Church Unity and Legitimate Variance, Part IV: Love, the Language of Truth, and the Will to Include

In the earlier, lesser-known days of this weblog, I wrote an essay on the love and humility with which St. Maximos the Confessor approached theological discourse, and the example which he sets for us today. I thought it would be worth revisiting that post for the sake of furthering the present discussion. The link follows the end of this post.

One more thing before I send you in that direction, though. Insofar as the unity to which Christians are called is a unity bound by love, our will to unity must also be a will to include rather than exclude. What I mean is that we Christians must attempt to live, speak and think in ways that enfold as many people as possible into the fellowship of the Church. This is true first of all with respect to Christians who find themselves disagreeing with one another on points of doctrine. They ought to struggle to count each other as being within the Church rather than outside her.

As I said in the first post of this series, there is today a theological maximalism in the Church that is driven by the need to exclude—to separate true believers from errant heretics. Don’t get me wrong: there are of course times when Christians have to draw boundaries between truth and falsehood, between orthodoxy and heresy. But the will to exclude cannot be our first instinct or response. In fact, even when we are forced to draw the lines, we must do so only with deep regret and sadness. God’s will for the Church, after all, is that she gather into her fold men and women “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues” (Revelation 7.9) so that Christ might be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15.28; Ephesians 1.23). By her constitution, she tends toward inclusion. As followers of Jesus, we ought to always lean toward reaching out, toward reconciliation, toward embrace. In this way, we will be more like our Master who once defied established norms by talking to a Samaritan woman and eating with people on the margins of religious correctness.

But on to an old post. Whether it’s your first read or second, I hope you’ll find it helpful.

• Searching for Truth with the Eyes of Love: Some Lessons from St. Maximos the Confessor