One of the better known and more significant groups was the Donatists. The separatists developed into numerous groups, some more and some less Biblical, and some heretical.
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“These congregations may be defined, therefore, as free churches because they won adherents and members, who when they freely accepted the word, turned away from the life of sin and voluntarily were baptized.” 11 They grew as a reaction against the gradual secularization and increasing worldliness of the larger Roman Catholic Church. These separatist churches considered the holiness of their members to be the real mark of the true church. Let the good tolerate the bad let the bad change themselves and imitate the good.” 10 Internal PurityĪ separatist movement developed in opposition to the centralized authority in the institutional church. 9 “I tell you of a truth, my Beloved, even in these high seats there is both wheat and tares, and among the laity there is wheat, and tares. 7 Based on the parable of the wheat and tares in Matthew 13, 8 he argued that the Devil had some of his own children in the church but, he argued, God had no children outside the church. The holiness of the church is not that of its members, but that of Christ. 6 Augustine believed the church to be a “mixed body” ( corpus permixtum) of saints and sinners. If Cyprian laid the foundation for Romanism, Augustine erected the papal throne, and blazed the way for the colossal tyranny of the Roman Church hierarchy. Hence his decisive conclusion: “He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.” 5 The idea of bride moved easily into the picture of mother one bride obviously means one mother. The view of the church as the bride of Christ meant that the schismatics were adulteresses. 4 Schism was a Satanic trick whereby he “might subvert the faith, might corrupt the truth, and might divide the unity.” Unity was, for Cyprian, the clear teaching of Scripture. Unity cannot be broken, for to step outside the church was to forfeit any possibility of salvation. Schism is totally and absolutely unjustified. 3Ĭyprian (200–258) emphasized the unity of the catholic church under the authority of the bishop. “For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority.” 2 Although he had a strong interest in maintaining the purity of the church, his desire to stem the rising tide of heresy resulted in a strong emphasis on external unity.
Irenaeus emphasized a universal, visible church based in Rome. Ignatius (who died about ad 107) spoke of “one Church which the holy apostles established from one end of the earth to the other by the blood of Christ.” 1 He was one of the first to use the phrase “catholic church,” although he used it for local churches. Four significant early writers were Ignatius, Irenaeus, Cyprian, and Augustine. The early church fathers, in refuting heresies in the second century, established external characteristics by which they argued that the true church could be known. This article will briefly survey these historical movements and direct attention toward the impact on our current culture. This division redeveloped in the twentieth century, as Fundamentalists reiterated the importance of pure churches (and denominations), while Evangelicals argued for greater unity despite doctrinal deviations. This distinction continued through the Reformation, with Luther and Calvin arguing for an acceptance of a single church identifiable through external signs and the Anabaptists arguing for an internal purity of the local congregations. These two directions were present prior to the Reformation, as Catholicism formed around the concept of an external unity and its opponents centered their arguments in an internal purity. One trend was toward external unity the other was toward internal purity. As early as the second century, two contradictory trends had developed that would affect the doctrine of the church until the present time.
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