Christians, separated as they are from one another across a variety of denominations and splinter groups, nevertheless generally agree that more unity would be a good thing. While we value the spiritual oneness we have in Christ irrespective of different labels and groupings, Scripture is clear that this spiritual oneness should be reflected in visible oneness. We have to concede that divisions in the church not only harm our gospel witness to the world, they also hinder everyone’s spiritual progress and, even worse, disregard God’s requirement that His people should be one. So why does disunity persist? In a recent publication, James Durham identifies eight things that act as temptations to excuse or justify our ongoing separation from our brothers and sisters. James Durham’s work on church divisions is newly available in a fresh edition from Reformation Heritage Books, The Scandal of Church Divisions: Healing the Wounds of Schism.

When people are tempted to perpetuate divisions, what are the various factors which might make the temptation stronger and harder to resist, especially for ministers and elders?

Zeal for God Masking the Desire for a Reputation

Once people are invested in a cause, and their own reputation is at stake for taking sides, then their heatedness and tenaciousness can express itself under other appearances, perhaps under cover of zeal for God’s honor, or respect for the reputation of the ministry and the ordinances. It may not seem to be any personal credit or respect that motivates them but zeal and respect for the Master, as is insinuated when the disciples sought to be avenged by fire from heaven on the place that would not receive Christ (Luke 9:54), and also when they forbade some to cast out devils, even in Christ’s name, because they thought it was not for Christ’s honor (Luke 9:49).

Firm Conviction of the Rightness of Their Cause

The temptation to persist in a division is often accompanied with great confidence about the justness and equity of their own side and about the unreasonableness of their adversaries. There may be in part some good ground for this, where the controversy is some doubtful, disputable thing. How great confidence both Job and his friends had in their debate! Both sides frequently express the desire that God would decide the matter (confident that God would take their side), when in reality God did not fully approve of either of them in either matter or manner. Sometimes also there may be a persuasion which one side finds very satisfying, when yet it is not from God. This was likely how it was on both sides in Galatia, even when they were biting and devouring one another (Gal. 5:8). For we often find in experience that once a disputable thing has been argued about over a period of time, it will become palpably clear and altogether necessary to those who have argued for it. Commitment to the cause bribes the light and perverts even the wisdom of the just. Hence we see that the longer someone argues for something, the more confident they become about it, because his own arguments secretly prevail more with himself than reasons proposed by any others to the contrary can.

Believing the Matter to Be Necessary and Important

There is a strength in the temptation to continue in a division when the matter under dispute is not only thought to be just but also necessary and of great importance.

Circumstantial truths are presented as necessary

A question over the most circumstantial truth (if we may speak so) can be regarded as necessary and a thing that cannot be quit. Even those on the side of the error will talk up the controversy as if it were a high point of Christianity. Among the early church fathers, those who maintained the millenarian opinion, and Christ’s personal reign, thought it a point of high concernment. Justin Martyr even said that anyone who thinks differently is no Christian. In later, popish writers, we see how strenuously they argue for the necessity of things like holy anointing oil. The apparent weightiness of such things gives people the impression that they are foundational points of Christianity.

Claims about the good of the church are inflated

If the dispute is over a matter of fact or a question of government, people think it is so important for the good of the church that they cannot back down without being accessory to the corruption and hurt of the church, or complicit in undermining the church’s authority. Hence the faults and consequences of the other side are so often exaggerated, and canons and constitutions are alleged to be broken, as we may see (among other instances) in the debate between Rome and Constantinople over who should have precedence before Antichrist was revealed, one claiming to have the support of an act of the Council of Nicea, the other an act of the Council of Chalcedon, and Rome claiming to have Saint Peter on their side, and the good of the universal church.

Faults on the other side are exaggerated

If it is a dispute about personalities, such as who is to be acknowledged bishop or minister, or who has been lawfully ordained or deposed, etc., then those on the other side are conceived to be notoriously heinous, and those on the side they support are believed to be incomparably gifted and eminent. No wonder, then, that they make their point so vehemently, because they believe that so much of the good or evil of the church depends on the admission of these men to office and the rejection of the others. This flows inadvertently from the former differences, because when one side are confident that they themselves are right on such an important point, they necessarily must think that those on the other side are wrong and unspiritual. The hotter the opposition grows, the more they think each other the more inexcusably obstinate.

By this they are also disposed to hear and receive reports and misinformation about their opponents. They end up honestly believing that they are outrageously wrong in every possible way, including in their motives and intentions. The differences that arose first between Luther and Karlstadt, and afterward between Luther and his followers on the one side, and Zwingli, Calvin, and others on the other side, fully demonstrate this. How little these beginnings were at first! And yet even the smallest differences were exaggerated, and the persons on either side were misrepresented, even before these differences came to the height which they did. We may observe also that making such mistakes about people and their actions, and the bitterness that follows, is most ordinarily discernible to be on the side where, in all conscience and fairness, there is least to be said in its defense.

Believing You Have Pure Motives

Add to these factors people’s conviction that their motives are honest and sincere. They are not aiming for any goal that is actually corrupt, nor do they entertain or approve any palpable dissimulation in their professions. But as they have some confidence of the rightness of their side, so they may regard it as a testimony to their sincerity of heart to maintain their cause. Great strength in the temptation to continue division lies here. For when you believe in your own sincerity and integrity, and, it may be, you have access to God, and liberty to pray, even in reference to such things, it is not easy to stop yourself in that way. And yet it cannot be thought but that among the instances of such divisions as we have given, people on both sides had an honest end and aim and did pray and had access in prayer. Indeed, there is no question but that many of them on both sides would go to heaven with such differences, for they continued zealous in their divisions, even to death. Nor should we find this strange, for the best know only in part and are liable to make mistakes, and their zeal and sincerity are squared according to their knowledge. It was such zeal (that is, not according to knowledge) that made Paul and others, with a kind of sincerity, persecute the church; therefore, proportionally, there may be zeal and sincerity in lesser things when there is ignorance of them.

Fear of Losing Face by Relenting

Committing yourself to taking sides strengthens the temptation to perpetuate the division, because by backing down afterward, it leaves you open to criticism for being so hasty to start with, and your ministry loses impact in other ways, and your followers, who possibly may be more tenacious and zealous than yourself, may be irritated and provoked. These things then look more damaging, even to the work of the gospel, than continuing divided. It is written of Luther that in discussion with Melanchthon and others toward the end of his life, he acknowledged to them that he had been too vehement and peremptory in his writings on the Lord’s Supper. When they urged him then to publish something to this effect, he replied that he was afraid to do so in case it would diminish the authority and weight of other controversies he had appeared in for God, so he declined to do it, although he did allow Melanchthon, after his death, to do about it as he thought fit.

Fear of Losing Credibility in Other Areas

Sometimes also, the temptation to continue in a division is strengthened by fear of bringing bad consequences on those who side with them. For example, if they make too many concessions in such and such particulars for union, they might make themselves and their cause odious to others who possibly had more respectful thoughts of them because of the stance they took in such things. Luther is said to have given this as a main reason why he kept up the difference over the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and would not unite with Calvin and others over it. Calvin’s views were generally more hated than Luther’s theory of consubstantiation, and Luther was afraid that uniting would leave the princes and others more open to malice and hatred.

Looking at the Failings of the Other Side

It strengthens the temptation to continue a division when people do not look at the difference simply in itself but comparatively with respect to the principles and behavior of their opponents. By considering things that are displeasing in them and their way, they are made the more tenacious and brought to justify themselves the more. Hence it is in such divisions that the great stress of debates lies in aspersions and accusations, recriminations and counter-recriminations, as if the only vindicating argument was, “The other side are wrong in so many things about their behavior, therefore our way must be right,” or, “therefore we have good reason to divide from them.” Almost necessarily, such recriminations are used in debates where the matter is not of such momentousness and clarity, as in the debates we have mentioned between Jerome and Rufinus, where there was no dispute on either side but recriminations on both. The same thing can be seen in the accusations of the Donatists.

Expecting the Other Side to Concede First

In such differences also, each side is ready to think that the other should and will concede to them and will not risk division on so little a thing. Hence, many have been drawn on to division from small beginnings, which they would not have yielded to if they had known what the consequences would be, or if they had not expected that the other side would have yielded. When this expectation is not met, their commitment to their own side becomes stronger, and the division more irreconcilable. It was remarked of Victor that he would not have been so peremptory in the controversy about when to hold Easter, if he had not assumed that the other side would have yielded.

For a more extended discussion on the theme of church unity, a recommended resource is James Durham’s insightful and practical book, The Scandal of Church Divisions: Healing the Wounds of Schism, published by Reformation Heritage Books.

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