The online scriptorium of author and pastor Matthew Burden
Reflections on the Christian Life
Saturday, October 26, 2024
The Evangeliad (30:4-5)
Saturday, October 19, 2024
Is There Only One True Church? (Part 1)
I recently had a discussion with my sister—a devout Roman Catholic, of the very best kind—about how one could plausibly assess the contention made by her church to be the one true church and the exclusive, fully legitimate heir of Christianity’s apostolic foundations (a title to which, contrary to the Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches also lay claim). I was, as one might imagine, skeptical of such claims, though I love Catholicism and Orthodoxy for their rich traditions of piety and their steadfast adherence to the core doctrines of the patristic age. But unlike some Protestant skeptics, who are content to brush off the exclusivist claims of apostolic churches as mere hubris, I desperately want to know the truth of the matter: Which church, if any, is closest to what Jesus intended? Is there a “one true church” among the proliferation of Christian denominations, and if so, how might one discern it?
Terminology
It might be useful to start with a couple notes on terminology. I’m using the term “denomination” to designate each Christian group. Some communions don’t think of themselves as denominations, either because they see themselves as the one true church, rather than one among many (à la Catholics and Eastern Orthodox), or because they prefer to think of themselves as a “movement” (like some recent Protestant arrivals, such as Calvary Chapel). Unfortunately for their preferences, “denomination” is a word that entirely fits the bill, so it’s the one I’m going to use. It simply means “a group with a name,” as they all quite obviously are.
I’m also going to use the term “apostolic” in this piece, which refers to denominations that can trace their lineage and governance back in a direct line to churches founded by the apostolic generation of the first century. For the purposes of this piece, I will refer to denominations which feature an undeviated line (that is, being always in communion with the apostolic foundation from which their line was originally traced) as “apostolic churches.” These would include the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox churches, and the Oriental Orthodox churches. These are distinguished from what I’m calling “apostolic communions,” which maintain an unbroken line of descent and governance from apostolic foundations (usually mediated through ecclesiastical structures like the office of bishop), but deviated by separations in communion from their original apostolic source. Major examples of this would be the Church of the East (formerly called Nestorian), the Old Catholic churches, and the Anglican Communion, all of which preserved the lineage of traditional ecclesiastic orders even during their breaks with the apostolic sees from which they came, and so can trace the succession of their ordinations in a direct line back to the apostles.
One True Church?
Two broad types of claims are usually made. When an apostolic church claims a position as the one true church that Jesus founded, it is usually appealing to its history of direct descent from the apostles. Every other church, in their view, branched off from the one true church either by abandoning a crucial element of Christian doctrine or by choosing to break communion with the apostolic foundation over some other matter. Ironically, all of the apostolic churches generally hold this view with regard to themselves: namely, that they are the ones who stayed connected to the apostolic foundation, and everyone else chose to break off at some point. They hold that communion could be reestablished, but only if everyone else gave up major parts of their theological distinctives in order to align with the practices of the "original" group. You can imagine the apostolic church as a giant iceberg which has, over time, split into several smaller icebergs, and all the penguins on each iceberg believe that theirs is the original piece, from which all the others broke off.
The other type of claim comes from a small set of Protestant churches which regard their own doctrine and practice as representing the one true church. In this view, most of Christian history was an exercise in going astray, starting immediately after the apostolic age, and it was only when their own branch’s founder rediscovered the core of true doctrine that authentic Christianity re-emerged. Such churches base their claim primarily on the principle of biblical adherence, arguing that their own practice best matches that laid out in the New Testament. While this now tends to be something of a fringe position in Protestantism, a fairly broad swath of Protestant churches had their beginnings in a belief like this. My Baptist communion would not usually claim to be the only true church nowadays, but one doesn’t need to read that far back in Baptist history to find such a claim being made.
It might be tempting, on looking at the churches making these claims, to dismiss them with a wave of the hand. It seems a little silly, after all, that all the churches in each group are making the exact same claim about themselves, despite the many manifest differences between them. They can’t all be right, and thus many observers are content to shrug the matter off.
But if there is one true church--or even just a church that most closely accords to God's intention--then I would very much like to know. It seems rather important that if there is one, then I should try to be a part of it. So I’m working through how one might assess the rival claims of all these different churches. Is there a communion of Christians that constitute the one true church in the world today? Or, on the other hand, is it the case that the one true church is simply the mystical Body of Christ, composed of all faithfully believing Christians, regardless of which visible communion they belong to? Either way, it seems an important question to try to get right.
Assessing the Evidence: Historical, Biblical, Experiential
Three main types of arguments are used to back up the claim that one’s own church is the right one:
1.) Historical arguments: “We’re directly descended from the original church and never separated from it, so that must mean we’re the true church.”
2.) Biblical arguments: “Our theological distinctives offer the clearest presentation of New Testament doctrine and practice of any church body, so that must mean we’re the true church.”
3.) Experiential: “The Holy Spirit works in our midst in such-and-such a way, and we experience this or that kind of miracle, clearly showing that God’s supernatural stamp of approval is on us.”
Each of these arguments faces challenges: for the historical and experiential arguments, it’s commonly the plurality of denominations that causes the most difficulty for making an exclusivist case, since there are usually other groups that can boast similar historical records and miracle stories. For the biblical argument, it’s the ambiguity of certain aspects of biblical interpretation that causes the most difficulty—it’s hard to make the case that your interpretation on a particular point is clearly the right one when, again, there are other denominations making equally impassioned and theologically plausible arguments for their own view of the same passages.
(To be continued…Next time we’ll examine each of the three
types of claims using the case study of our quirky big sister in the faith, the
Roman Catholic Church.)
Saturday, October 12, 2024
The Evangeliad (30:1-3)
Tuesday, October 08, 2024
Changes to My Blog
After several years of posting on a daily (or near-daily) basis, I'm going to scale back my presence on this blog, moving to a weekly pattern. The quotes, photos, and prayers will be going away, at least for a little while (reasons for this shift can be found below). Nevertheless, a few things will remain the same:
Thursday, September 26, 2024
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
The Evangeliad (29:43-38)
But they were silent, had nothing to say.
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Photo of the Week
Monday, September 23, 2024
Quote of the Week
"If you want to know who God is, look at Jesus. If you want to know what it means to be human, look at Jesus. If you want to know what love is, look at Jesus. If you want to know what grief is, look at Jesus. And go on looking until you’re not just a spectator, but you’re actually part of the drama which has him as the central character."
Thursday, September 12, 2024
Sermon
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Photo of the Week
Monday, September 09, 2024
Quote of the Week
"The essence of Christ’s peace lies in his perfect knowledge of the Father. So it is with us: if we know the Eternal Truth all the torments of this life will be confined, as it were, to the periphery of our being, while the light of life proceeding from the Father will reign within us."
Thursday, September 05, 2024
Reflections on My English Pilgrimage, Part 3
This will be the last of my reflections on my English pilgrimage; next week the blog will resume its normal schedule of posts. While the previous reflections have centered on history and theology, this one is more personal, albeit with connections to the life of the church that I hope will prove edifying to my readers.
Friday, August 30, 2024
Reflections on My English Pilgrimage, Part 2
The second set of reflections I've been ruminating on have to do with the Eucharist (that is, communion). If I had to look back and say which experiences most captivated me and produced the most profound spiritual effects in my interior life during the trip, they were all centered on the Eucharist. While I attended nearly as many church services as it is possible to attend while in England (many churches, following a pattern set down in the English Reformation, hold twice-daily prayer services and offer communion several times a week), three such experiences stood out to me: a communion service in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral at the end of my walking journey across Kent, another at the high altar of Lichfield Cathedral on the Feast of the Transfiguration, and a third in the nave of Southwark Cathedral on my final day in England. In each case, the moments of consecration and reception in the communion liturgy struck me with raw and unexpected emotional power, in a way that has stuck with me over the succeeding weeks.
Thursday, August 22, 2024
Reflections on My English Pilgrimage, Part 1
Part of the ruins of St. Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury |
In thinking over my English pilgrimage, I have three sets of reflections that have been rattling around in my brain, and I'll share them here in a series of posts, this week and next. First, about Christianity and the West; second, about the Eucharist; and third, about my own relationship to the church. So for this post, I'm looking back at the story of Christianity's re-emergence in Britain in the early medieval period, and what a burst of light in the so-called "Dark Ages" can tell us about our own day.
As a scholar of church history, and with a particular focus on the history of missions in early Christianity, I wanted to explore sites associated with the re-evangelization of Britain in the seventh century. Re-evangelization, you say? Well, yes. Britain had already received the gospel before that date, back when the native Britons were under the sway of the Roman Empire, and several of the sites I visited attested to that ancient heritage. There was St. Alban's Cathedral, marking the spot where--according to tradition--the first Christian martyr in England was killed, sometime in the late third or early fourth century. And there was St. Pancras Old Church in London, marking an old Roman encampment where, some believe, the first Christian church in Britain was erected after Constantine's edict of toleration in 313 AD. This Roman Christianity spread through the local population, such that the Britons largely became a Christian people over the succeeding years.
But paganism was about to mount a swift comeback in Britain, and it came in the form of a settler-invasion: the Angles and Saxons, Germanic stock from across the North Sea, settling first in Kent and East Anglia and gradually sweeping across the island. By the time the late sixth century rolled around, the Britons had been pushed back into Wales, and all of what is now England was once again pagan, bereft of the gospel.
St. Chad, Lichfield Cathedral |
- Canterbury Cathedral, built on a site sacred to the memory of the original Roman missionary to the Anglo-Saxons, Augustine of Canterbury, who arrived there in 597 AD;
- Rochester Cathedral, marking the mission of Augustine's friend Justus, who planted the faith there just a few years later; and which cathedral is also the resting place of Paulinus, yet another member of the Roman mission team, whose ministry of evangelization in the early seventh century took him all the way northward, into York and Northumbria;
- St. Paul's Cathedral, which likely goes all the way back to the ministry of Mellitus, a fourth member of that same Roman mission team, consecrated by Augustine to plant a church in London;
- Christ Church Cathedral, marking a Christian abbey founded in the latter half of the seventh century by the Anglo-Saxon princess Frideswide;
- Ely Cathedral, also founded as an abbey in 672 by the Anglo-Saxon princess Etheldreda;
- Lichfield Cathedral, marking the seventh-century ministry of Chad, who had pressed the Celtic Christian evangelization of England deep into the last remaining pagan territory, adding to the legacy of a whole generation of Celtic missionaries like Cuthbert, Aidan, and Mungo.
Memorial to St. Paulinus, Rochester Cathedral |
We too live in an age where it looks like the former place of Christianity in our society is vanishing before our eyes. Like the earliest British Christians, we've seen tides of unfaith roll into our civilization with all the alarming power and swiftness of an invasion. Not only atheism, but paganism itself is making a startling return, and one gets the sense in visiting some of these old churches that one is really just walking through the ruins of a bygone age. The Christian world has fallen, and a new Dark Ages opens before us. Many readers will feel this sensibility about the course things are taking in America, but it is far more visible in western Europe, where the old churches built to call all the people to worship largely stand empty, save for a handful. Like Britain in the sixth century, it looks like Christianity's time has come and gone, and a pagan and disinterested populace looks everywhere for solace except to the old faith.
Marker in Ely Cathedral |
Saturday, August 17, 2024
A London Day before Heading Home
The final part of my trip was a little stopover in the London area before my flight home to Maine (where I'm now trying to recover from jet lag). As with much of the trip, I wanted to take the opportunity to see a few important church history sites, so I spent the day checking off a few more cathedrals (St Albans, Southwark, and St Paul's) and zipping around the Tube to see churches and memorials associated with some of my post-Reformation heroes.
Stayed at the Highbury Centre, the same place my friends and I had stayed during a college semester in London some 20+ years ago |
At the Isaac Watts memorial in Abney Park |
John Wesley's memorial and historic chapel |
John Bunyan's memorial in Bunhill Fields |
St. Mary Woolnoth, John Newton's church |
The old pub on Fleet Street that G. K. Chesterton frequented |
Southwark Cathedral, where Shakespeare was a parishioner |
The Lancelot Andrewes memorial in Southwark Cathedral |
Metropolitan Tabernacle, Charles Spurgeon's old church |
Holy Trinity Church in Clapham, the church that William Wilberforce and his friends attended in London |
The altar in St. Paul's Cathedral, where (in a previous edifice) John Donne had served as rector |
Monday, August 12, 2024
Norwich and the Eastern Cathedrals
After my conference in Oxford wrapped up, I took a couple days to head east, into East Anglia and Norfolk, which, like Kent, were early centers of the Anglo-Saxon reception of Christianity in the 7th century. I stopped at cathedrals in Peterborough, Ely, Bury St Edmunds, and Norwich, but the real goal for me was to reach a much smaller church, and one that came a little later in Christian history: St Julian's church, Norwich. This medieval church had been home to one of the great Christian writers of the Middle Ages, an anonymous woman now know only for the church in which she lived as an anchorite (a hermit-like monastic in permanent residence in a cell attached to a church): Julian of Norwich. Her book, Revelations of Divine Love, has long been among the books I've most highly treasured, with words that elucidate the love of God to me. So amid all the cathedrals and their splendor, I spent most of my time in the reconstructed Church of St Julian (there's a guesthouse nearby where I stayed), and was privileged to have church there Sunday morning. Next up, after a bit of birding here in the Norfolk area, it's back to London for a whirlwind look at some of the city's church history sites, and then a flight back home.
Peterborough Cathedral |
Norwich Cathedral |
St Edmundsbury Cathedral |
Ely Cathedral |
A rose growing outside the Lady Julian's cell |
Friday, August 09, 2024
This Week in Oxford, Part 2
Most of the week was spent at the patristics conference in Oxford. I presented my paper on Thursday--"The Advantage of Rusticity: Patrick's Dissent from Patristic Interpretations of Great Commission Texts (Confessio 40)"--and it seemed to be well-received. Here are a few more pictures from around the city. Next, it's off for a few days to see a site associated with one of my favorite medieval writers, Julian of Norwich.
The Radcliffe Camera (part of the Bodleian Library), an iconic Oxford landmark |
The Examination Schools, where most of the conference's sessions were held |
Paying my respects to C. S. Lewis at his grave in Headington Quarry, just outside Oxford |
The conference's opening session in Christ Church Cathedral |
Christ Church College and Cathedral (where John & Charles Wesley studied and were ordained) |
Thursday, August 08, 2024
This Week in Oxford, Part 1
Magdalene College Chapel |
On the cloistered quad of Magdalene College |
Pulpit from which Lewis preached his "Weight of Glory Sermon," at University Church (John Wesley also preached here) |
Martyrs Monument, commemorating the executions of great Reformers like Thomas Cranmer |
The pub where Lewis & Tolkien used to hang out |
Keble College Chapel |