The reason and formation of denominations. What’s your take on it. Why do they exist? Is this something that God orchestrated or is this something conceived from man?
In 431 Anno Domini Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, was deposed by the Council of Ephesus for a legitimate heresy, through the joint efforts of Archbishop St. Celestine of Rome and Pope St. Cyril the Great of Alexandria (it was not until the next century that Roman archbishops began styling themselves as Pope, although Leo, the next figure in our story, was the first Bishop of Rome to assume the former Pagan title of Pontifex Maximus, historically a political office held by aspiring men of state climbing their way up the
cursus honoroum, for example, Gaius Julius Caesar).
Now, in 451, Leo effectively, via Chalcedon, anathematized the Pope of Alexandria, Dioscorus, the direct successor of St. Cyril, for alleged heresy, but a close examination of the Chalcedonian position and the Oriental Orthodox suggests this incident was regrettable, and it might be the first enduring schism.
However by this time the Church of the East, located in the Persian Empire, had become isolated from the West to the point where it fell briefly under the influence of Nestorius and the Nestorian theologians exiled from Antioch, who wound up in Nisibis. Thus, many people assume the Church of the East is Nestorian, but an examination of the Christology it assumed based on the work of Catholicos Mar Babai the Great around 500 AD would suggest otherwise. However one of their hymn writers, Mar Narsai, did compose one Christological hymn which I do find vaguely Nestorian, and they do not use the term Theotokos, which is a violation of the canons of the Council of Ephesus. However I personally incline to regard The Church of the East, or rather, the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East (they had a schism in the 1960s over the calendar) as orthodox.
This takes us to the year 1054 where Cardinal Humbert famously placed a writ of excommunication on the altar of the Hagia Sophia and fled Constantinople, outrunning the deacons the Ecumenical Patriarch sent after him, following a period of protracted difficulty between Old Rome and New Rome, including a schism in the 9th century over the Roman Catholic modification of the Nicene Creed to interpolate “filioque”, which was regarded by Byzantine theologians as Christological heresy.
So thus, in 1054, on the eve of the crusades, you had basically four legitimately Christian communions of churches: the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox, who had just fallen out with Rome, and then the Oriental Orthodox (Syriacs, Armenians, Copts, Ethiopians, Indians) and the Church of the East in Iran, Iraq and India.
Now, in the 15th century Jan Hus became incensed at the impact of the changes the forced conversion of the Orthodox Slavs of Moravia to Roman Catholicism had wrought, and attempted at the cost of his life and that of Jerome of Prague, who are both now counted as saints and martyrs in the Czech-Slovak Orthodox Church despite organizing what today survives as one of the two oldest Protestant denominations, the Moravians. You also had the Waldensians, founded by Peter Waldo, whose early doctrine was dubious but who endured brutal persecution and became part of the Calvinist community. The Waldensian church is the main Protestant church in Italy today if memory serves.
In the subsequent century you had Martin Luther explode in furious rage at misconduct in the Roman church, and Pope Leo X explode in equally furious rage anathematizing Luther and all his followers in the bull Exsurge Domine (Arise, O Lord) rather severely:
“With the advice and consent of these our venerable brothers, with mature deliberation on each and every one of the above theses, and by the authority of almighty God, the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and our own authority, we condemn, reprobate, and reject completely each of these theses or errors as either heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears or seductive of simple minds, and against Catholic truth. By listing them, we decree and declare that all the faithful of both sexes must regard them as condemned, reprobated, and rejected . . . We restrain all in the virtue of holy obedience and under the penalty of an automatic major excommunication”
The Eastern Orthodox in turn anathematized Calvinism as a heresy and branded Luther a “madman” at the Synod of Dositheus in the 17th century but at other times, Orthodox-Protestant relations have been better. Particularly with the Anglicans, and here I would note most of the Protestant denominations in the US are somehow derived from people getting upset that the Church of England had not protested sufficiently. The Presbyterians, Puritans/Congregationalists, and Baptists seceded (except in Scotland, where the established Church of Scotland became Presbyterian and Calvinist due to the influence of John Knox, to the chagrin of Mary, Queen of Scots, a devout Catholic) from the established church owing to anger at Anglican practices. The Anglican church became more “high church” over time and is now probably the most liturgically formal church in the West, due to the superabundance of liturgical abuses in the Western Rite of the Roman Church since the reign of Pope Paul VI. Methodism began as a devotional movement in the Church of England which for political and other reasons became independent.
Meanwhile in Russia some curious groups such as the Molokans, as well as darker cults like the Mutilators, emerged in the schism between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Old Orthodox over a liturgical revision brought about by Patriarch Nikon. This has partially healed, but in Woodburn, Oregon, and in Russia, you can still find Russian Old Believers who are not in communion with the Moscow Patriarch. There are also some Old Believers who fled to other Orthodox lands like Georgia, Romania and Turkey to seek the protection of their Patriarchs.
So that’s a very rough history of denominations.
but I dont want this post to be too long.
