More Doctrine, More Christ

Many in our day find the cause of all the dissension and division in the church in too much doctrine and in creeds that are too specific in their doctrinal declarations. They advocate that all these specific declarations of faith, by which each church erects a wall of separation around itself, be forgotten, erased, and eliminated; that the confessions be broadened and generalized; and that on the basis of such a broad declaration of general principles, the various denominations merge and thus realize the unity of the church. However, it should be evident that in this fashion an outward unity may indeed be effected, but only at the expense of the truth and at the cost of the church’s faith, which is the same as saying that it is a unity without the Christ of the Scriptures. The church is not interested in an outward unity that reveals itself in a mighty human institution…

The unity of the church is centered in Christ. If the church is to grow in this true unity, she must grow in Christ. She must not have less of Christ, but always more. And her Christ is in the Scriptures. Hence she must appropriate the Christ of Holy Writ, which means that she must instruct and be instructed in the truth. She must not seek union in the way of less, but in the way of more and richer doctrine. She must not only put aside the doctrines of men, to be sure, but also she must ever grow in the doctrine of Christ. Let the true church be ever so small in the world. Yet she dare not seek the realization of her unity in any other direction than that of growing in the knowledge of Christ her head, until "we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). Only they who strive to approach that stature are really working for the manifestation of the unity of the church, and whatsoever is more than this is of the evil one.

Herman Hoeksema
Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2
(Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2005), p. 243–244.