{"id":1485,"date":"2007-06-11T11:11:04","date_gmt":"2007-06-11T11:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/the-historical-christian-returns.html"},"modified":"2007-06-11T11:11:04","modified_gmt":"2007-06-11T11:11:04","slug":"the-historical-christian-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/the-historical-christian-returns.html","title":{"rendered":"The Historical Christian returns!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aimee Milburn, who writes the smart and generally excellent blog Historical Christian has been on a hiatus recently because of coursework, but she’s back with a great post on the unity of the Church:<\/a><\/p>\n

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A Protestant reader lately has written to ask about unity, an issue that bothers him as a Protestant, and that bothered me also when I was a Protestant.  All Christians are concerned about unity, because Christ told us to be one on his last night on earth as an important part of our witness for him, so the world may know him and believe in him. <\/em><\/p>\n

The question is, why is unity, oneness, so important for witnessing and believing that Christ made it a command on his last night on earth?  Why must we be one in order for Christ to be seen and believed in?  In dialoguing with my reader, something came clear, several different strands of theology that I\u2019ve been studying coalesced, that I shared with him and also want to share here: the meaning and significance of unity, of visible<\/strong> oneness for the Church.  <\/em><\/p>\n

It came together in my mind this way: it is important because it is the nature of God Himself, the nature of creation, the nature of the Church, and the reason for existence itself.  Simply put, the Church must be one because God is One, and the Church is His Body.  It must be unified, though composed of many members, because God is unified, three Persons in perfect harmony as one: the Trinity – and Jesus prayed that we, though many, would be perfectly one (Jn 17:23).  We are created in His image and likeness, so must show forth His image and likeness, which in essence is oneness and unity in love, not only in our individuality but also in our plurality, our relationships.<\/em><\/p>\n

Turns out my reasoning agrees with the Catechism, which says, \u201c<\/em>The Church is one because of her source . . . the unity, in the Trinity of Persons, of one God.\u201d (CCC 813)<\/em><\/p>\n

The following is my attempt to explain why that is.<\/em><\/p>\n

MORE<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aimee Milburn, who writes the smart and generally excellent blog Historical Christian has been on a hiatus recently because of coursework, but she’s back with a great post on the unity of the Church: A Protestant reader lately has written to ask about unity, an issue that bothers him as a Protestant, and that bothered…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Historical Christian returns! - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/the-historical-christian-returns.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Historical Christian returns! 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}