I fraternize with [Stone] as I do with the Calvinist. Neither of their theories are worth one hour…” Stone responded that if Campbell only called brothers those who, in Campbell’s words, “supremely venerate, and unequivocally worship the King my Lord and Master” then Stone was not his brother at all. Yet in spite of this strong rhetoric, the two men were architects of a unity between their two movements on the grounds that Bible-based unity transcended metaphysical uniformity.

Yet the same movement which united in spite of foundational theological difference split in the wake of the Civil War because significantly less dramatic doctrinal differences took on the character of personal loyalties. There a sense in which most Christian division can be reduced to this basic human flaw. I refer here not to functional division but spiritual division, since obviously a body of believers who believe it is a sin to have a kitchen in a church building cannot flourish shackled (at least architecturally) to a body of believers who meet in a building with a kitchen. The watershed, however, between this functional division and a true spiritual rupture comes when people begin to associate their doctrinal beliefs, no matter how strongly held, with their identity. Then, a dispute over personal opinions becomes a dispute between persons. It is the difference between a Tolbert Fanning who can attend a meeting of the American Christian Missionary Society and call its members his brothers and a Tolbert Fanning who calls a sectional meeting in the South and demands repentance from the “monsters” in the North.

It is interesting to note how frequently unity is sought through ever more distilled doctrinal confessions, with mixed results. From the Nicene Creed to the Restorationist “no creed but the Bible” to modern moves like paleo-orthodoxy, Christians hope desperately to achieve some semblance of Christian harmony by codifying from without what it means to be a Christian. Instead, it might be fruitful to consider that perhaps unity begins not at the level of doctrine but at the level of human psychology. The seed is planted when I identify as a Christian and only a Christian in a way that ultimately defies logical formulation because it consists in the mysterious working of Christ in me. Then, I recognize that I am a Christian definitionally and a Restorationist only incidentally. Then, recognizing that truth exists and warrants our faithful and diligent pursuit, you and I may work out our salvation with fear and trembling and tension and dispute and study and prayer and, most importantly of all, a Spirit of unity that vivifies all our collective efforts.

Why I Gave Up Paleo-Orthodoxy...Before I Had Even Heard of It

I heard of Thomas Oden and paleo-Orthodoxy for the first time recently, and the more I read about it, the more I realized that Oden was pursuing an aim which I myself had begun to pursue at the beginning of my training as a historian. There is a certain simple allure in what Oden offers, particularly for those of us deeply disturbed by the ongoing fracturing of the Church and the seemingly endless capitulation of faith to secular culture. The Bible has quite clearly proved insufficient as an objective uniting ground for Christianity. Even the Stone-Campbell churches who share a basic theology and hermeneutic could not stay united on the principle of "the Bible alone." So in proposing a broadened basis for unifying orthodoxy, Oden's suggestion of the earliest church as an alternative is promising.

Nevertheless, paleo-orthodoxy and the Vincentian Canon which forms its implicit grounds for unity are flawed in two important ways: one of them historical and one philosophical.

Historically there is very little that has been "believed everywhere, always and by all." If the full scope of those who claim adherence to the Christian faith is considered, then doctrines like the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Resurrection are out. In fact, what was measurably shared between Gnostics and "proto-Catholics" (to borrow a distasteful term from modern scholarship) is almost entirely semantic, reducible to the name "Christian" derived from largely unrelated understandings of "Christ." Of course, Oden and others would never suggest that heretics be included in the "everyone" who is believing. Yet, if heresy is excluded some definition of orthodoxy is assumed and the argument becomes circular. The problem is further compounded by the great diversity even between saintly persons who are recognized as authoritative. For example, the Cappadocian and Augustinian views of free will are not merely in tension, capable of coexisting side by side in a reunited Christianity. They are fundamentally incompatible. Oden elects the Cappadocian view over Augustine's, but the grounds for this are not entirely clear to me. Millions of Calvinists, among others, would certainly object that voluntarism is the universal testimony of the earliest church. Even within the orthodox historical witness, there is so much variation and ambiguity that to suggest that we can in any sense pool the record and come up with a clear majority on orthodoxy is at best optimistic, at worst deluded.

Even if, for the sake of argument, there was sufficient uniformity on matters of faith to select an arbitrary point in time before which orthodoxy would be understood to be in tact, there is a deeper problem to be considered. What are the grounds for assuming that consensus results in truth? The history of the church has rejected this claim as often as it has made it. Certainly Athanasius, who Oden cites as an orthodox father, would not have suggested that the Arian emperor was right to have him exiled by virtue of the Arian majority in the Empire at the time. Maximus the Confessor, another father Oden relies on as a source of truth, was mutilated and died specifically for his claim that even if the whole world testified that he was wrong God would vindicate him in the end. Christian truth can never be understood to be rooted in or even recognized by the consensus of Christians. Truth has as its root the True One, and no other source may be posited. Suggesting that by consensus the Fathers reveal what is orthodox to us is more or less the equivalent of suggesting that Christians might hold a worldwide poll today to determine what we should all believe, with the results being binding on everyone.

I had long since given up on paleo-orthodoxy as a grounds for ecumenicism before I ever encountered Thomas Oden or his theories. Nevertheless, in reading about his theology I am able to better understand precisely why the system is flawed. The practical outcomes of paleo-orthodoxy are certainly desirable as far as I'm concerned. A renewed respect by modern Christians for the theologians who came before. An effort to solve present issues by appealing to the core truths which have been articulated throughout time. A deference paid to the great minds - greater than most of ours, great enough to be preserved much longer than my thoughts here will be - who peered into the abyss that is God and preserved what they saw for the benefit of this blind generation. But as a system for recognizing truth and uniting Christians, it falls woefully short in view of its critical defects. Thus, I agree with Ralph C. Wood (who wrote one of the articles I read about Oden) both when he writes, "Our experience of the Cross is immensely deepened by learning how major (and also minor) theologians have interpreted it. So long as we remain mentally and existentially imprisoned within the cage of modernity, our faith itself is fettered" and, immediately afterwards, when he adds "that the Gospel requires a contemporary re-visioning as much as it needs a classical repeating." It does nothing, to paraphrase a quote I once read from Florovsky, to have a patristic faith if we spend all our time looking at the Fathers and no time following their example.