Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Archives

Christian Unity

Evanston and Church Disunity

by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

The World Council of Churches is a visible expression of the dilemma which faces Christian denominations severed from the unity of Rome. “We cannot unite,” they say to one another, “because there are deep and serious divergences between us in matters of faith, but neither can we continue to live in complete separation, because we recognize one common Lord and we desire to seek together the one Holy Church which is the Body of Christ.” [1] For two weeks in Evanston this past summer 1,200 representatives of 130 Orthodox and Protestant churches from 48 countries debated how they might escape the horns of the dilemma, and left a record of their conclusions, which can be instructive to those who know themselves to be in possession of the fullness of God’s truth.

For the sake of convenience we shall limit our study to a single document, the most important issued by the Evanston conference, which was drafted by the Committee on Faith and Order, voted on by the delegates and “commended to the Churches for appropriate action.” Condensed into four thousand words, it is the only strictly theological statement emanating from the 1954 World Council, and deals specifically with the core problem of the ecumenical movement under the title, “Our Oneness in Christ and Our Disunity as Churches.” In order to do it full justice; we shall first summarize, with quotations and without comment, the main ideas of the Evanston declaration, and then give a critical evaluation of its doctrine on church unity from the Catholic standpoint.

The Evanston Manifesto on Church Unity

“Our Oneness in Christ”

The declaration begins with the more pleasant task of examining the nature and extent of the “oneness in Christ” which the members of the World Council of Churches presumably enjoy. “This oneness,” they protest, “is no mere unity of sentiment. We become aware of it because it is given to us by God as the Holy Spirit reveals to us what Christ has done for us.” [2] Confronted with the spectacle of a house divided against itself, the theologians of the Council believed they could still discern a basic unity in their “sinful dividedness.”

1. Unity Derived from the Person of Christ

   Hoping to discover some semblance of unity among the 160 churches in the World Council, the Evanston Assembly prejudged its case by stating that “the New Testament conceives of the unity of the church, not as sociological, but as having its essential reality in Christ himself and in his indissoluble unity with his people.” [3] Instead of defining unity in terms both of its divine Founder and of its human members, who profess and practice a common faith, unity is said to be something belonging only to Christ Himself, who, obviously, is the one Mediator between God and man. In answer, therefore, to the question: does the New Testament teach that the Church of Christ is one? The answer is affirmative, but in a qualified sense. It is one because Christ is one, because He is the one source of our redemption and reconciliation with the Father, because through Him alone do we receive the Holy Spirit and hope for the glory of heaven. To use a comparison, we may speak of the human race as possessing unity because all men are created by one God, or of a human family as united because all the children are born of one father and mother who gave them life, nourishment and education.

2. Unity of the Church in its Earthly Pilgrimage

   But is this all? Is the only unity which Christ gave to His Church the integrity which comes from His being the one Lord and Savior of mankind? Essentially and substantially, we are told, this is sufficient. However there is a second kind of unity which Christ also desired His Church to have, which consists in the union of its members with one another, and which may be called “the oneness of the church in its earthly pilgrimage.” Properly speaking, this is only a tendency towards unity that “will not be totally achieved until God sums up all things in Christ,” that is, after the last day. [4]

   An analogy is offered to help illustrate these two types of unity, the one given and existing, the other to become manifest and still in the making:

   In each Christian there is both the “new man” who has been created and yet must be put on daily, and also the “old man” who has been crucified with Christ and yet must be daily mortified. So the church is already one in Christ, by virtue of his identification of himself with it, and must become one in Christ, so as to manifest its true unity in the mortification of its divisions. [5]

   The Lord has given to His Church abundant means for the gradual, though never total, manifestation of unity among the members of His Mystical Body:

   Christ of his love and grace has given his church such gifts as it needs for its growth from unity to unity…Christ has given his Spirit, which is the bond of peace and love, and the guide to all truth…. He has given apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers that the unity of the body may be continually built up…. He has given the church the gift and power of prayer, by which the church can plead both for its own unity and for the reconciliation of men to God and to one another. [6]

3. The Unity of the Church Partially Realized

   Before entering into a diagnosis of the discord in non-Roman Christianity, it is comforting to see there is at least some claim to unity among the churches in the World Council. “It would be ungrateful to a merciful God if we did not speak now of those gifts which assure us that the undivided Christ is present among us…in spite of our divisions.” [7] The list of these gifts, it seems, is impressive. As regards faith, “We all wait upon one Father, through the one Holy Spirit, praying that we may be ready to hear and obey when he takes of the things of Christ and shows them to us.” [8] As regards the Scriptures, all the churches read them, “and proclaim the gospel from them in the faith that the Word speaking through them draws us to himself and into the apostolic faith.” [9] Relative to the sacraments, “we all receive his gift of baptism whereby, in faith, we are engrafted in him even while we have not yet allowed it fully to unite us with each other.” Moreover, “we all hear his command to ‘do this’ and his word ‘This is my body…this is my blood’ in the sacrament of the Eucharist, even while our celebration of the Lord’s Supper is not yet at one table.” [10] In like manner, “we all receive a ministry of the Word and sacraments, even while our ministries are not yet recognized by all and not understood in the same sense.” [11]

   Here a careful distinction should be made between the terms “commons” and “uniform” as applied to the churches. The gifts of Sacred Scripture, Baptism, the Eucharist and the ministry are not indeed being used by the members of the World Council in a uniform manner, but, at least, “the fact of our common, though diverse, use of these gifts is a powerful evidence of our unity in Christ.” [12] It is a “present reality” which affords some consolation as justice “compels us now to examine seriously how it is that our disunity as churches contradicts our unity in Christ.” [13]

“Our Disunity as Churches”

1. A Historical Review of the Disunity in Christendom

   Disunity among the churches is not to be condemned out of hand. Understood as diversity, it is “not sinful because it reflects both the diversities of the Spirit in the one body and diversities of creation by one Creator.” But diversity becomes sinful when it “disrupts the manifest unity of the body.” The reason is because “it obscures from men the sufficiency of Christ’s atonement, inasmuch as the gospel of reconciliation is denied in the very lives of those who proclaim it.” [14]

   But the real question still remains: how are the great divisions in Christian history to be estimated? Were they sinful or not? The answer must be ambiguous. Objectively the alienation of one Christian body from another is always sinful, but subjectively all the great divisions in Christianity have been sincerely instituted.

   Thus during the first millennium, “some believed that others were departing from the God-given structure and faith of the church by unwarrantable claims and unfounded doctrines. So came the schism between East and West” completed by the year 1054 and, except for temporary and partial re-unions with Rome, still extant in the Orthodox churches which number upwards of 150 million communicants. [15]

   Others again “believed that God had called them to such reformation of the faith and order of the church as would restore it to its primitive purity. They found their work could not be completed within the framework of Roman Catholicism; thus came the separate churches of the Reformation.” [16] These represent the parent churches of Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, which have since divided into scores of denominations.

   “Some believed that the faith must indeed be reformed but within the framework of ancient and historic episcopacy. So the Anglican and Old Catholic communities became separated both from Rome and from many of the Reformed churches.” [17] Generically they may be called “episcopalian,” as distinct from the Roman Church which is Papal, and the Orthodox which claims to be concillar.

   Finally “some believed that the established churches of their day would not give free course to the Word of salvation. So the older free churches and the Methodist connection felt themselves forced to adopt independent church orders.” [18] In this group belong the majority of Protestant churches affiliated with the World Council, which are founded on the principle of “self determination” in matters of doctrine and discipline. [19]

2. Proposed Remedies for Church Disunity

   Disunity among the churches is only another proof of man’s utter depravity. “We shall never, in this life, escape from our sinfulness.” [20] Then on an opposite, hopeful note, “we can repent of sin when it is revealed to us,” as in the present situation. [21] However, before proposing a number of remedies as a means of repentance, it is recommended that the churches in the World Council make an ecumenical examination of conscience, asking themselves a series of searching questions:

   We ask each other whether we do not sin when we deny the sole lordship of Christ over the church by claiming the vineyard for our own, by possessing “our church” for ourselves, by regarding our theology, order, history, nationality, etc., as our own “valued treasures,” thus involving ourselves more and more in the separation of sin. The point at which we are unable to renounce the things which divide us, because we believe that obedience to God himself compels us to stand fast - this is the point at which we come together to ask for mercy and light. [22]

   The remedy for disunity, therefore, is blind self-surrender, “even unto death.” Churches which have cherished doctrines and traditions for centuries “have to be prepared to offer up some of their accustomed, inherited forms of life in uniting with other churches, without complete certainty as to all that will emerge from the step of faith.” [23] Several practical means are suggested to give tangible expression to this self-surrender which lies at the spiritual basis of the ecumenical movement.

   First and of paramount importance for healing the disunity in Christendom is humble repentance. “Not the repentance we may expect of others, but that which we undertake ourselves - cost what it may - even when others are not willing to follow.” This means a sincere “acknowledgment before God that we have sinned so as to be caught in the net of inexplicable evil and rendered unable to heal our divisions by ourselves.” [24]

   After repentance should come thankfulness to God “for the actual oneness he has given us in the World Council of Churches.” Concretely this means that the present members of the Council resolve “to stay together (and) beyond that, as the Holy Spirit may guide us, we intend to unite.” [25]

   The guidance of the Holy Spirit must come through “our Lord speaking to us through Holy Scripture.” This is a hard thing to do because “we still struggle to comprehend the meaning and authority of Holy Scripture.” Hence an earnest study of the Word of God is recommended, but, above all, a firm resolution “to be obedient to what we are told” by the inspired text. Then “we are on our way toward realizing the oneness of the church in Christ in the actual state of our dividedness on earth.” [26]

   Special and studious attention should be paid to the importance of Baptism and the Eucharist as instruments of unity. “For some, but not for all, it follows that the churches can only be conformed to the dying and rising again in Christ, which both sacraments set forth, if they renounce their Eucharistic separateness.” [27]

   And lastly, “the measure of our concern for unity is the degree to which we pray for it. We cannot expect God to give us unity unless we prepare ourselves to receive his gift by costly and purifying prayer.” Especially valuable is communal prayer, for “to pray together is to be drawn together.” Therefore “we urge, wherever possible, the observance of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, January 18-25 (or some other period suited to local conditions) as a public testimony to prayer as the road to unity.” [28]

Evaluation of the Evanston Report on Church Unity

Compromise Statement of Conflicting Opinions

In order properly to evaluate the foregoing document, we must first recognize it as a compromise document between disparate elements in the World Council. Before the Evanston Assembly, the Vice-Chairman of the Commission which framed the declaration published a small brochure in which he delineated the conflicting views on church unity - and disunity - which are active within the Council.

At one extreme are those who believe there is strength in disunity, for whom the World Council should be only a federated co-operative with no ambition to any sort of organic unity among the member churches. They are “keenly sensitive to the gains in vitality” which come from church disunion. [29] At the other extreme are the Orthodox groups, “for whom the unity of the church already exists,” and, in fact, is to be found within the exclusive limits of their own communion. According to this view, “the Orthodox Church…is insistent that to her has been given by God the fulness, the plenitude of Catholic faith and life, so that other Christians can only serve the unity of the Church by recognizing the claims of Orthodoxy to be Christian truth and by accepting them.” [30]

Between these two extremes lie the majority of denominations within the Council. They are undecided either on the nature of the Church or on the kind of unity it is supposed to have. Some among them “maintain that the unity of the Catholic (not Roman) Church is an existing historic reality” within certain theoretical boundaries. Their problem is “in defining those boundaries” within which the Church should be united and beyond which diversity is allowed. [31] Others believe that the Church is a purely invisible entity, “a community known only to God.” [32] Its unity therefore is also known only to Him, and the task of the Council is to give better expression to this existent - so far mostly invisible - unity among the divided members. Still others hold that the Church is essentially visible, but without restricting limits and capable of embracing “all those who profess and call themselves Christians, however diverse their belief and practice.” [33]

Not Representative of the World Council of Churches

On the same day, August 29, when the report of Church Disunity was formally approved by the Plenary Session, the Orthodox Delegation made a public protest against the declaration, stating it was contrary to the mind of its own constituents.

We have studied the document with considerable interest. It falls into three parts: the first contains an able exposition of the New Testament doctrine of the Church…. The second and third parts of the document deal with the divided state of Christendom and suggest practical steps toward union. It is our conviction that it does not follow logically and consistently from the first part…. The whole approach to the problem of re-union is entirely unacceptable from the standpoint of the Orthodox Church. [34]

This introduction is followed by a set of indictments, carefully reasoned out and negativing every main issue of the Evanston statement. To begin with, “The whole of the Christian Faith should be regarded as one, indivisible unity. It is not enough to accept just certain, particular doctrines, as basic as they may be in themselves, e.g., that Christ is God and Savior.” Without passing judgment on “the separated communions,” nevertheless “it is our conviction that in these communions certain basic elements are lacking which constitute the reality of the fulness of the Church.” [35]

In opposition to the eschatological concept of Christian unity, the Orthodox declared that, “The ‘perfect unity’ of Christians must not be interpreted solely as a realization of the Second Coming of Christ. We must acknowledge that even at the present age the Holy Spirit dwelling in the Church continues to breathe in the world, guiding all Christians to unity. The unity of the Church must not be understood only eschatologically, but as a present reality which is to receive its consummation in the Last Day.” [36]

Where the Evanston report speaks of repentance, the implication is that the Church as such has been guilty of sin. This is contrary to the teaching of Christ as expressed by St. Paul, who describes the Church as “not having spot or wrinkle or blemish.” [37] Consequently, “we cannot speak of the repentance of the Church which is intrinsically holy and unerring.” [38] And then in conclusion:

We are bound to declare our profound conviction that the Holy Orthodox Church alone has preserved in full and intact “the faith once delivered unto the saints.” It is not because of our human merit, but because it pleases God to preserve his treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God. [39]

Similar evidence that the Evanston report is not representative of the World Council are the radical changes that were made in the document from the time it was first presented to the Commission to the point where it was finally approved by the Assembly. Entire sections of the original draft were deleted and others so completely altered as to be unrecognizable. It was originally stated that there is only one Church of Christ and that the expression “churches” should not even be used in ecumenical discussions; that according to the gospel it is impossible for the Church to be divided; that according to the New Testament the unity of the Church cannot be conceived only in future terms, as an eventual or super-terrestrial ideal. These and similar opinions were omitted or modified to the point of contradiction in the final draft.

Unreconciled Statement of Contrary Doctrines

A careful reading of the Faith and Order report discloses what the Orthodox delegates called a non sequitur of one part from another, or what more plainly is a bare statement of two conflicting opinions on church unity, with no effort made to resolve them. There is first the theoretical position which represents the traditional Lutheran concept of man, the fall and the Church of Christ. According to this opinion, the disunity among the churches is certainly sinful, but unavoidable, in view of man’s depraved nature. Thus, “we may think of the church as we are able to think of the individual believer, who may be said at one and the same time to be both a justified man and a sinner (simul justus et peccator).” [40] In other words, the Lutheran theory of man’s justification is also the speculative basis for the Church’s simultaneous unity and disunity. In the same way that individual believers are and ever remain sinners, although justified by God, in Christ who alone is just; so the churches are divided among themselves, while they are still united in their Founder, Jesus Christ, who alone is one.

Disunity, therefore, is no less inevitable in the churches of Christ than is sin in the individual Christian. They cannot help being divided, no more than he can help committing sin. After all, the members of the Church are human beings, suffering from the common effect of Adam’s fall which completely vitiated the nature of man. If any unity is to be found in the Church, it can only be something extrinsic, a kind of appropriation, where the unity of Jesus Christ is imputed to the society which He founded. Really and formally, the Church is not united and cannot be this side of heaven, by reason of her fallen members, in whom the virtue of charity, which makes for ecclesiastical unity, has been utterly destroyed. This is analogous to the condition of a man who, in Luther’s phrase, has been justified by the blood of Christ “hiding his sins,” without actually deleting them. Before and after justification he remains “rottenness and full of dead men’s bones,” but the justice of Christ is mysteriously imputed to him. Looking upon the merits of His Son, God, as it were, overlooks the malice of the sinner and calls him, without truly considering him, a friend.

Assuredly division among the churches is sinful because “it obscures from men the sufficiency of Christ’s atonement,” since it is hard to see Christ’s redemptive grace where there is discord and conflict of opinion. Still it is part of human nature even at its best, as may be seen from the major divisions in Christian history: the Eastern Schism, the English and Continental Reformation and the Free Church Movement, all of which were caused and perpetuated “by a sincere concern for the gospel.” What religious leaders like Luther, Calvin and Cranmer did were “acts of conscientious obedience to the will of God,” [41] unquestionably sincere but nevertheless objectively sinful, with - the inescapable malice of every human action since the fall of man. For “we shall never, in this life, escape from our sinfulness,” [42] no more than we can shed the fallen nature in which we are born.

It goes without saying that in this theory the unity of the Church, like the Church itself, is wholly invisible; whereas disunity in the Church is palpably visible, yet predetermined, since nothing so sinful as the Church’s human members can hope to produce anything united. But then, what practical conclusions should be drawn? To be consistent, the Evanston delegates through the Faith and Order Commission should have resigned themselves to the status quo and not have presumed to change the unchangeable. Instead, as the Orthodox spokesman pointed out, they illogically went on to offer a series of remedies to heal “our disunity as churches,” thus negativing the doctrinal principles explained before.

They recommended “thinking of our divisions with repentance,” sincerely and not hypocritically, which means with the “desire for amendment of life.” Repentance should be accompanied by a study of the Scriptures and obedience to the voice of the Spirit bidding the churches drop their differences in a charitable amity. Three areas in particular should be examined as the “sore spots” of discord, namely, Baptism, the Eucharist and ministry. Above all, the churches must pray, asking the God of light to dispel the darkness which keeps the denominations apart and to bring them together in the union which He desires.

But how reconcile the need for penance and prayer in the interests of unity if the latter cannot be achieved except in eternity? If “from the beginning discord has marred the manifest unity of Christ’s people;” [43] if “the New Testament conceives of the unity of the church, not as sociological,” [44] as seen in the concord of its members in one society; and if the most we can hope for in this life is that God “is able to make all things to work together for good - even our divisions,” [45] what possible function can be served by penitential prayer over Christian disunity except as a “confession of solidarity with our brethren in sin?” [46]

We do not have to look far to discover the reason for this confusion of thought in evaluating the “scandal of division” among the churches in the World Council. When Oliver Tomkins, Vice-Chairman of the Faith and Order Commission, introduced his department to the assembled delegates, he identified the root of the problem with almost brutal clarity. The first function of the Faith and Order Commission, he told the Assembly, is “To proclaim the essential oneness of the Church of Christ and to keep prominently before the World Council and the churches the obligation to manifest that unity and its urgency for the work of evangelism.” He added:

This goes right to the heart of our purpose, revealing both our profoundest agreement and our most serious difficulty. We are united in the conviction, which we proclaim, that in some profound sense the Church is one. We are divided and stultified over defining that unity. That, of course, is a glimpse of the obvious. If we were agreed on the nature of the Church’s one-ness, our struggle between each other would be over. [47]

When the Faith and Order department, therefore, issued its blueprint for church unity, the document could not be expected to show more harmony than was present among its sponsors who, on their own admission, “find it impossible to agree in defining something which we are determined to unite in proclaiming.” [48]

Prospects for the Future

The ecumenical value of the Evanston declaration will depend in large measure on what sentiments in it become dominant in the member churches. If the rigid Reformation concept prevails, according to which the Church’s unity is invisible and her disunity inevitable, then the ecumenical movement is destined to failure. The churches in the World Council may continue to co-operate in solving their mutual social and economic problems, with obvious benefits to everyone concerned; but real unitive progress is impossible where radical differences in faith and worship are conceded, on principle, to be irremediable. Typical of this attitude was the editorial in a recent issue of the Christian Century. “Always at Evanston,” it complained, “there were grim disunities which the World Council may at limited times and to limited degrees transcend, but which it has hardly even begun to dissolve.” In fact, “Evanston will not be remembered for having carried forward the cause of Christian unity. It might possibly (though we hope not) be remembered for having shown how far off and blocked off the goal of unity is.” [49]  In line with this sense of futility, it is seriously questioned whether the Council might not more profitably confine its efforts to a study of social problems, “from the saddle, so to speak,” and scuttle all discussion of theological divergence. Then by way of prophecy, “if four more assemblies handle theological or dogmatic themes as badly as this one did…say the nature of biblical authority in 1960, the nature of the church in 1966, the nature of salvation in 1972 and the creedal basis of the council’s own being in 1978 - and if the world itself hasn’t blown up by that time, the council almost certainly will.” [50]

A more hopeful and balanced judgment is given by those who take their stand with the actionists of the Faith and Order manifesto, as against the theorists. Without examining too closely the speculative reasons of why they are divided, or in self-defense trying to rationalize their disunity, the optimists in the World Council prefer to work and pray “as the Holy Spirit may guide us.” The defeatist attitude was excoriated by the Council’s Secretary General, who realizes that on this point rests the whole success or failure of the ecumenical movement. There are many, he said, who think that the present relationship of the churches in the World Council is the limit of all that can be hoped for. “The danger of this is that…the World Council can thus become a narcotic rather than a stimulant. We must react against this temptation of accepting the present established disorder of our ecclesiastical world simply because it has been made to look less shocking as it has been provided with an ecumenical varnish.” [51]  The sanguine element in the Council of Churches looks to find “the way that leads beyond mere co-operation…to a true unity which will make it clear to the whole world that as there can only be one Body of Christ, so there is only one Body which is the Church of His People.” [52]

Without prejudice to their own position as members of the only true Church of Christ, Catholics may sympathize with the latter sentiments. In union with the Holy See, they can recognize here “the inspiration of grace from the Holy Spirit,” leading all men to the unity of one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. [53]

JOHN A. HARDON, S.J.

West Baden College
West Baden Springs, Ind.

American Ecclesiastical Review
Vol. 132, April 1955, pp. 217-231

Copyright © 1998 by Inter Mirifica