One line in the early Christian statement of faith, the Nicene Creed (AD 325), caused an avalanche of ecclesiological (study of Church) concerns within my evangelical stronghold. The earliest Christians professed: “I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” These four marks of the Church were identified as essential points in defining the true Church that Christ established. As an evangelical Christian, I faithfully acknowledged the words of the Nicene Creed (even reciting it word-for-word at special occasions), but living the implications of their meaning was a bit more disturbing!
“Can I make the same claim about my Baptist church?”
Take, for example, the first of the marks, “one.” The Church that Jesus established was to be one. How could I sincerely say that my Baptist church, or in fact any Protestant Church, was “one”? In Protestantism there is not one, but literally thousands of different denominations each claiming divine truth. In fact, there are over 30,000 different Protestant denominations, including “non-denominational” denominations! How could I harmonize these vast divisions in Protestantism with the call to be one Church?
Did evil overcome the Church?
In addition, what was I to make of the historical fact, that before the Protestant Reformation, there were no Protestant “denominations”? In the Bible, denominations are completely foreign to the first Christians! It seemed suspect that Jesus would allow His Church to proceed in error for 1,500 years before restoring it — especially since He promised, in Matthew 16:18, that the “gates of Hell” would never overcome it!
The First Mark of the Original Church:
The Church Is One
Jesus established one Church. He is our one Shepherd and we are His one flock. Jesus said that His people would hear His voice and follow Him.
I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice and there will be one flock, one shepherd (John 10:16).
Jesus specifically prayed for the unity of all Christians. In John’s Gospel, when praying for the disciples and their mission, Jesus prayed that they would be one. The weight given to His desire for unity is compared to none other than the Holy Trinity, Who is one God!
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me (John 17:20-21).
Scripture tells us that there is one Bride of Christ, the Church. Paul compares the Church to the special relationship a husband has with his wife. The Biblical covenant of marriage is an intimate union reflective of His mystical unification with the one Church He established.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless (Ephesians 5:25-27).
The Bible only knows of one Church, a radiant Church. How must God feel when we bring Him multiple churches, separated and broken, in what is supposed to be a divine union with His Bride, the Church?
Paul insists the Church agree, have no divisions, and be united. He follows his exhortation concerning dissention in the Church with a question that seems to almost pretentiously and prophetically challenge Protestant denominational divisions today.
I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. Is Christ divided…? (1 Corinthians 1:10, 13).
Paul says that Christians are one body, have one faith, and participate in one baptism. We are united with Christ and united with each other through Christ our Lord. Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread (1 Corinthians 10:17).
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:4-6).
Disunity – The Protestant Reformation
Since the Protestant Reformation in AD 1517, when the German Augustinian monk Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church, there have been thousands upon thousands of different Protestant denominations formed. The Catholic Church needed reform but the idea that Christ allowed His Church to decline into unrecoverable destruction for over 1,000 years is a theory not grounded in either Biblical or historical fact. Regardless, the impact of Martin Luther’s Reformation agenda unleashed a devastating blow to the unity of the Christian Church that continues to divide and split today.
Seeing Cracks in the Foundation of Protestantism
As my studies went on, important historical and theological questions arising from the time of the Reformation became uncomfortable and unanswerable. For example, did the Church founded by Christ in AD 33 cease to exist until Martin Luther was born; the same Church that Christ promised hell would never prevail against? To believe this seems to bring our Lord’s promise into question. Was the Church left without the Holy Spirit for over 1,400 years, despite Jesus promising to send the Holy Spirit to guide and protect it? (John 14:26 and 16:13, Acts of the Apostles 15:27-28). Does it make sense that every time a Protestant becomes disheartened he should leave his current church and start a new church or denomination that he feels “called” to start?
The visible fruits of division created since the Protestant Reformation produces an extremely frail position for the sincere Protestant studying Christian history. Protestant denominations ultimately find their origins in man:
Martin Luther (Lutheran church)
King Henry VIII (Church of England)
John Knox (Presbyterian church)
John Smyth (Baptist church)
John Wesley (Methodist church)
Thomas Campbell (Disciples of Christ church)
Chuck Smith (Calvary Chapel)
Bill Hybels (Willow Creek movement)
George Fox (Quakers)
Phineas Bresee (Church of the Nazarene)
Charles Harrison Mason (Church of God in Christ)
Charles Parham (Assemblies of God)
Aimee McPherson (Foursquare Gospel)
Kenn Gullicksen (Vineyard church)
Loren Cunningham (Youth With A Mission)
Bill Bright (Campus Crusade for Christ)
and so on.
What man can be named as founder for the apostolic Christian Church? The implication, for me, was eye-opening!
One historical fact is certain: all Protestant churches, despite their individualized reasons, broke off from the apostolic Church with the poignant consequences of creating division and denominational chaos throughout Christianity. Jesus established one Church. The Bible only knows of one Body of Christ, not many! The divisions in the Church, created since the Protestant Reformation, are clearly not what God intended for His Bride, the Church.
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