Scrawny Little Olives

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After something of a lull, I am picking up my conversation with Green Baggins over my book “Reformed” Is Not Enough. Chapter 13 is on church unity, and Lane and I actually have a healthy bit of agreement here. For example, he agrees with me on the legitimacy of receiving Roman Catholic baptisms “in order to be nursed back to health.”

He has some trouble with the distinction I made on the difference between a corrupt church and an apostate church, and asks a reasonable question — “where does he get that biblically?” Here it is. Churches that have had their lampstand removed are apostate. Churches that are being seriously warned about that possibility are corrupt. Branches that have been cut out of the olive tree are apostate. Branches that are still on the tree but have started to think that they support the root are corrupt. The short answer is that apostasy does not occur with no warning at all — and the run up to that apostasy is the period of corruption. God dealt with the Israelites even though they worshipped him in the high places. They were corrupt, but not yet rejected. The prophets were ticked about it, as they should have been, but God nevertheless still owned them as His people. That was corruption, not apostasy. The severance of Israel from the olive tree after 70 A.D. was apostasy, the culmination of corruption.

But in the course of this, Lane also says something really curious. He says that “any church that has justification by faith distorted is an apostate church, not just a corrupt church.” Now as I am using the word apostate, I mean not a true church at all — an olive branch cut out of the tree and lying on the ground. By corrupt, I mean a branch with scrawny little olives. If Lane is using the word the same way (and it seems he is certainly using it in the strong sense), he is saying that the Nazarenes, the Southern Baptists, the Assemblies of God, the Wesleyan Methodists, and so on — virtually the entire evangelical world — is apostate. They all get justification by faith alone wrong in pretty much the same way that Rome does, and in the way that Scott Clark thinks I do. And that’s really bad.

Lane also takes me as assuming that church unity is fundamentally an “organizational goal.” I do think one kind of unity should be an organizational goal, but another kind of unity is already given. Lane appears to recognize the unity which is given to us (what he calls spiritual unity), but not the unity that we are commanded to grow up into. For example, when we are commanded to be like-minded, and to all speak the same thing, this is not a charge to be differently minded, and to say contrary things.

Referring to Ephesians 4:1-6, Lane says, “Paul does not say that there should be Christian unity. He says there is unity.”

In another post a few years ago “A Protestant Vision for Unity“), I addressed this question. Here are some snippets.

The same Paul who tells us to labor to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace also tells us the basis of that unity. He tells us that we as Christians are to walk in a manner worthy of our calling as Christians (Eph. 4:1). Our demeanor in this is to be one of humility and patience (v. 2). With this attitude, we are equipped to obey his next command, which is the command to endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (v. 3). This unity is to be kept by us, not created by us. Armed with the right attitude, assigned the right task, what we now need is the right foundation. What foundation does Paul declare as the basis of this unity?

There is already one body because there is one Spirit. There is one hope of our calling. One Lord. There is only one faith. There is only one baptism. And above, through and in us, there is one God and Father (vv. 4-6). In heaven is the triune God, and on earth we find a common confessed faith and a common baptism—Word and sacrament. It is striking that there are no governmental bonds referred to here; the bonds are of another nature entirely. He does not list one holy Father in Rome. Nor does he say one ecumencial headquarters in New York. He does not refer to summit leadership conferences in Colorado Springs. When Paul is appealing to Christians to maintain the unity they already have, he appeals to them on this basis—one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

Of course, this does not mean that government is irrelevant to this question of unity. In the next breath, Paul goes on to say that the one Lord ascended into heaven, and from that exalted place He gave the gift of godly ministry to men. “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers” (Eph. 4:11). The reason He did this was so that these officers would labor in the perfecting of the saints, building up the body of Christ until we all come to the unity of the faith (vv. 12-13). The task before these officers is the presentation of a perfect man, a Church that has grown up into the measure of the fullness of Christ (v. 13).

In short, our foundational unity is trans-denominational, just like Lane says. But God is building this Church, and He fully intends to the put the roof on. And when He does, we are all going to be under it.

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