Thesis 25 We must practice catholicity, not ecumenicity.
The prayer of a righteous man avails much, the Scripture tells us (James 5:16). We know in turn that Jesus was the only righteous man. If we want to know what will come to pass, it would seem, we would be wise to see exactly what Jesus prayed for. In what has come to be known as Jesus’ high priestly prayer, Jesus prays that we who are His would be one, even as He and the Father are one (John 17:11). How are we doing?
While it may be appropriate for us to hang our heads over our petty squabbles and power struggles, we need to reach the right conclusion from our syllogism. That is, we do not affirm that because Jesus is righteous, and He prayed for unity but there is no unity, that therefore the promise that the prayers of a righteous man avail much is a false promise. Instead we affirm that because Jesus is righteous, and because the prayers of a righteous man avail much, that therefore the people of God do in fact enjoy the unity that Christ prayed for. We need to learn to distinguish between institutional unity and spiritual unity. There may be many churches, but the church is one.
While it may be wise to seek to expand institutional unity (remembering that those local bodies that remain independent for the sake of avoiding the “divisiveness” of denominations have simply created one more very small denomination) we do so so that the unity that we now enjoy would be made more visible. We believe, if we confess the faith once for all delivered to the saints, in one, holy, and catholic church. While it certainly may make the unity of the church more visible when we are all a part of one institution, we would be wrong to equate the two. To put it another way, church mergers may be a good thing, and church splits a bad thing, but where two or three are gathered together in His name, not only is He there, but we are all there, because we are one together, and we are one with Him.
What this means in practice is expanding our vision. Our tendency, certainly in Reformed circles, is to begrudgingly acknowledge that there are believers outside the Reformed circles, but to treat those other believers as so weakened as to be insignificant. Yes, we seem to reason, there are Baptists who will be in heaven, Lutherans will make it, but we are the front and center, the part of the church that really counts. The charismatics and the African Methodist Episcopals may have fire in their bellies, but if they were more sanctified like us, they would be more staid and calm.
Catholicity means affirming not only that God is at work in places far from our homes, but that we are one with those in far away places. When the church in the Sudan is being persecuted, we are being persecuted. When the church in China is going through revival, we are going through revival. Recognizing that we are one body means much more than being nice to your neighbor in the pew. It means identifying with your neighbor in the church in Pago Pago.