Revised and clarified version of this article
The Eucharist is associated with Christ’s “one body” and deemed the “sacrament of unity”. Jesus prayed that his people would be one. What type of unity did he mean, and what role does the Eucharist play in it? In light of all our disunity, do such questions even matter?
Some comment on stakes are in order. Many who have given the topic of our disunity more than casual reflection in light our theological sources on the Church (e.g., John 17, Eph. 4, and the Nicene Creed) have sensed that something is seriously, if mysteriously, “off” about our disunity. It is not, however, easy to articulate why, and practical churchly concerns make it easy to neglect the nature and import of the problem. Bruce Marshall has rightly perceived that “of the many problems Christianity and Christian theology now face, the division of the church is likely the most pressing.” Those interested in the tie between the Church’s unity and the Gospel’s credibility would profit from his study “The Disunity of the Church and the Credibility of the Gospel” (published in Theology Today 50.1: pp. 78-89). This 1993 article was published while he was still a Protestant, indeed, over a decade before he converted to Catholicism. But beware! We are here dealing with subterranean realities with the potential to reorient some of our theological furniture.
I would highlight three points Marshall makes from John 17, in one form or another, about the type of unity Christ envisages. First, unity must be public and visible. “The church’s unity cannot itself be accessible only to believers (as, for example, the invisible and perhaps not yet extant object of their faith and hope) but must lie open to the apprehension of all, outside the church as well as within” (79). If something invisible was meant, the world would not be able to see it in order to know that Christ was sent by God (v. 17:21). Therefore, while unity will have invisible aspects to it, they must serve the concrete, visible unity of the church. Make no mistake, the unity in question is ecclesiastical unity.
Second, visible unity must consist of specific and certain visible things. This is where a common church structure comes in, but most churches agree that shared participation in the Eucharist is preeminent. And for good reason. Paul says, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Cor. 10:16, ESV). We must keep in mind that, according to the Apostle, there is just one worldwide body of Christ: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:12-13, ESV). So, this is not merely something Paul says to the Corinthian church. He says it also to the Roman church: “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Rom 12:4-5 ESV). And to the Ephesian church (in a letter which appears to have been widely distributed to many churches): “There is one body and one Spirit” (Eph. 4:4, ESV). And to the Colossians (Col. 3:15). Thus, this one worldwide body is to participate in the Eucharist as an indication of their participation in Christ’s body. “Eucharistic fellowship is thus essential to the reality of the church, and, more than any other public practice, it gives the church that specific character by which the world comes to faith in the gospel, namely that of a visibly united body” (Marshall, 79).
Third, the unity of the church is contingent upon the unity in the Godhead. This relationship is “not simply of likeness or imitation, but of origin and existential dependence” (Marshall, 80). There are theological and linguistic reasons for this. Commentators (e.g., Raymond Brown’s Anchor Bible Commentary on the Gospel of John) and lexicons (e.g., BDAG and EDNT) have described one usage difference between ὡς and καθώς, namely, the latter can be used in the sense of causality or origin. And J.-M. R. Tillard has documented this use as common in John 17, saying, “It is not by chance that the conjunction which we translate by ‘as’ is here kathôs and not hôs. Because as a general rule hôs signifies an analogy based on imitation, external resemblance . . . whereas, ordinarily, kathôs evokes the analogy which arises from a rapport of causality or origin between the two elements in question” (Tillard, Church of Churches, 51). Indeed, EDNT has earmarked Johannine uses all throughout his gospel as instances of this use (EDNT, s.v.). But the most powerful reason is theological. Jesus himself portrays this essential interconnectedness as the basis for oneness: “I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one” (Jn. 17:23, ESV). This means that lexically and theologically, the unity of the church is contingent upon the unity which exists within God. Even Protestant commentators go with this (e.g., George Beasley-Murray, John, Word Biblical Commentary 36, 2nd ed., p. 306).
Two competing viewpoints have been offered. The first would be that the more we have of God, the greater our unity. Unity is not an unchangeable fact but a reality mediated by the divine life within Christ’s body. I will elaborate on this in Part II.
The second viewpoint is the “preterist” position: Christ prayed for the unity he would accomplish at Calvary. In other words, it has already happened. This unity is a fact, a wrought reality. Characteristic of this viewpoint would be Beasley-Murray: “Since the unity of the Church is rooted in the unity of God and the redemption achieved in Christ, we are to understand that the prayer of Jesus was answered: God has made the Church one in Christ” (ibid.).
A salvation-history perspective does not interfere with it. Jesus did pray this before his death and resurrection. Such a view, however, does not seem fully compatible with all that is communicated in John 17. If Jesus himself aimed to fulfill this prayer, why pray to the Father for it?
The preterist might respond, “Jesus, although he knew what was to come, wanted his disciples to know too.” But if so, why not just tell them? Why pray to the Father?
Our preterist might veer into Christology: “Jesus didn’t know his prayer would require his own death yet, so God answered him with instructions to go to the cross.” The problem here is that John 17 does not read like Jesus is ignorant. According to John, Jesus certainly knows what’s going on just a few verses later in 18:4, and in our text Jesus makes summative statements that reveal his belief that he had accomplished his goals, that something new was at hand, and that he would soon depart from them for his final act: “Father, the hour has come”; “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (17:4, ESV); “I am no longer in the world . . . and I am coming to you” (17:11, ESV); “while I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction” (17:12, ESV); and “now I am coming to you” (17:13, ESV).
In light of this evidence of Jesus’ awareness, is the assignment of ignorance to Jesus this late in his ministry prudent? Mere hours later in Gethsemane his blood-sweat indicated that he knew what was going on. Moreover, the question is magnified by the fact that John was writing much later (in the 90s) than these events. Would it not have been a strategic and powerful conclusion to John 17 to include that Jesus had fulfilled his own prayer? John is clearly not averse to explanatory asides (cf. 18:9, 10, 14) or theological commentary (cf. his whole gospel), so it’s not as though he didn’t want to interrupt his story-telling. No literary reasons exist not to include this important conclusion. On the other hand, there are clear rhetorical reasons to include it. So why does John 17, written way after Jesus allegedly accomplished his people’s unity, read as though Jesus’ prayer is still very much applicable? Without any statement of fulfillment of his prayer for unity, the narrative also seems misleadingly incomplete. The refrain “may they be one . . . may they be one . . . may they be one” seems quite strained if believers were already united when John was writing.
Moreover, the preterist’s explanation does not take into account that Jesus’ prayer for unity is not just for those who were around before he died but includes all those who would come to believe in Him through them. If his prayer is also that they move from a position of division into unity, then (at least in John’s eyes) the cross hadn’t accomplished that unity (although for the sake of theological precision we should add that it accomplished a means to that unity).
Our preterist might then argue, “It isn’t the prayer that is applicable to future believers but the oneness which was wrought by the answer to that prayer (i.e., the atonement).” But this does not resolve the awkwardness of Jesus praying to the Father for something he himself was going to achieve, unless we appeal to Jesus’ ignorance, which is a different type of awkward at this stage.
Moreover, Jesus prays for this unity to bring about an effect separate from unity, namely, “that the world may believe”. The implication is that the credibility of the Gospel depends upon the unity of believers. This is an odd principle for John to record, after Calvary, if this unity (and the resulting credibility) was automatically achieved by Christ’s work. Why write in a way that encourages his readers to think, “we better strive for unity in order that others perceive the credibility of the Gospel”? In this light, the prayer seems forced, and John’s recording of it perplexing.
The preterist cannot at this point say, “It is not perplexing because the principle applies to our interpersonal unity. When we love one another, we make the Gospel look good.” The preterist has precluded interpersonal unity from the interpretation of John 17 by arguing that Jesus accomplished that unity, in the past, at Calvary. They have taken the stance that the unity in question is no longer a pursuit. Instead, it was gained by Christ on the cross. If so, then however believers treat one another becomes irrelevant to whatever John 17 is discussing, unless there are multiple aspects of unity in play (which we will consider soon enough).
If the unity Jesus intended was going to happen independently of anything believers do (because it was on the basis of what Jesus did), what about the part of the discourse that leads up chapter 17, specifically chapter 15 and abiding in the vine (“abide in me, and I in you”)? If the prayer for unity in John 17 no longer applies to Christians (because it was fulfilled by Christ at Calvary), why should the unity of John 15 still apply? Let’s grant for the moment that John 15 and John 17 refer to different types of unity. John 17 applies to unity among believers while the vine-branch analogy applies to the unity between Christ and believers, but if the latter (Christ-believer unity) requires ongoing work (work which is not on account of Christ’s involvement but our own), why shouldn’t the former (believer-believer unity) as well? This is especially pertinent considering that the basis of unity among believers, according to John 17, is the unity of the divine life and thus is imparted only through our unity with Christ. So if the latter takes work, on the basis of the law of contingency, so would the former.
So it would seem that the types of unity spoken about in John 15 and John 17 stand or fall together. And if they fall (i.e., we deem them no longer applicable), we must pause. If we find ourselves stripping out the sanctifying relevance and applicability of the framing features of one of the longest Dominical discourses in the New Testament (John 14-17), we may need to ask some hard questions. What is prompting us to do this? And are our theological or ecclesiastical pre-commitments more important than the parenetic purposes of Scripture? John wrote after Calvary and gives us no indications that the hope for unity was merely a throw-back to a pre-Calvary problem and therefore no longer an issue. Instead, he is happy to leave the impression that all believers should enter into prayer for unity alongside their Lord.
Overall, Marshall has helped us to see three points. First, the unity Christ means in John 17 must be visible. Second, visible unity must consist of specific visible things, preeminent among them being a shared participation in the Eucharist. And third, this visible unity is contingent upon the unity in the Godhead, which means that the unity of the divine life must be transferred to us for us to be unified. And since in baptism the divine life is transferred to us, doesn’t its unity come with it? We can see why, despite the strain it places on the narrative details in John 17, the preterist view draws the support it does. And we must somehow account for this reality too. However, given that we are not instantly transformed into Christ when we are baptized, the lack of efficacy and fullness of that divine life proves theologically significant. Evidently, that efficacy and fullness must be worked out. Although the underlying mechanics of the outworking of this process are not fully laid out (see Part II), its contours are nevertheless present. It is the Eucharist that visibly instantiates Christ’s body (and the unity of the divine life in it) and makes it available to believers, and in that divine life believers are made one. Marshall puts the mystery like this:
“On the one hand, if the church is visibly united across space and time above all by the eucharist, then the church’s unifying participation in God’s own life happens not primarily in the minds and hearts of individuals (though it does of course happen there), but in the public eucharistic celebration by which Christ joins individuals to himself and so makes of them his own community. On the other hand, if the church is united by being brought to share in the unity of God, then the eucharistic fellowship of the church, in which human beings are joined to Christ, and so to the Father, by the Spirit, is the particular way in which the triune God visibly exhibits to and in the world his own single and eternal life” (ibid., 81-82).
In contrast, views of unity that suggest it was accomplished in its fullness at Calvary do not make sense of all the biblical data. Instead, they reflect attempts to make the unity for which Christ prays an invisible endowment that Christians have by virtue of simply being Christian. If so, our present divisions really do not matter so much (at least at the visible, institutional level) for they don’t disrupt that invisible unity, which is experienced through koinonia. But John 17 indicates a different reality. As Tillard puts it:
“Chapter seventeen of John’s gospel—which speaks, not of having koinonia but of being one hen einai—must in this perspective, be considered as the major revealed text about the inner depth of the communion which is the Church of God . . .. This unity does not consist simply of a bond of love among the disciples of Christ Jesus, even less of a solidarity that rests on the fidelity of all to the teachings of the Master . . . it is a question of a very concrete communion” (ibid., 51).
Without this concrete communion, we remain divided, and our disunity affects the credibility of our message. The unity Christ prays for must be visible and perceptible, and his people must work for it.
This is not our reality today. We exist in a deeply divided state, and the deeper one probes the mystery of unity in Christ, the greater the incoherence becomes. This incoherence eats at the integrity of the Gospel like cancer, despite all our best efforts. May God’s people see the hope and potential that lies in a common Eucharist.