The Babylonian Unity of the Church
A must-read essay by Toby Sumpter | Theopolis Institute
The unity Jesus is leading us toward has far less to do with hammering out a single organizational structure and far more to do with many different Christian tribes and tongues bringing their respective glories to the King.
There are many legitimate reasons to lament the divided state of the church. Fleshly pride, theological hubris, sectarian rivalries are each in their own ways modern versions of the Galatian heresy, refusing table fellowship with brothers and sisters for whom Christ died. And denominations have frequently played the same role as the names of Paul and Apollos in Corinth, for which we join in Paul’s manifesto to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified.
Yet, as we pray for the unity of the Body of Christ, as we labor to be one as the Father, Son, and Spirit are one, there ought to be just as much concern over the dangers of certain forms of unity. It seems there’s a romantic demon lurking in all the sons of Adam, and I mean that in a rather wooden etymological sense: there’s an idolatrous love of Rome and her ways that seems often lurking in discussions of catholicity. And by that I do not merely mean the Roman Catholic Church, but rather something subtler, more ancient, more pervasive in human nature. We do well to remember that Rome was the last of the great beasts that Daniel saw coming up out of the sea, a certain way of power, a style of consolidation, a promise of unity going all the way back to Babel that Jesus came to shatter.
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