Articles - From the Vicar

September 1999

Those who lament the separated state of Christian denominations might take some comfort in the fact that division amongst Christians has been endemic since at least the time of the Council of Jerusalem in AD48. This Council, described in the Acts of the Apostles, brought to a head the argument between the Jerusalem church on the one hand and St. Paul and his followers on the other. The Jerusalem church was for a time presided over by James, the brother of Jesus. He led a church of Jewish Christians who thought that converts to Christianity should observe Jewish religious law. St. Paul by contrast, although himself a Jew, saw certain elements of the Jewish law as a hindrance to his preaching of the Gospel message to Gentile (non-Jewish) communities. Acts chapter 15 (perhaps an over-charitable account of the matter) describes the amicable outcome of the Council: in modern ecumenical terms Gentile and Jewish Christians agreed to disagree. To all intents and purposes, however, the churches went their separate ways until, sadly, Jewish Christianity in the ancient world died out.

The subsequent history of Gentile Christianity is full of factional argument and bitter disagreement. For example the attempt of delegates at the Council of Chalcedon in AD451 to arrive at a commonly accepted definition of Jesus' nature (the delegates decided he had both a fully human and a fully divine nature) was met with violent disagreement by two groups in particular who then withdrew to Syria, parts of Egypt and Persia. Their modern day successors are the Coptic Christians in Egypt and the Nestorian Christians in Iran. Later on, the disagreements between the Greek speaking Christians of the East and the Latin speaking Christians of the West resulted in a disastrous split in AD1054 known as the Great Schism. Later still, the Reformation in the 16th century heralded a split between what is now called the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches, of which the Church of England is one.

With the history of Christian division going back 1,950 years, perhaps we shouldn't worry too much that ecumenism has not yet brought about the unity for which we long. We should instead thank God for the increased trust and co-operation between Christians of different traditions that the modern ecumenical movement has brought about. Such trust and co-operation are signs of the Holy Spirit's activity in which all Christians should rejoice.

26 August, 1999