Holy Catholic Church?[1]
Holy?
How so?
If we’ve spent any amount of time in church, we’ve encountered her messiness:
A hurtful word spoken, a broken promise, an unresolved conflict, a spirit of cliquishness, a ministry rivalry, an act of hypocrisy…
And even if we’ve never set foot in church, the number of church scandals in the news are legion.
Thankfully, we are not the first to mind the gap.
The NT writers describe the messy realities of the church without missing a beat.
Sometimes, the NT church is romanticised as the ideal picture of church.
But if we actually read the NT, we must conclude that often the picture painted of the Church ain’t pretty.
Consider the divisions of the NT church.
There were tensions between leading apostles, Paul and Peter (Galatians 2:11–14).
There was a sharp disagreement between Paul and Barnabas on John Mark, so severe that the two missionary partners parted ways (Acts 15:36–40).
In Corinth, believers fractured into competing factions, rallying around different Christian leaders (1 Corinthians 1:10–13).
In Philippi, two prominent women who had laboured alongside Paul in the gospel, Euodia and Syntyche, needed mediation (Philippians 4:2-3).
Consider the impurity of the NT church.
The pages of the NT reveal many instances of impurity within the early church.[2]
But the cake goes to the church in Corinth.
During the Lord’s Supper, upper class members stuffed their faces with the food and got drunk on communion wine, leaving their poorer brethren with nothing. They turned the sacrament into a display of Roman society’s ugly divisions. (1 Corinthians 11:17-22)
Men were sleeping with pagan temple prostitutes (1 Corinthians 6:16-18).
And if this wasn’t enough, a man was sleeping with his stepmother: a perversion so deviant that even the Roman culture abhorred it. Yet given the grievousness of the sin, the congregation were accepting and arrogant about it (1 Corinthians 5:1-2)!
Yet, aware of all of this, Paul incredibly identifies them as “those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints” (1 Corinthians 1:2)!
The NT writers describe the messy realities of the church without missing a beat.
Unfortunately, these marks of impurity are not confined to the NT church; they are evident in churches today as well.
How should we respond when we see the messiness of the church?
To begin with, we ought to remove the log from our own eye before attempting to deal with another person’s speck. If we fail to examine and purify ourselves, our vision becomes distorted. When we assume that everyone else is the problem, the more likely reality is that we are blind to our own faults.
Having searched ourselves before God, we ought to avoid two approaches.
The first is the approach of compromise – this is the Corinthian problem. They tolerated a man who was committing incest, and they didn’t even feel remorse. The danger of this approach, I trust, is clear enough. To avoid this, we must not avoid the need for church discipline. In a culture that sees love as an unconditional acceptance, church discipline seems unnecessarily harsh, but again and again the NT and the church have affirmed its place in the health of the church.
The second approach is far more subtle and unexpectedly dangerous. It is the opposite approach of Donatism – the error of demanding an impossibly pure church. This error has recurred over and over again in the history of the church because, how can it be wrong to work toward the purity of the church?
What exactly is this approach? In this final portion, allow me to introduce you to the Donatists themselves. This is a group that emerged in the 4th century in North Africa after a period of intense persecution of Christians from Rome (under Emperor Diocletian).
During the persecution, some bishops betrayed the church to save themselves. When the persecution ended, these bishops returned to their posts and continued to preside over word and sacrament.
The Donatists argued that the sacraments administered were invalid. And (at the risk of oversimplification) they then pursued an approach of separatism. They believed that remaining in communion with compromised clergy made one compromised. Separation wasn’t just permitted; it was morally necessary for self-preservation. Thus, they set up rival congregations in the same cities. There were two bishops in the same North African towns, one catholic and one Donatist, competing for the same flocks. This split communities and families.
Amidst this major church crisis, the church father Augustine exerted great effort and wisdom to push against the approach of the Donatists. His correction wasn’t to compromise holiness, but to clear up what the visible (as opposed to the invisible) church actually is. Drawing on the parables of Jesus, Augustine argued that the church is necessarily a mixed body – wheat and weeds growing together in the same field, good fish and bad fish caught in the same net. Jesus himself said, “Let both grow together until the harvest” (Matthew 13:30). The work of final separation belongs to God, not to us. To rip out every weed now is to risk uprooting the wheat along with it.
Historically, Donatism has reared its ugly head over and over again. For one, the Anabaptists of the 16th century called for a regeneratechurch membership. In their view, the church was to be a pure, counter-cultural, persecuted remnant. Consequently, those whose lives were not up to par were excommunicated swiftly and decisively.
In recent decades, the evangelical church has likewise faced similar Donatist pressures for separatism. It often begins with good intention – fervour for a discipleship movement, a clarion call to expository preaching, a heartfelt desire for authentic community. But often, these godly desires get mixed with a dose of impatience (to wait for change) and bitterness (from interpersonal clashes with the church leaders), leading to what seems inevitable: division.
But what if this deep desire for purity was channelled differently? Rather than forming alternative groups that fracture the local church, believers and parachurch ministries can actively encourage the existing congregation. Ultimately, a parachurch ministry should exist to build up the local church, not compete with her.
[1] On Sunday, the sermon will focus on Ephesians 2:18-22. In it we will consider how the Church is indeed holy – it is set apart by and for our Triune God. Yet if Ephesians 2:18-22 is all we are told about the Church, then it is easy to dismiss this vision as unrealistic. This perspective on the messiness of the church is meant to complement the glorious picture of the church in the sermon .
[2] The Galatian church were “bewitched” (Galatians 3:1) by false teachers, so much so that they deserted Christ for a “different gospel” (Galatians 1:6).
Many of the churches address in Revelation 2-3 were compromising with the idolatrous culture around them, blending the Christian faith with sinful practices around them (Revelation 2:14, 20). Some had a great reputation but were spiritually dead (Revelation 3:1).
