Why Must the Church be One? A Meditation on the Meaning of Christian Unity
A Protestant reader lately has written to ask about unity, an issue that bothers him as a Protestant, and that bothered me also when I was a Protestant. All Christians are concerned about unity, because Christ told us to be one on his last night on earth as an important part of our witness for him, so the world may know him and believe in him.
The question is, why is unity, oneness, so important for witnessing and believing that Christ made it a command on his last night on earth? Why must we be one in order for Christ to be seen and believed in? In dialoguing with my reader, something came clear, several different strands of theology that I’ve been studying coalesced, that I shared with him and also want to share here: the meaning and significance of unity, of visible oneness for the Church.
It came together in my mind this way: it is important because it is the nature of God Himself, the nature of creation, the nature of the Church, and the reason for existence itself. Simply put, the Church must be one because God is One, and the Church is His Body. It must be unified, though composed of many members, because God is unified, three Persons in perfect harmony as one: the Trinity - and Jesus prayed that we, though many, would be perfectly one (Jn 17:23). We are created in His image and likeness, so must show forth His image and likeness, which in essence is oneness and unity in love, not only in our individuality but also in our plurality, our relationships.
Turns out my reasoning agrees with the Catechism, which says, “The Church is one because of her source . . . the unity, in the Trinity of Persons, of one God.” (CCC 813)
The following is my attempt to explain why that is.
Jesus’ Command to be One
One of the things that ancient writers used to structure and highlight important concepts in their writings (they hadn’t yet invented chapters and punctuation) was bracketing (also called inclusio): bracketing the beginning and end of important texts with important key concepts, to emphasize the key meaning of the text to readers. Such a bracket occurs in Jesus’ long discourse in John 13-17.
The first is Jn 13:34-35, at the beginning of the discourse: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.”
The second is Jn 17:21-23, at the end of the discourse: “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. … I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me.”’
Common to both verses is the key concept “By this all men will know,” “so that the world may believe;” i.e., witnessing for Christ so others may be saved. These two verses, which bracket the entire discourse, highlight the key concepts of the discourse: we are commanded to love one another, as one, as the important key witness to the world about the reality of Christ, so that the world may believe in him also and be saved.
These concepts are repeated, emphasized, and expanded on by Christ throughout the discourse. Without that loving, united witness, it is easy for the world to disregard Christ – and many souls are lost.
Why that is, however, hasn't always been clearly articulated. To articulate it, one must first understand something essential about God Himself, and then about the reason for creation, the purpose of man's creation, the effects of sin and the Fall on that purpose, and the purpose of the existence of the Church. Then it can be clearly seen why unity is so important - and what unity really is.
The Nature of God
God is One God, the eternal, infinite Being without beginning and without end, who exists eternally in one infinite act of being that has no beginning and will never cease. He is Life itself, and His nature is Love. It is because of His reality and His nature as living Love that while being One, God is also a Trinity, united as One in perfect, ceaseless, living Love.
God exists as a Trinity because it is the nature of love to love, to pour itself out in love to the other, and so God by His very act of being pours Himself out ceaselessly, totally and eternally, with neither beginning nor end, in living love, holding nothing back and yet without being diminished (for He is infinite), not in the limited way of finite beings, but in an unlimited way, a real outpouring of the whole Divine Self that results in God Himself in the Son, same God, but without diminishing God Himself in the Father, due to His infinitude.
The Son is also completely God, the same God, without beginning or end, without limit. The Son, sharing the same nature as the Father, also pours Himself out totally, yet without being diminished, in living love. This outpouring in living love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit, also totally God, the same God, without beginning or end, without limit, also pouring Himself out to the Father and the Son ceaselessly, in living love. This is why the One God is, due to His very nature, One God and a Trinity of Persons within Himself, the total outpouring of Himself in life and love that is the Trinity.
The Reason for Creation
So God is relational, which is the nature of love, within Himself. And He is such an overflowing, all-powerful wellspring of life and love that out of sheer goodness He also calls creation into existence, and pours Himself out into creation as, like an artist, an expression of His glorious self. God is glorious, and is not content to let His glory remain invisible, purely spiritual, seen only by Himself, but wants to make it visible, so that He can be seen and loved and worshiped by others, have relationships with others in love.
So, He created creation for the purpose of making His glory visible, and created us so there would be someone to see it, someone He could share His life and love with – someone He could have a relationship with. The purpose of creation, in other words, is visible relationship, making God visible so He can be known, and share Himself with others.
And more. The Hebrew symbolism and literary structure used in the creation story, though not obvious in English translations, indicates that creation itself is a temple, created for the glory and worship of God. Creation itself before the Fall was the original Church, the first Temple where God could be known and worshiped.
The Purpose of Man's Creation
God created man in His own image and likeness so there would be someone there to see Him and share life with Him, and love and worship Him in return. In the beginning, God even walked in the garden with Adam and Eve (Gen 3:8). Adam and Eve were God’s original created family, created in His image and likeness and destined to share life and love with Him.
Why a family? Because God is a family, the Trinity is the original family: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in perfect unity and harmony. Being created in His image and likeness means we reflect both His oneness and His Trinity, not only in our individuality, but also in our plurality, our relationships with others. The family itself is a reflection of the Trinity: the relationship of father, mother, and child reflecting the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Trinity is the inner reality of the nature of God. This means that as creation was created to show forth the glory of God, we ourselves were created to show forth the inner, Trinitarian reality of God. This is why the first human relationship was a family, and was Trinitarian: the marriage relationship of Adam and Eve with each other, a real union, and their relationship with God: Adam, Eve, and God; reflecting the image and likeness of the Trinity of God himself.
In other words, our visible relatedness helps make God visible. Visibility is the reason for creation, and the reason for the creation of man: to make God visible, both in His outward glory and in His inward, Trinitarian reality, so He can be seen, known, loved, and worshiped.
Sin and Redemption
The fall into sin disrupted this, broke relationship with God and with each other, hiding God and obscuring His image in us. Human history ever since has been marked by sin and broken relationships. But God has been working to restore man ever since to his rightful relationship with God and with each other. God used a series of covenants (or a growing covenant, handed on), beginning with Abraham and each with an expanded meaning: Adam/family, Noah/extended family, Abraham/tribe, Moses/People of God, David/Kingdom, Jesus/worldwide blessing.
So we have the original covenant family of Adam, Eve, and God, broken through sin. The new covenant began with Noah’s household, saved from the flood. It expanded with Abraham to include the whole tribe. With Moses it made the whole people of Israel, all the tribes, God’s people (Lev. 26:12). With David it established the kingdom of Israel, and with Jesus it expanded to include all the nations, the worldwide blessing intended by God before the Fall, promised to Abraham and his descendants after the Fall (Gen 22:18).
But God hasn’t been working just to restore man. He’s also been working to restore the Church. The theme of all nations streaming to the Temple abounds in the Old Testament from Abraham through the prophets. But what is the Temple? The Temple is not the physical temple at Jerusalem, from which the presence of God departed at the Babylonian exile and never returned. The temple is the Church, the original meaning of creation, the place where God becomes visible and where God and man meet in a loving family relationship of love and worship.
Creation itself has fallen, due to sin, which means that the original church is fallen, and so must be restored: the new creation, a new Church. Christ is the first stone in the new creation, his resurrected body literally the first stone of the new physical creation, which is the first stone in the new Church. We also become stones for the new creation, the new Church, when we are incorporated into Christ through baptism and Eucharist, to be fulfilled at our own resurrection.
The Church
The Church, then, is the beginning of the new creation, the new Temple for the right worship of God, the new family of God, constantly growing, to be fully revealed at the end of time, when Christ comes again. As the Old Testament was a prefigurement and preparation for the coming of Christ, the Jewish temple and people were a prefiguration and preparation for the founding of the Church, the restoration of creation and of the family of God.
The Church is the Body of Christ, and because Christ is the image of the invisible God (Cor 1:15), so is the Church, His Body in union with Him, also the image of the invisible God, making God visible on earth, the reason for creation in the first place. So to make God truly visible, to make visible His inner, invisible nature, the Church must of necessity be visibly one, united as one though with many members, a true family, to reflect the united, Trinitarian, perfect harmony of the inner nature of God, so that God may be seen and known.
It is not enough to claim mystical union alone, because mystical union is invisible, by itself contrary to God's purpose of visibility, and meaningless to outsiders in the face of visible disunity. One of the most important components of our witness to the world is visible oneness, because our visible unity, oneness, harmony, itself is the Trinitarian image and likeness of God on earth, which helps make Him known to others, so they can worship Him, too. Jesus commanded us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5:48), and prayed that we would be perfectly one, even though many, because that is how God is, and we are created in His image and likeness so we can help make Him visible. This is the only way we can truly fulfill the purpose of our creation as image and likeness of the perfect oneness of the Trinity of God.
That’s why unity is so important. Unity itself has profound theological meaning and urgency. Real unity isn’t just a nice thing to help us get along better or make us look better to others. In a very real way it is the image and likeness of God on earth and reason for our own existence. Lack of unity is not. It is a broken image, a broken family – and thus a damaged witness. And many people reject Christianity in part because of the visible disunity among Christians. It makes us look like hypocrites. That’s why the brokenness of the Body is so bad. It has broken and obscured what was to have been the visible image of the Trinitarian life and love of God on earth, making God knowable and lovable.
This is an argument for what the Catholic Church teaches about itself, alone among all the churches on earth: that it is One, visibly one, along with being Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. This is not only an invisible, mystical communion, an interior thing for believers (though it is that, too, which includes all believers, not just Catholics), but also, and most importantly, a visible communion, in a visible, single institution on earth, externally, for non-believers, so they can believe, too. Oneness is one of the marks of the true Church that Jesus founded, and one of his commandments to the leaders of the Church before he departed the earth.
As the Trinity is united under the headship of the Father, the mystical Body is united under the headship of Christ the invisible head, and a healthy earthly family is united under the earthly father, so the visible Body must be united under a visible head, a single head, not many competing heads. Otherwise there is no unity.
The Catholic Church does have a single, visible head, the original
head of the original Body: the successor
to Peter, the leader chosen by Christ, the Pope today. It’s the only
church in the world that does, and that has consistently from the
beginning. Now, I realize this brings up issues
for my non-Catholic readers, issues that take time to understand and
work out. But under Peter we are and always have been unified as a
single Body, with a single head, a consistent image of Christ from the
beginning. We
have not only good relationship with God and with our local
congregation, but unbroken, real, visible worldwide relationship as one,
real unity, a truly single worldwide Body under a single visible head –
the way Jesus set it up to be, before he left the earth.
Unity is the Image and Likeness of God and the Meaning of Life
I asked in the beginning why visible unity, oneness, is so important
for witnessing and believing that Christ made it a command on his last
night on earth. In a nutshell, the answer is because the Church is supposed to be the
image and likeness of God on earth, is supposed to make God visible, and so must be united as one
because God is united as One, so that God may be seen, loved, and worshiped.
We must look and be like God. That is the whole reason for
creation, the whole reason for our
existence: to make God visible, in all His Trinitarian beauty and
harmony, so that He may be loved and worshiped, and share Himself with
others. That is the meaning of life.
I close with a dictionary definition of unity (from dictionary.com):
- the state of being one; oneness.
- a whole or totality as combining all its parts into one.
- the state or fact of being united or combined into one, as of the parts of a whole; unification.
- absence of diversity; unvaried or uniform character.
- oneness of mind, feeling, etc., as among a number of persons; concord, harmony, or agreement.
The word unity itself comes from the Latin root for one. The Greek word catholic means universal, which is based on same root: one. Seems pretty clear to me. We really are supposed to be one, actually one, not just in some mystical sense. Jesus told us to. It’s up to us to be it.
What does this mean for non-Catholics? I’m reluctant to make a blanket assertion. People are in different places, and the Church recognizes that all believers are at least invisibly joined in some way. I trust that everyone is capable of deciding for themselves where they need to be, according to how God is working in their lives. I decided for myself, and acted accordingly.
I write about why unity is important, because it really isn’t just an invisible thing. I write in order, I hope, to get people thinking more deeply, more seriously, about what it really is, to confront the reality of it so that we not only pray for it, but take concrete action to make it the reality that Christ intended, commanded, and prayed for on his last night on earth.
