Brentwood Church of Christ

We can read about the beginnings of “denominationalism” in the Bible. There have always been those who would leave the truth and carry away disciples after them forming new sects based on their own peculiar beliefs. Paul warned the Ephesian elders of this very thing (Acts 20:29-30). The Corinthians had the beginnings of such sectarian practices and Paul needed to rebuke them for it (I Corinthians 1:12-13). In II Thessalonians 2, Paul warned that there would be a great falling away in which men would not love the truth but turn to lawlessness. And the apostle John said in I John 2:18 that there were already many antichrists in the world. If such division and apostasy took place in the first century when the apostles were alive, we should not be surprised that it also happens today.

A brief history of how our present day denominations came into existence may also be helpful. When the apostle John wrote his epistles in 90 AD, there was an apostasy taking place by a group known as the Gnostics. By 150 AD this group had won over many disciples. As local churches attempted to defeat their errors, they also made some critical mistakes. They found that if one of their elders had some connection with one of the apostles they could wield more authority. Therefore, if they had an elder who had been a disciple of the apostle John, or even a disciple of one of John’s disciples, they could keep more of their members in the faith. This man would only need to proclaim that gnosticism was wrong for people to believe him and avoid error. The problem was that in so doing a precedent had been set for people to put more trust in a man than in the word of God. Soon, these special elders became known as bishops. By 325 these bishops came together in the first Nicean Council and formed the Nicean Creed. While there was nothing in this creed that was objectionable, the creed again set the precedent for something other than the scriptures as the final authority. Many councils and creeds followed until 606 when the first Pope was elected. During the Dark Ages there were times when the Catholic Church even tried to destroy the Bible in order to maintain their own authority. By 1000 AD it is estimated that only one out of every 10,000 people could read or write. This resulted in a strong reliance on the Catholic church for the reading and interpretation of the scriptures. By 1517 when Martin Luther triggered the Protestant Reformation Movement, men were quite accustomed to putting the confidence in the more educated for their own spiritual destiny. As the Protestant Movement flourished, more creeds were written. Schools were erected for the purpose of training the preachers for these denominations. As a result, to this day the average person questions their own ability to understand the scriptures without the help of a “theologian.” However, when men and women have decided to read the scriptures for themselves, rejecting biases, and using the scripture as their final authority, the result has been a return to the pure Christianity of the first century. This should be our only appeal.