A Call to Christian Disagreement

The end of Christian disagreement is to actualize Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21. Here, Jesus prays that those who believe in his Name would be bound together by his glory with a unity like unto the Trinity. How many of your tweets or Facebook posts would be deleted were this eschatological prayer to become the shape of immediate reality? It is my prayer that Christians would rightly triage their affections to love their brothers and sisters by disagreeing with them less and better, so that that the church would be a living answer to Jesus’ ‘High Priestly Prayer’ and “that the world may believe that [Jesus is the Son of God sent of the Father]” (John 17:21). 

The road to the realization of Jesus’ prayer in John is paved by Paul’s prayer for the church at Philippi. “It is my prayer,’ Paul writes, ‘that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ” (Phil 1:9-10). Paul’s prayer is an invitation to affective triage and its end is the same as Jesus’ in John 17: “the glory and praise of God” (Phil 1:11). So, if the affective triage commended by Paul in Philippians results in the same instrument of unity for which Jesus prays in John—the glory of God—then the end of affective triage is the unity of the body of Christ. The logic of this connection is found in the supreme beauty of God: we love best when we recognize with praise the glory of God because God is sublime. When our hearts think rightly, we love like God: we love God most. And the sinew joining supreme love for God to unity amongst his church is the glory of Jesus Christ, because the glorification of Jesus’ finished work of salvation entails the appropriation of its effect: redemption of those who place faith in him. If we are in Christ, we are reconciled to God and refuse take up cause with our brothers and sisters where God does not.

Crucial to this task is the concept of triage: the discernment of relative value compelling a response. Albert Mohler coined the term “theological triage” back in 2005, arguing that the practice and polity of church ought to be attenuated by three tiers of theological truth: within the corpus of Christian doctrine, first-order truths are those sine qua non’s of the faith—core realities of the gospel and the being of God which must be affirmed in order to call oneself a Christian with any degree of credibility; second-order truths are those issues which do not define the boundaries of the faith but which are integral to the practice of church and so form the distinctive convictions which give rise to denominations; finally, third-order truths speak to aspects of faith about which Christians can disagree in good conscience and continue in covenant relationship with one another within a local church. Andrew Walker has developed a similar schema for ethical triage in the practice of church discipline. But prior to each of these taxonomies is affective triage: the discernment of love in its proper proportion.

Triage takes place in the heart; our relationships to the various things, truths, and people which compose our lives are ordered by degrees of love. Why is the Baptist able to call a Presbyterian her sister in Christ but not willing to be members of the same church? Because she loves supremely the glory of Jesus which unites her in faith to her Presbyterian sister, but she is not willing to do church the Presbyterian way because her love for the Word of God and its clear teaching that baptism is not for babies outweighs her desire to be fellow members of a local church with someone who wants to baptize babies. So, triage begins with an evaluation within the heart of an object’s lovability and this evaluation determines our appropriate relationship to the object and directs our actions in proportion to this relationship. It must be noted here that because affective triage is located in the heart it is subjective and deceptive. For “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick” (Jer 17:9). This is why Paul prays that the Philippians’ love would be calibrated according to “knowledge and all discernment” (Phil 1:9). So too our hearts must be calibrated according to the truth if we are to triage our affections effectively and so live in unity with fellow believers.

Paul loved the unity of the church more than being right. Consider his engagement with a doctrinal dispute amongst the church at Rome. We are not given the precise contours of the dispute, but, from Paul’s reference to abstinence from meat (Rom 14:2) and Sabbatarianism (Rom 14:5), the issue appears to center around the question of whether Christians are bound to keep some portion of the Mosaic Law. Paul is not a passive observer in this debate; he has an opinion and offers it freely: “nothing is unclean in itself” (Rom 14:14). That should be the end of the matter; Paul has spoken into the debate with the very words of God as he was carried along by the Holy Spirit. But what is most striking about this passage is that Paul’s highest love and most strenuous desire is not that the Roman church would agree with his inspired position on the theological question; his most urgent plea is for unity through disagreement in this down-ballot dispute. See the affective triage shining through Paul’s words: “Let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God” (Rom 14:19-20). In Paul’s heart, what was most excellent about the church at Rome is not that they would be right but that they would be unified.

Are we then not allowed to disagree with our brothers and sisters lest we jeopardize the unity of the church? No! Christian disagreement directed by well-calibrated affective triage does not evacuate all disagreement. After all, disagreement is an indelible reality this side of eternity. As my pastor is fond of pointing out, “if you ever find two people who agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary.” Christians will and must disagree with each other about a host of important—if non-essential—questions, but we must do so well. The challenge of Christian disagreement is not to quit disagreeing; it is to disagree with our brothers and sisters in such a way as “makes for peace and mutual upbuilding” (Rom 14:19), bringing us closer to John 17:21. Disagreement may be inevitable, but contempt is not.

The mode of Christian disagreement which is the means by which our disagreement actualizes John 17:21 is Ephesians 4:15. Here we find Paul’s oft quoted but rarely heeded exhortation to “speak the truth in love.” Love is the (note the definite article) space in which truth is communicated because love is the credibility of truth. Absent love, truth’s mettle turns brittle and arguments articulated with “the tongues of angels” resound as “clanging cymbals” (1 Cor 13:1). Paul’s principle challenges our mode of disagreement on at least two counts. First, love takes time to cultivate because love entails a relationship and mutual trust. Hear this: while the relational depth required for a space of love may be brought onto a social media platform, it cannot originate there. Second, truth communicated outside of the space of love betrays the pride of its source. If I presume to communicate truth outside of the only space which God has blessed with efficacy, then I must love to be seen communicating truth more than I desire to see my interlocutor accept the truth I am communicating. The challenges presented by Ephesians 4:15 ought to have the effect of winnowing disagreements between Christians to spaces of love. Love is the location of Christian disagreement; only here can truth be communicated with any hope of acceptance or fear of caricature, and only here can disagreement be a vehicle of unity.

Baptists are the last people who should be trying to play pope on Twitter. It is true that truth impinges upon the conscience with an ethical obligation to be known and acted upon—how else are we to understand why “the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Rom 1:18)? Furthermore, it is evident that the church is not immune to the sin of conscience miscalibration, as the aforementioned dispute in Romans 14 makes clear. However, as Baptists, we understand that we are not the keepers of every Christian conscience; we only bear the responsibility—and requisite authority—of accountability in relation to those consciences with whom we have entered into covenant in a local church. 

Social media may immanentize your awareness of Christians with whom you disagree, even those whom you believe to be sinfully wrong, but the authority of rebuke is not tied to awareness; it is tied to covenant. This principle is seen most clearly in Jesus’ step-by-step, “Christian Disagreement for Dummies” primer on local church accountability in Matthew 18. While this passage speaks directly to the operations of church discipline, disagreement is necessarily prior to discipline. Jesus tells us “if your brother sins against you” (Matt 18:15), you are first to confront him one-on-one, next, if your rebuke is not received favorably, you are to confront your brother with the back-up of one or two others, and, if he still refuses to turn from his sin, then the controversy is to be brought before the judgement of the whole church. Common to each of the calls to accord with the truth received by the sinful brother in this passage is the presence of a covenantal relationship at its source. Indeed, the New Testament offers no instructions for, and recounts no instances of, verbalized rebuke amongst Christians absent a clear ecclesiastical connection. Christian disagreement in this mode is the means by which Jesus intends to whittle lies from our consciences. You are not to play pope on Twitter, because the church on Twitter is not yours; it belongs to Jesus. Trust that he will build his church his way such that “the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). 

The effect of affective triage is the evacuation of the tension between truth and unity. Rightly triaged, truth and unity are not enemies; each is the means to the end of the other. And the unity of Christian imperatives regarding the communication of truth and the integrity of our community is grounded in the being of God and accomplished by the glory of Jesus Christ. The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ gives shape to the church, such that the covenant community of a local church becomes the primary location of Christian disagreement: where Philippians 1:10 calibrates the consciences in the potluck line to practice Ephesians 4:15 and so immanentize Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21. And the glory of Christ gives shape to the church universal such that all who believe in Jesus are knit together with a love for his Name which surpasses disagreement and looks like eternity. We are destined to spend forever together, so let’s practice eternity now.

Aaron Woodall is a Master of Divinity Student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.