Ephesians chapter four: Only one Church.

uch there is, dear read­er, to admire and agree with in Dr.* James White’s recent pre­sen­ta­tion on the sin­gu­lar­i­ty of the Gospel. We dis­agree on how “the Gospel” is to be defined: He would say it is jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith alone; I say that that is a false doc­trine and exists nowhere in Sacred Scrip­ture. It exists only if you add the extra­ne­ous word “alone” to Romans 3:28 and ignore James 2:24. But on the whole, Dr.* White’s talk focused on the errors of secularism—in par­tic­u­lar, the erro­neous belief that truth is rel­a­tive or mul­ti­ple, and that it is wrong and “judg­men­tal” to point out error.  There, he and I agree.  That said, if Dr.* White believes that St. Paul’s words in Gala­tians 1 are his most direct, I would have to ask him whether he has read Eph­esians 4 of late. Paul’s words there about the sin­gu­lar­i­ty of the Church are just as much with­out com­pro­mise.  Paul says there is one Church, not 48,500. (I dis­cuss this fig­ure below.)

Some Exegesis for Dr.* White

Here is the rel­e­vant text in Eph­esians 4:

I there­fore, the pris­on­er of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk wor­thy of the voca­tion where­with ye are called, with all low­li­ness and meek­ness, with long­suf­fer­ing, for­bear­ing one anoth­er in love; endeav­our­ing to keep the uni­ty of the Spir­it in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spir­it, even as ye are called in one hope of your call­ing; one Lord, one faith, one bap­tism one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. (Eph. 4:1–6)

That is cer­tain­ly direct.  If in Gala­tians 1:7 St. Paul says that there is not any oth­er gospel, in Eph­esians he dou­bles down.  Not only is there not any oth­er gospel, but there is not any oth­er Spir­it, there is not any oth­er hope, there is not any oth­er God, there is not any oth­er faith, there is not any oth­er bap­tism, and there is not any oth­er Church.  When I was a Protes­tant, I was aware of the Catholic “one Church” inter­pre­ta­tion of this pas­sage. But when I looked at it I would protest, thus:  But the phrase “one Church” is not there!

Only, I was wrong: By “one body” Paul means “one Church.” If you are in doubt, you need only look a few chap­ters ear­li­er, where he says that God “hath put all things under [Christ’s] feet and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body” (Eph. 1:22–23a).  Like­wise in his let­ter to the Colos­sians, Paul says that Christ “is the head of the body, the Church” (Col. 1:18).  Even more sur­pris­ing­ly, Paul goes on, in verse 24 of Colos­sians 1, to say, “[I] fill up that which is behind of the afflic­tions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church.” As belong­ing to the Church is nec­es­sary to lead a life wor­thy of one’s call­ing in Christ, so the Church makes me a par­tak­er of “Christ’s afflic­tions for the sake of his body.”  Not only are Christ’s body and the Church the same, but my body is not to be sep­a­rat­ed from the Church either.

The Church is the body of Christ, and the body of Christ is not divid­ed. “One body” (en soma; ἓν σῶμα) Paul says in Eph­esians 4.  He uses the same Greek word in Eph­esians 1 to iden­ti­fy the “one body” with the Church:  te ekkle­sia, etis esten to soma (τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ, ἥτις ἐστὶν τὸ σῶμα), “the Church, which is the body.”  And again in Colos­sians 1:18:  tou somatos tes ekkle­sias (τοῦ σώματος τῆς ἐκκλησίας), “the body the Church.”  And final­ly in Colos­sians 1:24:  tou somatos autou, o estin e ekkle­sia (τοῦ σώματος αὐτοῦ, ὅ ἐστιν ἡ ἐκκλησία), “his own [i.e, Christ’s] body, the Church.”  Each time, Paul uses the same word—σῶμα (body)—to sig­ni­fy ἐκκλησίᾳ (the Church).  Thus when he says in Eph­esians 4 that there is “one body,” what he means is that there is one Church.

Reformed Chris­tians have a very high doc­trine of the Gospel (albeit a false one), but not a very high doc­trine of the Church.  The rea­son that is trou­bling is because Paul claims no less an exclu­siv­i­ty for the Church than he does for the Gospel.  I am used to hear­ing Protes­tant apol­o­gists take a page out of Pla­to and say things like, “There is an invis­i­ble Church which is man­i­fest in local bod­ies.”  But St. Paul does­n’t use the plur­al, he uses the sin­gu­lar:  body.  I nev­er hear Protes­tants say things like, “There is an invis­i­ble Gospel which is man­i­fest in local books.”  Nei­ther do they say, “Christ has an invis­i­ble body that is man­i­fest in local limbs.”  Nei­ther, final­ly, do they say, “Christ has an invis­i­ble bride who is man­i­fest in local women.”  But there is an odd need, among Protes­tants, to attempt to cre­ate the false dichoto­my that rends Christ from His Church.

Thus when Protes­tants con­vert to Catholi­cism, Dr.* White oft will say, “Their con­ver­sion is to a Church, and not to Christ.” He said it most recent­ly here, just this very week, in his hyper­bol­ic “response” (more of a tantrum) to the con­ver­sion of Jason Reed.

Dr.* White, there is no dif­fer­ence. If you want to say that the Gospel has an exclu­siv­i­ty to it, you are right and I am for you; but you can not claim any­thing less for the Church. Paul did­n’t. It is incon­sis­tent for you to preach the Gospel’s exclu­siv­i­ty while you remain in a protest that has result­ed in 48,500 dif­fer­ent sects. That is not what Christ meant when he prayed ἵνα πάντες ἓν ὦσιν, “that they may all be one” (John 17:21).  That is not what Paul meant when he said that we should be of one mind (τῷ αὐτῷ νοῒ) and one judg­ment (τῇ αὐτῇ γνώμῃ; 1 Cor. 1:10).  If you claim an exclu­siv­i­ty for the Gospel, don’t be shocked when Catholics claim an exclu­siv­i­ty for the Church. Who’s real­ly being incon­sis­tent?

Christ has one body.  It is vis­i­ble.  And it is man­i­fest in one Church.

The Law of Sectarian Growth

Now, as to how I reach the num­ber 48,500 as the cur­rent num­ber of Protes­tant sects.  The World Chris­t­ian Ency­clo­pe­dia sets the num­ber at 33,000.  (And yes, I’ve heard all of Dr.* White’s attempts to decon­struct this num­ber; frankly, they fall thin.)  But the pub­li­ca­tion date of this edi­tion (ed., Bar­rett, Kuri­an, & John­son) is Jan­u­ary 18, 2001.  Unless Dr.* White wants to tell me that the num­ber of Protes­tant sects has remained exis­ten­tial­ly fixed since 2001, the num­ber must be greater today.  But by how much?

I believe it rea­son­able to sur­mise that, rather than the num­ber of sects grow­ing at a steady rate, it con­tin­ues to grow expo­nen­tial­ly, accord­ing to the Law of Expo­nen­tial Growth. The task, then, is to dis­cov­er how often the num­ber of Protes­tant sects dou­bles.

That is, in truth, a rel­a­tive­ly easy process of start­ing with 1 and con­tin­u­ing to dou­ble it until you reach a num­ber approx­i­mat­ing 33,000.  Start­ing with 1, you next pro­ceed to 2, then 4, then 8, then 16, then 32, and so forth.  If you con­tin­ue this way fif­teen times, you’ll reach the num­ber 32,768.

Now, if we sub­tract 2001 (the year of the pub­li­ca­tion of the World Chris­t­ian Ency­clo­pe­dia) from 1517 (the year of the 95 The­ses), we get the num­ber 484.  Divid­ed by 15 (the num­ber of expo­nen­tial increas­es need­ed to reach 32,768 sects), we find that the num­ber of Protes­tant sects dou­bles about every 32 years. We may trace the growth in Protes­tant sects thus:

1517, 1 sect
1549, 2 sects
1581, 4 sects
1613, 8 sects
1645, 16 sects
1677, 32 sects
1709, 64 sects
1741, 128 sects
1773, 256 sects
1805, 512 sects
1837, 1024 sects
1869, 2048 sects
1901, 4096 sects
1933, 8192 sects
1965, 16,384 sects
1997, 32,768 sects.

As it turns out, the World Chris­t­ian Ency­clo­pe­dia was a few years behind.  But since we can assume that the num­ber dou­bles every 32 years, that would mean that, by 2029, the num­ber of Protes­tant sects would reach a gar­gan­tu­an 65,536.  In 2013, we are half way there.   If between 1997 and 2029 the num­ber of sects will increase by 32,768, that’s an increase of about 1024 a year.  By the end of 2012, the num­ber had reached 48,128.  With an increase this year of about 2.8 sects a day, the num­ber cur­rent­ly stands (as of May 14) at 48,503.

Dr.* White, is that what Christ intend­ed?

I do not lay all the blame for this upon sola scrip­tura. (Pray note that, Dr.* White!) But I do blame the most basic flaw in Protes­tantism: pri­vate judg­ment; or, the idea that you may fol­low no oth­er author­i­ty than that of your own intel­lect to dis­cern the mean­ing of Scrip­ture. How­ev­er much Protes­tants try to use rhetoric to dis­guise it oth­er­wise, that is what they do. And that is a foun­da­tion of sand. It is a foun­da­tion that divides Chris­tians, in an end­less expo­nen­tial divi­sion, from the one Christ and his one body. It is not the foun­da­tion I want to stand upon. I choose to stand upon the rock of Christ, and His body the Church, and the Holy Spir­it who guides the Mag­is­teri­um into all truth (John 16:13).

Note: Dr.* White does not dis­cuss this text any­where in The Roman Catholic Con­tro­ver­sy, nor (as far as I can tell) does he dis­cuss it in even one blog arti­cle. I began with a search for “Eph­esians 4” and “Eph­esians Four” and found many arti­cles that men­tioned Eph­esians, but not chap­ter 4. So then I ran a search for “Eph­esians Roman Catholi­cism,” and found a good deal of arti­cles cit­ing Eph­esians 2 instead. Where Dr.* White does men­tion Eph­esians 4, it is always in some dif­fer­ent con­text than exeget­ing the “one Church” pas­sage. If I have over­looked some­thing, and Dr.* White has exeget­ed this text, I would be grate­ful to be direct­ed to it. Else, I shall be left to con­clude that Eph­esians 4:1–6 ren­ders him mute.