Is There Only One True Church? (Part 4)

(If you haven't read them yet, go back and read the first, second, and third installments of this series of essays.)

The third vein of argumentation which various denominations will lean upon to make their case as being the one true church is an experiential one. This is usually not the primary argument for any particular church; historical and biblical arguments often come first. But it’s not uncommon to hear appeals to the evident power of the Spirit of God in one’s communion—miraculous evidence that one would only expect to find in the true church of Jesus Christ.

And, truth be told, that is what you would expect to find. If the Gospels and Acts are to be believed, the presence of miraculous signs and wonders was one of the hallmarks of the life of the church, especially associated with the first proclamation of the gospel in a new area, thus demonstrating the supernatural power of God in their midst. If a church or communion is indeed the one true church, then that hallmark should still be visible, at least in some form. If it is not the one true church—if it is merely a delusion of heretics and schismatics—one would expect the Holy Spirit not to offer gospel-matching miracles in their midst.

As a student of church history and a lover of the church in all its forms, I have a long-running set of experiences across the spectrum of many different denominations. And here’s the peculiar thing: despite the very vocal claims of some communions to be the one true church, to the exclusion of others, what one actually finds is that miraculous experiences are associated with all churches grounded in the Bible and the core doctrines of the ancient faith. From Catholics to Eastern Orthodox to Copts to Baptists to Presbyterians to Pentecostals (and many more besides) we find that the mystery of the Spirit’s power working in the church, the narrative thread underlying the book of Acts, is still wending its way through the experiences of all sorts of Christians today.

But, one may ask, can this kind of self-reporting be trusted? We’re talking about miracle reports from people who believe in miracles, want miracles to happen, and are looking for them. Surely there’s a significant margin of error for confirmation bias! Well, yes, no doubt there’s a good deal of that. But there’s something quite striking about the Christian legacy of miracles nonetheless. This experiential element runs through the ages as a mark of Christianity, but does not appear nearly as frequently in other religious traditions—not even those traditions that emphasize miracle-stories in their founders’ lives and their holy texts. Miracles pop up all the time in Christianity in a way that is simply orders of magnitude beyond those of any other religious system, with the possible exception of shamanic religions and other faiths associated with direct contact with spiritual entities (and there Christians would have reason to expect miracles of a rather darker sort to indeed be present). A good argument on this point is made in Craig Keener’s magisterial study, Miracles, which looks at both the startling ubiquity and the reliability of Christian miracle reports, both ancient and modern.

Okay, the critic might say—but since we brought up the possibility of demonic “miracles” in shamanic religions, why can’t that be true of heretical Christian denominations as well? Maybe Satan would give such groups a few miracles in order to keep people away from the one true church. While this objection sounds persuasive at first, it really isn’t nearly as compelling on closer inspection. These other Christian denominations, which the critic spurns as heretical, in fact show significant evidence not only of dramatic signs-and-wonders-type miracles, but even more so of the kind of “ordinary” miracles that Satan would absolutely despise: lives transformed by the power of the gospel, addictions broken, marriages restored, lives bearing abundant evidence of the fruits of the Spirit, and glory given to Jesus Christ as Lord. That being the case, I don’t think it actually passes muster to say that Satan must be the one behind the flashier miracles.

On balance, if one were to judge from experiential evidence alone, it would appear that the Spirit is at work across the whole swath of faithful Christian denominations. Each tradition includes a very large set of supernatural experiences related to the inner life of the Christian, and it’s also common to find the grander supernatural occurrences of public miracles in each tradition as well. One of the curious features to me, though—and one that I don’t quite know what to make of—is that each tradition seems to receive the kind of miracles that they expect to receive. Bible-centered traditions like Baptists and Reformed churches see healings and deliverances in response to concerted prayer; Pentecostals see dramatic healings on command and ecstatic phenomena; Catholics see Eucharistic miracles and healings from relics; Eastern Orthodox see myrrh-flowing icons. It’s interesting, isn’t it? The miraculous power of the Spirit appears to respond to those places where each particular Christian group is looking for his presence.

In any case, the experiential argument for there being only one true church has never really held up for me. Quite the contrary, it points in the opposite direction—that the Holy Spirit seems to regard the whole vast diversity of Christendom as the true church. If I were to try to convert based on the evidence of God’s supernatural power that I have actually seen at work in the church, I would have to convert to a Pentecostal church, the Roman Catholic Church, and an Eastern Orthodox church—all while also remaining Baptist! It seems to me, based on this observation and the ambiguity of the historical and biblical arguments, that it’s fairer to regard the whole Christian community as the church of Jesus Christ—all those who truly hold to the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints, as laid out in the scriptures.

Now, this still isn’t an open-and-shut case. Is it still possible that one of the biblical arguments is true, in exclusion of all other interpretations, and that one of the historical arguments is true, despite the paucity of evidence, and that some as-yet-unknown factor could explain the broad presence of miracles? Sure. But with an absence of evidence, it seems a little foolhardy to start jumping denominations before any clear answers appear. If there is only one true church, my prayer is (and always has been) that God would make it known to me, and if in his grace he grants that request, then I will drop everything and race to join the one true church. In the meantime, I’m content to grow where God has planted me.