Today’s saint, a man well named “Prudentius,” had his hands full in the latter part of the 9th century. He found himself a respected church leader who was expected to settle doctrinal squabbles among hair-splitters. For example, one heresy held forth that Jesus was both a divine person and a human person, instead of Jesus’ being a unitary person who was both fully human and fully divine. (Say what?!)

Here’s what Prudentius discovered–the people on both sides of this and many other similarly semantic-seeming issues actually agreed with one another more than they disagreed. It’s like what I heard on the “Matt & Ramona” radio show (on Charlotte’s 107.9, “The Link”) the other afternoon–all humans are 99.99% the same genetically as one another (heck, we’re even 90% the same as cats, apparently). The differences between one human and another are infinitesimal on the cellular level. Yet we are destroying this nation, the environment, and the world through placing all our attention on that wee tiny part where we are in disagreement, magnifying it beyond recognition, and digging in our heels over whatever it is that we think we disagree about.

Prudentius recognized that people in Camp A (the Jesus being two persons–which, by the way was ruled a heresy) and the people in Camp B (the Jesus being one person yet with two natures–ruled as orthodoxy) actually agreed that Jesus was, for lack of a better term, special and was special in a way that commands our attention. While it is quite true that the two positions do have ramifications if carried out to their (il)logical conclusions (for example, if Jesus was two persons in one body, then essentially it was a spiritual possession by which the Holy Ghost entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth, much like demons entered various persons discussed in Scripture), Prudentius had the perspicacity to recognize that no one was talking about spiritual possession (of good or evil) but that both sides were trying to find the right words to express their own apprehension of the Jesus they worshipped. Everyone agreed that Jesus was human and that Jesus was specially connected to the Divine.

Butler describes the situation Prudentius had to wade through in this way: “When parties are once stirred up in disputes, it is not an easy matter to dispel the mist, which prejudices and heat raise before their eyes.” Without taking on the position that “all cats are gray at night” (i.e., that one statement is just as valid as the next), Prudentius regarded this in-fighting not as a  time to use his power to crush an enemy viewpoint (and further splinter the good will of churchfolk) but as an opportunity to talk and to teach.

We have, today, a lot of this disputational mist that is hard to dispel. Prejudices, assumptions about others, heat and passion, strong feelings that people assert without ever taking time to bear witness to the other’s strong feelings and values–these are all clouding our vision. It’s actually not a bad idea to recognize that we agree about far more than we disagree, and that even in our disagreements we might well be in agreement far more than we realize!

How will we ever know if we don’t start talking and listening, and vice-versa? Thanks, Prudentius!