Q. If Christ founded just one Church, why are there so many churches along the streets of the town where I live?
A. This situation should be perplexing to all of us––how it is that five or six neighboring churches exist within a few blocks of each other? A a road near my childhood home in Ohio is named “Church Road” for this very reason.
Your question deserves a book-length response. To begin on an uncontroversial note, we know that Jesus did establish just one Church (Matt 16:18; 1 Cor 10:16-17; Eph 2:11-22; 4:4-6) and that he prayed earnestly for his followers to be united (John 17:11, 20-23). The Head has only one Body, and the Bridegroom only one Bride. The churches we read about in the pages of the New Testament, then, are not detached and distinguished from that one Church but are geographically localized instantiations of it—the same Church existing in multiple places, like Corinth, Ephesus, and Thessalonica. They are not churches in the modern denominated sense.
Contrast many of the churches that line our streets, each with a sign or marquee displaying its particular brand. Most do not conceive of themselves as localized embodiments of that one Church founded by Jesus, at least not in an institutional sense, but as alternate and optional instances of Christian profession, framed in ideological terms.
On this view, the one Church which Jesus established comprises all who profess faith in Christ. On that basis, they might enjoy a degree of “spiritual” or “invisible” oneness across denominated lines; but it’s a unity without physical or visible definition, a reduction with no constitutional principle beyond personal profession (“I’m catholic but not Catholic”; “I’m spiritual but not religious”). When a sufficient number of these “believers” agree on a common set of doctrines, organizational structures, leadership styles, or worship preferences, they form a “church.” And since opinions about those ideas, structures, styles, and tastes vary from person to person, especially in a free and democratic society, you simply find a community with which you mostly agree and with whom you feel most comfortable, you attend their worship services long enough to determine that it’s a fit, and that becomes your church. Failing to find such a community, there’s always the option of “planting” a new one among those who share your views. And so, the proliferation continues, into the tens of thousands of variations.
How did this conception of church originate, and on what basis do these disparate assemblies justify their separated identity? When and why did the Church become the churches? To grasp this is to get to the heart of what happened in the 16th century.
Contrary to widespread protestant sentiments, the great “achievement” of the “reformers” (both pairs of scare quotes are necessary here) did not consist in the rescue of the gospel or the recovery of biblical authority or the restoration of the first-century Church—every informed Catholic knows better than this––but in the relocation of interpretive authority from the Church to the individual and in the reconceptualization of ‘church’ (Grk. ekklēsia) from something defined and identifiable to something amorphous and malleable. Almost of necessity that term underwent a semantic makeover in order to accommodate a departure from the Church and the setting up of rival assemblies, while maintaining the rubric ‘church’ to identify these new ecclesial models. In other words, ‘church’ became an expedient by which people could reject the existing Church but still retain the label. By this innovation, c-h-u-r-c-h could be stamped on movements and gathering places that, arguably, neither the apostles nor their successors nor 16 centuries of ecclesial history would have recognized as Church.
In short, by reinterpreting the word ‘church’ and reconfiguring that to which it refers, the new movement invented a way for the Church to become the churches––for those in protest, in all their diversity, to depart from the Church while maintaining their status as the Church by redefining the meaning of ‘church,’ a notion that in due course became fully ingrained in the protestant consciousness.
Space does not permit a full response, but briefly: It is curious that those who appeal to “Scripture alone” (sola scriptura) are willing to advance a version of ‘church’ that lacks biblical warrant or, prior to the 16th century, any interpretive precedent.
Second, in a passage often cited in these discussions, Jesus did say that “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Matt 18:20); but he did not say that such a gathering ipso facto constitutes a church (or grounds for planting one).
Third, if Christ founded just one Church, then, like marriage, the union of its members is indissoluble and there is no optional “other.” Imperfections and conflicts do not constitute grounds for dissolution or departure, but occasions for growth in holiness, fidelity, service, and cruciformity. (On a personal note, it was this compelling realization that ultimately brought my wife and me into the Catholic Church 11 years ago.)
Fourth, if these assemblies of “separated brethren” are truly Christian, then they are still echoes of the “one holy catholic and apostolic Church,” in varying degrees of receptivity and repudiation, even if they define each of those terms differently from the formulators of the Creed and its historical understanding.
Finally, as misguided as these movements are, many of them are well-intentioned in their convictions and mission. Whether we regard the gathering places that line our streets as faith communities or as actual churches, let us love and pray and work for the embodied and visible unity of the one Church which Jesus founded.
For those who wish to pursue this topic further, I especially recommend Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, "God’s Word"; Bryan Cross, “Christ Founded a Visible Church” (available at https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/06/christ-founded-a-visible-church/); Joe Heschmeyer, "The Early Church Was the Catholic Church"; and, if I may, my own lecture “Catholic Dogmatic Perspectives on the Reformation” (available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMoYAj8eVdg).
This question was answered by Dr. Vern Steiner, president emeritus of the Emmaus Institute for Biblical Studies. For more information, visit www.emmausinstitute.net.
“Ask the Register” questions are subject to editing. Editors decide which questions to publish. Write to: 3700 Sheridan Blvd., Suite 10, Lincoln, NE, 68501-0328 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
