In 1977 British New Testament scholar James Dunn wrote a book entitled Unity and Diversity in the New Testament where in 470 well-argued pages he concludes that there’s a marked degree of diversity within the first-century Church; there are many different expressions of the Faith within the New Testament; there was no single normative form of Christianity in the first century. Their only unifying factor, he says, was their allegiance to Jesus.

Similarly, Oxford professor John Macquarrie, in his Christian Unity and Christian Diversity, offers the thesis that diversity is just as essential as unity to the well-being of the Christian church. ‘To combine unity with freedom is a very difficult task, and the temptations to uniformity are very great… A stark unity freezes the church and inhibits development. A sheer diversity would dissipate the church and cause her to disappear. Only unity and diversity together can be fruitful.’ (17) He borrows an expression from Don Cupitt, ‘One Jesus, many Christs’… ‘Jesus has been seen as moralist, prophet, apocalyptist, hero, redeemer, priest, and king’. (18) Oliver Wendell Holmes once said he wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but he would give his life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity. All heresy, G.K.Chesterton affirms somewhere, is a narrowing down unduly of what is essentially a complex reality. Each part of the church needs the other parts.

What binds us together is not the ‘purity’ of our doctrinal viewpoint, nor the way we worship and serve the Lord (‘orthodoxy’ and ‘orthopraxis’), but our common allegiance to Jesus as Lord, and our being children of the same Father, united by the same Spirit. The church ought never to be a universal ‘sausage-machine’, turning out clones of one sort or another.

Discuss: Who is ‘different’ in your church or community? Is your church fellowship open to people of differing socio- economic, theological, or ethnic backgrounds?

Further Reading: James D.G.Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the Character of Earlist Christianity, London: SCM, 1977; John Macquarrie, Christian Unity and Christian Diversity, Philadelphia: SCM, 1975.