This essay is a follow-up to my previous series on the question of whether there is only "one true church" from among the Christian denominations (and if you haven't gone back and read it, I'd encourage you to do so). The apparent conclusion of that series answered the question in the negative: The claims of various denominations to be the "one true church," to the exclusion of all others, do not seem to stand up to the light of careful scrutiny with regard to their historical, biblical, or experiential arguments. Now, there's still some openness to that conclusion--it might the case, for instance, that the issue isn't a simple black-and-white question, and that there might be one church, above all others, that possesses the fullness of God's grace, whereas other churches only cling to a partial inheritance of that blessing. While that possibility remains, I've yet to see any significant evidence toward that end, and so I maintain my skepticism for now.
However, in this essay I'd like to flip it around and make the case that the answer to the central question--Is there only one true church?--should actually be Yes. There is only one church, and it is the Body of Christ, composed of all faithful believers everywhere. And further, our visible divisions ought not to be an obstacle to our fundamental unity. We are mystically united in Christ, through the Holy Spirit, and we have significant ways of giving practical evidence of that unity here and now.
The argument for the metaphysical unity of all Christians in the mystical Body of Christ is not difficult to understand, and it has been the fundamental conception of the church in some denominations (like Anglicanism) for centuries. It simply follows the Apostle Paul's argument in Eph. 4:4-6:
"There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."Essentially, since the Holy Spirit is undivided, then if he indwells one's church, the true believers in that congregation are part of the undivided church. Since there is only one Christ, there is only one Body of Christ; and if we are members of it, then we are part of the one true church. And since the Holy Spirit gives evidence of being present and active across the whole swath of orthodox Christian denominations (as argued in the closing section of my previous essays), all such churches should be regarded as part of the one true church. We're basically just doing the same thing that Peter did when he recognized the Spirit's work in Cornelius's family--since God has accepted them, how can we maintain a division that keeps them apart from us?
A critic from one of the ancient apostolic churches might argue at this point: "Isn't the visible unity of the church important, though? The early church was single and undivided, a unity held together both by shared faith and a network of offices established by the apostles, held in complete communion with one another." This appeal to history does say something valuable, but it's not as robust an argument as the critic assumes. There exists a counterexample that calls the whole premise of the objection into question. You see, we actually have evidence of a part of the ancient church, recognized as being authentically Christian, but which appears to have maintained an entirely separate life from the "Great Church" tradition (the tradition that eventually became the Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches). That is to say: we have evidence of a separate "denomination" existing in early Christianity. This was the Nazarene sect (not the modern Church of the Nazarene), essentially a Messianic-Jewish tradition which persisted across the first four centuries of Christian life. References to it are sparse because the group appears to have been small, but recent scholarship has revealed that the early church fathers regarded it as separate, but not heretical. It was a direct outgrowth of the early Jewish followers of Jesus, and while it may have been the same community from which the Ebionite heresy eventually emerged, a significant orthodox remnant of that community faithfully maintained a truly Christian set of doctrines. It had a robust Jewish-Christian theology, entirely acceptable to the wider church, yet it did not have any known aspects of visible communion with the Great Church tradition beyond their shared doctrine. Differences in language and culture, together with their existence in geographically isolated areas on the margins, appear to have kept them effectively separate. So, yes, there is historical evidence of a separate-but-equally-the-true-church denomination, existing from the earliest days of the faith, until they were gradually absorbed back into the larger structure after the public Christianization of society in the fourth century, probably reintegrated as part of the culturally-similar Syriac churches.
Even aside from the Nazarenes, you could argue that a form of denominationalism has always been a part of Christianity from the very start, when linguistic and cultural divisions were causing factions in the Jerusalem church. There are evident differences between the Hellenistic form of Christianity and the Jewish form as early as Acts 6, and these are repeated in Acts 15, Acts 21, and in the curious disjunctions between Paul's letters and that of James. There is no overt hostility or excommunication of one another, but there is clearly a development of different ways of expressing and practicing the Christian faith. Beyond the New Testament period, these gaps persist. One can see major divisions in practice between Greek-speaking and Syriac/Aramaic church traditions; other similar fractures in culture accrue in regions which spoke still different languages: Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Georgian, Latin, and so on. These differences weren't just issues of style, either: they affected major questions of doctrinal practice. The Syriac liturgy of Addai and Mari, for example--recognized even by the Roman Catholic Church as an accepted and authentic form of ancient Christian worship--has no words of institution in its Eucharistic prayer, which in any other context is considered an indispensable element of Catholic practice. The culturally-different churches of early Christianity quickly developed their own ways of worshiping, which, while recognizably Christian, differed in some non-trivial respects from the way Christians worshiped elsewhere. All that to say, the argument that denominations did not exist in early Christianity is a little too much of a blanket statement to match the truth of the matter. The roots of denominational division were often clearly visible long before any official schisms took place.
OK, one might say--even if it's true that we Christians all share some kind of metaphysical unity by our incorporation in the mystical Body of Christ, isn't our lack of visible unity still a tragic thing? Well, yes and no. Certainly, the hatreds and persecutions that have arisen over division in the Body of Christ are tragic. But I'd like to argue that if we put aside the polemics for a moment, to pause and to "hear what the Spirit says to the churches," we'll begin to see with fresh eyes the great harvest of the fruit of God's work among our sister denominations and the beauty of our diversity. I also want to suggest that we have ways of demonstrating visible unity close at hand, for anyone willing to use them. Three in particular suggest themselves to me: recognizing Eucharistic unity, credal unity, and the unity of brotherly love.
First, Eucharistic unity. This one may come as a bit of a surprise, since it's usually listed as one of the main things that divide Christians. We squabble about our different beliefs regarding what is really happening in the elements of communion. Are they actually transforming into the flesh and blood of Jesus? Or is Jesus somehow spiritually present (but not physically) in the bread and wine? Or are they a purely symbolic memorial of his sacrifice? This was one of the great fracture-points of the Western Christian tradition, and it remains a sore point to this day.
It's not an unimportant question. Indeed, in many ways it stands at the absolute center of our corporate Christian life. But as I've reflected on the question over the course of my life, I've gradually come to the conclusion that we're all coming at it backwards. What we believe about the Eucharist will certainly frame our devotion around its practice, but is our belief about what happens actually the operative agent of what occurs? We all have faith in God's miraculous power at work in his church, and we practice the Eucharist as scripture and our traditions have handed it down to us. It seems to me that under those conditions, it will be what God intends it to be. If God's intention was for it to be a symbol of Christ's sacrifice, then that is what it actually is, even in Catholic churches that like to imagine there's a metaphysical transformation going on. Conversely, if God intends for it to be the literal presence of the flesh and blood of Christ, why wouldn't that actually be what happens, even in a Baptist church, seeing as they are instituting the service of communion exactly as Jesus and the apostle Paul commanded it to be done? Granted, there's no prayer of epiclesis in the New Testament, and so that part is absent from the Baptist rite, but as we've seen, even the omission of the actual words of institution in some ancient liturgies is not an insurmountable hurdle. Might it not be the case, if transubstantiation were God's intent, that a faithfully orthodox church, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, would receive the efficacious change of the elements as a result of their usage--being exactly faithful to the New Testament prescription--whether they were aware of that change or not? I'll admit that I don't know for sure what is happening behind the scenes in communion, and that the early traditions are generally more sacramental than the normal Baptist conception, but I don't think the theological logic of any of that means that God's gifts are not actually present in the precise way he intended, even in a Baptist church like mine. There's at least an off chance that we'll get to heaven and find out that our communion has been the true flesh and blood of Christ the whole time (or, on the other hand, that the Catholics will find out that it has been a symbolic memorial the whole time).
In short, I think the differences in our perceptions of communion do not actually add up to a difference in our actual reception of communion, and so our mutual participation in the highest rite of the faith ought to be a sign of our unity, accomplishing in each one of us everything that God intends we should receive from the rite. Indeed, this idea of the Eucharist as a sign of Christian unity is at the center of the first post-apostolic interpretation of the rite. In the ancient Christian text known as the Didache ("The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," and repeated in the later Apostolic Constitutions), there's a very early Eucharist liturgy which, interestingly, makes no claims about any of the things that later generations obsess over, like symbolism-vs-transubstantiation in regard to the body and blood. It includes neither the biblical words of institution nor a prayer of epiclesis. Instead, this is what it says (and it's worth considering it in full):
Based on this tradition--likely the earliest post-apostolic Eucharist liturgy available to us--the first Christians were not much concerned with the question of whether the bread and cup actually became the body and blood of Christ (and if it was a point of doctrine, it was apparently not one requiring an emphasis in the ritual itself). If it leans in any direction on that question, it appears to be more toward a low-church conception than a high-church one, but it's left largely undefined--the closest we get is a description of the elements as "spiritual food and drink," which could be taken either as symbolic or sacramental language. What does jump out clearly from the text, though, is an emphasis on communion as an expression of the church's unity. The beautiful imagery of the individual grains from fields on the hillsides all coming together to form one loaf is presented as the great hope for Christian unity and the ultimate redemption of the church. It would be well to reacquire this early point of emphasis in communion. Just like disparate grains scattered across the hills, the various denominations of Christianity are separated by wide gulfs of culture, language, and differences in style. And yet, by the miraculous work of God's Holy Spirit, we are made one in Christ, just like the grains coming together to form one loaf. I believe that our common practice of the Eucharist is, in fact, one of the very things that binds us together, far more so than we have ever perceived. Christ's command to take, eat, and drink--a command given to "all of you"--has taken us, this wayward rabble of wildly different disciples--and made us one communion in his Body.
If Eucharistic unity is the first form of practical unity which lies open for us to recognize, another one is creedal unity. Just as in the first great church age, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed can be the irenicon it was always meant to be. It remains, to this day, the standard summary of Christian dogma on Trinitarian doctrine and Christology, agreed upon by all. You might ask, "Well, what about non-creedal types (like you Baptists), who insist that Scripture alone is the only rule of faith?" It's a fair question, but it misunderstands the doctrinal position of the non-creedal churches. Most of these, in fact, have come around to a recognition that creeds are necessary tools, even if we don't call them that (we tend to call them "Statements of Faith"), and if you apply for a job at a non-creedal evangelical ministry, you might be surprised to find that you are being asked to assent to a Statement of Faith (that is, to a creed). I've lived my whole life in the evangelical world, and never ran into anyone who disagreed with any single line in the classic Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. If they did, they wouldn't be an evangelical anymore, nor really even a Christian. The creed is a summary of core biblical doctrine, and so us Bible-only types recognize the biblical truth within it and generally have no trouble agreeing with it.
The creed also remains a source of unity for the apostolic churches and communions, despite their differences. Major creedal ruptures tended to happen after the fourth century (in which the creed was produced), so it still stands as a representative of the more-or-less "undivided" age of Christianity. Even later disputes that focus on the actual text of the creed, like the Catholic/Orthodox feud over the Filioque, are potentially easily overcome once we explain exactly what we mean by the lines we confess (for example, the Orthodox can say that they are referring to the manner of the Spirit's eternal procession from the Father; the Catholics can say they are referring to the historical procession of the Spirit in the divine economy as it played out in the Gospels and Acts). Such disagreements really do, it turns out, fall under the much-abused category of mere semantics, despite each side's continued declamations against the opposing one.
My suggestions, then, are to frame our unity on these two aspects that really do matter to us all: the rite that stands at the center of our worship, and the statement of faith that serves as the classic exposition of our doctrine. That's not to say that we have to start doing these things together, as the ecumenical movement has so often tried to do (with relatively little effect), but simply that we can recognize our unity in these things. To be a member of the one true church is to receive God's purpose for us in the rite of the Eucharist and to confess together the biblical truths found in the creed. A Nicene church that practices the Eucharist by (at the very least) an obedience to the form as mandated in the New Testament should, in my opinion, be regarded as truly the church of Jesus Christ. This doesn't require a formal, institutional union, but a recognition of mutual brotherhood in the communion of the faith. My third practical suggestion follows on this: to seek a unity of love with one another, foregoing the fever dream of full institutional unity for something that is, quite probably, closer to what Christ commanded. The rule of love is what Jesus points to as the center of our unity: "Love one another as I have loved you."
But what about Jesus's prayer for Christian unity in John 17, praying that we would be one as he and the Father are one? Doesn't that imply a deep, real, abiding unity that goes beyond merely loving one another? Well, it depends on how you frame the matter. I would say first that there's nothing "mere" about loving one another. Further, given my prior arguments, I must insist that there already is a deep, real, abiding unity across the churches, because of the Holy Spirit's abiding presence. We really are one, in the deepest and truest sense. One day the veil will be lifted from our eyes, and we will see just how deeply we were a part of one another this whole time. But I would also say one more thing: I think we're mangling the analogy in Jesus's prayer if we take it to mean that unity-in-the-manner-of-the-Trinity means a full visible and institutional unity, such that there would be only one "denomination." After all, it's an indispensable point of Trinitarian doctrine that there is a real distinction of persons in the Godhead--they are all God, but they are not each other. The Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father, though both are fully and undividedly God. To interpret Jesus's analogy as implying a full institutional unity of the church appears to make a serious error of Trinitarian theology, dissolving the distinction of the persons into the unity of the divine nature. A more natural reading would suggest that the various denominations can remain themselves, as they are, while acknowledging the underlying metaphysical unity we already hold together in the Holy Spirit (thus, as the Father and Jesus are one: distinct in person, united in essence). The outward and visible sign of our unity would then be our love for one another, which is itself the defining quality of the Trinity's inter-relationships, the radiance that suffuses their union. And again, this is no "mere" loving one another, as if it's somehow a lower standard than institutional unity. If anything, it is probably a great deal harder. We Baptists need to learn to love our Catholic brothers and sisters, and the Orthodox need to learn to love the Pentecostals, and the Anglicans need to learn to love the Methodists, and so on. It won't be easy, but if my personal experience is of any value, it's more than possible.
As a closing thought, I would direct readers back to an essay I wrote years ago, on "The Beauty of Denominationalism." It strikes me that Jesus chose not just one successor, but twelve--twelve men with very different personalities, who all had to figure out how to love each other and get along together. This is our calling, too--our life as the church won't be made better by absorbing evangelicalism into Roman Catholicism, any more than it would have been had all the other disciples given up their identity, authority, and mission, so that Peter could just do everything for everyone. Rather, what we see in the apostolic missions of the book of Acts is that Peter and the other disciples, along with Stephen, Philip, Paul, Barnabas, and James, all exercise their own functions from the strengths of their differing personal qualities, and the whole church is strengthened as a result. I see the same thing in the panoply of denominations: we're better for having the Lutherans' untiring drumbeat on the refrain of grace, the Reformed emphasis on the glory of God's sovereignty, the Pentecostals' joy and expectation of the Spirit's work, the Anglicans' commitment to the beauty of moderation, the Anabaptists' patient adherence to the rule of peace, the Catholics' delight in the communion of saints, and Orthodoxy's rich vision of personal sanctification. If we were all subsumed into one institution, even if allowance was made for some differences in practice and culture, it would necessarily result in a gradual adjustment toward uniformity and a loss of some of these distinctives (a case in point is the way that Uniate churches--formerly Eastern Orthodox communions which joined Roman Catholicism--are now regarded by their old Orthodox family). An institutional uniformity that makes us less than what we are, I'm afraid, could be a tremendous loss to the whole Body of Christ.
This isn't an argument for relativism, by the way--I'm not saying that Baptists and Catholics can both be right on everything, because that would just be nonsense. Take the question of the scope of the Pope's authority, for example. One of us is likely right, and one is likely wrong. No, this is an argument for recognizing that where God has not seen fit to grant us abundant evidence for settling a few secondary theological issues beyond the primary core we hold in common, the best response is charity for our differences and a commitment to loving each other in the midst of them. That's what brothers and sisters do.
This, ultimately, is the reality that I inhabit. I've fallen in love with the whole church, and I won't give any of it up. I have roles as both a Baptist and, weirdly enough, also as an Anglican (yes, really), and even as a monastic oblate in a 1500-year-old Catholic institution. These roles are not mutually contradictory--I am a Christian, a member of the mystical Body of Christ, and thus I am an heir of the whole church tradition, every part of it. Those who willfully dispossess themselves of fellow members of that Body merely end up impoverishing themselves, because we really are one in Christ.