72: Why So Many Churches?: 1,000 Years of Doctrinal Drift – Part 5

Welcome to the Ready for Eternity podcast, a podcast and blog dedicated to inquisitive

Bible students exploring Biblical truths that might not be fully explored in typical sermons or Bible studies.

My name is Eddie Lawrence. Imagine you're a first century disciple of Jesus who time travels into the future to the year 1050

AD. You attend a local church, but after the assembly ends, you're bewildered.

You're not even sure you met with fellow disciples. So much has changed in doctrine, structure, and worship that the church looks almost nothing like the one

Jesus started. Over the past 1 ,000 years, doctrinal drift has made the church of the 11th century nearly unrecognizable from the one

Jesus started. What began as a grassroots movement of house churches had become two rival institutions, the

Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Both had developed layers of ritual, hierarchy, and doctrine unknown to the apostles.

While the name Christianity remained, many of the core teachings and practices had shifted, some of them radically.

A thousand years had introduced a lot of doctrinal drift.

Political pressures drove some of these shifts, and cultural trends drove others, and the growing institutional power of the church drove still others.

But nearly all of them represent clear departures from the simple pattern of belief and practice found in the

New Testament. Let's look back at the prior 1 ,000 years and see what changed and why it matters.

One of the big changes was that over time, the church developed a formal clergy class.

The earliest Christians had no formal clergy. The New Testament describes a church led by shepherds, also known as elders or overseers, and these shepherds met the practical needs of local congregations.

There was no special class of priests because all believers were part of a royal priesthood.

But as Christianity spread and organized, a clerical class began to emerge.

By the 3rd and 4th centuries, bishops gained authority not just over their local church, but over entire regions.

Over time, this clergy -laity divide hardened. What began as practical leadership ultimately turned into a sacred office that was distinct from the common believer.

Another big change was celibacy for priests. In 1 Timothy 3,

Paul insists that the church leaders be the husband of one wife and that they manage their households well.

Early church leaders like Peter took wives, but in the Western church, this changed.

By the 11th century, celibacy became mandatory for priests. The idea was that marriage distracted from holy service.

In the early days of this new emerging priestly class, some of them chose to practice celibacy.

The church didn't enforce it across the board until much later, and it never had any biblical support.

This change reflected cultural values and the rising belief that celibacy was a higher spiritual state than marriage.

Another major departure from the New Testament pattern was that the

Lord's Supper went from a meal to a sacrifice. Jesus instituted the

Lord's Supper as a memorial, a way to remember his death until he returns.

The early church saw it as a communal meal, shared in homes with spiritual meaning and fellowship.

Over time, this simple remembrance morphed into something very different. By the 9th century, the church began using sacrificial language, and they called it the

Mass. It was no longer just about remembering Christ's sacrifice, but about recreating it on the church altar.

This shift changed how people viewed communion. It was no longer a fellowship meal, but a sacred ritual performed by a priest on behalf of the people.

Perhaps the most dramatic doctrinal departure from the New Testament pattern as it pertains to the

Lord's Supper was the teaching of transubstantiation. This is the idea that the bread and the wine of communion become the literal body and blood of Christ.

Now, this teaching has absolutely no basis in scripture, and the church didn't even really formalize it until the

Fourth Lateran Council in the year 1215. But before that, there were differing views on what

Christ meant when he said, this is my body. But the move to dogmatize transubstantiation marked a major turn.

It brought deep reverence to the Lord's Supper, but also deep fear.

The Lord's Supper was now seen as a mystical event, requiring careful handling and a consecrated priest.

Another big departure from the New Testament teachings was the rise of the doctrine of purgatory.

The New Testament teaches that after death comes the judgment, and that salvation is either received or rejected in this life.

Yet by the early Middle Ages, a new concept had taken root, purgatory.

The church viewed this as a temporary place in the afterlife where God purified souls before they entered heaven.

Purgatory developed slowly, beginning with prayers for the dead, and it grew over centuries into a formal doctrine.

It's not found in scripture, but by the 12th century, it was widely accepted in the

Western church and used to justify practices like indulgences.

Baptism also changed. It went from an immersion in water to either pouring or sprinkling.

Paul describes baptism as a burial and resurrection in Romans chapter 6 verse 4, and early

Christians practiced full immersion. This mode matched the symbolism of dying and rising with Christ.

But immersion gradually gave way to sprinkling, especially in the West. This shift happened partly for convenience or where infant baptism became the standard.

Eventually, sprinkling became common, even though it no longer pictured the biblical meaning of baptism.

Another innovation was the use of holy water, blessed by a priest and believed to ward off evil.

The New Testament never mentions this practice, but it entered into Western liturgy around the 9th century.

Like many later traditions, holy water blended Christian symbols with older cultural superstitions.

Over time, it became standard practice in homes and churches, despite its lack of biblical support.

The church also started to offer prayers to both saints and to Mary.

Jesus taught his followers to pray directly to the Father, and he promised that prayers in his name would be heard.

Yet by the 4th century, prayers to saints became common. Christians believed these saints, being in heaven, could intercede on their behalf.

Mary in particular took on an increasingly exalted role. By the 5th century, the church called her

Mother of God, and later honored her as the chief intercessor.

Though born of genuine love and reverence, this practice subtly undermined the unique role of Christ as our only mediator.

Perhaps the most infamous departure came with indulgences.

In theory, indulgences offered remission of temporal punishment for sins already forgiven.

In practice, they became a way to raise money and manipulate guilt.

Indulgences grew out of the early church's penitential system. The church formalized them between the 11th and 13th centuries.

It was the abuse of indulgences that would later spark Martin Luther's 95

Thesis and the Protestant Reformation. To be clear, not everything about the church went off course.

Belief in Jesus as the risen Son of God remained central. Scribes continued to preserve and copy the scriptures with care, and many leaders sought truth and holiness.

But we can't ignore the growing distance between the apostolic church and the institutional church that dominated the

Middle Ages. The pattern laid out in the New Testament is clear and simple.

These developments we've reviewed, however sincere or well -intentioned, added complexity, ritual and hierarchy not found in the early church.

As we prepare to explore the events leading up to the Reformation, we need to understand how far things had drifted from what we read about in the

New Testament. Only by looking back can we grasp the need that sparked a cry for renewal, which was back to the

Bible and back to Christ. Thanks for listening to the podcast.

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