Should the Church Seek Unity above All Else?

Gary: Now, Religion in the News. This week’s item is excerpted from an interview with Chuck Colson as it appeared in the September 2000 issue of Jubilee Magazine.

Jubilee: What right now concerns you or frustrates you the most about the church?

Colson: The lack of unity in the church among all true believers, which is why I’ve devoted a lot of my efforts, made some people very unhappy, and created a lot of controversy working on Evangelicals and Catholics Together. I believe that unity is the condition that God created, that Jesus prayed would be maintained, and is the reality of the Christian experience.

Colson continues:  All true Christians are one in Christ. That has to be. That isn’t just a theological proposition. That is a statement of ultimate reality, because God has created us all, and those He has regenerated and called to Himself all belong to the same one God. This unity is a condition that God does not want. It defies what God has done. Therefore, it is an affirmative duty on the part of every Christian to work for unity among true believers—never compromising truth, of course, but always to work for unity. To work against unity, which to my great distress I find some brothers doing, is a sin—S-I-N—because it is contrary to the Word of God, and it defies Jesus’s High Priestly prayer the night before He was crucified.

“So that’s my greatest disappointment in the church today. The prayer that I pray every day first about the church is ‘May we be one with one another as you, Jesus, are one with the Father, so the world will know that You indeed were sent.’ I think we will never have any impact on our culture, we will never effectively evangelize the world, until we get ourselves together.

“C.S. Lewis was absolutely right about that, and I’m prepared to go to my grave with people throwing stones at me, but I'm going to fight that fight until the end.”

Tom: Dave, this is from Jubilee Magazine, which is the newsletter, magazine, of Prison Fellowship. So, this is Chuck Colson laying out his heart with regard to his concern about Christianity and what’s going on. Now, he says that…well, the last part: “People are throwing stones at him for his view.” Now, Prison Fellowship, they do great works. Their ministry in the prison, and I think most people would agree that they’ve helped a lot of people.

But this issue that he wants to go to his grave over—I mean, he’s an attorney, right? He ought to know the difference between one particular group that has the gospel, and another group that has a contrary gospel, shouldn’t he?

Dave: Tom, the words that he uses: “unity” and “all true Christians” and “truth,” and so forth, they really strike a chord. But we have to define them. Who is a Christian? You don’t just make it up, and just because you use the name “Christian,” or you call yourself a Christian church or it’s the “oldest church,” or the “largest church,” we become Christians through believing in Jesus Christ through the gospel. And if we have a false gospel, which Paul warned against, we’re not Christians. What is the church? What is the unity? Well, the unity that Jesus prayed for, which I believe His prayer was answered—all true Christians are united in the truth! They’re united in the faith! And we are to “earnestly contend for the faith, once for all delivered to the saints.”

Now, the fact is, for example, in his book The Body—that’s some years ago—which Chuck Colson wrote, which was a call for unity and a call for evangelicals and Catholics to join together. In that book, he said, for example, that they’re not involved in indulgences any more. Well, the pope just opened four “holy doors” in Rome—special indulgences for the year 2000. You give up smoking for a day, you get forgiveness of sins! They still wear scapulars. The church is involved in indulgences, and there is a currently in force anathema against…

Tom: Right. Vatican II.”

Dave: …from Vatican II against anyone who denies indulgences. Now, an indulgence is works! It’s wearing some medal or scapular, it’s doing works in order to reduce the time of your suffering in purgatory. Purgatory is not a biblical doctrine! Christ either paid the full penalty for our sins or He didn’t. But the Catholic Church anathematizes us.

Now, if Chuck Colson wants unity, he ought to begin with the more than 100 anathemas damning to hell anyone who disagrees with Roman Catholic dogmas! The pope just stated it again very clearly: “Outside of the Church of Rome, there is no salvation.”

Now, how are you going to have unity with those who disagree? So, we can talk about unity, but when there is denial…  For example, let me give you one anathema—we’ve probably quoted it before: “Whoever says that the sacraments of the Catholic Church are not essential to salvation but that without them, through faith in Christ alone, a man can be saved, let him be anathema!” 

“Anathema” means excommunicated from the Church, which means you are damned to hell because there’s no salvation outside of it! Now, they’re clearly saying that the sacraments of the Catholic Church are essential. Well, I’m not involved in the sacraments. Evangelicals do not participate in the sacraments of the Catholic Church. Now, how are you going to join together in unity those who’ve been anathematized? Chuck Colson needs to start right there. He needs to acknowledge the very fact of what the Catholic Church teaches! He needs to acknowledge there is disunity to say that if you’re not part of the sacraments, if you don’t participate in the sacraments of the Catholic Church, “anathema to you,” I would think that is the cause of disunity. Now, let’s work on that, Chuck!

And I sent him the seventeen pages from Vatican II involving all the rules and regulations for this—for indulgences. He’s never changed his book, he hasn’t changed his opinion. I don’t understand! He’s so concerned about it. It’s quite clear that there is a disunity on the very truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Tom: Yeah! And in his article here, the implication is that…just what you’re saying, Dave; just what we’ve been saying, he would say that that’s sin. That we’re working against this unity. What we’re doing, I would think, is the antithesis of that. We want people to come together in truth…

Dave: Not come together under the Catholic Church or some protestant church, but come together in Christ in His truth; in the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s the only place where there is true unity.