I don't know if I have any voice left after singing all of Donna Kord. We have had a great time this week. It's been great to be with you all this week. Thank you very much. We've really enjoyed it. I hope that everything we've done has been a blessing to you as I've spoken. I hope these things have been helpful. And I think it's only fitting that I save the most controversial talk for last, right before I split out of town and head a long ways away from here. I'm going to talk this morning about church unity, or you could also say Reformed Catholicity. And let me talk a little bit about my talk before I actually begin. I've really got two goals here. One is, I want to stress the importance of ecumenicity. That's just kind of a fancy word for the unity of the church. And as I said, there's nothing that can divide Christians like a talk on unity. That's just kind of the way it is. And we will try to take some questions afterwards. I want to tell you, too, if you have questions, you want to carry on discussions that were started here, you can always email me or even call me if you want to use that old-fashioned form of communication. But, yeah, I want to talk about the importance of a humanicity, the importance of church unity. The oneness of the church is a big deal in the Scriptures. The oneness of the Church is a matter of faith. It's something taught in the Scripture, so we're called to believe it. We're called to believe it even when we don't see it. It's something we've professed in the ancient creeds, the one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. We don't see that, and of course that's the problem. certainly a matter of faith always, but also something that is, at least in the main, observable. And we'll see why that is as we go. The other thing I want to do is talk specifically about Reformed Catholicity, because that's a label that gets thrown around a good bit in our circles. It's a tag. that I've seen a lot of people in the CREC use. I've used it myself for several years. What I'm going to try to do is just talk a little bit about what reformed Catholicity is, how I see it, what that might become. I think part of that, I think part of the reason that you hear some talk about reformed Catholicity in CREC circles is we're trying to sort of figure out as a newer denomination, and by denomination I'm not trying to prejudice anything one way or the other, I'm just simply saying we're denominated the same way, we share the name of CREC. But I think we're trying to sort of figure out where we fit into the church landscape. We obviously are not the only Reformed denomination, and there are a lot of non-Reformed denominations too, and so we have to ask, how do we relate to these other church bodies? What is our role going to be? Part of that also is trying to figure out how we are connected to the historic church. How do we connect to the patristic church? The patristic church is the church of the church fathers, the patristics, the church fathers. How do we relate to the medieval church, to medieval Christendom? And of course, especially how are we connected to the great reformers of the 16th and 17th centuries? I want to start with three quotations. First, Richard Niebuhr. Denominationalism represents the moral failure of the church. Second quotation from Leslie Newbigin. And if you don't know who Newbigin is, I'd urge you to become familiar with him. Very important 20th century missionary figure and theologian. It is the common observation of sociologists of religion that denominationalism is the religious aspect of secularization. What he means by that, he unfolds, he unpacks that claim in his writings in various places. But the point is denominationalism is the form of religion best suited for people who have privatized religion, for people who have taken religion out of the public square, because denominationalism fragments Christianity. Inevitably, it privatizes Christianity. So Newbigin's point is that denominationalism or sectarianism has gone hand in hand with the secularization of the public square. And then thirdly, the Lutheran theologian Carl Brattain. I'm not sure how to say his name. The reformers witnessed the split in the Western Church. Christians became divided. The reformers made their protest against Rome on behalf of the whole church out of love and loyalty to the truly Catholic Church. After the split came, they continued to work for the reform of the church, the renewal of Christian life, and the reunion of the alienated parties. The furthest thing from Martin Luther's mind was to make his reform movement into an independent church bearing his name that would exist permanently outside of and in competition with the Roman Catholic Church. There is a whole history of Reformed ecumenicity, Reformed catholicity in the 16th century that we know virtually nothing about. We know a lot about the Reformers. What we don't know is how eagerly and how earnestly they desired the the unity of the church, even as they were carrying on this reformation movement, this reform movement of the church. They desired for the reunion of Christendom. Their greatest fear would be that their followers, this is talking about Martin Luther and John Calvin and the other leading reformers, their greatest fear was that the church would continue to divide and fragment after their death, which it's easy to see that that is exactly what has happened. Let me put it to you this way. I'm just going to state it as bluntly as possible up front, then I'll read a couple of Bible passages, pray, and we'll dive in. But I want to state sort of where I'm heading as bluntly as possible. If you are loyal to the Catholic Church, small c, Catholic Church, the Catholic Church as we confess in the creeds, you must hope that someday your denomination will cease to exist. You must hope that your denomination will cease to exist because it has been absorbed into something bigger and larger and even more Catholic than what it is at present. you must hope for the undoing of denominationalism. Now, there's no easy or immediate solution at hand. And when we get to the end of that time, I'm going to throw out to you five or six very short practical suggestions to head in this direction. But frankly, it's hard to imagine even the conditions under which the fragmentation of the church could be undone. We can't even imagine how that could begin to happen. So here I'm really having to speak more in terms of theory, in terms of the ideal, rather than anything that we can go out and do tomorrow. But at least diagnosing the problem is something we can do, and it gives us something to hope for, something to pray for, something to shoot for, even if it's something that has to happen many, many generations from now in ways that we can't even fathom at present. But I say that because I don't want you to fall into the trap of becoming a sort of ecumenical Pelagian thinking that we can just set out and in our own strength, our own effort, reunify the Church. It can't happen. When the Church is reunified, that will be God's gift to His people. It will be a free gift of grace, not something that we've achieved. I'm not saying there aren't means to that end. that we should employ, there are, but I'm saying that it's not going to be something that we can simply make happen in our own strength, in our own efforts. Let me read to you from John chapter 17 first. This is 17, 20 to 26, pretty familiar passage. It's Jesus' high priestly prayer. This is the conclusion of it where he prays for all believers. I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they all may be one as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And the glory which you gave me I have given them, that they may be one just as we are one. I in them, and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you gave me, may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which you have given me, for you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you, and these have known that you sent me. And I have declared to them your name, and will declare it, that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and I in them. And I also want to read from Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 to 11. I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long-suffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all. But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gifts. Therefore, he says, when he ascended on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts to men. Now this, he ascended, what does it mean that he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is also the one who ascended, far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. Till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to and to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men and the cunning crackiness of deceitful plotting, but speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effect of working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself. in love. That was actually 4.1.16, not just 4.2.11. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, we do ask that you would grant unity, genuine, authentic, visible catholicity to your people, to churches in California, churches in Alabama, churches in our denomination, churches outside of our denomination, churches across the globe. Father, we can't even begin to imagine how you might reunify your people And yet we know that ultimately for the church to accomplish all that you have commissioned her to accomplish, she must be unified. She must be one, even as you, Father, are one with your Son. Father, we pray that these things would happen. We pray that you would give us even small, meager insights into this this morning. And we pray that you would help us to do whatever our role in this is. Father, we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. Well, I want to start with John 17. And I want you to note that Jesus prays here that His people may be one, even as the Father and the Son are one. He prays that we'd be one in one another, even as the Father and Son are one in one another. In other words, the prayer of Jesus assumes the Trinity. I mean, you can't make sense out of this prayer unless you've pieced together a doctrine of the Trinity from the entirety of a biblical revelation. And what Jesus is praying here It shows us that the Trinity is the true model for the unity of the Church. The very inner life of the Godhead, the eternal triune relations between Father, Son, and Spirit are the model for the unity of the Church. You could say the Trinity really is the clue to ecclesiology, to our understanding of the Church. The Trinity provides a paradigm for the life of the Church. God himself is a social being. He is a family of Father, Son, and Spirit. And Father, Son, and Spirit each indwell one another. Now the technical theological term for that indwelling is perichoresis. Perichoresis means to indwell or to contain or to penetrate or to permeate If you take it more literally, the Greek prefix peri means around, and koresis, that's the Greek term from which we get our English word choreography from. So it means something like to dance around. The Father, Son, and Spirit dance around. I don't know if they're doing the Virginia Reel or what, but thinking back to that dance last night, But you can think of the life of God as a choreographed dance of Father, Son, and Spirit. They live in harmony in this way. They move together. They give themselves to one another continually. Each person is enveloped by the others. The Father is in the Son. The Son is in the Father. They're continually pouring themselves into one another. The Father gives himself to the Son in the Spirit. The Son returns that gift, giving himself to the Father in the Spirit. So there's this continual mutuality, this eternal mutuality within the life of God, this eternal giving to and receiving from one another. The unity of the church is modeled after this triune unity. That's the meaning of the just as phrase there in John 17, 21. He says, his prayer is that they all may be one as you, Father, are in me and I in you. So as the Father and the Son indwell one another, so God's people are to indwell one another. Members of the church are to indwell and envelop one another in a way that is analogous to the persons of the Trinity. And we find further that this indwelling is vital to the mission of the church. You kind of see that progression in verses 20 to 23, and it actually happens again in 24 to 26, but he says there, Verse 23, I in them, and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that you have sent me, and have loved them as you have loved me. See, why is the unity of the church so important? This is how the world comes to know that the Father sent the Son. The world comes to know that the Father and the Son are one, and that the Father sent the Son, for the sake of the world, through the unity of the church, as we are one, as we indwell one another. It's interesting, down in verse 25, he says, O righteous Father, the world has not known You, but I have known You, and these have known that You sent Me. Well, see, how did the disciples come to know that Jesus, the Son, was sent by the Father? Because the Son lived in perfect harmony, perfect oneness with the Father. As He lived in that perfect oneness with the Father, the disciples came to know, this is the Son sent by the Father. And as we live in oneness with one another, the world comes to know that the Son was sent by the Father. So that's the progression, that's the logic. That means the unity of the Church is essential to the mission. of the church. And obviously, too, this means that Jesus is not talking about the invisible church, some unseen, hidden spiritual unity, you might say. This has got to be a unity that is visible, that is observable. It's got to be an empirical unity. See, there's a sense in which getting the doctrine of the Trinity right is pointless unless we get the doctrine of the Trinity out, unless we embody that doctrine in the way we do church, in the way we live as the people of God in the world. The way we embody the doctrine of the Trinity, the way that we show that the Father and the Son are one, and that the Father sent his Son, is by how we live together as the people of God in the world. And that's true at the local level, right on up to the global level, and at every level in between. We're to be showing these things to the world. Furthermore, we not only indwell one another, but the church dwells in God, and God dwells in the church. So you might say, we've been brought into this three-person dance. God has made us His dance partners as well. God has come to the church and has said, may I have this dance? And we've been brought into this ring of glory, this ring of love, this ring of unity. We are human participants in this divine dance. And that's, of course, incredibly mysterious. But again, that's what Jesus says in verse 21. that they also may be one in us. So it's not just that the church reflects the unity of the Trinity, but the church shares in the unity of the Trinity, lives within the unity of the Trinity. So I hope you see what is at stake in the unity of the church. It's not only imaging the Trinity in the eyes of the world, but it's also participating in the Trinity rightly. See, there's this dance going on, and if we're not unified, If we're continually stepping on one another's toes or stumbling or whatnot, if you're kind of like I was last night out on the dance floor, that's a big problem. That's not what God wants. God wants His church to live within the unity of the Trinity, within the circle of love and fellowship that is the Triune God. God desires His people of His renewed humanity to reflect His very being as a community of persons bonded together by love and fellowship. In other words, the church, by her unity, should model human life as God really intended. This was God's purpose for humanity from the very beginning. The human race was created by God and has now been redeemed by God in order to show forth the very love, humility, and peace that marks God's own inter-Trinitarian relations. See, man is not just imago Dei, the image of God, but really we could say imago Trinitatis, the image of the Trinity. That unity, of course, was marred in Adam's fall into sin. It's being restored in the Church. The Church is God's new humanity, His reconstituted human race that now does reflect these inter-Trinitarian relations. So, enjoying community with one another? What we call in the creed, the communion of the saints, this is not just an afterthought. It's not something tacked on to the gospel, like, isn't it great that God saved us? And then thrown in at no extra charge is this fellowship we have with one another. Now, that's not the case. That fellowship with one another is at the very heart of the gospel. It's at the very core of our salvation. It's internal to the gospel. It's an irreducible aspect of the gospel. The whole point of the gospel is not simply to forgive sin, it is to create a holy fellowship, a new community, a renewed human family. You can find, I think, this kind of link between unity and salvation many places in Scripture, maybe even in Acts 2, the passage we looked at, the Lord added to their number daily, those who are being saved. To be saved and to be incorporated into the fellowship of the saints are one and the same, two sides of the same coin. I think Psalm 133 gets at this as well. It puts community right at the heart of the blessings of salvation. The psalm opens, behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity. It then goes on to describe this unity in terms of a priestly anointing. Describes the unity of the people of God, like the precious oil flowing down Aaron's head and beard down to the edge of his garment. So the priest's body and garments become symbolic of the oneness of the community. We are to be a priesthood, you could say, Ephesians 4, the passage I read, talks about one new man. Well, that one new man is God's priest. That's the picture there. And then the psalm ends, this is really the key point, for there, that it's in this place of unity, in this unified, reconstituted human priesthood, this priesthood that shares in the anointing of God's Spirit, For there the Lord commanded blessing life for evermore." Or that could be read life eternal or even the life of the new age, the life of the age to come. See, what is life evermore, life eternal, life in the new age? It's life in this unity. It's life in which we experience the blessings of this new community. Those two things are just inseparable. Brothers dwelling together in unity and life evermore are just two ways of describing the same thing. Outside of salvation, brothers cannot dwell together in unity. To have salvation is to dwell with your brothers in unity. So this unity is what salvation is all about. God's salvation includes reconstituting the human race as a unity in Christ. That anointing in Psalm 133, that's the Old Testament, the Hebrew for anointing, is where we get the word Messiah from. In the New Testament, that becomes Christ. It's a christening, it's an anointing. If we are in Christ, if we are in the anointed one, then we are part of this new humanity that God is uniting in Christ Jesus. So dwelling together in unity is the shape that life everlasting takes. Now, I think you can see even more the importance of fellowship if you go all the way back to the very beginning of the biblical story, all the way back to the creation account in the book of Genesis. Think about Adam being formed on the sixth day of creation. He's made perfect. He is, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, created in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. He's without sin, and so he is in perfect fellowship with God. He's even called in Luke's Gospel, the Son of God. He has a familial relationship with God. And yet, what does the Bible tell us in Genesis chapter 2? He was lonely. It tells us it was not good. Now, you might stop right there and ask, how could this be? He's in communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I mean, isn't that enough? How could he be lonely? Isn't friendship with the Trinity enough to satisfy the deepest lungs of Adam's heart? Well, no. God made us for more than just Himself. No doubt God did make us for a relationship with Himself, but God made us for more than that. To put it bluntly, God is not enough. A personal relationship with God is not enough. How often do you hear that? It's a good thing I'm getting on that plane here in a couple of days. To be complete, to be fully satisfied, to live life the way God intended, we not only have to have fellowship with God, we must have fellowship with other human beings. See, to be truly human, we need not only to know God, we need to not only have a deep relationship with the Triune God, we must have deep relationships with other human beings. That's what we were made for. Now obviously when I say God is not enough, I don't mean that in some kind of idolatrous way as though God really isn't adequate, God really can't satisfy our needs. It's still God who provides for all of our needs. God does that in Genesis chapter 2 by giving to Adam and Eve. a wife to be his companion, a helper suitable for him. But this is the point. God designed us to experience not just vertical fellowship with the Father, Son, and Spirit, but also horizontal fellowship with one another. And it's so important. Those two axes of fellowship are inseparable from one another. God created us to have fellowship in both directions. Now, as I said, the fall obliterated that. When Adam and Eve fell into sin, they were alienated from God, they were alienated from one another. You know, Martin Luther said, could you imagine the squabbles that took place over the next 900 years? You know, why'd you eat that fruit? Why'd you give it to me? You know, that kind of thing. But look, what is the Gospel all about? The gospel is about the restoration of fellowship in both directions. See, it's a multidimensional salvation. The gospel is multidimensional. It's not just one-dimensional, a new connection with God. It's also got this horizontal aspect to it, a new connection with one another. See, we need to recover and redeem the idea of a social gospel, I would say. I think that's a good term. Liberals in the early 20th century used the label social gospel to describe their program of salvation, is actually what they called it. But in that view, that particular usage of the term, they substituted salvation from sin and from alienation by Jesus. They substituted instead salvation from poverty and bad working conditions, through a state-run welfare program. It became a statist form of salvation, rather than a salvation from sin in all its consequences, all its ramifications, through the blood of Christ. This is how Niebuhr put it. He characterizes social gospel liberalism this way. He said, it's as though a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a cross. That's not what I mean. That's really no gospel at all. And not only that, but it doesn't create any kind of new society either. It just doesn't create any kind of new community that endures, that lasts. But there is a sense in which we can and perhaps must speak of The social gospel. The true gospel is social. John Calvin said this was the whole point of Christ's death. That there might be a church. That there might be a communion of saints. That there might be a people called out from the world to live together in holiness. Devoted to God and devoted to one another. This is what Jesus prays for in John chapter 17. Jesus prays that his people may be one even as the Father and Son are one. He prays that the gospel would bear social fruit. And again, not as something tacked on to the gospel as a kind of secondary thing, but this is what he's praying for on the eve of his crucifixion. He's about to go to the cross and the thing that's at the forefront of his mind is the unity of his people throughout the world down through the ages. That's what he's praying for. That tells you where this fits into his priorities. And note again what I already mentioned, He desires this unity not only for our own sake, but as He says in verses 21 and 23, so that the world may know that Jesus is the one sent by the Father and that the church is the people of God, the people that God has set His love upon. See, the unity of the church shows the world these things. Now, when the world looks at the church today, what does the world see? Frankly, the world sees a mess. It doesn't see what I've just been describing. It certainly doesn't see the things that Jesus prayed for. It doesn't see life in the Trinity. It doesn't see the unity of the Father and Son embodied. It doesn't see a renewed, reconstituted humanity. It doesn't see brothers dwelling together in peace. No, what it sees are divisions. What it sees are denominations. It sees denominations instead of unity, fighting instead of loving, miscommunication instead of communion. And again, we can't hide behind any invisible church doctrine here, so our oneness could remain at just that spiritual invisible level. I don't doubt that there are bonds between all of God's people all throughout the earth. Whatever denomination they may happen to be in, I don't doubt for a second that they really are joined together in one new humanity in Christ. But the problem is we're supposed to show that to the world rather than hide it. And our divisions, and I think perhaps most prominently our denominational divisions, obscure that fact. See, Jesus wants the world to see clearly our oneness, which means it has to be a visible, institutional, governmental, liturgical, doctrinal oneness. And I don't mean that that means every single church all throughout the world is going to do things exactly the same way. I don't think it means a blanket uniformity. But it does mean that there has to be a shared life, a common life, that is visible, that is manifest throughout the church, throughout the world. I think it is especially important, it is especially incumbent upon Reformed Christians to think this through, to make unity a priority. You know, one of Rome's big arguments against the Reformation was simply this. Once you split off from the Roman Catholic Church, They said, you guys are going to keep on splitting and splitting and splitting. And that was one of their great arguments against the Reformers. Now, I don't think that the Reformers in the 16th century were schismatic. I think that they were wrongly cast out of Rome, the same way the apostles were cast out of the synagogues. They were cast out of the Roman Catholic Church. But because they were faithful to Christ, it's not as though the Church actually deserted them, or it's not as though they actually deserted the Church. They remained. in the Catholic Church, even though they were now on the outside of the Roman Catholic Church. And indeed, I think that when Rome cast out the Reformers for illegitimate reasons, I think Rome lost her legitimate claim to Catholicity. So I think Rome is largely to blame for the schism of the 16th century. I'm not saying the Reformers themselves were at fault. I think that Jaroslav Pelikan is exactly right when he calls the Reformation a tragic necessity. It was tragic all right. It was tragic because it brought to an end medieval Christendom and because it did fragment the church. But it was so, so necessary because the church was in such a bad way at that point in history. It did need correction. It did need reform. But here's the thing. I don't think Luther and Calvin were schismatics, but I think their heirs have become schismatics and perhaps have become even more schismatic than Rome was in the 16th century. So now the heirs of Luther and Calvin have lost their right to claim catholicity. Now this is why I say reformed Christians need to be especially sensitive to this whole issue. I think in one sense the legitimacy of the whole Reformation project is at stake in our ecumenicity, that is in our ability to get church unity right. Otherwise, we actually legitimate and validate Rome's original argument against the Reformation. You see that we prove Rome right when we continue to splinter and fragment as Protestants. If the Reformation was the creation of a new church from scratch, then no, unity doesn't matter. But if the Reformation was the creation of a new church from scratch, then I don't want any part of it, and I hope you don't either, because it would be completely disconnected from what God's Spirit had been doing for the previous 1,500 years, from Pentecost up to the 16th century. But if the Reformation was a correction of the one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, If it was a reform within that one holy Catholic and apostolic church, then a concern for governmental, doctrinal, and liturgical unity matters. And I would say that is indeed what the Reformation was all about. And that means, in turn, that denominationalism undermines our legitimate claim to stand in direct continuity not only with the reformers themselves, who were not schismatics, but with the medieval church and the church of the patristics, the church fathers. This is how John Williamson Nevin put it. He was a German reformed theologian. Perhaps some of you with RCUS roots have heard of him. He was one of the leaders of the 19th century Mercersburg movement and I think had a lot of good things to say. It wasn't perfect by any stretch. his colleague Philip Schaaf. They weren't perfect by any means but they had I think tremendous insight into ways in which the American Reformed Church had moved away from where she began with Calvin and Luther and the other great early Reformers. And one of the things that Nevin did besides putting a real premium on liturgy and making reform of sacramental theology a high priority he saw that the spirit of sectarianism in American Christianity really was a manifestation of the spirit of the Antichrist. It was a denial that Christ had come into flesh, a denial that there is a body of Christ that exists within the world that needs to manifest itself publicly and visibly. Listen to what he says. A church without unity can neither conquer the world nor sustain itself. He describes our duty this way, all Christians then in their various denominational capacities are required as they love the church and seek the salvation of the world to encourage with all their might a closer visible connection between the different parts of Christ's body. It is a high and glorious privilege to take part even to the smallest extent in the work of restoring these divisions. He described his own ecumenical labors this way. He said, if I might be instrumental with the humblest agency in helping only to pull down a single one of all these walls of partition, these denominational walls that we've built up between the people of God, if I might be instrumental with the humblest agency in helping only to pull down a single one of those walls of partition that now mock the idea of Catholic unity in the visible church, I should feel that I had not lived in vain, nor labored without the most ample and enduring reward." One thing you need to understand, and this is what Nevin was really fighting against, is that rampant denominationalism is really an American invention. It's really become the American way of doing church. And you might say, it's kind of scary to say this, but it's sort of our contribution to church history. It's not that denominations didn't already exist. Denominations certainly predated the founding of America, the church was already fractured and fragmented, but what was different was the comfort level. The fact that people now thought, well, that's okay. It's okay for us to fragment up into these different denominations. Now, why has America become the nation of denominations? Well, at least in part, our nation's founders sort of wanted it that way. If you go back and you look at how they viewed the church, they were very concerned that America not have any more religious wars. And so the way to create social peace, public peace, political peace is through privatizing religion. And some of them were pretty explicit about this. They wanted to subordinate religion to economics. Religion itself would be subjected to market forces, to consumerism. It would become a matter of private choice, not of public policy. And so in America, there would be no established church. The public square would not be governed by anyone's denomination, interpretation of the Bible. Rather, the public square would be governed by supposedly neutral reason, by secular reason. And this was in large part the design of the founders. And of course the problem with the American church down to this day is that American churches are largely consumer driven. They are largely driven by giving people what they want, not by what's true or good or beautiful. But they're controlled by market forces by trying to claim as much market share as possible. And again, I started with that quote from Newbigin, but America really is then sort of the test tube in the laboratory where this has been worked out. Denominationalism is necessary to secularization. If you were coming out of the medieval and reformational era and you wanted to secularize a nation, drive God out of the public square, the way to do it was to fragment the church. And that's exactly what happened. In the same way, if we want to transform our culture, if we want to re-clothe the public square with the scriptures, with the gospel, then we must seek to reunify the Christian church. We must seek the reunion of God's people. Only then will cultural and political transformation really be possible. But of course it isn't just the existence of denominations that mar the unity that Christ desired the world to see. Sometimes even within a denomination, or within a local church, you can have infighting and dissension that will obscure the oneness that Christ wants the world to witness. And so we have to work for unity. not only across denominational lines, but also within denominational frameworks. See, we've got to be working on both these projects at the same time. Let me give you one illustration of the kind of attitude that we need. I've already quoted several times this week from Martin Luther. Martin Luther was no doubt a great man, great reformer, mightily used of God, but he was also impatient. He was short-tempered. He was sometimes very hard to get along with. He was very severe. He could be very rash in his judgments and very intemperate in his use of language. He didn't always listen carefully to what others had to say, and sometimes he made his own peculiar views, tests of orthodoxy, sort of exalting them above what others believed. Sometimes he failed to see how close others were to him. He would exaggerate the differences. He was prickly. He was overly demanding at times. Well, sometime in the mid-1540s, and granted this is very late in Luther's life, and he was not always in the best of health, but Luther broke out in fierce attack, fierce invective against the Swiss reformers, and it was primarily over a sacramental issue. He was very frustrated with their inability to see the truth of his understanding of Christ's presence in the Lord's Supper. And so he broke out in this very bombastic tirade against them. and something he wrote. And Heinrich Bullinger and John Calvin really bore the brunt of Luther's anger. Luther published this very nasty demeaning diatribe against Bullinger and Calvin. Now Calvin certainly differed with Luther on the issue of how Christ is present in the Lord's Supper. There was a theological difference there, but Calvin never thought that it should hinder cooperation between, you could say, the Swiss reformers or the Calvinists and the Lutherans. He always regarded the Lutherans as orthodox brothers, as fellow reformers. He did not think that total agreement on that particular point, which admittedly is very mysterious in Scripture, he did not think that absolute agreement in that was necessary to fellowship because they shared so much other evangelical doctrine in common. There was such a wide basis for agreement, there was no reason to fight over that or to part ways from one another over that particular issue. Well, after Luther had published this diatribe, Bullinger wrote to Calvin asking for advice, writing to Calvin asking, how should we respond to Luther's attack? And listen to Calvin's response here. He's writing back to Bullinger. This is a letter from late 1544. He says, I hear that Luther has at length broken forth in fierce invective against us. On the present occasion, I do not venture to ask you to keep silence, because it is neither just that innocent persons should thus be harassed, nor that they should be denied the opportunity of clearing themselves. Neither, on the other hand, is it easy to determine whether it would be prudent for them to do so. But of this, I do earnestly desire to put you in mind in the first place, that you would consider how imminent a man Luther is, and the excellent endowments wherewith he is gifted, with what strength of mind and resolute constancy, with how great skill, with what efficiency and power of doctrinal statement he hath hitherto devoted his whole energy to overthrow the reign of the papacy, and at the same time to diffuse far and wide the doctrine of salvation." And then this really is the key sentence. Often I have wanted to declare that even although he were to call me a devil, I should still not the less hold him in such honor that I must acknowledge him to be an illustrious servant of God." Now those are just amazing words. You know, I've heard a lot of expositions through the years of what it means to be a Calvinist, of what Calvinism is all about. Never have I heard this as a part of it. This is just amazing. This humble, peace-loving attitude on the part of Calvin. This desire for unity. This desire to turn the cheek even when another believer slaps it. This desire to serve, not what's best for John Calvin, but what's best for the church of Jesus Christ. To put the interests of the church at large above his own interests. I think we've just missed it. I want to look around today and say, where are the real Calvinists? Where are there any Calvinists who are doing this kind of thing? Where are the real heirs of Calvin, those who are worthy of the name? You know, Calvin here doesn't whitewash Luther's sin. You know, he says what Luther did was wrong, and he says to Bollinger, you know, maybe you should defend yourself. That would be just, you know, it's hard to know prudentially what would be the right thing to do. He doesn't whitewash Luther's sin, but he does cover that sin with love. And he puts the well-being of the Church Catholic above his own individual reputation. Again, he wanted what was best for the Church, not what was best for himself. That is true Calvinism. That, at least, is an aspect of true Calvinism. And I look around today and I want to say it's too bad there are so few real Calvinists. in the church, even among those who would claim Calvin. On another occasion, Calvin would dialogue quite a bit, of course, with the other leading reformers through letters. Thomas Cranmer over in England wanted to call together an ecumenical council that would have representatives of all the different factions that were emerging within Christendom. And so he wrote to Calvin about this idea for this ecumenical project he had, hoping they could all come together and formulate a doctrinal statement and a book of church order and a liturgy that would bind them all together. And Calvin was very enthusiastic about the project. He wrote back to Cranmer. He said, not only will I cross the sea to come to England for such a thing, I would gladly cross 10 seas if it would reunite the church. And if you know anything about Calvin, I mean, Calvin was not a guy who liked to travel. He was a timid, homebody sort of guy. And he's saying, I would cross ten seas. If you know anything about sea travel in those days, it wasn't very enjoyable. And I don't think Calvin's being hyperbolic. I think he's serious. I think he really meant it. He desired the unity of the church. so badly. What's interesting, too, is that Calvin and Cranmer disagreed on a lot of things. In fact, Calvin's attitude towards the unity of the Church can also be seen in his assessment of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. He was quite dissatisfied with certain aspects of Cranmer's work. Cranmer was the principal author of the Book of Common Prayer. Calvin had his followers in Britain, of course, and when the first edition of the Book of Common Prayer came out, they wrote to Calvin saying, what should we do? It's got these defects. You know, this is wrong with it. And that's wrong with it. And this other thing is wrong with it. Calvin wrote back to them and called upon them to exercise patience, to refrain from disputes over secondary matters, because unity was more important than getting each and every little detail of the liturgy just right. Now, sadly, the British Calvinists did not follow Calvin's advice. They ended up breaking off from the Church of England, and as a result, the whole history of Anglicanism and Puritanism was very, very different than what it would have been, what it could have been, had they followed Calvin's counsel, Calvin's instructions. And of course, the beat goes on today. We continue to disregard Calvin's instruction, Calvin's desire. Rather than desiring unity and peace, most Reformed Christians today get very suspicious when they hear talk about unity, about love, about catholicity. We immediately assume that that means compromise. But we need to understand, these are things near and dear to the heart of Christ. These are things He prayed for on the eve of His crucifixion. These are things that are emphasized on almost every single page of the New Testament. This is a question I always have. Why is it that we don't want We say we don't want unity because we don't have to compromise truth. Well, do we realize how compromised we already are on the truth of the Church's catholicity? It just doesn't work. Why is that the one truth that we don't mind throwing to the side, that we don't mind compromising, the truth of the Church's catholicity? Now, let me talk about Reformed Catholicity for just a minute. I can do this much more quickly. What does it mean to be a Reformed Catholic? Again, that's a label that I've used for quite some years now. I've started to hear some people in the CREC use that label a little bit, so let me talk about what that might mean here for just a minute. Obviously it means we are staunchly reformed and reforming in doctrine. It means we believe in the absolute sovereignty of God. We believe in the supreme authority of Scripture. We believe in the complete graciousness of our salvation from beginning to end. It means we believe in worldview Christianity, that our understanding of the Scriptures has got to work itself out in everything that we do. The Scriptures are to be applied to all of life. These are deep convictions that we hold and that we will not budge on those things. We absolutely will not give those things up. That's what it means to be. That's the Reformed part of Reformed Catholicity. It means that we see ourselves as standing in continuity with those 16th century Reformers who rediscovered the Evangel, rediscovered the Gospel, rediscovered the comprehensive authority of the Scriptures. But what about catholicity? You know, some Protestants view the word catholicity as a bad word. They're sort of troubled by that word, but really it's a good word. And we shouldn't just hand it over to the Romanists. That word goes all the way back to the early, it's not a biblical word, But it goes all the way back to the early church fathers. Saint Ignatius seems to be the first to have used it to describe the universality of the church. The fact that the church is universal. She used to be global. She used to be one in her breath as she embraces the nations. To speak of the Church Catholic is to speak of the Church universal, that is, the Church in all times and places. It's to speak of the Church even across denominational lines, since no one denomination can be fully identified with the Catholic Church. So that is to say, within the Catholic Church today, you've got all these various denominations, and of course, that's part of the problem. is where we ought to be one, we have fragmented. We're not manifesting that Catholicity properly. In the Nicene Creed, we confess, I believe one holy Catholic and apostolic church. In other words, we confess the solidarity of God's people. We confess that there is a worldwide fellowship of those who belong to Christ. Now, I think the Catholicity of the Church has to be set off against two things. First, it's got to be set off against the Old Covenant situation. It's got to be contrasted with the Old Covenant situation. Before Christ came, you could say the Church was not Catholic. at least not in the sense that the New Covenant Church is Catholic. Israel was God's special nation. They were His priestly people marked out by circumcision and by their land and by their dietary laws and by the Sabbath and other symbolic boundary markers that God gave to them. God had staked out Israel as His special people. Israel, as is often pointed out, was the forerunner of the Church. You could say Israel was the Church in her immature Old Covenant form. And yet Israel obviously was not Catholic. She was just one nation among many nations in the world. Not only that, but many outside the nation of Israel worship the God of Israel. They're known as Gentile God-fearers. I think I already made reference to them. They were saved even though they were not incorporated into the people of Israel. So you could not identify Israel with the saved in any kind of straightforward way. God had a special priestly people over here, the nation of Israel, and then he had these non-priestly Gentile God-fears over here. In a sense, God had two peoples. And of course, as Paul says in Romans chapter 4, Abraham, who is the father of the circumcised who have faith and the uncircumcised who have faith, They've now been joined together in this one new covenant family of the Church. And so that's what we mean when we say the Catholic Church. It's the Church that now includes all of God's people. The Church is Catholic because she's no longer divided into Jew and Gentile. Jew and Gentile have been made one in Christ. That is to say, then, that the Catholic Church is now the place of God's salvation. The Westminster Confession of Faith, for example, teaches that the visible institutional church is the Catholic church. And then it goes on to say that this Catholic visible church is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ and the household and family of God, outside of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. So you never could have said that about Israel. Outside of Israel, there was a very ordinary possibility of salvation. But not so in the New Covenant. The Church Catholic is the place of God's salvation. Now, why is that? Well, it's because it's here in the church that God is at work through His Word and through His sacraments. This is where the faith is located. This is where the true faith is found. This is where Christ has promised to make Himself present. That's why Martin Luther said, not the Pope, not even an angel from heaven can give you more than God does in your local parish church. Because that's where Word and sacrament are found, and so that's where God Himself is found, because God has bound Himself to those means. In fact, Luther said that the church is the principal work of God. The church is that for which the world continues to exist. God sustains the whole world for the sake of the church. So if you want to find Christ, you've got to find His church, you've got to find His people, because that's where Christ is. He is among His people. He is found in the means of grace that have been entrusted to His people. So the church today is marked out by its profession. It's marked out by the sacraments as boundary markers identifying the covenant community. Again, as Martin Luther said, in the church great wonders daily occur. The forgiveness of sins, triumph over death, and the gift of righteousness and new life. These are things that God does in the life of the church through the means that He has ordained. Or to put it as John Calvin did, to kind of turn it around, Calvin said it is always disastrous to leave the church. Calvin viewed departing from the church as departing from Christ because this is where Christ is found. He said the church is our mother. and we must seek nourishment and protection from her all our days. We never outgrow the church. We cannot have a relationship with God apart from the church, independent of the church. Again, this is how Calvin puts it. Because it is now our intention to discuss the visible church, let us learn, even from the simple title, Mother, how useful, indeed, how necessary it is that we should know her, for there is no other way to enter into life unless this mother conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us at her breast, and lastly, unless she keep us under her care and guidance until, putting off mortal flesh, we become like the angels. We're skipping ahead in church history to the 20th century. This is how Leslie Newbigin puts it, and he puts this in the context of calling upon Christians everywhere to seek penitently and realistically for the source of our proliferation of divisions. And in the context of talking about how we have wrongfully divided the Church and asking how can we be content to see the Church of Christ split up into hundreds of separate sects and feel no sense of shame about the situation, listen to what he says. There is a real people of God present in the world, a real spiritual society, a place where the light of God really shines and the life of God really pulses. And he goes on to say, it makes the most awful and ultimate difference conceivable whether you are inside or outside of that place. See, if this is where God is found, if this is where God dwells, if the church really is the temple of God, That's where you've got to go to get salvation, to experience God's favor, God's blessing, God's presence. The other backdrop against which we have to confess the catholicity of the church is this. We have to distinguish ourselves from groups which really are heretical, which truly are schismatic. The church's catholicity is defined doctrinally by the great orthodox creeds and councils of the early church. We could say the Apostles' Creed, and the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, and perhaps also the formula of Chalcedon. Those are sort of the biggies. Those are the foundational pillars, you could say, on which the whole church rests. The whole weight of the church rests on those doctrinal foundations. Those ecumenical creeds and councils represent what the Church Father Vincent of Lorenz, he put it this way, he said, these are the things believed everywhere, always, and by all. And so to divide from those who teach these things, confess these things, believe these things, to break fellowship with those who still hold the Nicene faith, who hold the ancient ecumenical orthodoxy, is itself an act of schism, to disfellowship those people. So, Catholicity means that we are attached to other Christians throughout time and space, Christians who share this same ancient faith. So, we don't just exist in our own little denominational pond, we're part of this great rushing river, down through the centuries, down through the ages of history. And so we've got to take the church's heritage seriously. You know, C.K. Chesterton said, tradition is the democracy of the dead. We've got to give our ancestors a vote. And that's why it's very important in our liturgy and in our hymnody that we look back to what has come before. The Spirit didn't just start working, you know, in the last five years. He's been working in God's people for 2,000 years now, really much longer than that. You can go back to his sort of shadowy preliminary work in the Old Covenant era. We've got to respect all that. means that when your teachers go to prepare a sermon or lesson of some sort, they need to be in conversation with and consulting with what the best teachers have said in the church down through the ages. We're not just trying to reinvent the Christian faith ourselves. It's an inheritance that has been bequeathed to us. Now, the problem with that, of course, is that most American Christians had a very low view of the church, and certainly a very low view of the church's tradition. For at least the last 150 years, we've put very little thought in the church as an institution. And so Americans will teach their children the Pledge of Allegiance, pledge allegiance to one nation under God, indivisible, The nation is indivisible, and yet American Christians will say that the church, the body of Christ, is very easily divisible. We feel no shame, no guilt, no remorse over dividing the church into thousands of little denominational pieces. It's been said, high churchmen are those with a high view of the church and a low view of themselves, while low churchmen are those with a low view of the church and a high view of themselves. And I think there's a whole lot of truth packed into that clever little saying. We've got to recover a high view, a biblical view, a classic Catholic and Reformed view of the church. Now, what does that look like? How does all that get worked out? It does not mean theological latitudinarianism. It's not just, you know, Rodney King's approach to theology. Why can't we just all get along? That's why it's Reformed Catholicism. It's not anything goes Catholicism. It's Reformed Catholicism. But just because we are Reformed does not mean that we think everybody else has to be in order to be regarded as a brother or sister in Christ. So, Catholicism doesn't just mean being nice to everyone. It doesn't mean that we give up on all these theological doctrines that have been handed down to us. But it also means we need to get away from the whole attitude that Steve Schlissel described, where he says we spend all this time polishing one another's reform badges, patting one another on the back, you're really in the club. It can't be that either. There's got to be an openness. One thing you find throughout history is that perfectionism and sectarianism always go together. People who are perfectionistic about the church always end up as sectarians because they just can't stand a church with blemishes. And you can go back and look at how Calvin handled the Anabaptists, who were sort of the perfectionists of his day, and how he calls on people to bear with and put up with all kinds of faults in the Church for the sake of unity. So if you want to practice Reformed Catholicity, you must be kind to one another, You must be showing brotherly love to one another, you must show deference to others, you must be patient, you must be prayerful, you must live peaceably with others, especially within your local body, insofar as it depends upon you. But you also need to be seeking and praying about ways that the global unity of the Church can be rebuilt. You need to deal with differences, yes, but you need to deal with them in love and in humility within the framework of those Catholic ecumenical creeds. See, they provide the context for the conversation. And we go from there. When differences do arise in the body, we don't ignore them, nor do we magnify them out of proportion. We seek to deal with those kinds of conflicts in a peaceable manner by going to the Scriptures, going to church tradition as a kind of secondary standard under that, the confessions and so forth. And we handle the dialogue in such a way that we're not just trying to score points for our theological camp. We're not just trying to win a debate. We're trying to really do, as Calvin would, what's best for the Church. So we strive for like-mindedness with a humble attitude. That's really what it comes down to. Reformed in doctrine, Catholic in spirit, Catholic in attitude. That's the point. And that's really what I think Paul is describing there in Ephesians chapter 4. He says there, that objectively speaking, this is an objective fact about the world, there is one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. A sevenfold oneness, a perfect oneness. If that perfect oneness is not manifest, if it's not evident, then really we're lying about the way things really are. It's like we're telling the world, no, really there are many faiths, many baptisms, many lords. and so on. Can't do that. We must be seeking to show the world this oneness. That's our obligation. That's our call. Otherwise, we give the world an excuse for its religious pluralism. In a sense, we're giving the world an excuse to not believe. The Gospel. So we've got to seek unity for ourselves, for the world, and of course ultimately for God's sake. Let me close with, I started with a few quotations, let me close with a couple quotations here. This is from John Robinson, not John Robbins, mind you, but John Robinson. Listen to what he says here. You know, one thing that Ephesians 4 points us to is that the church is going to be continually growing up to maturity in Christ Jesus through history. The church is not a static thing. It's not like we've arrived and now we just kind of stay put. There's this dynamic growth towards maturity that takes place. Listen to what John Robinson says. We have not yet arrived at the goal. There are still treasures in the Scriptures, the knowledge of which have remained hidden to us. all the misery of the Presbyterian churches is owing to their striving to consider the Reformation as completed and to allow no further development of what has been begun by the labor of the Reformers." When he says, all the misery of the Presbyterians, that just resonates for me so deeply. He says, the Lutherans stopped at Luther, many Calvinists at Calvin. This is not right. Certainly these men in their time were burning and shining light Nevertheless, they did not possess an insight into the whole of God's truth. And if able to arise from their graves, they would be the first to accept gratefully all new light. It is absurd to believe that during the brief period of the Reformation, all error has been banished, just as it is absurd to believe that Christian understanding has completed its task. So we have more to learn. That's why we need to keep our Bibles open and our hearts and our minds open to God's truth. And we need to stay in dialogue with other Christian traditions. This is how Thomas McCree, the Scottish Presbyterian, describes it. Very post-millennial in his thinking here. A happy reunion of the divided church is promised in the word of God. It is implied in those promises which secure to the church the enjoyment of a high degree of prosperity in the latter days in which God engages to arise and have mercy on Zion to be favorable to his people, pardon their iniquity, and hear their prayers, cause their reproach to cease, and make them a praise, a glory, and a rejoicing in all the earth, in a word, in which he promises to pour out his Holy Spirit and revive his work. God cannot be duly glorified, religion cannot triumph in the world, the church cannot be prosperous and happy until her internal dissensions are abated and her children come to act in greater union, unison, and concert. But when her God vouchsafes to make the light of His countenance to shine upon her and sheds down the enlightening, reviving, restorative, and sanctifying influences of His Spirit, the long-delayed, long-wished-for day will not be far distant. It will have already gone." And then finally from N.T. Wright, Paul lived in a world that was divided by race, class, wealth, gender, geography, citizenship, and a host of other factors in a world, a world, in fact, very much like our own. In Paul's world, the rulers and authorities, both what we would call the spiritual rulers and what we would call the political rulers, they were not so easily separable in Paul's mind, carved up the world between them, claiming allegiance from people and then locking them up in little boxes. What was Paul's solution? That the church should become yet another exclusive group, perhaps a subgroup of one or two of the above? Of course not. He sees the fact that he has been called as the Jewish apostle to the Gentiles, He sees the fact that his gospel message is about the Creator God summing up all things in Christ, things both in heaven and earth. He sees the fact that the gospel is about the untold riches and the unimagined plan of God. He sees all these things as creating a new entity, a new identity, a new humanity in which it is of the essence that people of every race and class and gender and geography and all the rest come together as one body in Christ. This is to be the sign to the watching world, to Caesar's world, to Plato's world, to the modern world, and particularly our postmodern world, that Jesus is Lord. The unity of the body is the sign to the world that Jesus is Lord. That's John 17. that His death and resurrection have defeated the powers of evil, the anti-creation powers, the powers that hold human beings apart in their separate boxes, and that God in Christ and by the Spirit has now created a single new humanity, Jew and Gentile, black and white, male and female, slave and free, rich and poor, East and West, and North and South. The very existence of a community like this is to be the sign to the powers that their time is up. This is the unexpected announcement, the good news that Jesus is Lord and the powers of the world are not. And the announcement is made, not simply or even principally in words, but in the existence of a newly human and cheerfully united community. This is at the heart of Paul's gospel, and it should be central for today's gospel people, today's evangelicals. See, it's the existence of this newly human, this joyfully united community that is right at the heart of the gospel. Six things to do. First, I think it would be good for Christians to think about periodic worship services, maybe centered around events in the church calendar, with other churches in their given region. And of course, in the very process of working out a liturgy for those events and that kind of thing, you'll have all kinds of impasses you have to work through, but I think that's a good project. Second, in our worship services and our prayer meetings, we should be praying for Christians, Christian churches, Christian missionaries who belong to other groups, other denominations. Don't just pray for our own, but pray for those who belong to other denominations within Christendom. Third, show respect publicly for the discipline, orders, and sacramental life of other churches. Now, that doesn't mean that there will be times when you have to disagree with a governmental action on the part of another church. But as much as possible, we ought to seek to show a mutual respect to one another's governmental actions, one another's administration of the sacraments, and so forth. Fourth, we ought to make common cause with other Christians in mercy ministry and in community service. This is one of the most important things that we can do to show the world the solidarity of the body of Christ. Join together in mercy ministry in the name of Christ. Go build a house for a poor person with other Christians in your city. Go work at a soup kitchen with other Christians in your city, whatever it might be. Fifth, seek to have pastors' gatherings, where pastors can build relationships, where they can pray with and for one another, and where you can provide a forum for real theological discussion, sitting down at the table with an open Bible, hashing things out, working towards agreement. We can't just agree to disagree. We need to be working through those agreements to a deeper unity in the faith. And then sixth, we need to have a healthy attitude to other churches and other Christians, not an attitude of suspicion, but an attitude, a posture of trust, an attitude of charity towards other Christians. In fact, I think more than anything else, perhaps Reformed Catholicity comes down to how you view and engage with other Christians. Do you view them as the enemy or do you view them as brothers with whom you need to seek to have as much unity and fellowship as possible? Let me pray for us.