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 …
Continue reading An Uncomfortable Conversation About Offenses
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 …
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 …
A conversation about the Lord’s Supper and Christian unity should begin with John 13-17, which is John’s account of the Passover meal just before Jesus’ arrest, and the feast where he instituted the Lord’s Supper. Of particular interest is his prayer following the meal, where Jesus twice prays that those the Father gave to him …
This is an out-of-schedule essay that interrupts what I’ve been writing about. But I am an unabashed Matt Whitman fanboy, and his most recent video deserves a thoughtful response. He’s the host of the Ten Minute Bible Hour (TMBH) podcast and TMBH YouTube channel (two completely separate endeavors), and he cohosts, the No Dumb Questions …
Just Another Jim 