First I want to say that this topic can be highly emotional. However, I can only speak the truth as I have learned it. The things said are not out of malicious intent but really something I had to wrestle with in an extremely painful way. If you feel offense by reading this, please forgive me. This is not an intention of mine.

Throughout the Bible, there are many instances where the unity of the Church is made of extreme importance. I’ve come to realize that this unity is not something based on “believing the basics,” as many Protestant forms of Christianity anachronistically believe. Such a view is to look back at history and presuppose a modern interpretation over and above what the apostles and the later Church Fathers understood these passages to mean for the first one thousand years of Church history. Ultimately, I have struggled with how different the modern reformed interpretation of Scripture is, compared to what was believed unanimously among all Christians for the first millennium. Meanwhile, many Protestant interpretations are only as old as five hundred years or even younger. There are thousands of different denominations of Protestant Churches out there that are not in official communion with one another and disagree on some fundamental doctrine; else, why would they need to be a different denomination?¹ Is this what Christ and the Bible teach?

The Nicene Creed, created at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 (and amended in AD 381 with the words below), was a creed set forth by this ecumenical council of Church fathers to combat specific Christological heresies. The end of the Creed says:

I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.2

The fathers at this council expressed their understanding of Biblical passages regarding what it means to be a Church and a Christian and what Christian unity was. This unity was not the idea that the Church is one because “we believe the basics.” Christ prays a prayer for the apostles in John 17:11 before his betrayal at Gethsemane. He prays, “Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are.” Later, in John 17:21, Jesus prays for all future believers who are to come, saying, “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.”

As many mainline Protestant denominations assert, is “believing the basics” of the faith the same “oneness” that Christ prays for us to have? Jesus Christ is a hypostasis (person) of the One True Triune God, the Godhead and Trinity. As the Nicene Creed says, “And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten, not created, of one essence with the Father through Whom all things were made.” Christ is ontologically one with the Father. This goes far beyond the “believing of the basics” Protestants assert. Jesus Christ is of one essence and does the will of the Father. He does not say, “I disagree with the unseen Father God on a few issues, but otherwise, we believe the basics.” Christ does the will and knows the mind of the Father, and Christ prays that we will be of this mind with Him and one another regarding faith through His Church. It goes far beyond believing in the basics with one another.

This is why St. Paul in Galatians 5:19-21 says, “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” The word “heresies” is often translated as “divisions” or “factions.” If there is any Christian tradition that is littered with factions, it is Protestantism. St. Ignatius of Antioch (who was martyred around AD 108) echoes St. Paul in his letter to the Philadelphians, saying:

“Wherefore, as children of light and truth, flee from division and wicked doctrines; but where the shepherd is, there be ye as sheep follow. For there are many wolves that appear worthy of credit, who, by means of a pernicious pleasure, carry captives those that are running towards God; but in your unity they shall have no place. Keep yourselves from those evil plants which Jesus Christ does not tend, because they are not the planting of the Father. Not that I have found any division among you, but exceeding purity. For as many as are of God and of Jesus Christ are also with the bishop. And as many as shall, in the exercise of repentance, return into the unity of the Church, these, too, shall belong to God, that they may live according to Jesus Christ. Do not err my brethren. If any man follows him that makes a schism in the Church, he shall not inherit the Kingdom of God. If anyone walks according to a strange opinion, he agrees not with the passion [of Christ]. Take ye heed, then, to have but one Eucharist. For there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup to [show forth] the unity of His blood; one altar; as there is one bishop, along with the presbytery and deacons, my fellow servants: that so, whatever ye do, ye may do it according to [the will] of God.”3

St. Jerome  (AD 420), providing commentary on Galatians 5:19-21, says, “It often happens that dissensions arise in the interpretation of Scripture, from which heresies, here numbered among the works of the flesh, boil over. For if ‘the wisdom of the flesh is at enmity with God’ (and all false doctrines, being repugnant to God, are at enmity), heresies also, being at enmity with God, are consequently included among the works of the flesh.”⁴ Many other verses speak to the unity required of the Church, which is at odds with and entirely contradicts the Protestant view of Christian unity. 1 Corinthians 11:18 and 19 has St. Paul condemning the Corinthians for having factions within the Church. Before this, St. Paul implores the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 1:10 to agree in judgments and to be of one mind, seemingly echoing Christ’s prayer before his betrayal in John 17. 2 Corinthians 13:11, Philippians 2:2, 3:16, 4:2, and 1 Peter 3:8 all echo this idea of being of “one mind.” We must look at these verses in the context of the Church of the time. There were no denominations. Anyone who diverged from anything the apostles taught was seen as a heretic and not of them. 1 John 2:18 and 19 notes that any divergent teaching not of the apostles is of the Antichrist, and this is why St. Peter, in 2 Peter 1:20, says “that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation.”

So how do you understand Scripture and truth? St. Paul says in Ephesians 1:22-23, “And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” In St. Paul’s letter to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:15, he says, “but if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” The Church precedes the Bible and the written Gospels. There was “one holy, catholic, and apostolic” church for thirty years or so before the four Gospels were written. The Church is the “pillar and ground of all truth” and can canonize authoritative texts like the New Testament because it is the Body of Jesus Christ on earth. This is why Sola Scriptura is not Biblical and will be a topic I will of course speak more on as I have wrestled and ultimately abandoned as a doctrine.

Paul even goes so far as to say that the principalities in the heavens (the angels) learn the truth from the Church herself in Ephesians 3:10, saying, “to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.” Christ came to establish a Church, not a book. Christ says to Peter and all the apostles there in Matthew 16:18, “And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” Jesus makes an important promise. He promises to build his church (body) and that the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. The Protestant position has to assume some level of belief that the entirety of the Church fell away for nearly fifteen hundred years for their Protestant interpretation of ecclesiology (church doctrine) to be true.

Regarding the Church, Christ refers to Himself as the bridegroom, and the Church is seen as His bride (John 3:29, Matthew 9:15, Mark 2:19, Luke 5:34, 2 Corinthians 11:2, Ephesians 5:25-27). When a man and woman join together in marriage, they become one flesh (Genesis 2:24). Marriage imagery is often used to describe the Church in relation to Jesus Christ (as well as God’s relationship to ancient Israel), with the Church being His body and Jesus Christ being the head (much like how the Husband is the head in marriage imagery of this oneness of flesh). God is not a polygamist. There can be only one tangible, visible bride of Christ ( the Church). Fr. Michael Shanbour says, regarding the imagery of the Church as a bride and the Protestant view of many churches and denominations constituting the bride:

“The spiritual unity of husband and wife is manifested visibly–they share the entirety of life together, live under a common roof, break bread together, and are exclusive in physical affection and in the conjugal act. All of these signs of union are physical and visible. Even today few would dispute that the boundaries of marriage are definable and clear, and that fidelity to one’s spouse is foundational to maintaining the marital relationship. The boundaries of the Church are also clear and require that her members share a common faith, doctrine, and way of life expressed by unity with a specific bishop (who holds the Orthodox Faith), under a common “household of faith” (Galatians 6:10), consummated by partaking of the one loaf and the one cup (1 Corinthians 10:16-17).”5

The idea of Protestants that there is an invisible Church “that we cannot know,” as J.I. Packer argues, does not align with the view held from the time of the apostles until the end of the first millennium.⁶ Fr. Michael notes that the idea that the Chruch fell away is not held by any respectable scholars these days due to more archeological evidence. In regards to the Protestant “invisible church” doctrine that only God knows who constitutes the body, and it is composed of many Churches with conflicting doctrines that “agree on the basics,” Father Shanbour says:

“A husband who justifies his infidelity by suggesting his lover is very similar to his wife, I imagine, find little sympathy, especially from his wife. It will not suffice to point to common personality traits and physical features, since it is obvious these are two different women with two distinct and identifiable bodies. Very few Christians would argue this point as it relates to marriage. Yet today it is commonly believed that Christians of separate denominational bodies are free to participate together in the most intimate expression of unity in Christ–the Eucharist, or Holy Communion–yet without a real communion of faith.”7

Father Seraphim Rose, in his book Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, says, “The idealogy behind ecumenism, which has inspired such ecumenistic acts and pronouncements as above, is already a well-defined heresy: the Church of Christ does not exist, no one has the Truth, the Church is only now being built. But it takes little reflection to see that the self-liquidation of Orthodoxy, of the Church of Christ, is simultaneously the self-liquidation of Christianity itself; that if no one is the Church of Christ, then the combination of all sects will not be the Church either, not in the sense in which Christ founded it. And if all ‘Christian’ bodies are relative to each other, then all of them together are relative to other ‘religious’ bodies, and ‘Christian’ ecumenism can only end in a syncretic world religion.”8

Father Seraphim Rose continues later by saying, “‘Christian ecumenism at its best may be seen to represent a sincere and understandable error on the part of the Protestants and Roman Catholics–the error of failing to recognize that the visible Church of Christ already exists, and they are outside it… …Why, indeed, should Christ have established a Church if the Holy Spirit  acts quite independently, not only of the Church but of Christ Himself?”⁹

The Protestant view is at odds with the typology and symbolism used to describe and illustrate who and what the Church is in the Bible, along with centuries of consensus by Christians in the first millennium. The Protestant Christian religion is only 500 years old. The burden of proof is not on the first-millennium Church to prove its legitimacy and historicity but on the Protestants to prove that their divergent ecclesiology, which would have been wholly unknown to any Christian for fifteen hundred years before the reformation, is legitimate. These are grave errors to potentially make, seeing how Christ founded a Church through which man can be saved and perfected. To gamble and end up outside the Church after knowing all these things (2 Peter 2:21 and 22) was an immense risk to me. This is what I am wrestling with, and I find the Protestant view unable to answer the concerns I have regarding these things unless I believe the Church was apostate for centuries until the reformers arrived. And that goes against the words of Christ in Matthew 16.

Citations

1.  Beale, S. (2017, October 31). Just how many Protestant denominations are there?. NCR. https://www.ncregister.com/blog/just-how-many-protestant-denominations-are-there

2. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (2024, March 5). Nicene Creed. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nicene-Creed

3. of Antioch, I. (2015). Philadelphians. In Letters to the Churches (pp. 17–18). essay, Beloved Publishing LLC.

4. St. Jerome. (n.d.). Jerome on Galatians 5:20. Catena Bible & Commentaries. https://catenabible.com/com/584233c025973d7a18c66827

5. Shanbour, M. (2016). The Church. In Know the Faith (pp. 28–29). essay, Ancient Faith Publications.

6. Ibid.

7. Packer, J. I. (1993). Church. In Concise Theology: A Guide to Historical Christian Beliefs (pp. 199–203). essay, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

8. Rose, S. (1975). Introduction. In Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future (pp. xxv–xxxi). Introduction, Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood.

9. Ibid