The Secret of Unity for the Early Church
1800 years ago, a prominent bishop wrote:
The church, though dispersed through our whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith . . . as if occupying but one house, [she] carefully preserves it. She believes these things just as if she had but one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, teaches them, and hands them down with perfect harmony, as if she had but one mouth. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies I:10:1-2)
Obviously, we no longer have that unity today, yet Irenaeus was able to boast of that kind of unity a full 150 years after Jesus died. What was their secret?
In my opinion, the secret is threefold, none of which are sufficient by themselves. Together, though, these three things are the key to the unity, power, and life that characterized the Church immediately after the time of the apostles, when neither persecution nor manifold heresies could move them from their utter commitment, together, to Jesus Christ.
Their Doctrine Was Basic
While churches today battle over the eternal security, baptism in water, and the exact nature of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the early churches had not yet lost focus. Their basic, unifying doctrines were simple. Even more importantly, the doctrines that united the early churches are preserved for us today in the form of a creed that all Christians have heard of. It is called the Apostles' Creed, and it is recited in many churches every Sunday. It goes, with some minor variations, like this:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.
[We believe] in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of the Father—that is, of the substance of the Father—God from God, light from light, true God from true God; begotten, not made, one in substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, both which are in heaven and on earth; who for the sake of us men and on account of our salvation descended, became incarnate, and was made man; [he] suffered, arose again the third day, ascended into the heavens, and will come again to judge the living and the dead.
[We believe] in the Holy Spirit also.
The version of the creed I just gave you is the original developed at the Council of Nicea, a council of 300 bishops gathered from all over the Roman empire to preserve the unity that was being stretched and challenged in A.D. 325, almost 150 years after Irenaeus. Because that council was only able to preserve the basic doctrine of their predecessors and not the other two things we will be talking about, their attempt to preserve unity failed, and it failed miserably. We have suffered for it ever since.
A contemporary of Irenaeus, Tertullian of Carthage, a lawyer, tells us that this creed, which the churches of his day called “the Rule of Faith,” was taught to believers at baptism and that it was an expanded version of Jesus' own baptismal formula given in Matthew 28:19. As you can see, it was not expanded much. Each church had its own rule of faith. In fact, the Council of Nicea based their creed upon the rule of faith of the church in Caesarea, adding only a couple words to it.
I believe it matters that God has preserved that creed to our day. Though not all churches had the exact same creed, and Irenaeus gives one slightly longer than that of the Council of Nicea, both Irenaeus and Tertullian tell us that the churches of their day were exactly united in their faith, in complete fellowship with one another. The rule of faith, however, was not the only reason for this.
Their Focus Was on Living for Christ
If Christians are believers in Jesus Christ, what could be more important than actually following his teachings?
Justin Martyr wrote in A.D. 150, about 35 years before Irenaeus. In a letter defending the faith of the Christians to the Roman emperor he wrote:
We consider it right . . . to cite a few precepts given by Christ himself. And be it yours, as powerful rulers, to inquire whether we have been taught and do teach these things truly. Brief and concise utterances fell from him, for he was no philosopher, but his word was the power of God. (First Apology 14)
Justin then goes on to quote Christ as teaching that Christians are not to lust, not to store up treasures on earth, and that we are to be kind and merciful. More than anything, the mark of being a Christian was not the list of things that Christians believed, but the way that they lived. Justin goes on to mention the way Christians lived.
[Christ] has exhorted us to lead all men by patience and gentleness from shame and the love of evil. This indeed is proved in the case of many who once were of your way of thinking but have changed their violent and tyrannical disposition, being overcome either by the constancy they have witnessed in their neighbors' lives, by the extraordinary forbearance they have observed in their fellow travelers when defrauded, or by the honesty of those with whom they have transacted business. (ibid. 16)
The Bible agrees with this focus on living by Christ's teaching. The apostle Paul writes, “The foundation of God stands sure, having this seal: The Lord knows those who are his and let everyone that names the name of Christ depart from inquity” (2 Tim. 2:19). This is the sure foundation of God. We have to let the Lord decide who belongs to him, but everyone who names Christ's name should depart from iniquity.
We can see this, too, in the Bible's instructions on those from whom we should withdraw fellowship:
I have written to you not to keep company, if anyone that is called a brother is a fornicator, covetous, an idolater, a mischief maker, a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such a one, no, don't even eat. (1 Cor. 5:11).
While there are Biblical injunctions to withdraw from false teachers, these false teachers always taught things that led to bad behavior. For example, in Titus 1:10-12, there were teachers causing those in Crete to be “liars, evil beasts, [and] lazy.” In Titus 3:10, Titus is told to withdraw from heretics, but the word “heretic” in the first century meant a person who caused division.
The purpose of the Bible is to teach us to walk with God—“to depart from inquity” as Paul put it in the letter to Timothy we quoted above. It is that same letter that tells us the purpose of the Scriptures:
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Tim. 3:16,17)
While doctrine is mentioned here, we can see from everything else we've covered that the doctrines of the apostolic churches were simple. The ultimate purpose of the Bible, after these basic doctrines, was “reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness” so that the man of God may be “thoroughly equipped for every good work.” If all that is not clear enough, Paul adds in the letter to Titus, “[Christ] gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a special people, zealous for good works” (2:14).
Unity Was Important to Them
How important was unity to these apostolic churches? In A.D. 95, just 40 years after the apostle Paul sent his two letters to the Corinthians, the church at Rome felt it necessary to send one, too. It was written by a man name Clement, an elder appointed to his position by the apostles themselves. He wrote:
Who then among you is noble-minded? Who compassionate? Who full of love? Let him declare, “If sedition and disagreement and schisms have arisen on my account, I will depart. I will go away to wherever you want, and I will do whatever the majority commands; only let the flock of Christ live on terms of peace with the elders set over it.” (First Clement 54)
Obviously, it was extremely important to these early churches. Ignatius of Antioch, another elder appointed by apostles, wrote in A.D. 110 on his way to martyrdom:
Become a choir so that, being harmonious in love and taking up the song of God in unison, you may sing with one voice to the Father through Jesus Christ, so that he may both hear you and perceive by your works that you are indeed the members of his Son. It is profitable, therefore, that you should live in an unblameable unity, so that you may in this way always enjoy fellowship with God. (Letter to the Ephesians 4)
The churches that followed later in the 2nd century took these exhortations seriously. They knew that Jesus had said that it was by Christian unity that the world would know the Father sent him (Jn. 17:20-23) and by their love for one another that the world would know they are Christians (Jn. 13:34-35). Thus, they devoted themselves to unity, and they made extreme efforts to preserve it. Rome's letter to Corinth in A.D. 95 was specifically an effort to prevent division in that city. Unity was important enough to those in the apostolic churches that one city would make the effort to prevent that unity from being broken in another. The trip from Rome to Corinth can be made in a few hours today, and a letter from Rome to Corinth would likely cost less than a dollar. Not so in the first century. Such a road was long and fraught with peril. Unity, however, was worth it to them.
In another situation the church at Rome was going to divide from all the churches in the Eastern empire over something so trivial as the day on which Easter was celebrated. This struck the church in Smyrna as so important that they not only sent a letter, but they sent their renowned and elderly bishop, Polycarp, on the long, arduous journey to Rome to resolve that conflict, which he did successfully.
The road to unity in our day is just as long and arduous, but in a different way. Denominationalism in well-entrenched in our society. We will never push past the obstacles to unity and find creative solutions if it is not as important to us as it was to the only set of churches in history that were able to maintain unity for two centuries, those churches formed by the apostles and their disciples. Let us learn their standards and mimic their efforts. It cannot be impossible, for the unity of those committed to following Jesus Christ is the will of God, and it is the one proof Jesus offered to the world that he was sent by the Father.
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