Denominations vs. Christian Unity

As followers of Christ, we believe that we are supposed to be sharing the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus, with the world and advancing the Kingdom of God on the earth. We pull this straight from the words of Jesus in Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 – 20.

“And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Jesus’ final words were telling us to go out and preach the Gospel and lead people to Him. This is known as the Great Commission. Now, fast-forward over 2,000 years later and how are we doing on this mission? I mean, it’s not that we just aren’t doing anything about it. In fact, there are faithful Christians all over the world who are right now sharing the Gospel where they are at, it’s just that there is also a lot of push-back. Some of the critiques that we get are pretty easily dismissed, some are a little more challenging, but there is one that we want to talk about this month because it is not only a worldly critique of our message, but one that Jesus spoke directly about and that historically we haven’t done a great job at handling.

John 13:34-35 – “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

On the night before Jesus was crucified, He told His disciples – actually, no! He commanded His disciples to love one another. He also told them that this would be a marker to let people know that they were His followers. Christianity is a faith which is built on relationship – our relationship with God, our relationship with His Church and our relationship to the rest of the world. However, one of the most frequent criticisms against the Christian message points directly to that second point of relationship as evidence that what we don’t really believe what we’re saying. They’ll ask, “If Christianity is true, then why are there so many denominations?” or “So, which denomination of Christianity is the right one and how do you know yours is it?” It would be easy enough to wave these challenges away or ignore them altogether except for the fact that how we’ve divided ourselves, even to the point of fighting and killing each other over the centuries, which is in direct conflict with Jesus’ command. Because of this, it is necessary that we do evaluate both individually and collectively just why we are so divided, when and where these divisions started and if those reasons are legitimate enough to remain separated.

While there are estimated to be over 40,000 different Christian denominations in the world today, they can mostly all be boiled down into 6 primary branches – Catholicism, Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, Oriental Orthodoxy, and Assyrians. The Assyrian Church was the first of these main branches to split after the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD. This council was primarily convened to determine to Churches position on the doctrine of Nestorianism. Nestorius was the archbishop of Constantinople who taught that Christ’s two natures – the human and the divine – were completely separate, essentially that He was two distinct beings in one body. This goes against the Biblical teaching that Jesus is and was eternally God, but at the incarnation took on flesh and became a man. What may sound like a semantic disagreement was actually enough to spur the first large split of one of the main branches in Church History. The continuing confusion about the nature of Christ would soon lead to the Council of Chalcedon in 451 where it was affirmed the Christ was one person, two natures – being both fully God and fully man. Churches who rejected this position broke off to form what are now known as the Oriental Orthodox churches. Then, in the 11th century, the great schism occurred when the Eastern Orthodox churches broke off from the Roman Catholic church. The commonly cited cause, again, seems to come down to a semantic argument, deciphering whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father or the Father and the Son. While this was the tipping point for the split, there were a number of other issues leading up to this point ranging from language barriers, to the ability to study the scriptures, to the supremacy of the pope in Rome. Those same issues would come up again in the 16th Century during the Protestant Reformation. During this time, the Anglican church was formed as well, when King Henry VII pushed the church of England to come out of the headship of Rome, primarily so that he could divorce his wife after the pope had denied him. It is from these seven branches that most of our modern denominations stem from, and as different as they are from one another, each of these 7 branches is historically rooted in the one Church established by Christ and founded by the disciples. It’s a messy family tree, for sure, but that is an extremely broad brush view of the last 2,000 years of Church history. So, we know what, when and why but the really important question is, “were these church splits Biblically justified?”

Now, that is a really big question. We know that we are commanded to love one another, but love also comes with correction. “For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son He receives.” - Hebrews 12: 6. Right doctrine – what we believe about God, His Word and what it means for us – is important. Even in the first century Church, Paul was warning the Galatians about false teaching and to reject it and its teachers, going as far as disfellowshipping them from the Church if they would not repent. This is a big deal, but does every different idea or belief about God and the Bible need to be exactly the same or else we could be kicked out? This is where the Christian understanding of primary, secondary and tertiary doctrines comes into play, and that is where we are going to pick up the conversation next week!