The biblical perspective
The unity of the church and of all creation is a dominant motif in the Bible. This witness begins in the Old Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures, not the New Testament. As attested in the Bible, God established a covenant with the Hebrew people and gathered the disparate tribes into one religious nation, Israel, taking steps to overcome the alienation between God and humans and to reconcile God’s people. The tradition of ancient Judaism, therefore, was based on the reality of the one people of God. Their unity was an expression of their monotheistic faith, the oneness of God (Yahweh). According to Genesis, God created the world as one cosmos, an ordered unity determined by one single will in which all creatures are responsive to the purposes of the Creator. Yahweh chose Israel from all the nations of the world and entered into covenant with its people. Whenever men and women sinned and alienated themselves from God and from one another, God acted to bring about their reconciliation. Israel’s mission was to preserve the faithfulness and unity of all God’s people and to prepare them for the realization of the Kingdom of God.
The vision of unity is central to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the teachings of his Apostles. Those who confess Jesus as Lord and Saviour are brought together in a new community: the church. The New Testament writers assumed that to be “in Christ” is to belong to one fellowship (Greek: koinōnia). Jesus clearly gave the mandate when at the Last Supper he offered his high-priestly intercession, praying that the disciples and all those who believe in him “may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee…so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (John 17:21). This unity was demonstrated in the miracle of Pentecost (Acts 2) and other actions that established the primitive church—e.g., the epoch-making Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), which negotiated conflicts between Jewish and Gentile Christians.
The early church nevertheless had many tensions and conflicts that called for ecumenical proclamations and pleas from the Evangelists and Apostles. Tensions arose between Jewish Christian churches and Gentile Christian churches, between Paul and the enthusiasts. Peter and Paul disagreed strongly over whether Gentiles had to fulfill Jewish requirements in order to be welcome at the Lord’s Supper (Eucharist). As revealed in the New Testament, the young church clearly faced the challenge of theological aberrations: Colossians refutes Gnosticism; the Johannine Epistles warn against Docetism; 2 Peter and Revelation attack false prophets.
Diversity, however, did not create schism nor allow a break in fellowship. There were no denominations or divided communities, as were to develop later in the church’s history. Division among Christians is a denial of Christ, an unthinkable distortion of the reality of the church. Amid their diversity and conflicts the early Christians remained of “one accord,” visibly sharing the one Eucharist, accepting the ministries of the whole church, reaching out beyond their local situation in faith and witness with a sense of the universal community that held all Christians together. As Paul taught the Ephesians, God’s ultimate will and plan is “to unite all things in him [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth” (chapter 1, verse 10).