Of one mind and one heart, of one accord – thus is described the unity of the faith as enjoyed by the early Christian church. Such, indeed, is the ideal set forth in the scriptures for the body of believers. If, according to scripture, that body is subject to one head (which is Christ), it follows that it would quite naturally be of one mind. Moreover, as it was in the beginning of the church, according to the apostle Paul, so also will it be in the end, at the coming of Christ.
Yet how unlike this biblical ideal is our contemporary experience, seeing that the Christian community is broken up into thousands of organisations, each with its own doctrinal edifice. Let us be clear about this. It is because they do not agree among themselves, that they are thus divided. And it is not merely the broad confessional streams, which are at mutual odds. When we do a little probing, we find – even within the same pew – as many ideas, opinions, persuasions and doctrines, as there are individual souls. A unity of the faith ... the notion is preposterous. Confusion reigns among the churches – and, in truth, we have seen nothing yet.
Given our information age – the phenomenal increase of information within the public domain – inevitably, the situation will only intensify, as the global mind of humanity is becoming ever more diversified, partisan and mutually estranged. Far from anything like transcendent oneness, the outlook today is towards hitherto unprecedented – indeed unimagined – fragmentation of worldview and belief. Essentially, the process is one of analysis, as groups and individuals are becoming increasingly exclusionary in their respective self-definition – factions splintering into yet further factions, in a relentless spiral into chaos. As W. B. Yeats, in his Second Coming, was prescient to observe: ‘things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’.
For the organisational entities of this world – religious and political – this is a problem. For how does one control the thinking of a populace let loose upon the internet? Or, for that matter, of a congregation let loose upon the Christian Bible – that strangest of books, diverse in viewpoint, subtly nuanced and profoundly mystical? The task, in a word, is impossible. Which is why information control – the limiting and manipulating of information – has ever been the preferred strategy – by the church, as by the state. Ecclesiastical examples indeed abound – from self-imposed monasticism, from tribunals and inquisitions, to modern fundamentalism and so-called discernment ministries. While, in the secular realm, there looms the ever-present threat of censorship and a state-controlled media.
However, the principal weapon of control – religious as well as political – is the creed, the prescribed code of speech. We may not all think alike, it is conceded, but we may all be coerced into some form of collective creedal lip service. Hail the emperor or loose your head! Adhere to the creed or be counted a heretic! Yet, emphatically, this coercive model is contrary to the spirit of Christ, even as it is repugnant to the human or humane sensibility. The matter, indeed, is of profoundest spiritual significance. For our Bible cannot be reduced to a creed without severely compromising its transcendent charter – even as our universe cannot be reduced to a rational scientific model. For both – nature as well as scripture – bear the imprint of transcendence, such that violence is inevitably done to the sacred canon of life when subjected to a reductionist inquisition. When divorced, moreover, from authentic experience, language turns to gibberish, as human beings become progressively estranged – from one another as indeed from themselves. And whether we speak of secular ideology or the religious creed, once given the destruction of affective language, the historic outcome is is inevitable. It is the destruction alike of value and meaning, of nature as of wholesome culture.
In scripture the applicable model is the legendary tower of Babel, its associated narratives combining all the essential elements. There is the spectre of forcible unity in the guise of the Babylonian empire, a Promethean project to assault the heavens, and the resultant confusion of language, which led to cultural and ethnic dispersion. Further biblical types include the Babylon described in the book of Daniel and, in the Revelation, the so-called beast, the image to the beast, and again the spectre of Mystery Babylon. The city of Babylon is thus recurrent throughout scripture as the archetypal incarnation of religious and political oppression. As such it is further identified with the biblical antichrist, which, in its prophetic end-time elaboration, becomes a global phenomenon.
There does exist, of course, a true and godly unity of the faith, as acknowledged by biblical writers, and it flows from the spirit of unity, which is to say, from the Holy Spirit of God. It is occasioned – this godly unity – not by forcible constraint, but by interior regeneration of a spiritual birth. Jesus, in conversation with Hebrew scholar Nicodemus, stated (John 3:7-8), Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. In other words, the wind blows where it wills – you hear its sound, but you cannot determine its course – and so is everyone born of the spirit. And here we encounter paradox, in that the spiritual birth and Holy Spirit agency is altogether beyond human understanding and control. From an organisational standpoint this sounds like a recipe for chaos. Yet it is God’s way; it is the Bible way – and, indeed, it is the only way of achieving true and lasting unity.
Concerning organised religion and the institutional church, therefore, we see that these represent not merely something other, but something entirely opposed, to the ways and works of the Spirit of God. Wherefore also the Spirit and Word of God was banished from the historic church (at the original council of Nicea, to be precise) – namely as Christian communities succumbed to organisational politics, and creedal lip service became the token of inclusion, replacing the divine seal or token of the spiritual birth. And to this day we are witness to the spiritual confusion, to say nothing of the material misery, which this agenda has caused through schisms, wars, inquisitions and pogroms.
Denominational apologists, the while, assert that without ‘organisation’ there would be chaos and the 'mere anarchy' lamented of Yeats, and, historically, there is some truth to this. Religious organisation, in the typology of the spiritual seed, represents the stalk, tassel and husk. Its function is to protect and nourish the seed until it (the seed) comes to maturity. Accordingly, through most of Christian history the two systems here contrasted were inextricably conjoined. Eventually, however, the seed pulls away from its organisational matrix; the life of the Spirit becomes concentrated in the seed, leaving the stalk, etc, to wither and die. Here we may recall the cry of the baptist (Mathew 3:12), that he (the Christ of God) will gather his wheat into the garner, but he will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. As it was in the beginning, therefore, when the original church set out under the investiture of the Holy Spirit, so will it be in the consummation, when the seed attains to maturity and breaks free of organisational constraint – which, indeed, it must in order to accede to the biblical high calling in Christ.
Organisational churchmen, who warn of mayhem and pandemonium if the Holy Spirit had free reign, are thus fixated on the religious past, and, in large measure, on the mess for which they themselves – or their forebears – are responsible. The type (broadly those of the cessation doctrine in some form) is referred to in scripture (Timothy 3:5) as having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. The apostle (Paul) thus foresaw the day, wherein the Holy Spirit would be set aside for committees, councils and conclaves – for state presbyters, archbishops and popes. Christ, as states Revelation 3:20, is outside of his church, knocking to gain entrance – and, indeed, the entire address to Laodicea is here of relevance. Self-assured and full of hubris, the modern church has need of Christ – not the other way around.
The universal creator, as nature herself attests, surely has no need of human cunning. For, as molecular biology teaches us, there is more order and intelligence in a blade of grass than in the whole of human achievement. As the scriptures further state, a body hast thou prepared me – a body, an organism, possessing life – such is the divine investiture set forth in biblical scripture. Organisation, as I employ the term, is but its carnal imitation. It is devoid of life and, typically, the incarnation of disorder. An incommensurate gulf moreover portends between these respective systems – the human and the divine.