Unity

From Early Christianity to Islam and Back — 1. The Earliest Christianity

This post is the first in a series of six outlining a broad view of how things in the Church and the world got to be as they are now, including contributions early Christianity and Islam made to each other. This post attempts to outline the basic positions of early Christianity. Comments are invited!

Our Oneness in the Body of Christ and the Consequences of Ignoring It

What happens to you affects me. If we choose to work together, the Body of Christ is healthy and effective. If we choose not to recognize each other, we are still one, but the Body of Christ os diseased.

We Are Called to Live Out the Truth of Our Oneness

We are called to live out the unity of the Body of Christ. The Body is already one, but we have a role in making that oneness effective in the world.

Humans “Male and Female” and Marriage as Pictures of God’s Unity in Diversity

The creation of humans as male and female, marriage and reproduction are all a part of the image of God in human beings, and are all an intelligible picture of God’s unity in diversity. They also point to our unity iwith each other and God n the Church.

The Human Being as a Picture of God’s Complex Unity

Human beings are made in God’s image, a picture of his complex unity. Body and spirit must be united to form a soul. Each of the faculties of the soul and parts of the body together form a single, unified person.

Unity in Diversity as an Attribute of God

God is a complex unity–Three in One by nature–and is also one with us who believe, by adoption. He is not an absolutely simple unity, as is often taught. This false teaching comes from early efforts to make the Gospel more acceptable to the upper classes of Roman society by introducing Neoplatonist philosophy into it. But it instead destroys the Gospel by making God incapable of having any real unity with his children.

The Trinity in Which We Share

The three persons who eternally and inseparably comprise the One God are God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit.  The Father is God.  In John 6:31, Jesus called him “God the Father.”  In John 4:21-23, Jesus identified “the Father” as the God the Jews and Samaritans both worshipped.  Jesus also prays to his “Father” in numerous places1–2,…
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Our Individual Oneness with Christ

Jesus called Himself the whole vine—which includes each of the branches—not just the root or the trunk of the vine. Thus, we are one with Him as the branch is one with the vine. We are each a part of Him, just as he is the life of each of us…. if we live in Christ and His words live in us, anything we ask will be done for us, because the Father is glorified when we bear fruit.