The One True Church
Objection: “All Churches that believe in Christ and the Bible are the
same. In any case, I don’t need to attend any church to worship God.
All I need is a personal relationship with Christ which I can have by
praying and reading the Bible on my own.”
The Protestant Reformation introduced new and radically different
concepts concerning the nature and role of the Church. In contrast to long
held doctrines such as the Communion of Saints and the corporate view of
the Church as the Body of Christ, Protestantism asserted an individualistic
Christianity that focused on one’s personal relationship with Jesus Christ to
the exclusion of any need for a Church or other visible organization. One
modern-day anti-Catholic sums up the Evangelical approach to the Church
as follows:
“salvation is found, not in a Church and its sacraments, but through a
personal relationship with Christ himself. Salvation is given directly
by Christ to an individual, without the need for any other
mediation.”¹
However, faith in Jesus Christ not only obliges the Christian to have trust
and commitment in His person, but to believe in and follow what He taught
and established to continue His work of salvation in the world. That Our
Lord Jesus Christ intended to establish an authoritative Church of His own
is clear from Sacred Scripture: “and on this rock I will build my Church”
(St. Matt. 16:18).
The Church belongs to Christ as He founded her while still on earth. Being
her founder He is also her head: “Christ is the head of the church, his body”
(Eph. 5:23). Those baptized in the name of the Trinity (St. Matt. 28:19) are
incorporated into Christ’s Body, that is, the Church. In no way is the
Church simply a man-made institution established centuries later bearing
1
William Webster, The Catholic Church at the Bar of History, Carlisle, Penn.:
Banner of Truth Trust, 1995, Ch. 9, p. 133.
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