Digging Out the Embedded Church - The Maranatha Community

manner. He declared that men could be saved only by nourishing among themselves
peace and concord.
He called Himself a shepherd and his servants, sheep. Who has ever seen sheep
fighting with sheep? What will the wolves do if the sheep tear at one another?‟
John Calvin – 16 th Century:
„It must be counted on among the worst evils of our epoch that the Churches are thus
separated one from another, so much so that hardly any human society exists among
us, still less that holy communion between the members of Christ which all profess but
very few sincerely cultivate in reality.‟
Martin Luther – 16 th Century:
„It is a dangerous and terrible thing to hear or to believe something contrary to the one
witness, faith and doctrine of the entire holy Christian Church, which has been
maintained harmoniously from the beginning, that is, for more than fifteen hundred
years, through the whole world.‟
Anonymous:
„Scholars have an interesting word to describe the relationships of Persons in the
Godhead. They speak of “perichōrēsis”, from the Greek words, “choros” a dance and
“peri”, around. The harmony of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is that of a joyous dance
circle, each dancer an individual, but each contributing to the vigour and symmetry of
the celebration. Perichoresis is the model for Christian Unity; we are meant, in our
glad acceptance of each other in the Church, to dance together in complete harmony.‟
Connop Thirlwall – 19 th Century:
„On the eve it may be of a harder struggle than has ever yet tried our strength, common
prudence enjoins us to gather and unite all our forces. At such a time the first of duties
is to seek peace at home, and to strive by all allowable means to ensure and maintain
it: to draw as tight as possible the bands of Christian fellowship; to deal the largest
measure of charity consistent with a regard to the truth; to avoid, as far as we can,
questions which tend to engender strife, or to provoke bitterness; to put the most
indulgent construction on all that seems ambiguous in the words or acts of our
brethren; to waive minute and merely speculative differences, and to take our stand on
the broad ground of our common faith.‟
Cardinal Basil Hume – 20 th Century:
„There can be no doubt that a major obstacle to the effectiveness and well-being of the
pilgrim people of God is disunity in its ranks. Throughout this century it has become
clear that, moved by the Spirit of God, Christians have experienced increasing
frustration and impatience with divisions among themselves. Non-believers, too, readily
take refuge in criticism of Christian disharmony. It is only by abandoning ourselves
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