Is There Only One True Church? (Part 4)

(If you haven't read them yet, go back and read the first, second, and third installments of this series of essays.)
The third vein of argumentation which various denominationswill lean upon to make their case as being the one true church is anexperiential one. This is usually not the primary argument for any particularchurch; historical and biblical arguments often come first. But it’s notuncommon to hear appeals to the evident power of the Spirit of God in one’scommunion—miraculous evidence that one would only expect to find in the truechurch of Jesus Christ.

And, truth be told, that is what you would expect tofind. If the Gospels and Acts are to be believed, the presence of miraculoussigns and wonders was one of the hallmarks of the life of the church,especially associated with the first proclamation of the gospel in a new area,thus demonstrating the supernatural power of God in their midst. If a church orcommunion is indeed the one true church, then that hallmark should still bevisible, at least in some form. If it is not the one true church—if it is merelya delusion of heretics and schismatics—one would expect the Holy Spirit not tooffer gospel-matching miracles in their midst.

As a student of church history and a lover of the church inall its forms, I have a long-running set of experiences across the spectrum ofmany different denominations. And here’s the peculiar thing: despite the veryvocal claims of some communions to be the one true church, to the exclusion ofothers, what one actually finds is that miraculous experiences are associatedwith all churches grounded in the Bible and the core doctrines of theancient faith. From Catholics to Eastern Orthodox to Copts to Baptists toPresbyterians to Pentecostals (and many more besides) we find that the mysteryof the Spirit’s power working in the church, the narrative thread underlyingthe book of Acts, is still wending its way through the experiences of all sortsof Christians today.

But, one may ask, can this kind of self-reporting betrusted? We’re talking about miracle reports from people who believe inmiracles, want miracles to happen, and are looking for them. Surely there’s asignificant margin of error for confirmation bias! Well, yes, no doubt there’sa good deal of that. But there’s something quite striking about the Christianlegacy of miracles nonetheless. This experiential element runs through the agesas a mark of Christianity, but does not appear nearly as frequently in otherreligious traditions—not even those traditions that emphasize miracle-storiesin their founders’ lives and their holy texts. Miracles pop up all the time inChristianity in a way that is simply orders of magnitude beyond those of anyother religious system, with the possible exception of shamanic religions andother faiths associated with direct contact with spiritual entities (and thereChristians would have reason to expect miracles of a rather darker sort toindeed be present). A good argument on this point is made in Craig Keener’smagisterial study, Miracles, which looks at both the startling ubiquityand the reliability of Christian miracle reports, both ancient and modern.

Okay, the critic might say—but since we brought up thepossibility of demonic “miracles” in shamanic religions, why can’t that be trueof heretical Christian denominations as well? Maybe Satan would give suchgroups a few miracles in order to keep people away from the one true church.While this objection sounds persuasive at first, it really isn’t nearly ascompelling on closer inspection. These other Christian denominations, which thecritic spurns as heretical, in fact show significant evidence not only ofdramatic signs-and-wonders-type miracles, but even more so of the kind of“ordinary” miracles that Satan would absolutely despise: lives transformed bythe power of the gospel, addictions broken, marriages restored, lives bearingabundant evidence of the fruits of the Spirit, and glory given to Jesus Christas Lord. That being the case, I don’t think it actually passes muster to saythat Satan must be the one behind the flashier miracles.

On balance, if one were to judge from experiential evidencealone, it would appear that the Spirit is at work across the whole swath offaithful Christian denominations. Each tradition includes a very large set ofsupernatural experiences related to the inner life of the Christian, but it’salso common to find the grander supernatural occurrences of public miracles ineach tradition as well. One of the curious features to me, though—and one thatI don’t quite know what to make of—is that each tradition seems to receive thekind of miracles that they expect to receive. Bible-centered traditions likeBaptists and Reformed churches see healings and deliverances in response toconcerted prayer; Pentecostals see dramatic healings on command and ecstaticphenomena; Catholics see Eucharistic miracles and healings from relics; andEastern Orthodox see myrrh-flowing icons. It’s interesting, isn’t it? Themiraculous power of the Spirit appears to respond to those places where eachparticular Christian group is looking for his presence.

In any case, the experiential argument for there being onlyone true church has never seemed to hold up for me. Quite the contrary, itpoints in the opposite direction—that the Holy Spirit seems to regard the wholevast diversity of Christendom as the true church. If I were to try to convertbased on the evidence of God’s supernatural power that I have actually seen atwork in the church, I would have to convert to a Pentecostal church, the RomanCatholic Church, and an Eastern Orthodox church—all while also remainingBaptist! It seems to me, based on this observation and the ambiguity of thehistorical and biblical arguments, that it’s fairer to regard the wholeChristian community as the church of Jesus Christ—all those who truly hold tothe faith that was once for all delivered to the saints, as laid out in thescriptures.

Now, this still isn’t an open-and-shut case. Is it stillpossible that one of the biblical arguments is true, in exclusion of all otherinterpretations, and that one of the historical arguments is true, despite thepaucity of evidence, and that some as-yet-unknown factor could explain thebroad presence of miracles? Sure. But with an absence of evidence, it seems alittle foolhardy to start jumping denominations before any clear answersappear. If there is only one true church, my prayer is (and always has been)that God would make it known to me, and if in his grace he grants that request,then I will drop everything and race to join the one true church. In themeantime, I’m content to grow where God has planted me.