Dr. Henry E. Webb (1922–2018) spent more than 40 years on the faculty of Milligan College and Emmanuel School of Religion (Emmanuel Christian Seminary at Milligan). At Milligan, he served as chair of the Department of Biblical Studies. He was an active participant in Christian unity movements and discussions among the branches of the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ. He authored the book, In Search of Christian Unity: A History of the Restoration Movement, originally published in 1990. In 1957, when Dr. Webb wrote this, he was also serving as minister with First Christian Church in Erwin, Tenn.
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When Christians Disagree
By Henry E. Webb
March 23, 1957; p. 3
A PROUD husband once boasted to his friends that he had been married for fourteen years, and that he and his wife had never disagreed about anything. An elderly minister in the group remarked, “Your home must be a dull place.”
The remark of the minister was not entirely facetious, nor was he intimating that disagreement gives sparkle and zest to marriage. But, he was recognizing a profound fact of human nature. No two human beings are exactly alike, and the normal expression of human personality will inevitably generate some areas of differences among individuals.
Uniformity of product is an important aspect of modem mass-production, but it is not a desirable characteristic of human beings. Spark plugs, coming from the production line with monotonous uniformity, are machined to fit any automobile, but those spark plugs have no individuality. Mass-produced nails are all of uniform size and shape, but there is nothing of beauty or variety in a whole keg. God is not interested in this kind of uniformity in His creation. Had He been, He would not have placed such a profusion of varieties of minerals, plants, animals, and human beings.
Look at nature! On any two days, the sky is not the same. No two mountains are identical. No two rivers follow similar courses. No two trees have identical shapes. In the winter, God paints strangely beautiful pictures in white. In the spring, warm fingers of golden sunshine touch the earth to summon delicate shades of green that blend with the color and fragrance of a thousand different kinds of blossoms. In summertime, the whole range of the spectrum is exploited in numberless varieties of gorgeous flowers. Autumn crowns the whole cycle with a riot of different colors. Nature indicates that God is not interested in monotonous uniformity. Beauty does not consist in sameness, but in a harmonious variety.
Look at man. Through the centuries, there have been billions of people, and no two have been identical. Human beings differ in talents, intellect, looks, emotional capacities, culture, and in a host of other ways. Within a race, nation, or family, there is infinite variety. Moreover, a human being is not the same on any two days of his life. Attitudes, ambitions, perceptions, and many other personal characteristics are subject to constant mutation. Any person who fails to recognize this simply does not understand life.
In the light of these facts, it should not be surprising that there are differences of opinion in the important realm of religion. There are at least four valid reasons why there will be differences of opinion and areas of disagreement among Christians. One of these reasons is psychological. The experiences of one man’s life may be such that he will find greater joy in or place greater emphasis on one aspect of the gospel than another man, whose experiences are totally different. An example is the difference in the understanding of Christian truth as evidenced in Augustine and Pelagius. Augustine’s passionate nature led him to believe that he was utterly helpless without God’s grace. He emphasized, if he did not exaggerate, man’s inability to cope with sin. Pelagius, on the other hand, was dispassionately rational, and his stern personal morality led him to emphasize (yea, exaggerate) man’s natural virtues and abilities. Both looked at Christianity too much through the eyes of their own experience (a natural tendency) and hence they made the mistake of attempting to universalize their own conclusions. One does not have to admit that Christian truth is relative to recognize the psychological fact that none escapes entirely the personal, subjective element in religion.
A second valid reason for differences of opinion among Christians is the simple fact of Christian growth. A growing soul constantly comes into contact with new truth, which, if honestly faced, will cause change of opinion. Once Saul of Tarsus sincerely believed that Jesus Christ was an impostor, but Saul learned otherwise, and he had to change his whole viewpoint on life. Once Simon Peter believed that it was wrong to offer the Christian hope to a Gentile, but Peter’s understanding of God’s will grew until he was forced to change his mind. He was the first to baptize a Gentile. Only the stagnant mind never changes. Since all Christians are not in the same stage of growth at the same time, differences of opinion are bound to appear. It cannot be otherwise.
A THIRD REASON for differences of opinion among Christians can be traced to the different cultures in which Christianity has flourished during the nineteen centuries of its history. Of course, the gospel has not changed in these centuries, but its precise application and relevance to the needs of mankind in various cultures has not always been identical.
A fourth valid reason for differences of opinion among Christians can be found in the nature of Christianity itself. The truth that God revealed to man in Jesus Christ is far in excess of the capacity of human beings to comprehend. The well-known poem of the blind men and the elephant is a humorous illustration of this point. One may as well attempt to put the whole ocean into a bucket as to attempt to comprehend the infinite. This fact should make Christians humble, but it has not always had this effect.
In view of these four reasons, nobody should wonder or be troubled about differences of opinion within the scope of Christian thinking. Uniformity of thought among human beings does not seem to interest God. The unity of which Jesus spoke does not consist in everybody thinking absolutely alike. God has never made any attempt at thought control. Jesus wrote no formal creed, and not a single apostle wrote a Summa Theologica. If rigid doctrinal uniformity were the ideal, the apostles did a poor job of providing it when they wrote the New Testament. What a vast difference there is between the vital faith of the New Testament church and the rigid orthodoxy of later Christianity!
In the course of Christian history, the church has had many struggles and has spilled gallons of blood over theological differences. In the early centuries, the person who believed in and served Jesus Christ was considered to be a Christian. But as the teaching of the church crystallized into a rigid pattern, the person who agreed with the dogmas of the organized church was considered to be a Christian. With the adoption of an official theology on the part of the church of Rome, there came to be less and less room for individual opinion. The theology of the church was legalistic, and functioned more as a legal basis for heresy-hunting than as an expression of a vital faith. With the establishment of the Inquisition, freedom of thought and expression in the field of religion became a dangerous pastime, for which more than one man paid with his life.
With the coming of the Reformation, religious differences became numerous and had to be recognized. The nations of Europe had long operated on a state-church basis, and differences in the realm of religion became serious problems of state. England was torn between Catholicism, Anglicism, and Puritanism, when an adviser suggested to Queen Elizabeth I a principle for conciliation: “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things charity.”
This principle received wide acceptance in the early years of the Restoration movement. Like many an excellent ideal, however, it proved to be easier to state than to apply. Because no definition of the “essentials” has been widely accepted, the world has seen little of either the “unity,” the “liberty,” or the “charity.” In fact, considerations of liberty and charity have sometimes been ignored in attempts to expound the essentials of unity.
IT IS NOT a sin for Christians to disagree; rather, it is the necessary consequence of human freedom of thought and expression. The only alternative is thought control, an alternative that few men in their right reason would choose. But disagreement becomes a sin when it leads to a rupture of fellowship among Christians. Too often well-intentioned Christians have made a shambles out of the fellowship of the church (a distinctly Biblical consideration) in the interest of some cherished but relatively unimportant opinion.
Of course, Christianity must rest upon a common basis of foundation. There can be no “Christianity” without faith in the claims that Jesus made. This “foundation” of the church must undergird all of the relations that exist among Christians. But upon this foundation, men have reared many separate structures, often for the purpose of housing their own opinions that have assumed grotesque proportions in relation to the whole. The schisms of the twentieth century are the product of many centuries of strife and bitterness. It took a long time to get the church so deep into the woods of sectarianism, and it will require a long time, much study, and much patience to lead the church out of these woods.
A NECESSARY condition for the success of any approach to Christian unity is the development of a satisfactory concept of Christian liberty—one that recognizes the right of another person to exercise his sincere mental and spiritual faculties with the freedom we demand for ourselves. This does not involve religious compromise or latitudinarianism. One does not have to compromise his convictions to be a gentleman. Deep Christian faith is not inimical to genuine breadth of understanding. To meet a person whose religious views differ from our own ought to provide a challenge for us to use our mental and persuasive faculties to bring him to a clearer understanding of the truth. In such a case free discussion is a blessing. Should such discussion degenerate to the point where motives are impugned and human dignity is sacrificed, the result will curse rather than bless.
One can never “defend the gospel” by employing methods and techniques that vitiate the gospel. On the other hand, the gospel has never been damaged by Christian charity and courtesy. Somehow we must “learn how to disagree without being disagreeable.”
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