The topic of the church itself has been of intermittent interest in the history of the church. In the fourth century the church's intense struggle with the Donatists was a controversy that focused significantly on the nature of the church. In the Middle Ages the struggle over the bishop of Rome's authority helped separate East and West, and it caused great struggles among theologians in the West. Later, Jan Hus, John Wycliffe, and other medieval non-conformists pressed a doctrine of the invisible church in which Christ, not the pope, was head. What follows are some important questions that arose out of these controversies.
Visible or Invisible?
The assemblies of Christians, or local churches, mentioned in the New Testament are examples of visible churches. God has designed the church to be an apparent and visible testimony of him to the watching world. But is visible the only way the church can be described? After all, Jesus stated that weeds have been sown among the wheat but that the two will be separated on the last day (Matt 13:20–23). We can also speak of the invisible church, that is, the church as God sees it, or as it will appear on the last day. The invisible church is the church composed of all true believers, whether or not they are in the visible church, and excluding those in the visible church who are not genuinely converted.
Historically, Protestants have championed the distinction between the invisible and visible church. This distinction has been used to explain the absence of the visible unity for which Christ prayed in John 17. By its nature the invisible church is united; the visible church is sadly mixed and divided. While it is not accurate to say that the idea of the invisible church began with the Protestant Reformation, since the idea is found in Wycliffe, Hus, and even Augustine, the Protestant Reformers made particular use of the idea.1 There are not two separate churches, one visible and one invisible; these are two aspects of the true church.2
Local or Universal?
Another dichotomy with a significant history of theological consideration in the church has been the distinction made between the local church and the universal church or (catholic church). That church which is composed of all Christians throughout history is the universal church.3 While the universal church has never assembled, one day it will, and Christians currently are regarded by God as a part of that elect body. On the other hand, the local church is simply the local assembly of Christians. With one possible exception (Luke's interesting use in Acts 9:31), the word church in the New Testament always refers either to a local assembly (the great majority of usages) or to the universal church (a handful of usages).4 Christians have historically accepted that both of these usages are found in the New Testament. Two significant disputes, however, have raged concerning this dichotomy.
First, and most significant for the church around the world, has been the dispute about whether there is a prescribed order and polity for the universal church, as there is for the local church. The Roman Catholic Church maintains a universal order exists. The Greek Orthodox and many Protestant groups maintain that structures have developed which are allowed and useful though not mandated in Scripture (e.g., national assemblies, conventions, archbishops, etc.). On the other hand, congregationalists, like Baptists, have maintained that the New Testament prescribes no structure for the universal church. All cooperation between congregations is understood to be voluntary and consensual.
A second controversy of particular concern to Baptist Christians has surrounded the question of whether one can legitimately refer to something as a church if an order or structure for it has not been set down in Scripture. Ironically, some nineteenth-century Baptists and their heirs agree with this aspect of Roman Catholic thought—that the invisible church does not exist apart from a divinely given visible structure. However, they join this to the conclusion that the universal church is never discussed in the New Testament. This controversy was known as "Landmarkism," named after Prov 22:28: "remove not the ancient landmark which your fathers have set" (KJV). This was the text for a sermon by J. M. Pendleton and the basis of J. R. Graves's book, Old Landmarkism: What Is It? (1854). This book became a manifesto for the movement and exercised great influence among Baptists in certain parts of the United States.5
Militant or Triumphant?
Still another dichotomy which has been used to describe different aspects of the church is the church militant and the church triumphant.6 The church militant refers to Christians alive now, who therefore remain engaged in battling the world, the flesh, and the devil.7 The church triumphant, however, refers to Christians now in heaven, removed from the combat of spiritual warfare and fully victorious.8 The Roman Catholic Church also speaks of the church suffering, by which they mean both the church now on earth as well as those who are redeemed but are still being purified in purgatory.
True or False?
The topic of the church became the focal point of formal theological debate in the Reformation. Here, as in so much of the church's theological development, the question of how to distinguish the true from the false led to a clearer definition of the true.
Before the sixteenth century the church was more assumed than discussed. It was regarded as a means of grace, a reality that existed, and a presupposition for the rest of theology. Roman Catholic theology commonly refers to "the mystery of the church," by which it means the inexhaustible, imponderable depth of this reality of the church. Thus, in the Vulgate, Eph 5:32 refers to the union of Christ with his church as a "sacramentum" or mystery. Practically, the church of Rome argued that it was the true, visible church according to Petrine succession through the bishop of Rome [pope], based on Jesus' words to Peter in Matt 16:17–19.
With the advent of the Reformation, discussion of the church's nature became inevitable. To the Protestant reformers, "Not the pretended chair of Peter, but the teaching of Peter was the real mark of apostolicity. The Reformation made the gospel, not ecclesiastical organization, the test of the true church."9 Calvin criticized Rome's claims to be a true church on the basis of apostolic succession: "Especially in the organization of the church nothing is more absurd than to lodge the succession in persons alone to the exclusion of teaching."10 Believing that the attributes of the church (one, holy, universal, and apostolic) had become insufficient to distinguish between a true and a false church, the Reformation introduced the notae ecclesiae, the marks of the church: the right preaching of God's Word and the right administration of the ordinances.
Beginning with the Reformation, then, Protestants have believed that an individual, local congregation should be regarded as a true church when the Word of God is rightly preached and the ordinances of Christ are rightly followed.11 The right preaching of the Word of God is the formative discipline which shapes the church (as opposed to corrective discipline, which includes measures like excommunication). The ministry of the Word, therefore, is central and defining. The way to distinguish between a true church and a false church is to ask whether the church's public worship consists of right preaching of God's Word and the right administration of the ordinances. If both are present, a true church has been found.12 The Word being rightly taught should lead the church to rightly administer the ordinances of Christ (which would also imply discipline being exercised).13
Closely related to the idea of the church's universality is the idea of the church's unity. In the early church Christians presented their unity as a bulwark against heretics and schismatics. But mutual excommunications over issues like Nestorianism, monophysitism, or papal supremacy rent the visible unity of the church. The church was further divided during the Reformation both by the Protestant understanding of the gospel and by their method of understanding that gospel—through the clear (perspicuous) and sufficient Scriptures rather than the mediation of the church. Roman Catholics have insisted on a visible unity of the church. Protestants have insisted instead on the primacy of a unity in doctrine and spirit.
Rise of Denominations
Denominations, as they are known today, arose largely in the seventeenth century, though their roots are earlier. Protestants did not look upon dividing the visible church lightly, but the Protestant principles of Scripture's perspicuity and authority gave them warrant, or even required them, to divide from false teaching. As Calvin said, "We acknowledge no unity except in Christ; no charity of which he is not the bond; and . . . therefore, the chief point in preserving charity is to maintain Faith sacred and entire."14 This meant that the Reformers recognized that the cost of unity at the price of truth was a bad bargain. Correct division should be preferred over corrupt unity. For these reasons various groups on the European continent struggled free from the control of established churches and began pursuing their own understanding of faithfulness to Scripture.
Most of the denominations popularly known in America today initially grew up in the United Kingdom. Presbyterianism, congregationalism, and a belief in believer's baptism are all derived from Queen Elizabeth I's England (1558–1603). However, the English government did not tolerate any congregations outside the established church until the late seventeenth century, almost 100 years later. Denominations may have solidified divisions in the church, but they also eased the pinched consciences of many careful Christians in the seventeenth century. Freedom to meet together and to worship according to one's conscience was a fundamental step in the development of denominations as they are known today.
The three "old denominations," as they were called, were the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, and the Baptists. These three joined the establishment Episcopalians and the eighteenth-century denomination, the Methodists, to comprise the British-born religious landscape of early America. Once other significant ethnic groups were added, such as the Dutch and French Reformed churches or the German and Scandinavian Lutheran groups, America became the primary laboratory for scores of denominations of Christian churches coexisting.
These groupings of churches largely retained their doctrinal and practical distinctives, and new ones have emerged since then. Many families of churches arise from a struggle for purity. This was true in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As questions of the gospel were settled, secondary but important issues of church government and discipline led to separate congregations of Baptists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians. Advocates and opponents of slavery divided major denominations. Numerous divisions among heirs of Wesley and doctrinal disagreements among Presbyterians added to the denominational divisions of the nineteenth century. The rise of modern religious unbelief in mainline Protestant denominations in early twentieth-century America led to another burst of congregations and denominations separating from older groups and formed new, purer groups.15
Both the doctrinal convictions themselves and the importance attached to them have proved to be grounds for both unity and division among Christians. In short, the rise of differing denominations represents the desire for faithfulness in purity rather than in visible unity.16 Every congregation decides which beliefs and practices members must share before they can in good conscience experience and express unity with them.
1 John Calvin, Institutes, IV.1.7; cf. Benjamin Keach's catechism, Questions 105–6, reprinted in Tom J. Nettles, Teaching Truth, Training Hearts (Amityville, NY: Calvary, 1998).
2 "This Church is said to be invisible, because she is essentially spiritual and in her spiritual essence cannot be discerned by the physical eye; and because it is impossible to determine infallibly who do and who do not belong to her" (Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 566–67); cf. Westminster Confession, chap. 25.
3 E.g., Jesus in Matt 16:18 was referring not to one local church but to the one universal church as "my church."
4 On Acts 9:31, see F. F. Bruce's comments, in Bruce, Acts in NICNT, ed. F. F. Bruce (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 208–9; cf. A. H. Strong, Systematic Theology (Valley Forge: Judson, 1907), 891.
5 One can get something of an idea of the seriousness of the controversy when it is noted that Basil Manly Jr.'s 1859 "Abstract of Principles," written for The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, lacks any affirmation of the existence of the universal church—a matter which would have been uncontroversial among Baptists two or three decades earlier. For a careful consideration of the exegetical and theological claims of Landmarkism, see John Thornbury, The Doctrine of the Church: A Baptist View (Pasadena, TX: Pilgrim Publications, 1971) and James A. Patterson, James Robinson Graves: Staking the Boundaries of Baptist Identity (Nashville: B&H, 2012).
6 Such language can be found in Aquinas and in Wycliffe.
7 See the classic Puritan treatment of the militant nature of the church's life in this world by William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armor (1662–65; repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1964).
8 See Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 565.
9 Clowney, The Church, 101.
10 Calvin, Institutes, IV.ii.3; cf. the 1536 edition in II.29.
11 Examples of this can be found in Iain Murray, ed., Documents for the Reformation of the Church (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1965), 15–23.
12 It should be noted that true churches can be divided between those true churches that are regular and those that are irregular, that is, between those that are according to the rule (regula) and those that are not. Thus, various Protestant churches may recognize one another as true churches but irregular (depending on their differences on matters such as polity and the proper subjects or mode of baptism).
13 This understanding of the nature of the true church led to changes in physical church structures, changes in the service (more time for congregational singing, for the sermon), and changes in the minister's role. He changed from being a priest offering sacrifices to being a minister of the Word and a pastor of the people.
14 John Calvin, in his preface to Psychopannychia, in Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters, vol. 3, ed. and trans. Henry Beveridge and Jules Bonnet (1851; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), 416.
15 For a classic text explaining and advocating this idea of "biblical separation," see Ernest Pickering, Biblical Separation: The Struggle for a Pure Church (Schaumburg, IL; Regular Baptist Press, 1979). Two instructive critiques of evangelicalism over just these points are Iain H. Murray, Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of the Crucial Change in the Years 1950 to 2000 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2000); and Rolland McCune, Promise Unfulfilled: The Failed Strategy of Modern Evangelicalism (Greenville, SC: Ambassador International, 2004). For an Anglican perspective on some of these same themes, see Michael B. Thompson, When Should We Divide? (Cambridge, UK: Grove Books, 2004).
16 "For the New Testament unity is in order to preserve the faith, not something which can exist irrespective of doctrinal purity" (Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided [Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2000], 140).