a word before we begin

There is a question the apostle Paul asked the church at Corinth nearly two thousand years ago, and he asked it the way a man asks a question he already knows the answer to, which is the most uncomfortable way there is to be asked anything. Is Christ divided? He is not, and every soul in that room knew He was not, and they went on dividing anyway. So the question was never really about information. It was a mirror, held up to a people who had already made up their minds and needed to see their own faces.

It has not aged a day. Walk down the street of any American town and count the signs. Baptist here, Methodist there, Presbyterian on the corner, Lutheran across from the Anglicans, and a dozen more with no denomination on the sign at all, which we shall have something to say about before we are through. Every one of those buildings is full of people who would tell you, without a moment’s hesitation, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, born of a virgin, crucified for their sin, and risen bodily from the dead. Every one. And they will not walk across the street to one another.

So here is what we are about. We are going to take an honest look at the great denominations, at what each of them actually holds and where exactly they part company. Then we are going to hold that list up against the thing that actually makes a soul a Christian, and see how it measures. I think you will find, when we lay them side by side, that the body of Christ has torn itself into a hundred pieces over the furniture and left the foundation entirely untouched. And then we shall have to ask the question nobody wants to ask: who wanted that? Because it was not Christ. He prayed the opposite, on the last night He had.

chapter one

was paul crucified for you?

The trouble is not new. It is not a product of the modern age, nor of the Reformation, nor of the printing press. It is as old as the church itself, and we know that because the very first generation of believers, the ones who had the apostles themselves in the room, managed to do it before the ink was dry.

Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?1 Corinthians 1:12–13

Read that again and feel the sting of it, for Paul is not asking a gentle question. He is asking three questions in a row that a child could answer, and he is asking them precisely because the Corinthians were behaving as though the answers were not obvious. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? No, no, and no, and every man in that room knew it, and they went right on wearing their little labels anyway.

And notice what they were dividing over. Not heresy. Not the resurrection. Not the deity of Christ. They were dividing over which faithful teacher they liked best. Paul planted, Apollos watered, Cephas was Peter himself, and every one of these men preached the same Christ and the same cross. There was nothing wrong with any of them. The Corinthians had taken three good and godly men and turned them into three flags, and then formed up behind the flags, and the flags became the point.

Now mark how Paul names it, because he does not name it as a healthy diversity of emphasis, nor as a rich tapestry of tradition, nor any of the other soft words we have invented to keep from calling it what it is.

For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?1 Corinthians 3:3

Carnal. Fleshly. Walking as mere men. That is the apostle’s verdict on the tribal spirit in the church, and he does not soften it by an inch. The dividing was not a sign of theological seriousness. It was a sign of immaturity, of the flesh doing what the flesh always does, which is to build a wall and stand on the good side of it.1 And if that was true in a church that had known Paul personally, how much more true is it in a church two thousand years down the road with ten thousand flags to choose from.

And set beside it the thing the Lord Himself asked of the Father, on the last night before the cross, when a man says only what matters most.

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.John 17:21

There is the prayer, and there is the reason for it. That they may be one, and that the world may believe. Our oneness was meant to be an argument. The watching world was meant to look at a people gathered out of every tribe and tongue and class, people who had no earthly reason to love one another, and see them love one another anyway, and conclude that something had happened to them. That was the plan. And we have handed the world the opposite exhibit instead, a body so splintered that the unbeliever cannot tell what we believe, and has concluded, not unreasonably, that we do not know either.

Our oneness was meant to be an argument.

what actually makes a christian

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sources & notes

  1. W. E. Vine, An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, entry “Carnal”: sarkikos denotes that which pertains to the flesh, the believer walking according to the natural man rather than the Spirit. Paul applies it to the Corinthian party spirit in 1 Corinthians 3:1–4, where allegiance to Paul or Apollos is diagnosed not as theological seriousness but as immaturity. Cf. J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, on 1 Corinthians 1 and 3, on the factions at Corinth.
  2. The articles summarized here correspond to the confession the church has held from the earliest centuries: the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed (A.D. 325, revised 381) on the Trinity, the incarnation, the virgin birth, the crucifixion, and the bodily resurrection; and, on the two natures in one Person, the Definition of Chalcedon (A.D. 451). On salvation by grace through faith apart from works, Ephesians 2:8–9 and Romans 3:24–28; on the inspiration of Scripture, 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:21.
  3. The characterizations of the traditions in this chapter follow their own historic confessional and governing standards: e.g., the Baptist commitment to believer’s baptism by immersion and congregational polity (cf. the London and New Hampshire confessions); the Presbyterian and Reformed standards (the Westminster Confession of Faith, ch. 28, which grounds infant baptism in the covenant and its relation to circumcision, Colossians 2:11–12); the Methodist heritage from John and Charles Wesley; the Lutheran Book of Concord; and the Stone-Campbell “Restoration” movement behind the Churches of Christ and Christian Churches. For a standard overview, see Frank S. Mead, Samuel S. Hill, et al., Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Abingdon Press).
  4. John Wesley, Journal, entry for May 24, 1738, recording the Aldersgate Street meeting at which, during a reading from Luther’s preface to Romans, Wesley found his heart “strangely warmed” and trusted Christ alone for salvation. The phrase has since become shorthand for the Methodist emphasis on the new birth and assured personal faith. On the movement’s origins within Anglicanism, see Mead and Hill, Handbook of Denominations, on the Methodist bodies.
  5. The Augsburg Confession (1530), Article X, and the Formula of Concord (1577), Article VII, on the Lutheran doctrine of the Supper: that the body and blood of Christ are truly present and distributed “in, with, and under” the bread and wine, the elements remaining bread and wine, a sacramental union distinguished both from the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation and from a purely memorial view. Texts in The Book of Concord.
  6. The Stone-Campbell or “Restoration” movement of the early nineteenth century, from which the Churches of Christ, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and the independent Christian churches descend. Its founders, Barton W. Stone and Thomas and Alexander Campbell, aimed explicitly at abandoning denominational names and creeds in order to restore the New Testament church, an aim summarized in Thomas Campbell’s Declaration and Address (1809). See Mead and Hill, Handbook of Denominations, on the Restoration bodies.
  7. Frank S. Mead and Samuel S. Hill, Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Abingdon Press), on the Pentecostal and charismatic bodies. Modern Pentecostalism is conventionally traced to the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles beginning in 1906 under William J. Seymour, and to the earlier Topeka, Kansas, meetings under Charles Parham (1901); the charismatic renewal carried the same emphases into historic denominations from the 1960s. The continuationist/cessationist question turns chiefly on the interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13:8–12.
  8. Ephesians 4:15, “speaking the truth in love,” where the two are joined and not offered as alternatives; with 1 Corinthians 13:1–2, on the emptiness of correct knowledge without charity. Cf. Charles H. Spurgeon on the danger of contending for truth in an unloving spirit. On the Baptist distinctives commended in this chapter, see the confessions cited above at note 3.
  9. The classic formulation of this triage, “in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity,” is commonly credited to Augustine, but it is not his. It originates with the German Lutheran pastor Rupertus Meldenius (Peter Meiderlin) in a tract written about 1627, during the Thirty Years’ War, and was popularized in English by the church historian Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 7, who called it the watchword of Christian peacemakers. The misattribution is longstanding and worth correcting.
  10. The principal positions on the timing of the rapture relative to the tribulation, whether pretribulational, midtribulational or prewrath, or posttribulational, are each held by men affirming the bodily return of Christ; the debate turns on such passages as 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18, 2 Thessalonians 2:1–8, and Revelation 3:10. On the polity question, compare Acts 6:1–6 and 15:22 with 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1:5. On the Supper, compare the Reformed, Lutheran, and memorial readings of 1 Corinthians 11:23–26.
  11. W. E. Vine, An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, entry “Baptism, Baptist, Baptize”: baptizō means to dip, immerse, or submerge; the cognate baptō was used of dipping cloth in dye. Cf. Acts 8:38–39 (Philip and the eunuch “went down into” and “came up out of” the water) and Romans 6:4 (baptism as a figure of burial and resurrection).
  12. Honesty requires noting the earliest evidence on the other side: the Didache (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles), ch. 7, an early manual generally dated to the late first or early second century, directs baptism in running water but permits pouring water three times upon the head where sufficient water is unavailable. The concession is instructive on both counts. Immersion is plainly assumed as the norm, yet the early church did not treat the mode as absolutely inflexible in necessity.
  13. Against baptismal regeneration: Luke 23:39–43 (the thief promised paradise without baptism); 1 Corinthians 1:17 (“Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel”); Ephesians 2:8–9 and Titus 3:5 (salvation not of works). Acts 2:38 and 1 Peter 3:21, the passages most often urged the other way, are read by conservative expositors as tying baptism to the profession rather than the procuring of salvation; see J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, on Acts 2.
  14. 1 Timothy 2:11–14 and 3:1–7, and Titus 1:5–9, on the office of elder or overseer, where the qualifications are stated of a man; with 1 Corinthians 14:34–35. That women serve God in wide and vital ministry is equally plain from Scripture: Deborah (Judges 4–5), Priscilla instructing Apollos (Acts 18:26), Philip’s daughters (Acts 21:9), Phebe (Romans 16:1), and the women first at the empty tomb (Matthew 28:1–10). Cf. Warren W. Wiersbe on the Pastoral Epistles.
  15. The Council of Trent, Sixth Session (January 13, 1547), Decree on Justification, formally condemned the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone: Canon 9 anathematizes justification “by faith alone… in such wise as to mean that nothing else is required to co-operate”; Canon 12 rejects assurance defined as confidence in God’s mercy; and Canon 24 affirms that good works increase justification. See Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, Session 6, trans. H. J. Schroeder.
  16. The Reformation confessions state the contrary doctrine in the plainest terms: the Augsburg Confession (1530), Article IV, that men are justified freely for Christ’s sake through faith; and the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), ch. 11, that faith is the alone instrument of justification, receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness. On assurance as attainable, Westminster ch. 18 and 1 John 5:13.
  17. The Watchtower publication Should You Believe in the Trinity? sets out the Jehovah’s Witness denial of the Trinity and of the full deity of Christ, holding Jesus to be a created being (identified with Michael the archangel) and “a god” lesser than the Father. For the Latter-day Saints, the doctrine that God the Father was once a man is summarized in the Lorenzo Snow couplet, “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be,” drawn from Joseph Smith’s King Follett Discourse (1844). Both diverge from the historic Christian confession of one God in three Persons and the eternal deity of the Son.
  18. Martin Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses at Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, protesting the sale of indulgences, and refused to recant before the Diet of Worms in April 1521, being excommunicated by the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem in January of that year. The break came over the doctrine of justification and the authority of Scripture, the floor and not the furniture. See Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 7.
  19. A caution on the numbers, since inflated figures circulate freely in this argument. The oft-quoted claim of “33,000 Protestant denominations” derives from David B. Barrett et al., World Christian Encyclopedia (Oxford University Press), which expressly defines a denomination as an organized body within a single country, so that the Roman Catholic Church alone is counted there as some two hundred and forty “denominations,” one per nation. Counted that way the figure says far less than it appears to, and the honest point stands on the visible fact of division rather than on a statistic.
  20. Romans 14:1–12, on matters of conscience where the Lord has received both parties: “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind” (v. 5), with the twin warnings against despising and against judging a brother (v. 3, 10). Cf. Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, on Romans 14, and Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Right (on Romans).
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