Joshua Coutts
In my previous article, I identified two kinds of division attested among early believers in the New Testament: (i) division generated by the gospel of Jesus between his followers and the world and (ii) dissension between believers themselves.
Having considered the importance and challenge of identifying issues over which division is legitimate for the sake of the gospel, I turn here to the kinds of divisions that are tragically the most common in Christian communities—those divisions which occur over secondary or disputable matters or that arise out of selfish pride.
Two passages in Paul provide powerful guidance for us as we navigate such divisions today.
Navigating “Disputable Matters” in Corinth
What are we to do when we disagree over some important (to us) matter and yet the gospel, the witness of the Spirit, and our Scriptures seem to offer support for both sides?
As a starting point, we might conclude that disputes that meet this description do not merit the division that all too often they generate. Paul was aware of such “disputable matters” (or “adiaphora”). He did not discriminate, for instance, between believers who disagreed over whether to observe a sacred day or not (Rom 14:5), and he acknowledged that circumcising a believing Gentile may be prudent in some situations (Acts 16:3) while soteriologically unnecessary (Gal 2:1–5).
Perhaps the best known New Testament example of adiaphora regards the issue of food that had been first offered to idols, which Paul addresses at length in 1 Corinthians 8–10. In Greek and Roman cities of the period, meat consumption was uncommon, and most meat available for purchase in the macellum (“meat market”) was from offerings in the temples nearby which surrounded the forum. This made idol food inescapable.
For some Christians, the association of the meat with its pagan provenance was tantamount to idolatry and so would have felt like a “gospel issue.” Others could see that eating idol meat was not directly engaging in idolatry and seem to have reveled in their “freedom” in Christ, to the consternation of their sisters and brothers. Paul seems to recognize that both sides were understandable with no obviously “Christian” view as he appeals to their reason in 10:15: “I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say.”
But what should Paul say, with no clear teaching from Jesus or explicit scriptural guidance on this specific issue? Indeed, Paul points to two relevant Scriptures which could be taken to point in opposing directions. He reminds his readers to have nothing to do with idolatry by reminding them of Israel in the wilderness: “Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written: ‘The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play’” (1 Cor 10:7). Yet later in the chapter, Paul cites Psalm 24 to condone eating any food because “the earth is the Lord’s” (1 Cor 10:26). If all things came to be through one creator God, then meat is not intrinsically evil (cf. 1 Tim 4:4). Appeals to Scripture are not always conclusive, and they are never so with adiaphora, whether because texts point in different directions or the disagreeing parties emphasize different aspects of those texts or interpret them from different perspectives.
Yet, there is a second dimension to Paul’s argument—a clear focus on the unifying figure of Jesus. Paul begins his discussion of idol food with a reminder that there is only “one God” (alluding to Israel’s Shema) yet strikingly locates Jesus at the heart of this God: “for us there is one God . . . and one Lord, Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 8:6). He then draws two sets of inferences from this confession.
First, if Jesus shares in the identity of Israel’s God, then the exclusive devotion reserved for God in the Old Testament belongs likewise to him: “You cannot drink the cup of the lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the lord and the table of demons” (1 Cor 10:21). This allegiance could be expressed in two different ways: either avoid meat offered to idols entirely as an act of exclusive devotion to Jesus or, recognizing that Jesus alone is Lord and the idols are nothing, eat heartily “for the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:25–26, 31; cf. Rom 14:6). So far, the unifying figure of Jesus does little to resolve the issue.
But there is yet a further dimension to Jesus, which Paul exploits here. He observes that insofar as we are in Christ, we are also tied to one another. Whereas John has us as branches related to each other via the single Vine in which we abide, for Paul we are the “body” of Jesus and therefore belong to each other.
In chapter 8, he admonishes the “strong” to not cause their “weaker brothers” to stumble by flaunting their freedom: “by your knowledge, the weak one is destroyed—the brother for whom Christ died; when you sin against your brothers . . . you sin against Christ” (1 Cor 8:11–12).
Notice how the framing of this admonition assumes both a profound union of the weaker brother with Christ, and a strong mutual belonging between sisters and brothers. While eating idol food may be legitimate for individual believers, we are not at liberty to think merely as individuals. Moreover, if my brother is one “for whom Christ died,” am I willing to do any less?
Implicit here is the assumption that membership in the community of Christ entails not only trust in him as the “one Lord,” but allegiance to his “body” and a life that exhibits his way of being (i.e., cruciformity) within that body. Paul concludes then that if idol food is a cause of stumbling for others, he would never eat, out of consideration for them (1 Cor 8:13), and exhorts his readers to think likewise: “do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other” (10:24).
So, for Paul, “disputable matters” still need to be thought through Christianly, but since the content at issue does not threaten the gospel, it is eclipsed in importance by other dimensions of the one Christ who unifies. In fact, many—perhaps even most—disputes that arise within churches have much more to do with our failures to embody Christ than with our disagreements about Christ or other disputes of an exegetical or theological nature. This point is made clearly in Philippians, to which I now turn.
Disagreement between Christians in Philippi
In his letter to the Philippian church, Paul admonishes two women, Euodia and Syntyche, to “have the same mind in the Lord” (Phil 4:2). The phrasing is so similar to the general exhortations in chapter 2 to “be of the same mind” and to “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:2–5) that it is likely the conflict between these two prominent women was in Paul’s mind throughout the letter.
It is interesting, then, that we know nothing about the nature of the dispute between them. We can conjecture from the prominence Paul attributes to them (“they fought at my side in the work of the gospel”) that they were important leaders in the church, or perhaps in two distinct house churches in Philippi. Regardless, Paul regarded the presenting “issue” between them as window dressing for what was more fundamentally a clash of egos. In a way, the specifics of the dispute(s) in Philippi are immaterial. We are all too familiar with the kinds of division that bubble up from “selfish ambition or vain conceit” or personal “interests” (2:3–4).
For Paul, the solution was to draw both parties more closely to the unifying figure of Christ. As we saw earlier in John’s Gospel, the unity Paul exhorts here is not merely confessional agreement about who Jesus is, important though that is. It also entails a full embodiment of Christ’s way of being in the world—namely, cruciform, self-giving love: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself . . . and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (Phil 2:5–8).
Although Paul notes that his readers will confess that “Jesus is Lord” with the tongue at final judgment (cf. v. 11), he is implicitly inviting them to declare his lordship precisely by inhabiting his cruciform shape with each other in the present.1 Incidentally, when addressing division in Corinth, which similarly arose in no small measure from arrogant posturing (1 Cor 1:10–12; cf. 3:4, 21–22), he takes the same approach, beginning by pointing to the “foolishness” of a crucified Messiah (1 Cor 1:18–31; 2:2).
Paul exhibits a profound awareness of the root of much of our divisions. Although the presenting issue in a conflict often has the façade of exegetical or doctrinal content—and thus we may frame it as a defense of “truth” or “the Bible”—there is often something deep and ugly that drives it. Therefore, nothing less than fidelity to Jesus in all its dimensions (not just intellectual) will serve to rectify the division.
Let me take a somewhat sensitive recent example. During the Covid-19 pandemic, many churches were riven over disparate responses to government regulations. In many cases, the extreme ends of the spectrum of responses reflected a failure of devotion to the Jesus proclaimed in Philippians 2.
On one side were those who were gripped with fear for their health or sought to avoid physical suffering at all costs. Now, physical self-preservation is a good natural impulse, but when Christians elevate this to become the utmost in importance, they have forgotten both that the avoidance of suffering at all costs is not the path of our Lord and that the hope of the resurrection harrows even the grave itself. In other words, they have taken their eyes off the Jesus who was “obedient to death—even death on a cross” and whom God “highly exalted” after his death (Phil 2:8–9).
On the other end of the spectrum were those who glorified political religious freedom above all else. Resistance to government health orders was framed in terms of religious persecution because the right to immunity from any such interference was of the utmost value. Now, religious and political freedoms are indeed precious. Yet they cannot be ultimate for those who claim to worship one who, “though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped” (Phil 2:5). Moreover, Paul indicates that the lordship of Christ is universally realized not forcefully by human politicking but eschatologically and by divine administration: “God gave him the name . . . so that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is lord” (Phil 2:9-11). So this group, too, disclosed an allegiance to something other than the Lord of Philippians 2.
If groups at both extremes had inadvertently displaced this Jesus with these other goods, it is little surprise that they were also willing in many instances to demonize, ostracize, and break fellowship with each other rather than to embrace the cruciform path of bearing with each other in self-giving love. The corrective is the same for both groups, and it is the one into which Paul invites the Philippians: look upon the crucified God; confess him as Lord; inhabit his way of being with each other.
Conclusion
The theological reasoning here is similar to what we observed in 1 Corinthians. Both provide concrete examples of how multiple dimensions of the Jesus in whom we are united must be leveraged in navigating disagreement and division between individual Christians and communities.
If the dispute is less fundamental than the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord and is not resolved easily by appealing to Scripture, then embodying his cruciform posture or recognizing a sister or brother as “one for whom Christ died” nearly always will. This is a reminder that, as important as the substance of our disagreements with each other may be, the way in which we engage each other through it is just as important to Jesus.
When this One has all of us, fully, then we cannot but be “one”—even when on some matters we will still disagree.
Joshua Coutts (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is Associate Professor of New Testament at Providence Theological Seminary in Manitoba, Canada. He is the author of The Divine Name in the Gospel of John (Mohr Siebeck, 2017).
Image: Pieter Aertsen, A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms
- Here I borrow the language of Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), see especially pp. 9–39.[↩]