dealing with early church disagreements

The firsts of 4 studies to come out of the PCC awayday.

The group felt that how we reacted to disagreement depended a lot on the context, who we had the disagreement with and what it was about, eg. how important it was to us.

We looked at Romans 14 which is about disagreements about food and holy days. In general Paul seemed to agree that it didn't mater what you ate or what days (if any) you kept as holy, but for they sake of the "weaker" believer he recommended that people give way so as to not offend.

As a principle we felt we should avoid judging others, that we should have a sense of perspective, eg. just how important is this issue?

Then we looked at Acts 15.1-21 which is about tension in the early church around how much (if any) of the Jewish traditions should be adopted by the gentile converts, specifically about circumcision. Paul had a much stronger view about this issue - he was completely against requiring gentile converts to be circumcised. After an argument with the people proposing this he goes to Jerusalem to have a meeting of Church leaders to discuss this. This issue was seen as more important, more fundamental to the faith. It was tackled by having a meeting to hear all sides and then an agreement was reached, although it is interesting to note that only the speeches against the adoption of circumcision are reproduced here. It can also be seen that there was a slight compromise eg. gentile converts were to avoid certain foods and sexual immorality.

As a principle we could see that listening to the other was extremely important. Also to respective the other person and their motives even though we disagree with their position. In the speeches we have in this passage reference is made to what is happening in the world, to what God is doing in the world, ie. that the gentiles have the spirit. Reference is also made to scripture. So another principle would be to look to the bible and also to what is happening in the world for guidance on how to settle disagreements. We also felt we should be open to other opinions.

We have two quite different pictures of how the early church tried to deal with conflict, to apply them today would mean trying to distinguish between what are relatively unimportant issues (even if the people involved see it differently) about which it is ok for people to believe and do different things and those issues that are more important or about which is not possible to have to views/practices happening at the same time. For example I think that the issue of woman becoming Bishops in the Church of England is such an issue. Woman either can be/are Bishops are they cannot be Bishops.

Hope the above is a fair reflection of our discussions. Please add your own comments, especially if you disagree or think I have left anything out :-)