Disunity about Unity: Spiritual Unity vs. Federalism

The found­ing ecu­meni­cal insight is that there already is some kind of unity among the churches. Every church pro­fesses that the true church is one; the dif­fer­ence of opin­ion is where the bound­aries lie around this one church. Time spent together in con­ver­sa­tion, prayer, and study has shown that there is a lot more com­mon ground between churches than was pre­vi­ously thought. We do after all con­fess faith in the same Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whom we know through the same holy Scriptures.

The ques­tion is: is that enough? Does such “spir­i­tual unity” suf­fice for the unity of the church, or does there need to be some kind of orga­ni­za­tional unity too?

The answer to that ques­tion, of course, varies quite widely. The more con­gre­ga­tion­al­ist you are, the more you think orga­ni­za­tional unity is irrel­e­vant; the more epis­co­pal you are, the more you think orga­ni­za­tional unity is essen­tial. In the space in between these two extremes, gen­er­ally among churches of pres­by­ter­ian or syn­od­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion, the pro­posed mid­dle ground in the early twen­ti­eth cen­tury was called “fed­er­al­ism,” much like in sec­u­lar governments.

This form of unity would allow indi­vid­ual church bod­ies to main­tain their inde­pen­dence but coop­er­ate in very spe­cific ven­tures, espe­cially in areas of dia­conal ser­vice or gov­ern­ment lob­by­ing. It would give a “vis­i­ble” pro­file to the unity with­out get­ting bogged down in the details.

The prob­lem is that this model doesn’t really rep­re­sent “unity” in any mean­ing­ful sense. It’s more like a tac­ti­cal alliance. As the ecu­menist John Kent put it: “Christ is more than the pres­i­dent of a fed­eral repub­lic of Chris­t­ian asso­ci­a­tions; he is the Head of the Body which is his church.” It’s also hard to locate any spir­i­tual com­po­nent in it, and the moment one church dis­agrees with the oth­ers it can with­draw. Such unity would be frag­ile at best.

Russel Murray, OFM says:
October 13, 2010 at 6:49 pm
“What will a reunited Church look like?” It’s eas­ily among the most FAQ I receive when­ever I make a pre­sen­ta­tion on ecu­menism. I’m sure it is for you, as well. Now, I don’t know about you, but I always find that the ques­tion, in the var­i­ous ways in which it’s posed, reveals a great deal about the hopes & fears of those who ask it, not to men­tion the hopes & fears of the churches to which they belong. Chief among such rev­e­la­tions is the pre­sump­tion that there exists some mas­ter vision of unity toward which the ecu­meni­cal move­ment is work­ing, and peo­ple want to know just what that vision is, prin­ci­pally so that they can decide whether they & their churches should be for or against it. How dis­ap­pointed they are when I reply that there is no such mas­ter vision exists.
Of course, this is not to assert that the churches enter into dia­logue with­out some idea of the goal they’re seek­ing. This may be a vision of what unity might look like; it def­i­nitely con­tains ele­ments they believe essen­tial to unity. Nev­er­the­less, pre­cisely how these ele­ments will be received by their dia­logue part­ners and the over­all shape these ele­ments will take when vis­i­ble unity is restored is not some­thing that the churches claim to know. The rea­son is that the unity God wills for the Church is not some­thing that the churches will, let alone can, cre­ate. Like the Church itself, unity among Chris­tians is the work of God; it a gift that God will real­ize in us, God’s Peo­ple, through this good work that God has begun in us, i.e., the good work of our dialogue.
With­out a doubt, this asser­tion reveals a great deal about me, not to men­tion about the church to which I belong. It is rooted in the state­ment from Vat­i­can II’s Dog­matic Con­sti­tu­tion on the Church that I give below, i.e., that by virtue of our Bap­tism we are already one in the Lord, and that though we may eat at dif­fer­ent Tables, even with dif­fer­ent minds, through our par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Break­ing of the Bread the Lord is prepar­ing our hearts to receive the one­ness He & His Father are already effect­ing in us – and, I might add, in us for the sake of the world, lest we for­get that God has called us not as a sign of God’s infi­nite good taste, but for the sake of the Gospel. What this unity will look like, only God knows. In the face of this uncer­tain future, I believe the only essen­tial – and often unasked ques­tion – is this: are we & our churches for or against what God will give?
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“In the human nature united to Him­self the Son of God, by over­com­ing death through His own death and res­ur­rec­tion, redeemed man [sic] and re-molded him into a new cre­ation. By com­mu­ni­cat­ing His Spirit, Christ made His broth­ers, called together from all nations, mys­ti­cally the com­po­nents of His own Body. In that Body the life of Christ is poured into the believ­ers who, through the sacra­ments, are united in a hid­den and real way to Christ who suf­fered and was glo­ri­fied. Through Bap­tism we are formed in the like­ness of Christ: ‘For in one Spirit we were all bap­tized into one body.’ In this sacred rite a one­ness with Christ’s death and res­ur­rec­tion is both sym­bol­ized and brought about: ‘For we were buried with Him by means of Bap­tism into death’; and if ‘we have been united with Him in the like­ness of His death, we shall be so in the like­ness of His res­ur­rec­tion also.’ Really par­tak­ing of the body of the Lord in the break­ing of the Eucharis­tic bread, we are taken up into com­mu­nion with Him and with one another. ‘Because the bread is one, we though many, are one body, all of us who par­take of the one bread.’ In this way all of us are made mem­bers of His Body, ‘but sev­er­ally mem­bers one of another.’ (Lumen gen­tium, §7)”
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