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Chapter Three
Toward a Post-Denominational
Ecclesiology
It
seems to me that far too much of our thinking about the church, both in
scholarship and in practical church life, fails to make important
distinctions between the church and the denominations. Consider the four
attributes given to the church in the Nicene[1]
Creed: "one, holy, catholic and apostolic church."
Yes,
the church is one: as we saw in the
last chapter, even today the one true church still persists,
though with an impaired governmental structure. But the
denominations clearly are not one; they are many.
The
church is holy, not in that all
Christians and congregations are morally perfect, but in that God has set
his church apart from all other institutions in a
special relationship to him. But Scripture gives us no reason to
believe that God has placed any human denomination in such a
special category, except insofar as it is part of the church as a
whole. Among those denominations which are truly parts of the body of Christ,
none is in this sense any more holy than the others.
The
church is catholic, i.e. universal.
It includes all believers of all times and places. No denomination (even
the ones with "Catholic" in their names) can make such a claim.
And
the church is apostolic, perpetuating
the doctrine and life of the apostles of Christ, building on
their foundation. As with holiness, a denomination can be
"apostolic" if it is faithful to that foundation. But loyalty to
the apostles and loyalty to a denomination are not necessarily the same
thing. The apostles, through their writings in Scripture, call us
even today to be loyal to that church which God built on
their foundation. But they do not demand such loyalty to
any denomination.
The
Gates of Hell and the Free Will Baptists
Other
comparisons may also be illuminating. God has promised that the gates of
Hell will never prevail against the church; the church will never perish
(Matt. 16:18). There is, however, no such promise for denominations.
Indeed, many denominations have perished over the years, and in many
cases this has been a good thing.
The
church was founded by Jesus Christ, out of his unsearchable love.
Denominations were founded by human beings, often for at least partly
sinful motives.
The
church has, as we have seen, a real authority over believers through its
officers. Has God granted such authority to denominations? I would say
that denominations have authority insofar as they do represent the
authority of the church (but that is very difficult to ascertain) and
insofar as we voluntarily grant this authority to them in our membership
and officers' vows. But this is very different from the authority
of the church as such, which is given by Christ himself
(Matt. 18:18-20) and is therefore irrevocable.
Scripture
promises to the church an ample supply of the Spirit's gifts. To the
"one body," God has given sufficient gifts (especially
leadership) "to prepare God's people for works of service, so that
the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith
and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to
the whole measure of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:12f; note
also verses 14-16 and the teaching of Romans 12 and I Cor. 12).
Do modern denominations, as denominations, have the right to
claim this promise? I very much doubt it. Surely one cannot assume
so on the basis of the text's language. And my experience
suggests that not all denominations have a balanced and full complement
of the gifts of the Spirit. Rather, some denominations have more
and better teachers, others more and better evangelists, and so on.
We
owe to our fellow Christians a special love ("love of the
brethren," I Pet. 1:22; cf. I John 2:10, 3:10ff, 4:20f), a special
care, which takes precedence over our duty to help unbelievers (Gal.
6:10). Is there a special love that we owe only to members of our own
denominations and not to other Christians? To ask such a question is
virtually to answer it negatively. But we often act as if it were true.
Yes, there are legitimate obligations which we incur to our denominations
in our membership vows. And we tend to form our closest friendships within
our denominations, and friendships make legitimate claims on our affections.
But the Christian Philadelphia, brotherly love, is for the church, not for
one denomination above another.
These
comparisons should indicate to us that there are great differences between
the church and the denominations: differences in oneness, holiness,
universality, apostolicity, power, foundation, authority, gifts, love. Yet
it seems that in the ecclesiological literature and in our usual thinking
and speaking we tend to equate the church with the
denominations. When Jesus says that the gates of Hell shall never
prevail against the church, preachers routinely apply that text to
the
We
need an ecclesiology that makes some careful distinctions between the
attributes, powers and gifts of the church, on the one hand, and those of
particular denominations, on the other. We should not any longer develop
doctrines of the church which are written as if the schisms had never
taken place, or as if we were all still living before 451.
When
someone seeks to stir up in us passions of denominational loyalty,
then, by pointing to Scripture's very high view of the church, we
must raise questions. The church is a wonderful thing, deserving
our deepest loyalty. It is that for which Jesus shed his own blood. But
denominations are another thing altogether. I am not saying that we owe no
loyalty to our denominations. I am saying that our loyalty to our
denominations must be tempered by the understanding that these
organizations are the result of sin, inadequate human substitutes for the
God-given order of the one, true church. Somewhere in each of our hearts
ought to be the conviction that denominations should work, not to their
own glorification, but to their own extinction.
A
Practical Case
It
is fairly obvious that Novatian and Donatus should not have left the one,
true church to start their own churches. They were, in
truth, "schismatic." Sometimes today, one believer
will call another one "schismatic" when he leaves one
denomination to join another. Is that fair?
I
do believe that it is possible to commit the sin of schism today. Most of
the time, when people start new denominations, adding to the divisions in
the body of Christ, I do not hesitate to call them schismatic.
Similarly when they leave one denomination for another for the same
motives Novatian and Donatus had: pride, unwillingness to submit to
legitimate discipline, desire for autonomy.[2]
But in many, perhaps most situations where people make such transfers,
there is no schismatic behavior at all. The true church is scattered among
many denominations today. Often transfer is simply a matter of wanting to
go from one part of the church to another, to share the gifts of
Christians in a different group. Let us become clear about this: leaving
the church is one thing; leaving a denomination quite another. The former
is a very serious matter, the latter much less so.
This
is the sort of practical case in which it is very dangerous for us to
identify the New Testament church with some modern denomination. That
confusion can lead to unfair judgments against one another. We should
rather seek to make the right distinctions, to judge wisely. The church is
found in the denominations; but the denominations are not the church.
In
my view it is misleading, indeed, for denominations to take names for
themselves with "church" in the singular: Protestant Episcopal
Church, Presbyterian Church in the
We are in a post-denominational age, and we must apply the scriptures to the times in which we are living, not to a time that is long past. It is not easy to find the precise continuities and discontinuities between the church and the denominations. But we must be willing to take up that task.