The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 5/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
THE FUNDAMENTAL AND DISTINCTIVE IDEA OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH—DIVISION OF THE CHRISTIAN SECTS.
All forms of conscious religion have this common point, an acknowledged sense of dependence on God, and each has some special peculiarity of its own, which distinguishes it from all others. Now the essential peculiarity of Christianity is, indeed, that moral and religious character already spoken of;[1] but the formal and theoretic peculiarity, which contradistinguishes it from all other religions, is this doctrine:—That God has made the highest revelation of himself to Man through Jesus of Nazareth. This doctrine—which does not proceed from the absolute character, but from the historical origin of Christianity—is the common ground on which all Christian sects, the Catholic and the Quaker, the Anabaptist, the Rationalist, and the Mormon, are agreed. But as this is logically affirmed by all theoretical Christians, it is as logically denied by all not theoretical Christians. Thus the Jews and Mahometans think their prophets superior to Jesus. When we find a man who is a higher “incarnation of God;” one who teaches and lives out more of Religion and Morality than Jesus, we are bound to admit that fact, and then cease to be theoretical Christians. Men may now be essential and practical Christians, if they regard Christianity as the Absolute Religion and live it out; or if they live the Absolute Religion and give it no name, though not theoretical, may still be essential Christians.
This distinctive character of Christianity appears in various forms in the different sects. Thus some call Jesus the Infinite God; others the First of Created Beings; others a miraculous Being of a mixed nature, and hence a God-man, the identity of Man and God; others still, a mortal man, the most perfect Representation of Goodness and Religion. These may all be regarded, excepting the last, as more or less mythological statements of this distinctive doctrine.
Now if Christianity be taken for the Absolute Religion, with this theoretical peculiarity, and developed in a man, it has an influence on all his active powers. It affects the Mind, he makes a Theology; the Conscience, he lives a Manly Life; the Imagination, he devises a Symbol, rite, penance, or ceremony. The Theology, the Life, and the Symbol, must depend on the natural endowments and artificial culture of the individual Christian, and as both gifts and the development thereof differ in different men, it is plain that various sects must naturally be formed, each of which, setting out from the first principle common to all religions, and embracing the great theoretical doctrine of Christianity, which distinguishes it from all not-Christian religions, has, besides, a certain peculiar doctrine of its own which separates it from all other Christian sects. These sects are the necessary forms Religion takes in connection with the varying condition of men. The Christian Church as a whole is made up of these parties, all of whom taken together, with their Theologies, Life, and Symbols, represent the amount of absolute Religion which has been developed in Christendom, in the speculative, practical, or æsthetic way. To understand the Christian Church, therefore, we must understand each of its parties, their truth and error, their virtue and vice, and then form an appreciation of the whole matter.
In making the estimate, however, we may neglect such portions of the Christian Church as have had no influence on the present development of Christianity amongst us. Thus we need not consider the Greek and Oriental churches after the sixth century, as their influence upon the rest of Christendom ceased to be considerable, in consequence of the superior practical talents of the Western churches.[2] The remaining portions may be classified in various ways; but, for the present purpose, the following seems the best arrangement, namely:
I. The Catholic Party.
II. The Protestant Party.
III. Those neither Catholics nor Protestants.
These, three will be treated each in its turn.