Guest commentary
What would you do if the Mother Church fed her children spoiled food?
By Inkyu Park, Special to The Layman, January 4, 2012
This is the question that came to my mind as I read several recent comments concerning the possible schism in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Cyprian (c. 200/10-258) spoke of the mother-church metaphor to emphasize the unity of the church. In his view, to belong to Christ one has to be a child of this mother. However, what if the doctrines of the One Mother Church are no longer wholesome? What if we know the corrupted teachings of the church to cultivate malnourished and anemic children? Could we, in good conscience, ignore the flaws that endanger our Christian salvation? The Reformers acted in response to such questions.
Throughout its history, the Christian church has struggled with innumerable interpretations of its saving faith. When one crucial aspect of faith was deemed incompatible with new worldly speculations, whether Christians accommodated the gospel to their surrounding cultures or the pagans adopted bits and pieces of the gospel to fit their theosophy, theological debate raged. In some instances, the church fractured and schisms took place. As we become further entangled in the arguments for and against a modern schism, two questions, through the clear lens of historical hindsight, may prove enlightening. First, at what point does schism become a viable option? Second, what ramifications result from these schisms for future generations?
The Primitive church experienced a schism when it separated itself from Judaizing errors. As Paul, missionary to the Gentiles, corrected Peter, the Apostle to the Jews, if righteousness were to be gained by practicing the law, Jesus died for nothing (Gal. 2:21). The sinner is saved by grace through faith in Christ. This is the victory of grace over law, a triumph upon which the church has built non-legalistic Christianity. This first notable division in the burgeoning church caused serious losses in evangelizing Jews. Nevertheless, the missional success throughout the Greco-Roman world was made possible only after the apostles cleansed the church from false teachings and practices. The growth of global Protestant churches is also attributed to the victory.
The early church underwent a second notable schism, this time to shed Gnosticism, a loose confederation of religious movements in the early Christian centuries. If Gnosticism was an appealing alternative to early Christianity, it was because both were primarily interested in human salvation. However, how the two dealt with salvation was different in nature. Christians wanted to be saved from sin while Gnostics spoke of human spirit’s liberation from the material world that included human body and soul. Gnostics achieved their salvation through secret knowledge or gnosis. While the Gnostic redeemer concept was a post-Christian development patterned after Christ, he was thought to be a source of saving knowledge, not the Savior. They denied the incarnation of the Son and his full humanity. Gnosticism began to infiltrate the church contaminating the essence of Christianity. As the Gnostic elements were removed, however, the church was able to reexamine, refine, and build a more pure Christology and Soteriology.
During the second century, a third schism threatened the church as Marcion attempted to de-Judaize the gospel. Advocating a total discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments, Marcion preached in his theology that the Creator was not the Father of Jesus, and he accused all apostles but Paul of apostasy, excluding all but 10 Pauline epistles from Scripture. Unlike the Gnostics, Marcionites organized churches that could be considered a denomination in the contemporary sense. The Marcionite Church posed a greater challenge to the church at large, at least for some time. Although Marcion and his followers were schismatic by any definition, it could be stated, at the risk of oversimplification here in this essay, that the Christian church began to realize the need to codify its own canon. In answer to Marcion’s uprising, the church adopted the 27 books of the New Testament. Scripture has been inseparable from the church. It is now, as John Macquaarrie of Oxford characterizes, a mark of the church.
A fourth notable schism rocked the church for much of the fourth century, marked at the beginning by the excommunication of Arius in A.D. 318. After the excommunication, Arius and his followers continued to spread his teaching, presenting a formidable array of Scriptural texts. Their hermeneutical methods, based on the proposition of absolute monotheism, led them to conclude that the Son was a unique creature and someone like God. However, if Christ were a demigod, as Arius proposed, Christ would lack both in divinity and humanity. Observing the splintering of the church at the hands of the Arians and fearing the threat of disunity of the church and therefore the fracturing of the Roman Empire, Emperor Constantine called the Council at Nicea in A.D. 325.
If Constantine had hoped for the unity on the basis of a Greek term homoousios (translated in our Confession “of one Being” with the Father), plus the agreement of freedom in interpretation, he did not succeed it within his lifetime. After a long acrimonious controversy, in A. D. 381 when an Eastern synod at Constantinople was convened, theological unity, at least on the unity of the three persons in the Godhead, appeared to be solidified. The end result of the controversy was, however, uniquely decisive for Christian faith. The Son, not the Father, was incarnate and suffered death on the cross and was raised from the dead by the Father. He, who is fully divine and fully human due to the mode of his birth of Virgin Mary through the power of the Holy Spirit, now sits on the right hand side of the Father. The distinction among three persons of Father, Son, and Spirit is not, however, a distinction between three Beings but a distinction among three ways of God’s being God. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are equally God within the one being of God. In its defensive mode, the doctrine of the Trinity safeguards the Christian confession that Christ is the one and only Savior of the world, not one among other religious saviors.
A fifth and final example from the long history of the church highlights a central notion within the Protestant Church: denominational loyalty is one thing but faith in Christ is quite another. After the Emperor’s invasion of the church in the fourth century, the doctrine of the Trinity was securely in place within the church but the papal imperial authority began corrupting the church theologically to the point of necessitating the Reformation in the sixteenth century. John Calvin (1509-1564), after he left the Roman church at age 24, immediately defended in a form of apologia his fellow evangelicals, who, as he witnessed them, were hungering and thirsting after Christ, stating that their separation was not schism. To the contrary, they were the legitimate heirs of the Christians of the early church. The evangelicals came to Christ for sound doctrine and fellowship of Scriptural faith not in a new church but in the original form of the church.
In his polemic against the primacy of the Apostolic See and the authority of Holy Mother Church, argued Calvin, the visible form of the church was not in the see of the Roman Church nor its hierarchy in communion with the Pope, but in the pure preaching and hearing of God’s Word and the lawful administration of the sacraments as Christ instituted them. The Papal church lacked the genuine form of church in that its foundation was not built upon the teaching of prophets and apostles; the sum of necessary doctrines was overturned; Rome was headed by a man, not by Christ; Christ lay hidden; it failed to provid
e the motherly care but led her children to practice idolatry; and traces of the true church was not enough. In short, the church is recognized by what it does with the gospel of Christ, not by its institution. Judged by this standard the whole Roman church was dying.
Thanks to Calvin and others, the Roman primacy is gone permanently. The church of Christ is by no means one particular denomination. The unity of the church has to be found neither in one man (the pontiff of Rome) nor in affiliating with one institutional church but in the true headship of Christ. In this age of the post denomination, this notion is much clearer than any time in history. A local church may change its affiliation with a denomination or even with a newly organizing one, but not replace the Savior with other saviors of the world. To be faithful to Christ, the God and Man is the core to the Christian faith that leads to salvation that includes eternal life with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In this way the primacy of God’s Word is reintroduced.
I hope the Presbyterian motto “Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei” will work within the Fellowship of Presbyterians separating itself from Americanizing errors. The newly adopted Book of Order translates the affirmation accurately for the first time in history: “‘The church reformed, always to be reformed according to the Word of God’ in the power of the Spirit” (F-2.02). The phrase “the Word of God” here refers to Scripture that bears witness not only to the Head of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church but also to the Father and the Spirit. The Latin composition places the source of reform activities within the limits of Scripture alone. And according to our Constitution the power comes from the Holy Spirit, not from human spirit which is totally depraved in Reformed theology.
Though the church has seen its fair share of unwarranted schisms, in a real sense some schisms are mandated by Scripture and are thus necessary, for example, in cases of apostasy from faith in Jesus Christ. Though painful to consider, justifiable and carefully considered schism can have benefits, as “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). It is unclear, however, whether the Fellowship will end up in the PCUSA as a minor reform-effort like numerous movements in the Roman church before the Protestant Reformation or whether it will emerge as a new Reformed church. What is clear is that to abhor schism in favor of preserving the mere semblance of unity and harmony adulterates the ultimate power of Christian faith. If history is any guide, the prospective division we face currently could result in a more purely refined theology for future generations to live by.
Inkyu Park is pastor of University Presbyterian Church in Akron, Ohio.
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