How should Christians disagree?

At the outset of his invasion of Scotland in the summer of 1650, Oliver Cromwell remarked that theological disagreements (and surely he is thinking in part of the differences among the English and Scottish Puritans that had led them to war) are endemic to the life of the church in a world marred by sin.

Disagreements are a sad reality with which Christians have to contend. Nonetheless, Christians can control the way that they participate in such disputes.

Disagreeing over the cross

Jump forward now to the close of the next century and one such disagreement between Abraham Booth and Andrew Fuller – the two most important English Baptist theologians between 1770 and the late-19th century – about the vital matter of the atonement and its extent.

Their disagreement became an issue in the years immediately preceding Booth’s death in 1806. In fact, at one point, Fuller was alarmed to find that Booth was the origin of a rumour (totally without foundation) that Fuller was moving headlong into Arminianism. Fuller remonstrated with Booth about this, and this may have alleviated some of Booth’s concerns, but Booth’s fears were probably never fully quieted.

Booth had nothing to fear in this regard, as Fuller emphasised. But the way Fuller handled the matter is most instructive. He met with Booth and spoke to him in order to allay his fears. Moreover, he refused to go public about their differences while Booth was still alive.

‘I always revered his character’

After Booth’s death Fuller did publish two items that dealt with their disagreement. What is striking about the way he dealt with their differences – concerning one of the most profound subjects of the Christian faith – is that he did so with loving respect and reasonableness.

Shaping the way he disagreed with Booth was a question of Christian character, and something he regarded to be as important as what the two Baptists disagreed about. As he put it, two years after Booth died, in a note in The Evangelical Magazine: ‘I always revered his character, though, in some particulars, I thought differently from him.’

A better way

What I find particularly distressing about the present day is not that there are differences between Christians about important, albeit secondary or tertiary, issues. Regarding differences over worship and over eschatology, Fuller’s close friend, John Sutcliff of Olney, once stated (in the Preface to an edition of one of Jonathan Edwards’ works in which Edwards’ post-millennial vision largely figured) that every Christian has a right to think for himself and ought to have liberty to express his opinion.

What is distressing is the way that some Christians are treating those who disagree with them on matters not essential to the faith, casting aspersions on their integrity, calling them shameful names and so causing divisions. It is disgraceful.

Fuller’s example speaks a better way. Or, if Fuller will not be heard, hear James and Paul:

‘With the tongue we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in God’s likeness. … My brothers and sisters, these things should not be this way’ (James 3:9,10).

‘For since there is envy and strife among you, are you not worldly and behaving like mere humans?’ (1 Cor. 3:3).