Fellowship and Communion

Throughout this series of essays on church unity I’ve argued that the Lord’s Supper is not about church unity, but rather our unity with Christ. I believe we need to rethink our starting point, and we can begin that process with the consideration of two words: fellowship and communion. In the Protestant world, these two …

An Uncomfortable Conversation About Offenses

The central issue, which this essay series about church unity has hovered around, has to do with two perceptions of reality. For the east, truth is understood to be primarily personal while in the west, and particularly in Protestantism, the rational and empirical elements of truth are emphasized more. A consequence of this difference is …

The Question of Authority

Matt Whitman’s proposal for church unity (see the previous four essays) focused on sharing the Lord’s Supper. He has been quite dismissive of authority structures, saying they are a primary obstacle to unity and going so far as to call for Christians to go behind their church authority’s back in order to share communion. In …

Bread, Believers, and the Body of Christ

In last week’s essay I briefly considered the foundational text for our understanding of our unity in Christ: “The glory that you have given me I have given them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the …