Unitas Christiana (Christian Unity)
The tagline for this website is “in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.” This phrase, which is often attributed to St. Augustine (perhaps misattributed), serves as a wonderful guide for Christian discussion and debate, allowing followers of Christ to stay focused on our unity in Christ and on the essential doctrines of the Christian faith.
Throughout my career as a Christian minister, I have given a lot of thought to this issue of Christian unity. I have also given a lot of thought to the question: “what is essential?” For the purposes of this post, I am not going to offer a thorough treatment of the subjects at hand; though I do plan to do so in later posts.
Instead, I want to muse just a bit on something I see within our denomination that makes the subject of Christian unity difficult for we Advent Christians. I’ll put it simply and try to unpack it a little bit. I am not 100% sure where we find unity as a network.
DOCTRINAL UNITY
I have spent nineteen years serving in leadership in Advent Christian churches. Prior to that, I spent years as a child in Advent Christian churches. I am a fourth generation Advent Christian. While I do not profess to understand all there is about our network, this background has taught me one thing: I don’t know what Advent Christians believe.
Please understand me. I know what we profess to believe. We have a declaration of principles and, very recently, we have adopted a statement of faith. But I also know that there is a large swath of Advent Christians who would not hold to the doctrinal positions outlined in either of those documents.
At face value, this does not necessarily seem like a big problem. After all, even within our Declaration of Principles, we have acknowledged the non-essential nature of some of its articles through their ambiguity. Our article on war, for instance, allows Advent Christians to follow conscience as to whether or not they should bear arms while still recognizing that “war is contrary to the spirit and teachings of our Lord and Master. In this article, we have spelled out clearly that while we see this as a significant issue, it is not one to divide over.
However, found within these two documents are statements that represent established and core doctrines of the Christian faith, on which we still struggle to find unity.
On the Bible:
AC Statement of Faith: We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.
AC Declaration of Principles: We believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, being in its entirety a revelation given to man under divine inspiration and providence; that its historic statements are correct, and that it is the only divine and infallible standard of faith and practice.
On God:
AC Statement of Faith: “We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory.”
AC Declaration of Principles: “We believe, as revealed in the Bible:
In one God, our Father, eternal, and infinite in his wisdom, love and power, the Creator of all things, “in whom we live, and move, and have our being.”
And in Jesus Christ, our Lord, the only begotten Son of God, conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary; who came into our world to seek and to save that which was lost; who died for our sins; who was raised bodily from the dead for our justification; who ascended in heaven as our High Priest and Mediator, and who will come again in the end of this age, to judge the living and the dead, and to reign forever and ever.
And in the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, sent from God to convince the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment, whereby we are sanctified and sealed unto the day of redemption.”[1]
Of course, even within these statements on God, ambiguity can be seen, specifically within the Declaration of Principles. This, perhaps, underscores my point.
To many, this ambiguity and resultant disagreement on core Christian doctrines raises the obvious question we must, at some point, face as a network. Is there a way forward for us where we can achieve some level of doctrinal unity? Is there a way forward for us where we can clearly identify and answer the question: What is essential?
I raise this only because, again, as someone who grew up in the Advent Christian denomination and has served as a minister within it for nineteen years, I cannot, with clarity, answer that question.
You may not see that as an important question to answer. But, tied up within that question are serious and practical questions related to who God is and by what means we receive salvation. There are real world implications for doctrinal questions and their answers effect much more than we often choose to acknowledge. The answers to these questions even relate to our understanding of the Christ whom we claim to find our unity within.
MISSIONAL UNITY
Another area facing us as a denomination is the issue of missional unity. This issue, in my mind, flows out of the issue of doctrinal unity, as most things do. In North America, we are a network presently made up of between 250 and 300 autonomous churches and several additional autonomous ministries that also (probably) have close to that many different ideas of how to function in our Gospel service. Again, perhaps at face value this does not appear to matter. If each church is autonomous and free to function in the way that they see fit, we do not need to agree on how to serve. Right? Maybe.
We are also a network of churches with united resources and united ministry efforts all around the globe. The reality is, the missional understanding of each and every one of our churches is going to have effect on how we view those united ministry efforts. We see this at every level of our denomination. Churches have the hard decision to make regarding what they want to be supportive of within our network, based on how they view that ministry in light of their missional understanding.
Such lack of missional cohesion makes it extremely difficult for denominational officials and pastors alike to know how to function and create real challenges for how our churches interact with one another.
RELATIONAL UNITY
This brings me to relational unity. This has been seen as an area of strength within our network for longer than I am probably aware. The relationships many of our pastors and leaders have go back decades and run very deep. Many of these relationships find their origins on the campuses of Berkshire Christian College and Aurora College.
As pastors of those generations move toward retirement, however, the type of relational unity that has existed for these many decades as a result of those college relationships will soon disappear. New pastors and leaders entering into the denomination are coming through a variety of different paths. This means that the relational history brought about through a shared youth will soon no longer be able to carry us toward the relational unity we once enjoyed. This presents many significant challenges, particularly given our struggles to find doctrinal and missional unity.
Perhaps relational unity can be achieved without that common history. But we are going to need to find a common foundation on which to build relational unity from. Theoretically, this should be found in Jesus Himself. However, our disunity on Christology does make that a much more difficult foundation to build upon.
CONCLUSION
Absent these foundations, it is my belief that we have to find a way toward some real/honest dialogue on these issues. If we cannot find our way to real unity in these three areas, we are very likely to split apart. This may be the will of the Lord, and if so, we will all be better for it. But, if it is our belief that we still have a purpose as Advent Christians, hard conversations must be had and real clarity on these doctrinal and missional issues must be sought.
Christian unity does not mean we must agree on everything. But I believe that it does mean that we need to come to a common place on those things that are essential to the Christian faith.
Notes:
[1] All quotations and references to the Advent Christian Statement of Faith and Declaration of Principles pulled from Advent Christian General Conference, Beliefs, https://acgc.us/about/#Beliefs.