Posted 1:35pm CT Jan. 18, 2008 in Minneapolis, USA
LONDON 6:35pm – JO’BURG 8:35pm – MANILA 2:35am 19/1 – SYDNEY 5:35am 19/1

Collected by Gloriscope

Paul [the Apostle] proclaims that Jesus Christ is the center of the faith that can hold the church together, even in the midst of sharp differences. Only by negotiating the way through our differences by professing the centrality of Christ crucified might the church be able to hold together in the face of what threatens to cause disintegration. […] The unity of the church is not something we create. To think that the unity of the church depends on our actions is one of the most pervasive fallacies of the ecumenical movement. The unity of the church is a gift. To be more precise, the unity of the church is a gift of the gospel of Jesus Christ. […] Justification is the center that creates the unity of the church and mediates God’s mission in and through the church. Unity and mission are given in, with, and through the church.

– Craig L. Nessan, Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Contextual Theology at the Lutheran (ELCA) Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, U.S.A., in his book Many Members Yet One Body, 2004

The fatherhood of God gives Christian brotherhood its firm foundation. […]  The belief that we have all become a single new man in Jesus Christ will always call us to let the separating particularity of our own egos, the self-assertion of human selfhood, melt into the community of the new man Jesus Christ. Whoever believes in Jesus Christ has not only found an ethical model to be imitated privately but is called to break up his own merely private ego and merge into the unity of the body of Christ. The ethic of Christ is essentially an ethic of the body of Christ. Inevitably, therefore, it means losing one’s own ego and becoming one in brotherhood with all those who are in Christ.

– Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), in his book The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, 1960.

‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ’ (Romans 8:15-17). This is the thing that makes us one. We are ‘children’ of the same Father. We know that He has a great inheritance prepared for us. And the unity that obtains among us is the unity of those who are ‘joint-heirs with Christ’, who are waiting for the final consummation and their entrance into the presence of God. […] Unity is not something which exists, or of which you can speak, in and of itself.

– D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981), a Welsh Calvinist, considered to be the greatest British preacher of the 20th century, in his book The Basis of Christian Unity, 2003.

Every time the baptized come together to pray, it is the Spirit who guides them and teaches them how to pray. It is the same Spirit who builds the Church’s unity. It is the Holy Spirit dwelling in those who believe, rewarding and ruling over the entire Church, who brings about the marvelous communion of those who believe, and joins them so intimately together in Christ that he is the principle of the Church unity.

– Roman Catholic Bishop Philip Anyolo of the Kenya Episcopal Conference, quoted by Catholic Information Service for Africa, Jan. 15, 2008.

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TO GOD BE ALL THE GLORY!

Published in the U.S.A. Copyright © 4T4C News Corp. 2008. All rights reserved.