Reading: Methods, Chapter 11: Unity

Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?
By Roland Allen

Chapter 11: Unity

We have seen that St. Paul did not set out on his missionary journeys as a solitary prophet, the teacher of a solitary individualistic religion. He was sent forth as the messenger of a Church, to bring men into fellowship with that body. His converts were not simply united one to another by bonds of convenience arising from the fact that they lived in the same place, believed the same doctrine, and thought it would be a mutual assistance to form a society. They were members one of another in virtue of their baptism. Each was united to every other Christian everywhere, by the closest of spiritual ties, communion in the one Spirit. Each was united to all by common rites, participation in the same sacraments. Each was united to all by common dangers and common hopes.

In like manner, the churches of which they were members were not separate and independent bodies. They were not independent of the Apostle who was their common founder, they were not independent of one another. In St. Paul's mind the province was a unit. So, when his churches were established, he distinctly recognized the unity of the Church in the province. He constantly spoke of the churches of Macedonia, of Achaia, of Galatia, of Syria and Cilicia, of Asia as unities. For the purpose of the collection which he made for the poor saints at Jerusalem, the churches of Macedonia, Achaia, and Galatia were each treated as a separate group, and officers were appointed by each group to act on behalf of the province which they represented in the administration of the collection.

This unity was more than a convenient grouping. The same bonds which united individual Christians one to another united the churches. They were not simply groups of Christians who, for mutual assistance and convenience, banded themselves together in face of a common danger. They were all alike members of a body that existed before they were brought into it. They could not act as if they were responsible for themselves alone. 'What,' writes St. Paul to the Corinthians in rebuking them for allowing women to speak in the church, 'was it from you that the word of God came forth? or came it to you alone?' Or again, in laying down the rule that women should be veiled in the church, he concludes, 'If any man seemeth to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God'. For him, the Church was prior to the churches. The churches did not make up the Church, but the Church established the churches.

We have seen that St. Paul established his churches at centers of Greek and Roman civilization and that they were bound to one another by great trade routes. They were consequently in frequent communication one with another. Visitors passed easily from one to another and prophets soon began to spend their lives journeying from place to place preaching and expounding the faith. The evidence of this frequent communication is abundant. It is quite clear that not only St. Paul's own converts, but emissaries from Jerusalem was constantly passing from church to church. It would seem that there was a regular system of commendation by letter, and that anyone who was recognized as a baptized person was welcomed and entertained. Thus the churches were, in fact, united by many bonds of personal interest.

But they were not united only by bonds of personal interest. As the individual converts, as the city churches, so the provincial churches were united by the most real of all bonds, spiritual communion. They were all members of one body. That body was a visible Church liable to all kinds of attacks from very visible enemies. It was held together, not merely by convenience, not merely by a common faith, and common sacraments, but also by common submission to a common founder. The unity of the churches in the different provinces was expressed not only in constant intercourse one with another, but by their common recognition of the Apostle's authority as the messenger of Christ to them.

Furthermore, the churches in the Four Provinces were not independent of churches of which St. Paul was not the founder. The 'churches of God in Judea' were in Christ before them. St. Paul had been sent forth by the Church in Syria. The churches in the Four Provinces were united to them. The same bonds which made converts members of Christ made them members of the Church; and the Church was not the church in their city only. The same bonds which united the churches in the Four Provinces one to another united the churches everywhere one to another.

St. Paul began with unity. In his view, the unity of the Church was not something to be created, but something which already existed and was to be maintained. Churches were not independent unities: they were extensions of an already existing unity. There could be no such thing as two churches in the same place both holding the Head, yet not in communion one with another. There could be no such thing as two churches in different places both holding the Head, yet not in communion one with another. There could be no such thing as a Christian baptized into Christ Jesus, not in communion with all the other members of the body of which Christ was the Head. If a member was united to the Head he was united to all the other members.

There was a spiritual unity in the one Lord, the one faith, the one baptism, the one God and Father of all. There was an external unity in common participation in common religious rites, common enjoyment of social intercourse. There was no such thing as spiritual unity expressed in outward separation. Spiritual unity is unity, means unity, and is expressed in terms of unity. Outward opposition is a certain sign that spiritual unity does not exist. Spiritual unity in proportion to its perfection and fullness necessarily issues in common, united, harmonious expression, whether of word or act; or else the soul may be God's and the body the Devil's at the same time.

This unity was to be maintained. St. Paul wrote much to his churches about unity, but he never spoke of it as of something which they had created. He always spoke of it as a Divine fact to mar which was sin. Unity could be broken. Spiritual pride might express itself in self-assertion, self-assertion might issue in open schism. The Body might be divided. But that was a sin against the Holy Ghost: it was to destroy the temple of the Lord. The act of schism implied and expressed a schismatic, uncharitable spirit. So long as charity had its perfect work, differences of opinion could not issue in schism. The rending of the outward meant the rending of the inward. The separation of Christians meant the dividing of Christ.

That unity might be broken. The dangers by which it was threatened were of the most profound and serious character. The Church began in Jerusalem as a body of Jews who carefully maintained their Jewish tradition and observed the custom of their fathers. The Church in the Four Provinces consisted almost entirely of Gentiles ignorant of that tradition. Consequently, if a Christian from Macedonia or Achaia went up to Judea he must have found himself in a strange atmosphere, in a community as unlike that to which he was accustomed as it is possible to imagine. Circumcision was practiced, Sabbaths were kept, meats avoided as unclean, the Law was the practical rule of every-day life. There was a strictness and a reserve which must have oppressed and dismayed him. Christianity in Jerusalem must have seemed to him a thing of rules hardly distinguishable from pure Judaism. Many of the Christians shrank from the Gentile, or tolerated him only as a sort of proselyte. In the meetings of the church, the prayers were modeled on Jewish patterns and expressed Jewish thought in Jewish speech with which he was not familiar. The only point of real contact was a common devotion to the Person of Jesus, a common recognition of the same apostles, and a common observance of the same rites of baptism and the Lord's Supper.

On the other hand, when a Christian from Jerusalem went down to Corinth the shock must have been even more severe. The Corinthian in Jerusalem found himself in a society stiff, uncouth, severe, formal, pedantic. The Jewish Christian in Corinth must have thought the church there given over to unbridled license. Uncircumcised Christians attended the feasts of their pagan friends in heathen temples. Every letter of the ceremonial law was apparently broken every day without rebuke. Even in the meetings of the church, preachings and prayers were built on a strange system of thought which could hardly be called Christian, and there was a most undignified freedom of conduct. He must have welcomed the presence in the church of a party led by men from his own city who argued that in dealing with a people like this it was useless to compromise matters: the only possible course was to enforce the observance of the whole Law throughout the whole Church. To omit anything would simply be to admit the thin end of a wedge which would split Christian morals into fragments. If a man wanted to be saved he must keep the law.

Even amongst themselves, the Greeks were not at one. In doctrine and practice, there were different schools of thought. Some inclined to maintain that there was some importance in the directions in the Old Testament concerning meats clean and unclean, or in the common conviction that idols were really the instruments by which spirits of superhuman beings came in to intercourse with men and enabled men to approach them with prayers and offerings, or that the disregard of holy days was really a serious offence. Others laughed all these things to scorn, arguing that it was precisely from that kind of religion that Christ had come to set men free, that the Gospel did not depend upon any outward acts or facts. Some went so far as to say that even the Resurrection of the Lord was to be regarded by spiritual men rather as a spiritual than as a material fact, and that if it was apprehended as a spiritual fact in which Christians spiritually shared by faith, then it was not necessary to believe that any actual resurrection of any actual body took place, or if Christ's body rose it was not necessary to conclude that other men's bodies would rise, because spiritually men in virtue of their faith in Christ were already risen.

Thus there was not only a danger of schism in the churches of the Provinces. There was an even greater danger lest the churches of Judea might repudiate and excommunicate the churches of the Four Provinces altogether. To preserve unity under such circumstances was a task of no small difficulty. How then did St. Paul overcome this difficulty?

Unity might be maintained in two ways. The Church in Jerusalem might be regarded as the original Church, the body of Christ established and organized by His apostles. The converts in the Four Provinces might be regarded as joining that Church. In that case the new members must be willing to accept the rules and regulations, the laws and the customs of the Society which they joined, and any rebellion against those laws and customs must be treated as an act of schism. The authorities in Jerusalem must be regarded as the final court before which every act of disobedience must be tried. There must be a highly centralized organization. That is the Roman system, a system that has so dominated the modern world that even those who repudiate the papal claims for themselves yet cannot resist the temptation to adopt it in principle when they establish missions among other peoples.

On the other hand, new churches established in the provinces might be regarded equally with the first as parts of a still incomplete whole which must grow up by degrees into its completeness. In this case, the new additions would at once be recognized as members of a Spirit-bearing body, equally enjoying the inspiration of the Spirit with the older members. The rules and regulations of the older members of the body could not then be regarded as final and of universal obligation. The first had the customs natural to its own habit of thought designed to satisfy its own needs. The last might equally have its own customs natural to its own habit of thought to meet its own needs. The first had no right, simply on the ground that it was the first, to impose its laws and its customs upon the last. In a word, unity did not consist in outward conformity to the practices of the earliest member, but in incorporation into the body. It would thus be as distinct an act of schism for the earliest to claim a right to dominate the last member as for the last member to assert its own independence of the earlier.

It was the second of these two policies which St. Paul adopted. He refused to transplant the law and customs of the Church in Judea into the Four Provinces. He refused to set up any central administrative authority from which the whole Church was to receive directions in the conduct of local affairs. He declined to establish a priori tests of orthodoxy which should be applicable for all time, under all circumstances, everywhere. He refused to allow the universal application of particular precedents.

(I) He refused to transplant the law and the customs of the Church in Judea into the Four Provinces. For that, he went in daily peril of his life, for that he endured calumny, persecution, detraction, for that he risked everything. He himself kept the law, but that availed him nothing. He was pursued from province to province and from city to city by the most cruel and malicious opponents. His work was hindered, his converts perverted, his labors multiplied, his strength worn out. Yet he held on his course; and the establishment of Christianity throughout the then known world was his reward.

(2) He refused to set up any central administrative authority from which the whole Church was to receive directions. Once, and once only, he supported an appeal to the Council in Jerusalem to settle a question which arose in another province. The church of that province was not of his founding, and it seemed good to the brethren to appeal. But from the Four Provinces, there was no such appeal made. When the same or similar difficulties arose in these provinces, he treated these difficulties as questions which each province, if not each church, must settle for itself. He gave his advice and trusted the church to arrive at the right conclusion. When emissaries from Jerusalem attacked him in Jerusalem, he proceeded thither, not to attend a council which might override the provinces, but to maintain the orthodoxy of the provinces and to defend their liberty.

(3) He declined to establish a priori tests of orthodoxy. We who are eager for such tests, who always want to have it clearly defined beforehand precisely what a church may or may not do, what it may or may not put aside on pain of ceasing to be of the Catholic Church, seek earnestly in the records of the apostolic acts for such a test. And we fail to find it. We know what St. Paul taught positively. We have seen how he handed on the tradition and the Scriptures, how he established the orders of the Ministry, how he insisted upon the due administration of the Sacraments. But negatively nothing is defined. It is very strange how difficult it is to find any clear guidance. There was a point beyond which a church could not go without being excluded, just as there was a point of moral conduct beyond which an individual could not transgress without being excommunicated. But as at Corinth, the law was not laid down beforehand, as the offenses which would necessitate the ex-communication of an individual convert were not defined, so the point at which irregular conduct on the part of a church would imply apostasy and would demand exclusion were not defined beforehand.

St. Paul never tells us what would happen if something should be done which, as a matter of fact, had not actually been done. His great strength lay in his power to refuse to define, or to anticipate, any heresy or schism. He foresaw that there would be, that there must be, heresy, but he refused to prejudge the matter before the offense was actually committed.

(4) He refused to allow the universal application of precedents. When a question had arisen and a judgment had been given he did not apply that judgment as of universal authority. The decrees of the Jerusalem Council were addressed to the churches of Syria and Cilicia. St. Paul carried them as far as Galatia, but he carried them no further. He did not enforce them in Macedonia or Achaia. Precedents are not of universal application. The conditions in Corinth or in Thessalonica were not the same as in Antioch in Syria, or even in Galatia. What was vital and natural in Syria would have been artificial in Achaia. It would not have been a precedent to the Corinthians or Thessalonians. It would have been a purely arbitrary ruling. Questions are not settled once for all. They recur in each age and in each country in different forms. They have to be restated and the answer must be revised and restated by the church there on the spot. Nothing is more dangerous than to substitute judgment by precedent for judgment by conviction, and nothing is easier. To appeal to Jerusalem, or Trent, or Lambeth, or Westminster, is easy, but it is disastrous. It makes for an appearance of unity: real unity it destroys. Definitions and precedents have created more schisms than they have healed. If definitions and precedents are dangerous necessities at home, when they are transplanted abroad they become dangerous superfluities. If it is a true doctrine that 'every man must bear his own burden', it is equally true that every age must produce its own definitions and every church its own precedents.

St. Paul's conception of unity was so spiritual that it could not possibly be realized by a mere maintenance of uniform practice. It was so spiritual that it could not fail to issue in vital agreement. It was so spiritual that it could not be enforced by compulsion; it was so spiritual that it demanded that it should be expressed in outward unity. The only thing which mattered was the spiritual unity; outward unity which did not express an inward unity was an empty husk. But inward unity was the only thing that mattered, because inward unity which did not express itself in outward unity was the negation of unity.

Hence he laid great stress upon unity.

(1) He taught unity by taking it for granted. He taught men to realize it as a fact of their Christian experience. He taught his converts to recognize every baptized Christian as a brother. He taught them, as we have seen, again and again, the duty of mutual responsibility one for another. He taught them by constantly recalling to their minds their common difficulties and sufferings, referring in his letter to the sufferings of other churches and comparing them with their own. He taught them to practice hospitality one to another. At all times, by all means, he kept the fact of the unity of the Church before their eyes.

(2) He used to the full his position as an intermediary between Jew and Greek. He was a Pharisee with a Greek education and in perfect sympathy with the Greek mind. He carefully kept the law when he was in Jerusalem whilst he strenuously advocated the liberty of the Greeks. He was trusted by all the leaders of the Church and he constantly used that influence. In ten years he went up to Jerusalem three times. After his first journey through Galatia, he returned to Antioch and thence went up to Jerusalem for the Council. After the second he considered his presence in Jerusalem of such importance that he refused an urgent entreaty to stay in Ephesus, which was a center in which he had long designed to preach. At the end of the third journey, he insisted upon going up to Jerusalem in spite of earnest and repeated warnings in which he himself believed The only possible interpretation of this care is that he knew that it was only by his personal intervention that he could hold the churches of Judea and the Four Provinces together and counteract the machinations of the party which would bind upon the Gentiles the burden of the Jewish law, and so either create a schism or destroy his work.

(3) He maintained unity by initiating and encouraging mutual acts of charity. The collection for the Jewish saints of Jerusalem was at once a proof and a pledge of unity. It has been universally recognized that St. Paul's eager anxiety to secure this collection was due to his sense of the gravity of the situation, and to his conviction that this sign of fellowship in the Gospel would be an immense source of strength to him in the coming struggle with the Judaizing party in Jerusalem. No assurance of orthodoxy in the face of contentious questions is so powerful as a single act of charity. The real unity which lies at the back of external agreement is common participation in the Spirit of Christ, the spirit of charity. One sign of that Spirit moves men to suppress their grievances and to recognize the rightness of others more than many assertions of orthodox practice. And the influence of the collection is apparent in the refusal of the Church in Jerusalem to take the side of the Judaizing missionaries.

(4) He encouraged the constant movement of communication between the different churches. He encouraged his churches in common action for a common end. The collection for the poor saints in Jerusalem was not a series of separate collections made in Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia and Asia, it was a collection made by all these churches together. If it helped to bind the Church in Jerusalem to the churches in the Four Provinces, it also helped to bind the churches in the provinces one to another. They all sent representatives with the Apostle to Jerusalem. When he went up, he went as the head of a large party. It was the presence of a Greek with him in the city which was the immediate cause of the riot. To counteract distorted statements nothing is more valuable than many witnesses. Some may see the worst side of things, but amongst many, some will see the best side and the evidence of the many will tend to sound judgment. Hence the value of the growing intercourse between the churches abroad and the Church at home; each helps the other to understand the unity of the Church.

In all these ways St. Paul taught his converts to realize the fact of unity.

Today unity is maintained in our missions by a very different means. We have had a long and very bitter experience of schism at home, and all our missions have been planted and organized with the fear of schism ever before our eyes. Our attitude towards our converts is largely the result of this fear, and our methods are largely the offspring of it. We have not established abroad anything that can be compared with the church in the Four Provinces. We have simply transplanted abroad the organization with which we are familiar at home. We have maintained it by supplying a large number of European officials who can carry it on, with the idea that sooner or later we shall have educated the natives to such a point that, if they eventually become the controlling power in the church, the change will be nothing more than a change of personnel. The system will proceed precisely as it did before, natives simply doing exactly what we are now doing. In other words, we have treated unity mainly as a question of organization.

When we establish a mission abroad we make a European the bishop of an enormous diocese, and the diocese is ruled by him essentially in the same way as a diocese is ruled by a bishop at home. He has under him a certain number of white priests who are in charge of districts which they habitually call their parishes, and they govern their parishes on essentially the same principle as the parish priest at home governs his. Externally, there are certain differences. Their flocks are widely scattered, and in consequence priests in charge try to move about as much as they can, and they hold more evangelistic services for those in their parish who are not churchgoers. They have under them priests, deacons, or catechists, who minister to little groups of converts at mission stations larger or smaller, and these stand to them in very much the same relation as curates and lay-readers stand to the parish priest at home. They conduct their services in precisely the same way as their brethren at home. They use the same Prayer Book and the same ritual.

If a traveler returns from visiting our Indian or Chinese Christians the first thing that he tells us is that he was delighted to find himself worshipping in a church where the language indeed was strange and the worshippers of another color, but that in every other respect he felt quite at home. He found the same sort of ornaments, the same service, the same Prayer Book, the same hymns with which he was familiar. If a Chinese or an Indian convert comes to England he finds, of course, that England is not the Christian country which he imagined it to be, and that the majority of people do not observe many of the rules which he has been taught to keep, but within the circle of the Church he finds the same thing with which he was familiar in his own home. In all the outward forms of religion, there is practical uniformity.

There are, of course, divisions, but they are our divisions transplanted into foreign soil. We have our own parties, and party distinctions are allowed at home and abroad, but there are no divisions between the Church at home and the Church abroad. We import, of course, our own divisions, High and Low, Ritualistic and Anti-ritualistic; but we do not admit the possibility of divergence in manner between East and West. There is nothing that we can really compare with the differences which separated the Church in Jerusalem from the Church in Corinth or in Ephesus. To find a parallel to our modern missions in the churches of St. Paul we should have to imagine a Judaistic church in Macedonia or Achaia divided into Pharisaic, Sadducean, and Grecian parties. In fact, we should have to imagine that St. Paul and his fellow-workers were all Judaizers.

No emissaries from Europe or America ever return to accuse some native church of violating the law and the customs. No bishop ever hastens home to claim for the church of his foundation spiritual liberty, and to assert its right to disregard a rubric. None ventures to maintain the equality of one church with another, as equally with it a member of the Spirit-bearing body. A rule is made in London by a Conference of Western bishops and is applied indiscriminately to China and to Africa, and none dares to say that the Chinese have already settled this question for themselves in their own way, and that, though their decision may not approve itself to Englishmen, still it is certainly not a sufficient reason for breaking communion.

With the alteration of a few titles, the same description would, I fear, be equally applicable to the missions of other Christian bodies. They too carry abroad their own organization and forms. They too Judaize in exactly the same way.

The unity, therefore, which we maintain is practically uniformity of custom. It is essentially legal in its habit. When questions arise they are settled by the missionaries, and the missionaries have but one test and that test is agreement with Western practice. If a precedent be found, that precedent settles the question. If a rule of the Western Church, in any way applicable to the case, is to be found, that rule must be followed. If no law, no precedent, seems applicable, some rule or precedent is established which seems most in harmony with the genius and history of the Western Church.

By this means it must be admitted we have succeeded in maintaining a kind of unity. Schism and heresy are almost unknown in our missions. But at what a price have we succeeded! If there has been no heresy, there has been no prophetic zeal. If there has been no schism, there has been no self-realization. If there has been no heresiarch, there has been no Church Father. If there have been no schismatics, there have been no apostles. If there has been no heresy, there has been no native theology. If there has been no schism, there has been no vigorous outburst of life. If there has been no danger of a breach between the New Missions and the Church which founded them, there has been no great advance in the religious life of the Church. The establishment of new churches in the East should bring to us as great a gain as the establishment of Greek churches brought to the Church in the first century. But how can that be, so long as we persist in thinking of the conversion of Eastern people simply as the making of so many proselytes for the communion to which we happen to belong?