Pax.

Bryan

The Reformation happened only yesterday – a local feud between Christian brothers which has spread scandal and controversy throughout the entire world. We in the Eastern Church still grieve over doctrinal disagreements with the Non-Chalcedonians in 451 AD, which separate me today – if only slightly – from my Coptic and Ethiopian Orthodox brothers and sisters. And then came the horrific disaster of the Great Schism with the Roman Church in 1054, since which time we continue to grow farther apart, to our immense pain and distress. I appreciate Dr. Hauerwas’ candor and obvious good intentions. May God bless him as he works to bring unity, and clarity of thought in considering what is indeed a great disaster.

St. Paul tells us in 1st Corinthians 25 and 26: “…that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.”

Forgive me, brothers and sisters, as I am a great sinner and do not presume to teach. But it seems to me that until all Christians rejoice for each other, grieve for each other, sincerely try to understand and respect each other – in short, until we truly, intentionally love and seek to serve each other, as precious living images of our Lord and Savior, and as beloved common children of God – until we achieve this, we are poor Christians indeed, and false witnesses of our Lord to the world that knows Him not.

Please pray for us all that we may be granted the strength for repentance, fasting, unceasing prayer and sincere humility of spirit. Perhaps we could all use less reading and arguing ABOUT Christianity and doctrinal differences, and more frequent prayer? And most of all, let us pray that we all may be granted the grace of a genuine, deep personal relationship with our heavenly Father the Creator of the universe. When we are truly in Christ, we can not help but be One Body, as we are called to be.

I applaud Dr. Hauerwas for this work.

While Hauerwas does generalize several points, your main criticism misses the point. It’s not the fact of diverse beliefs (big or small) that distinguishes between a unified Church and fragmented gatherings of professed Christians. It’s the principle of unity which consists of (as Hauerwas points out) “the unity of the Spirit occasioned through sacrament.” Now, it happens that in order to partake of the sacraments of the Church, the life of the Church, obedience and receptivity to apostolic teaching is required, and that apostolic teaching is authoritatively seated in the Church – in the Pope and the bishops through apostolic succession, and in the faithful through the light of the Spirit. But the principle of Reformation, or at least the principle of fragmentation, that Hauerwas denounces here is the understanding of Christian unity which says that intellectual assent to certain formulas (which none of the fragmented Christians can agree on, anyway) is the life of the Church. Instead, though a Reformed Christian, Hauerwas can see that the life of the Church is in fact the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, which is imparted to his Church through his own Body, his own words, his own sacraments. And he recognizes that the Catholic Church as retained a *principle of unity* without which there *can* be no true diversity, only fragmentation and isolation. Catholics listen to the words of the Pope and the Tradition, and gather at the one table, and that is why there can be real diversity within the one Church. It’s not as if it’s impossible for a Catholic to break away from this unity, and so you rightly point out that the Church censures those they understand to have actually thrown off the unifying principle of faith and obedience. But his point is that Protestantism actually collapses this distinction, so that there is *no discernible difference* between a faithful or a faithless member of the Body. In fact – there is no discernible Body.