Church Unity And Our Confession of Faith
Church unity is a confession. It probably isn't helpful to supply the phrase "there is" at the beginning of 4:4. It seems to me it has more impact and is more in keeping with the flow of things to have, "keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: One body, one Spirit.one God and Father" That way it strikes us as a glorious banner unfolded and waving in the wind. Like a cry as people running into battle against all the forces of chaos and fragmentation. The sort of thing Shakespeare has the English ring out as they fly into battle: "For God, for England and for Harry." Keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: One body...one Father!The confession at this point functions (at minimum) to deliver our virtues from the status of mere morality. (In saying "mere morality" I've no wish to sneer at the lovely lives of those who haven't yet given their lives to Christ. Their moral goodness is as real as that of Christians. We're not morally superior but we have, as the elect of God, a peculiar agenda that others have not.) Our confession functions to deliver our virtues from the status of mere morality and shows them to be "gospeling"; shows them to be the way the crucified God himself has lived in Jesus of Nazareth. These are very human virtues, of course, because God lived them out here as one of us (see Matthew 12:28-30) but they reveal the character of the pre-incarnate Lord. The character, which had such virtues, didn't begin at the incarnation.
The confession functions to give point and complexity to the virtues and the virtues function to protect and nurture the meaning and implications of the confession. There is truth we all say "Amen" to. There are ordinances we will not meddle with but will humbly obey rather than debate. There's a liturgy we won't allow to fossilize or petrify on the one hand or to be trivialized on the other. We won't allow it to be made a political football to be kicked from one end of a field to another. There's a Spirit in whom we all live and on whom we all depend, there's a hope we all cherish, a Lord we all bow to and a Father we confess is above all. All that we are given in a faith that we receive in a spirit of faith so that our life as a holy nation expresses our faith, our gospel..
We need to keep this in mind. Suppose Israel is behaving appropriately. That appropriate behaviour is not simply a generalized ethical response to some God or other giving them a code of behaviour. Their national life is an expression of their faith, of their experience and understanding of Yahweh. Their moral life is a proclamation of "gospel". Ask them why they behave this way or that, ask them why their liturgy is this way or that and they would have told you, "Because Yahweh is our God and he........." Our Confession is lived out as well as rehearsed and our life embodies our Confession.
There's knowledge without which unity isn't possible but if it's to save us then it can't exist outside and independent of us. There are truths to which we must give our hearts and minds when we are confronted with them. Our relation to that knowledge is not the relation of a valedictorian to his grade averages nor do we study so we can store up answers for the big final exam in the sky. But a relationship with God without receiving some things as true isn't possible. There must be knowledge (notitia) and an assent (assensus) to that knowledge.
Paul knew very well that knowledge puffs up but he never despised truth. For sinners knowledge and correctness of opinion is a very heady wine and at various points in our lives we're enamoured by our intellect and store of information. But if we're blessed, a day comes when we recognize that the Tree of Knowledge is not the Tree of Life. Can you imagine a dying hour more awful, asked F.W. Robertson of Brighton, than that of one who has aspired to know rather than to love, and finds him/herself at last surrounded by a mountain of correct information, having loved nobody and adored nothing?
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