Unity and Purity In The Church

A Historical Survey

As early as the second century, two contradictory trends had developed that would affect the doctrine of the church until the present time. One trend was toward external unity; the other was toward internal purity. These two directions were present prior to the Reformation, as Catholicism formed around the concept of an external unity and its opponents centered their arguments in an internal purity. This distinction continued through the Reformation, with Luther and Calvin arguing for an acceptance of a single church identifiable through external signs and the Anabaptists arguing for an internal purity of the local congregations. This division redeveloped in the twentieth century, as Fundamentalists reiterated the importance of pure churches (and denominations), while Evangelicals argued for greater unity despite doctrinal deviations. This article will briefly survey these historical movements and direct attention toward the impact on our current culture.

External Unity

The early church fathers, in refuting heresies in the second century, established external characteristics by which they argued that the true church could be known. Four significant early writers were Ignatius, Irenaeus, Cyprian, and Augustine.

Ignatius (who died about ad 107) spoke of “one Church which the holy apostles established from one end of the earth to the other by the blood of Christ.”¹ He was one of the first to use the phrase “catholic church,” although he used it for local churches. Irenaeus emphasized a universal, visible church based in Rome. “For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority.”² Although he had a strong interest in maintaining the purity of the church, his desire to stem the rising tide of heresy resulted in a strong emphasis on external unity.³

Cyprian (200–258) emphasized the unity of the catholic church under the authority of the bishop. Schism is totally and absolutely unjustified. Unity cannot be broken, for to step outside the church was to forfeit any possibility of salvation.⁴ Schism was a Satanic trick whereby he “might subvert the faith, might corrupt the truth, and might divide the unity.” Unity was, for Cyprian, the clear teaching of Scripture. The view of the church as the bride of Christ meant that the schismatics were adulteresses. The idea of bride moved easily into the picture of mother; one bride obviously means one mother. Hence his decisive conclusion: “He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.”⁵

If Cyprian laid the foundation for Romanism, Augustine erected the papal throne, and blazed the way for the colossal tyranny of the Roman Church hierarchy.⁶ Augustine believed the church to be a “mixed body” (corpus permixtum) of saints and sinners. The holiness of the church is not that of its members, but that of Christ.⁷ Based on the parable of the wheat and tares in Matthew 13,⁸ he argued that the Devil had some of his own children in the church; but, he argued, God had no children outside the church.⁹ “I tell you of a truth, my Beloved, even in these high seats there is both wheat and tares, and among the laity there is wheat, and tares. Let the good tolerate the bad; let the bad change themselves and imitate the good.”¹⁰

Internal Purity

A separatist movement developed in opposition to the centralized authority in the institutional church. These separatist churches considered the holiness of their members to be the real mark of the true church. They grew as a reaction against the gradual secularization and increasing worldliness of the larger Roman Catholic Church. “These congregations may be defined, therefore, as free churches because they won adherents and members, who when they freely accepted the word, turned away from the life of sin and voluntarily were baptized.”¹¹

The separatists developed into numerous groups, some more and some less Biblical, and some heretical. One of the better known and more significant groups was the Donatists. Donatists insisted that the true church was a fellowship of real saints; therefore, they endeavored to purge the church of the unholy element. The free church principle was perpetuated in later groups such as the Paulicians, Cathari, Waldensians, Lollards, Hussites, and Anabaptists. These churches all had one belief in common: they considered the true church to be composed only of real saints, in opposition to the Augustinian mixture of saint and sinner.

Reformation Views of the Church

A number of theological issues were raised during the Reformation, but a central issue was the church. “The Reformation was about the nature of the Church more than it was about justification or grace.” Luther had no desire to form a new church; his intention was “to serve the Church that was there, and which was, he believed, una sancta ecclesia [one holy church].”¹² The Church contains both the saint (sancti) and the hypocrite (hypocritae).¹³ Using John 18:36 and Luke 17:20, 21 as proof passages, he maintained the Augustinian and Roman Catholic tradition of equating the church and the kingdom. Having saints and sinners in the same church was not a problem for Luther. Only God can know precisely who are the members of the church, although the true believers (the fideles) can recognize what is the true church by the presence of its marks.

In contrast to Luther’s vagueness, John Calvin developed a specific theory on the relation of the invisible church to the external ecclesiastical institution.¹⁴ Calvin followed and restated Cyprian’s doctrine that outside the church there is no salvation. The church was the divinely founded body within which God effects the salvation of the elect. Therefore, he taught, like Cyprian, that one cannot have God for his Father who has not the Church for his mother. “But as our present design is to treat of the visible Church, we may learn even from the title of mother, how useful and even necessary it is for us to know her; since there is no other way of entrance into life, unless we are conceived by her, born of her, nourished at her breast, and continually preserved under her care and government till we are divested of this mortal flesh, and ‘become like the angels.’ … It is also to be remarked, that out of her bosom there can be no hope of remission of sins, or any salvation.”¹⁵

Calvin distinguished between the invisible and the visible church. The community of Christian believers is the visible church; the fellowship of saints (the company of all the elect) is the invisible church (in keeping with Augustinian ecclesiology). The invisible church is known only to God. The invisible church is made up of only the elect, while the visible church is composed of both good and evil, the elect and the reprobate.¹⁶

The Anabaptists practiced a different ecclesiology than did the Reformers. The Reformers maintained the Catholic practice of infant baptism, while the Anabaptists argued that only true believers, ones able to express their faith, could be baptized.

Baptism, however, was really only an external demonstration of their distinctive ecclesiology, not a root of it. While the magisterial reformers had seen the Church as corrupted by Catholicism, the Anabaptists saw it as fallen. Reformers such as Luther and Calvin had a tremendous regard for the living tradition of the historic church. As they saw it, the Roman Catholic Church had been the true church, but it had fallen on evil days and into unworthy hands. Therefore, they sought to bring about a spiritual renewal, initially from within, but eventually from without. In contrast, the Anabaptists set out to discard the entire Catholic pattern and replace it with the pattern they saw in the New Testament. They did not seek to introduce something new, but to restore something old. Rome and the Reformers had based their views of the church largely on the Old Testament; the Anabaptists denied the identity of an Old Testament church with that of the New Testament and insisted on a church of believers only.¹⁷

There were strong parallels between the Anabaptists and the Donatists. Both groups believed in a pure and holy body of believers, isolated from the corrupting influences of the world, and prepared to maintain their purity and distinctiveness. Discipline was maintained by heavy use of the “ban,” and they separated from other churches that failed to maintain proper discipline within their ranks.¹⁸

Application to Today

In the middle of the twentieth century, Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism splintered into two distinct movements. An important feature of New Evangelicalism was its emphasis upon and effort toward unity.¹⁹ To many New Evangelicals, the division among Fundamentalists, often over what they viewed as minor doctrines, was deplorable. These men called for a Biblically-based ecumenism. They rejected the Federal Council of Churches as too liberal but also rejected the American Council of Christian Churches as too narrow; the result was the founding of the National Association of Evangelicals.²⁰

Harold J. Ockenga, coiner of the term “new evangelicalism,” rejected Fundamentalism’s “shibboleth of having a pure church, both as a congregation and a denomination.”²¹ He was critical of their exegesis of 2 Corinthians 6:14–18 and the parable of the tares, which he viewed as the basis of their ecclesiology. Graham agreed with him: “The visible Church is the present-day universal Church, composed of local groups of Christians. In it are both the ‘wheat and tares’ (Matthew 13:25–40)—the truly redeemed, and many who are not.”²²

“The sad practice called ‘come-outism’ developed.”²³ This highlighted the primary theological difference between Fundamentalism and New Evangelicalism. The Evangelical “differentiates his position from [the Fundamentalists] in ecclesiology.”²⁴ Fundamentalist ecclesiology required separation, and the New Evangelicals saw this as a failed strategy. Ockenga saw the reason for the failure: “Purity of the Church was emphasized above the peace of the Church.”²⁵

The Fundamentalist emphasis on doctrinal purity was not and is still not taken lightly. Bible-centered Baptists believe that the custody of the faith is a sacred trust. The purity of this faith is more important to the cause of Christ than any institution or movement. “Since the church was founded to spread the true faith, when this faith is corrupted and compromised, the reason for any church’s existence is destroyed.”²⁶

Fundamental Baptists place a strong emphasis on the purity of the church and any denomination, association, or fellowship to which that church may belong. Purity is of far greater importance than unity, especially when that unity is based on false doctrine or unbiblical practice.

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Dr. David Saxon is a member of the Bible faculty at Maranatha Baptist Bible College in Watertown, Wisconsin. He and his wife, Jamie, have four children.

(Originally published in FrontLine • July/August 2011. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.)

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Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

1. Ignatius, To Philadelphia, 4. [↩]
2. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, 3.3.2. [↩]
3. Earl D. Radmacher, What the Church Is All About (Chicago: Moody, 1978), 41. [↩]
4. Alister McGrath, Christian Theology, An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 408. [↩]
5. Cyprian, De unitate Ecclesiae, 3–6. [↩]
6. H. E. Dana, A Manual of Ecclesiology (Kansas City: Central Seminary, 1945), 116. [↩]
7. McGrath, Christian Theology, 409. [↩]
8. Augustine, Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament, 23.1. That he made the church identical to the Kingdom of Heaven and identical to the world in the same parable apparently did not trouble him. Nor did it trouble him that Jesus described the “field” as the “world.” [↩]
9. Augustine, De Baptismo, Contra Donatistas, 4.10.16. [↩]
10. Augustine, Sermons, 23.4. [↩]
11. Gunnar Westin, The Free Church Through the Ages, Virgil A. Olson, tr. (Nashville: Broadman, 1958), 1–2. [↩]
12. Geddes MacGregor, Corpus Christi: The Nature of the Church According to the Reformed Tradition (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1958), 5–8. [↩]
13. “Augsburg Confession” in Triglot Concordia: The Symbolic Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (St. Louis: Concordia, 1921), 46. [↩]
14. McGrath suggests that with the collapse of the Colloquy of Regensburg all hope of reunification with Catholicism was lost. Therefore, the second-generation reformers, such as Calvin, needed a more extensive ecclesiology (Christian Theology, 412). [↩]
15. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated by John Allen (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, n.d.), 4.1.4. [↩]
16. McGrath, Christian Theology, 413. [↩]
17. Louis Berkhof, The History of Christian Doctrines (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1937; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 244. [↩]
18. McGrath, Christian Theology, 416. [↩]
19. Millard Erickson, New Evangelical Theology (Westwood: Revell, 1968), 41. [↩]
20. Harold John Ockenga, “Editorial,” United Evangelical Action 2 (January 1943), 1. See also “What the N.A.E. Is and What It Is Doing,” United Evangelical Action 7 (15 April 1948): 5–6. [↩]
21. Harold John Ockenga, “From Fundamentalism, Through New Evangelicalism, to Evangelicalism,” Evangelical Roots, Kenneth Kantzer, ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1978), 42. [↩]
22. Charles G. Ward, Christian Worker’s Handbook (Minneapolis: Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, 1982), 58. [↩]
23. Klaas Runia, “When Is Separation a Christian Duty?” Christianity Today (23 June 1967), 942. [↩]
24. Ockenga, “Resurgent Evangelical Leadership,” 13. [↩]
25. Ibid., 12. [↩]
26. Chester Tulga, “The Christian and the Problem of Religious Unity,” Sword of the Lord 25 (2 January 1959): 11. [↩]