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

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

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

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

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

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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

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

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

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

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

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A thousand years had introduced a lot of doctrinal drift.

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Another major departure from the New Testament pattern was that the

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

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

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

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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

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Western church and used to justify practices like indulgences.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Perhaps the most infamous departure came with indulgences.

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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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

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

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

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We hope this episode has deepened your understanding of Scripture. If you found this content valuable, please share it with your friends.

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For more Biblical studies, visit our website at ReadyForEternity .com.

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Keep studying your Bible, growing closer to God, and getting ready for eternity.