Under Which Flag? Reflections on Christian Unity and Identity

Abstract

Under Which Flag? Reflections on Christian Unity and Identity William Swan In an increasingly pluralised and globalised world, human identity is being challenged and expanded. When I first attended primary school, the student next to me at the desk asked me where I was from and I answered with the name of my townsland in the parish where my home was located – Blackhall. When I attended secondary school, I was asked the same question and this time I named my parish – Glynn. When I moved to college in Dublin, to the same question I gave a different answer – Wexford. Finally, when I went abroad to live and study in Rome, I proudly identified myself as ‘Irish’. In the international environment of a Roman university, my Irish identity made me equal to others from all over the world, and brought a realisation that together we were part of a universal family of brothers and sisters, children of our heavenly Father. The important point is that in an international context comes the realisation that we are a global fraternity of Christians. While this identity does not dissolve other identities, such as one’s home parish, county or country, it does supersede them in a way that overcomes division and leads to communion. United diversity in the early church From the birth of the church, Christianity has demonstrated a remarkable ability to acknowledge specific identities but in a way that transcends them and moulds them into a greater and unified corporate identity. This began with Jesus’ calling of a group of Jewish fishermen, tax collectors and zealots, drawn into unity by their attraction to and ultimately their faith in Christ himself. Then at Pentecost, this dynamism of unification is repeated when Parthians, Medians, Judeans, Mesopotamians,Asians, Egyptians and Romans are unified by the Holy Spirit in a way that transcended their specific national, cultural and linguistic identities. Here, at the moment of the church’s birth, she is already catholic, already a world church. St Paul was particularly concerned with unity among Christians and the Studies • volume 107 • number 425 87 challenge to maintain unity in a church made up of Jewish and Gentile converts. Indeed Paul himself was marked by at least three distinct identities: Jewish, Roman and Christian. As an apostle for whom ecclesial unity was paramount, Paul knew that any distinct identities within his churches had to be transcended so that a greater, more unified and inclusive identity could be established. We see this clearly in First Corinthians, when he challenges factions that have emerged in the community along the lines of allegiances to Cephas, Apollos and Paul himself (cf. 1 Cor 1,10). The Apostle protests: ‘Christ has been divided into groups’ (1 Cor 1,13). In addressing the issue of unity, Paul insists that, through baptism, we are inserted into Christ and united with him as a single subject; no longer many alongside one another, but ‘one only in Christ Jesus’ (Gal 3,28). In Ephesians, Paul teaches that ‘there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism and one God and Father of all, over all through all and within all’(Eph 4,5-6). He outlines this to a community made up of Jewish and Gentile Christians in a letter that most scholars agree was written to address issues of unity in the church at Ephesus.1 For Paul, the place and time where all distinctions were transcended was at the Eucharist. He offers this teaching in First Corinthians where he writes: ‘The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because it is one bread, we, the many, are one body’(1 Cor 10,16). This is the same letter in which he first develops the doctrine of the church being the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12,12). Therefore, for Paul, the celebration of the Eucharist and the unity of the church are intrinsically linked. Celebrating the Eucharist breaks down barriers of subjectivity and gathers believers into a greater communion of existence, where distinct identities are acknowledged but transcended in the greater corporate identity of the Body of Christ made up of many parts. The Irish context When the...