Theopedia

Peace of the Church

— Eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. (Eph. 4:3)

Definition

The peace of the church names two related things: the internal, spiritual unity Christ’s people share as one body, secured by his reconciling work rather than by uniform outward organization, and expressed concretely when churches hold communion with one another for their mutual peace and edification;1 and, historically, the period after Rome ended its persecution of Christians following Constantine’s Edict of Milan in AD 313.2

Confessional Witness

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession addresses the peace of the church directly in the same chapter that states the church’s other marks and polity. Particular churches, it says, “when planted by the providence of God, so as they may enjoy opportunity and advantage for it, ought to hold communion among themselves, for their peace, increase of love, and mutual edification.” When “difficulties or differences” arise, either within a single church or between churches, “it is according to the mind of Christ, that many churches holding communion together” send messengers “to consider, and give their advice in or about that matter in difference,” though such gatherings hold no binding “jurisdiction over the churches themselves.”1 Peace among churches, on this confessional account, is pursued through voluntary fellowship and counsel rather than through a governing hierarchy standing over the local congregation.

Biblical Basis

Paul grounds the church’s peace in Christ’s own reconciling work: “he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility… that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace” (Eph. 2:14-15). From that accomplished peace he draws an obligation for believers to “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:1-3). The same appeal recurs in his letter to Philippi, urging believers to stand “firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel” (Phil. 1:27) and to be “of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” (Phil. 2:2).

Doctrinal Significance

Reformed theology locates the church’s peace in an internal, spiritual unity rather than an external, institutional one. Rome’s unity, Berkhof writes, “manifests itself in its imposing world-wide organization,” centered not in believers but in a hierarchy narrowing upward from priests through bishops and archbishops to the pope.3 Protestants instead hold that the church’s unity “is not primarily of an external, but of an internal and spiritual character… the unity of the mystical body of Jesus Christ,” bound together by one Head, one Spirit, and a common faith and love that only secondarily seeks outward expression in shared worship and sacraments.3 Because that unity is grounded in Christ rather than in an organization, it cannot be manufactured by structural means alone: the church’s unity “cannot be separated from Him who blesses; in Him it has its source and reality, through His Word and Spirit it is revealed to us, and only in faith can it become a reality among us.”4

This bears directly on how the church’s peace is maintained in practice. Bavinck holds that assemblies of churches, though not strictly necessary to the church’s existence, are “permitted and necessary to the ‘well-being’ (bene esse) of the church,” because “the unity of doctrine, discipline, and worship to which the church is called, the order and peace and love it has to preserve… can only come into their own by means of” such gatherings.5 Peace, on this account, is not merely the absence of conflict but the fruit of doctrine, discipline, and worship held in common.

Historical Development

The peace of the church after Constantine

In the technical, historical sense, “the peace of the church” denotes the era that began with Constantine’s Edict of Milan in AD 313, which “put an end in the West to the persecutions of Christians by the Roman government, making peace, so to speak, between the state and the church.”2 Bavinck independently corroborates the same AD 313 dating, noting that the end of external persecution shifted the church’s chief pressure from without to within: “external pressure was replaced by the internal pressure of heresy in the church,” and the major dogmatic controversies of the following centuries, chiefly over Christology, began in earnest.6 The peace secured from the state did not, on this account, produce peace within the church itself.

Peace preserved through Reformed order

The Reformed tradition tied the church’s peace to the ordinary means of doctrine, discipline, and worship rather than to a single hierarchical authority. The Westminster Assembly’s 1645 Directory for the Publick Worship of God prescribed a public prayer asking “that therein God would establish peace and truth, the purity of all his ordinances, and the power of godliness… heal all our rents and divisions.”7 Bavinck’s same account of synods as guardians of the church’s “order and peace and love” reflects this conviction in dogmatic form: peace is preserved not by suppressing disagreement but by settling it through the ordinary courts and assemblies the church itself has appointed.5

Objections and Responses

Is pursuing the church’s peace at the cost of doctrinal truth still the peace of the church? Berkhof answers no. Surveying the modern ecumenical movement’s pursuit of visible church unity, he judges it “un-Scriptural in so far as it has been seeking unity at the expense of the truth,” warning that apart from “unity in the truth, it will not be productive of real unity but only of uniformity.”4 On this account, a peace purchased by setting doctrine aside is not the peace Scripture commends, since the unity in view is a unity of “the same faith” as well as “the common bond of love.”3

Related Doctrines

References

  1. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 26, “Of the Church,” para. 14-15. ↩ ↩2

  2. Ronald E. Heine, Classical Christian Doctrine: Introducing the Essentials of the Ancient Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 73. ↩ ↩2

  3. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 555-556. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 557. ↩ ↩2

  5. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality.” ↩ ↩2

  6. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 2, “The History and Literature of Dogmatic Theology.” ↩

  7. Westminster Assembly, The Directory for the Publick Worship of God (Edinburgh, 1645; repr., Philadelphia: B. Franklin, 1745), 20-21. ↩