Sullivan church of Christ – Sullivan, MO
Date: August 12, 2007
A SOLID BASIS FOR RELIGIOUS UNITY
Cled E. Wallace
The strident clamor of discordant voices in religious matters makes a mockery of
the prayer of Jesus that His disciples stand united on the teaching of the apostles.
The purpose of that unity, as stated by Jesus, is that the world may believe (John
17:20-21). The prevailing discord is an effective handicap to faith, the result of
which is widespread unbelief.
The unity that Jesus prayed for and the early church achieved was a unity of faith.
"There is one faith" (Ephesians 4:5). This unity demands that men believe the same
thing on the same evidence. "Now I beseech you, brethren, through the name of
our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no
divisions among you; but that ye be perfected together in the same mind and in the
same judgment" (1 Corinthians 1:10 ASV).
Obviously, the things to be believed must be crystal clear, and the evidence to
support it must have the same character. There is no room in the picture for
dreamer, visionary or speculator. Such have always darkened the clear sky of faith
with the clouds and shadows of their opinions. They are apostles of confusion. The
practical difference in the nature of faith and opinion, with the tremendous
consequences involved, is plainly vivid when unity of faith is properly defined.
What men must believe, they can and must understand. Facts are stated and
evidence is presented. An understanding and full acceptance of the case as stated
mark the boundaries of faith. Since the call to faith is as universal as the need of
it, and that takes in the Greeks and Barbarians, the wise and the foolish, the basis
of faith must be streamlined. The man of faith travels light. He cannot ascend the
heights to which faith inspires weighted down with the equipages the opinionated
would lay upon him and stack around him. Faith stops in religion where revelation
stops. Opinion takes off where revelation ceases or has ever been and leads the
unwary and the curious into snipe hunts of doubt, and oftener utter folly.
Illustrations are abundant in the very texts that demand faith. It is well to begin
with faith in God. "...for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he
is a rewarder of them that seek after him" (Hebrews 11:6 ASV). The evidence of the
being of God is far from meager. It is uniform and cumulative. The Almighty Being,
"who is and was and who is to come," the Eternal God, has declared Himself in the
sacred writings, and His works are not only there manifest, but also throughout the
world of nature. Nature corroborates what the scriptures declare. The evidence is
full and satisfactory to establish what men must believe.
What they must believe, they can understand. Faith is in God, His being, and His
revealed character. When men with haughty intellects take off from the solid
ground of faith to soar into heights they do not have wings for, or to sound depths
they are unqualified to fathom, the man of faith will stay where the footing is solid.
In religion the realm of speculation and opinion is endless and profitless. It is even
worse than profitless, for the path of the speculator in religion is strewn with the
wrecks of faith he has caused and endless wranglings he has engendered.
Controversy through the centuries over the questions of Deity have raged far
beyond the facts which are stated in the scriptures as the basis of universal faith.
Men have been burned at the stake because they could not subscribe to a theory.
The mysteries we cannot understand even by searching are the very things that are
not revealed, and also the very things that some ambitious men with itching
curiosity are most anxious to pry into. "The secret things" belong to God; "the
things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children" (Deuteronomy 29:29).
"O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how
unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out! For who hath
known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? or who hath first
given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through
him, and unto him, are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen" (Romans 11:33-36
ASV). Let us understand what the Book says about God and believe it, and in that
faith abide.
The builders of faith must exercise restraint and stick to essentials. "If any man
speak, let him speak as the oracles of God" (1 Peter 4:11). "And I, brethren, when I
came unto you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you
the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you, save
Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:1-2 ASV). Divine demonstrations
of power showed God's approval of Paul, and he addressed prospective believers
with direct evidence unadorned with "persuasive words of wisdom."
No man can be truly edified by the endless maze of theories which men, both
Catholic and Protestant, have spun about Jesus the Christ. They settle down like a
fog on the path of faith. "These are written that ye may believe" (John 20:20-21).
What are written? The inspired words of the birth, life, teaching, and works of
Jesus. Men can understand and believe the facts as presented. Believe what? "That
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God." He is declared to be just that, and clear
evidence is presented to prove it, and the man who cannot believe it is either too
perverse or too shallow to be impressed by facts. It is certainly no reflection on the
Son or the evidence which supports Him that He is not universally accepted.
Unity of faith demands that men accept what the scriptures say about Jesus and
eschew opinions that men have expressed about Him. Inspired preachers and
writers were strong on facts, which incidentally are both easier to understand and
believe than the involved type of reasoning by which men seek to establish their
theories. For instance, Paul preached that Jesus died for our sins according to the
scriptures, was buried, and rose again from the dead according to the scriptures (1
Corinthians 15:3-4). The testimony was simple, direct, and appealing. Many
speculations have been spun around these facts which are both confusing and
incredible. It is far better to accept the fact of "the atonement" and not become
involved in futile efforts to understand its unrevealed mysteries. Blessings come to
all through simple faith in the fact.
It is absurd to charge religious strife over such matters to the inability of men to
"understand alike" what the Bible teaches. The modernist does not reject the
sacrificial character of the death of Christ and the fact of His resurrection because
he cannot understand it, but simply because he does not believe it. It is
foolishness to him as it was to many intellectual pagans in the first century, and
on similar grounds. The theorist who accepts it is not satisfied to know that it
works. Like the little boy with his father's watch, he wants to open it and take it
apart to see how it works, a task he is not capable of, and confusion results.
So-called "systematic theology," coloured and flavoured according to the individual
notions of who happens to be the theologian, expressed in various creeds, has
through the centuries furnished the munitions for party conflict and continues to
do so. Even a sectarian effort to attain "union" — which is not unity — requires
that creeds be largely ignored. Ignoring the creeds is a step in the right direction,
but does not go far enough. Unity demands faith, and faith rests on revelation, not
speculation (Romans 10:17). This is the broad, solid basis for unity.
Division has always been caused by the introduction of foreign elements into the
faith and practice of the church. "Mark them which cause divisions and offenses
contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them" (Romans 16:17). It
is not a popular text with religious agitators who have a playful imagination.
Think what a "streamlined religion" faith furnishes. There is in it no agitation
about hereditary total depravity of the sinner, direct operation in conversion, but
that a simple acceptance of the gospel brings the sinner into a state of
reconciliation. All such constitute the body of Christ, the church (Ephesians 1:22-
23); and when they continue steadfastly "in the apostles' doctrine," (Acts 2:42)
there can be no occasion for parties and creeds to express their peculiarities.
The peculiarities of Christians are common and according to faith, not opinion.
Faith, too, is entirely sufficient to put the innovator out of business and purify the
worship of the church by eliminating all unauthorized practices such as
instrumental music and the burning of incense. The solid basis of unity in religion
is the "simplicity and the purity that is toward Christ" (2 Corinthians 11:3 ASV).
—via “The Gospel Preceptor,” August, 2007, www.gospelpreceptor.com