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.)