Christianity in Pieces

Question : Why is Christendom so splintered?


Answer : Throughout the Church’s history biblical truths have been challenged and denied by all kinds of groups, some within and some without. The story of how the Church dealt with everything from heresy to holy wars is inspiring and heart rendering. From the very beginning, Christians have fought a battle to believe the faith once delivered to the saints.

In the first century, Christ’s apostles founded the Church, which spread quickly from Jerusalem out into the entire Mediterranean world despite persecution from (1) the Jews who did not accept Christ as the Messiah and (2) the Roman government, which branded Christians outlaws because they insisted that Jesus, not Caesar, was Lord.

Many Christians were martyred, but their blood became the seed that spread the Church even more. As the Church grew, however, an even greater threat came from within its ranks in the form of heresy, particularly Gnosticism, which threatened to corrupt and twist the Gospel just into another pagan religion or philosophy. But the Church fought off this threat as well, particularly through the work of men called apologists who wrote and spoke the truth.

By the second century, the Church founded by the apostles developed into the Catholic (universal) Church; and early in the fourth century persecution of Christianity was ended by Constantine who became the emperor of the western Roman Empire after winning a battle in which he believed Christ gave him special help. Christianity soon became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire, and eventually the Church included five patriarchates – four in the East (Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria and Caesarea) and Rome in the West. Distance, difference in language and culture, and conflicting theological opinions were all reasons for serious disagreements between the East and the West.; but the chief cause of division was a continuing insistence by the Church at Rome on supreme power and authority over all of Christendom. The rift came to a head in 1054 when a major split created the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Orthodox Church in the East.

After the split, the Roman Catholic Church gained even more power and continued to add more doctrines not found in Scripture. In addition, the Roman Catholic Church became more and more corrupt, which finally led to the Protestant Reformation, led by a Catholic monk named Martin Luther. In the beginning, Luther, intended to reform the Roman Church by making the Bible the only authority. But Church leaders, particularly the pope, rejected his views and he was forced out.

The Reformation spread throughout Europe, and those who protested against the teachings of Rome came to be recognized as a new form of Christianity called Protestant. From one Christian church, then, came three major branches: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant, which further divided into many different denominations.