Schism and Reform

The history of Christianity after the early councils is in significant part a history of division. Two great fractures stand out above all others: the Great Schism of 1054, which divided Eastern and Western Christianity into the Orthodox and Catholic churches, and the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, which fragmented Western Christianity into dozens of traditions that have continued to multiply ever since. Understanding these divisions - what caused them, what theological issues were at stake, and what has and has not been resolved - is part of the honest account of the Christian tradition that any serious student of the Bible owes themselves.

The Great Schism of 1054 was the formal breaking point of a division that had been developing for centuries. The Eastern church, centered in Constantinople, and the Western church, centered in Rome, had drifted apart in language (Greek versus Latin), culture, liturgical practice, and theological emphasis. The immediate triggers of the formal split were disputes about papal authority - whether the Bishop of Rome had universal jurisdiction over all Christians, as Rome claimed - and a theological dispute about the Holy Spirit known as the filioque controversy. The Western church had added to the Nicene Creed the phrase that the Holy Spirit proceeds "from the Father and the Son" (filioque in Latin); the Eastern church insisted that this addition was both theologically wrong and procedurally illegitimate, since a universal council would have been required to change a universal creed. The mutual excommunications of 1054 were lifted in 1964, but the churches remain divided.

The Protestant Reformation began in 1517 when Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses challenging the practice of selling indulgences - payments to the church that were claimed to reduce the time souls spent in purgatory. The controversy quickly expanded to fundamental questions about the authority of scripture versus the authority of the church, the nature of salvation, and the proper form of Christian worship. Luther's principle of sola scriptura - scripture alone as the final authority for faith and practice - stood in direct tension with the Catholic position that scripture and tradition together, interpreted by the church's teaching authority, constituted the source of Christian doctrine. John Calvin in Geneva, Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich, and the English Reformers all developed distinct forms of Protestant Christianity, and these traditions continued to divide and sub-divide in the following centuries.

The Reformation also produced the Radical Reformation - groups like the Anabaptists who went further than Luther or Calvin, insisting on believers-only baptism, the complete separation of church and state, and a more thoroughgoing rejection of the structures of medieval Christianity. These groups were persecuted by Catholics and mainstream Protestants alike. Their insistence on religious liberty, the gathered church of committed believers, and the authority of conscience shaped the traditions that eventually produced the Baptists, the Mennonites, and much of the Free Church world - including the tradition represented by Mt. Zion Baptist Church.