Peace Among Christians

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. MATTHEW 5:9

Baxter spent his life on this subject and largely failed at it, which makes him an unusually instructive teacher. He laboured for reconciliation between the English religious parties for forty years. He drew up schemes of comprehension, wrote irenic treatises, organised associations across party lines, and served at the Savoy Conference trying to find terms broad enough to keep the moderates together. Almost none of it succeeded in his lifetime. He also quarrelled with practically everyone, at length and in print, and knew it.

Why Christians divide

His analysis of the causes is unsentimental, and it holds up. Pride, which he named first and repeatedly. Most controversy is not really about the question in dispute; it is about being right, being seen to be right, and not being overcome by an opponent.

For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? 1 CORINTHIANS 3:3

Ignorance, in two directions. We do not know enough about the matter in hand, and we do not know enough about our opponent’s actual position — we argue with a version of it we have constructed. Party spirit, which attaches the loyalty due to Christ to a name, a tradition or a leader. Making too many things necessary. Baxter’s chief structural point: divisions multiply in proportion to the length of the list of things everyone must agree on. Shorten the list and much of the conflict disappears.

Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. ROMANS 14:1

How to conduct a disagreement

He gave practical directions, and they are usable in a church committee this month.

State your opponent’s view in terms he would accept before you answer it. Baxter regarded failure here as evidence of bad faith or laziness, and most controversy as therefore illegitimate before it starts. Distinguish the person from the position, and the position from its worst consequences. A man is not responsible for conclusions he does not draw. Ask whether the matter is worth the cost. Baxter’s rule was that the damage done by pressing a point must be weighed against the good of settling it, and that many battles are lost by winning them. Allow that a godly man may hold what you consider mistaken. This was his strongest theme in later life — that the differences among genuinely converted people are smaller than the difference between the converted and the unconverted, and that we habitually get the proportions backwards.

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. JAMES 3:17

Note the order. Pure first — peace is not bought by abandoning truth — and then peaceable, gentle, and willing to be persuaded.

The limits of peace

Baxter was not advocating peace at any price, and his own life proves it. He was ejected from the church he loved rather than subscribe to terms he judged false, and he went to prison rather than be silent.

If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. ROMANS 12:18

Paul’s two qualifications are the whole doctrine. If it be possible — sometimes it is not, and the fault may be entirely on the other side. As much as lieth in you — our responsibility extends to our own conduct and no further. A Christian is not obliged to secure peace; he is obliged not to be the one who breaks it.

The man himself

Now the honest part, and Baxter would have wanted it said. The greatest English writer on Christian peace was, by temperament, a controversialist. He could not leave an argument alone. He answered every attack, usually at length. He wrote so much polemic that his friends begged him to stop, and his own admission late in life was that he had written too much, too fast, and too sharply. There is something instructive in the gap. It suggests that a man may see a duty clearly, teach it well, and struggle with it all his days — and that his teaching is not thereby invalidated. Baxter knew what peace required precisely because he had spent so long failing to achieve it. He also, and this is the redeeming part, kept changing. The self-assessment in his autobiography records a man who had grown steadily gentler, less certain of his own judgment, and more willing to think well of those who differed. He was still arguing at the end. He was arguing differently.

The test of this chapter is not whether you value unity. It is what you do in the next disagreement. Specifically: can you state the other person’s view in terms they would accept? If not, you are not yet in a position to answer it.

The Worcestershire experiment

Baxter’s most successful contribution to Christian unity was not a book or a scheme of comprehension. It was a local association of ministers, and its story is instructive. In the early 1650s he gathered the ministers of Worcestershire — Presbyterians, Independents and men of episcopalian conviction — into a voluntary association. They agreed to co-operate in three practical things: the discipline of their congregations, the systematic catechising of their parishes, and mutual counsel. What they did not do was resolve their differences. The question of church government, over which the nation was tearing itself apart, was deliberately left open. They simply agreed to work together on what they could agree about. It succeeded. Other counties copied the model, and for a few years there existed in parts of England a working co-operation between parties that were at war everywhere else.

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! PSALM 133:1

Two lessons come out of it. The first is that unity is more achievable locally than nationally. Baxter’s grand schemes at the Savoy Conference failed completely; his county association worked. Men who know each other, whose congregations overlap, and who face the same practical problems can cooperate on a basis that abstract negotiation never reaches. The second is that shared work unites better than shared agreement. The Worcestershire ministers did not become friends by settling their disputes. They became friends by catechising the same county, and the disputes mattered less afterwards.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. In your next disagreement, state the other position in terms its holder would accept before you reply. If you cannot, you do not yet understand it. 2. Ask of your current controversy whether the good of winning outweighs the damage of fighting. Some battles are lost by winning them. 3. Shorten your list. How many things must someone agree with you on before you can regard them as a brother? 4. Distinguish the person from the position, and the position from consequences they do not draw. 5. Where peace has failed, check whether the failure lies with you. That is the only part you are answerable for.

A PRAYER

Lord, I have argued for truth and enjoyed the arguing, and I have not always been able to tell the difference.

Show me where my convictions are really about being right. Give me the honesty to state fairly what those who differ from me actually believe.

Make me peaceable without making me hollow — pure first, and then gentle, and willing to be persuaded.

And where peace is not possible, let the fault never be mine. Amen.