How do "Christians" know which Denomination is the Truth?

[Duvduv]

I have long wondered how all the people who call themselves Christian get through all the disagreements and disputes over essentials doctrines to determine which denomination is the true form of Christianity.
Of course we assume the Roman Catholic Church believes it is the true religion, whereas the Orthodox church(es) believe that they are the true religion. And yet the Lutherans, Methodist, Reformed and Anglicans argue that what they have established is the original form of Christianity, which is disputed by Baptists, Anabaptists, Pentecostalists, Restorationists, Adventists, Witnesses, and LDS who each believe THEY are the original and true form of Christianity established by Jesus and Paul.
And yet even within each denomination there are disputes as to which one is the true representative of the TRUE denomination. Everyone thinks that the Utah LDS is the only church claiming the truth, but there are many other LDS churches who consider the Utah church heretical because of Brigham Young. And of course within the Baptist or Pentecostal denominations there are disputes that question which subdenomination is the true representative of True Christianity, and so it goes among all the rest.
Do Christians merely observe all this and say that whatever denomination they grew up in or switched to is "the truth," and "don't confuse me with any other details"?? How do they handle all this?

 

[HitchSlap]

I have long wondered how all the people who call themselves Christian get through all the disagreements and disputes over essentials doctrines to determine which denomination is the true form of Christianity.
...

How do they handle all this?

Simple they start new denominations.

Source: List of Christian denominations by number of members - Wikipedia

 

[TuxAme]

I don't know how others do it. Personally, I was raised a mix of Anglican and Catholic, lapsed after Confirmation, and became something of an agnostic for several years. I gradually started to warm up to religion during my senior year of high school, but wasn't too serious about faith until I went away to a Catholic college (they had the best program for my major, that being the reason I went) and I was invited to Mass. I came back to the Catholic faith that night. It was a short service, but very powerful for me. I was "officially" a Christian again that night, but only of the Catholic variety because "they got to me first", both as a child, going to Sunday school, and this time when I came to Christianity on my own. That being said, I came back to the Church with some "fundamentalist" beliefs I had picked up from the culture.

I started reading the Bible and trying to figure out what I believed (I was taught poorly or just didn't remember what I had been taught), so I was on my own. I figured out what the Catholic Church teaches about the Eucharist and thought, at first, "That's ridiculous. I'll stay, but won't believe in that". I had that attitude because I had never really read the Bible before, and my "common sensibilities" overrode that. Luckily for me, my English professor gave us an assignment to write a paper about any topic we wanted, and I chose to write something on Catholicism.

At this time, I was coming home every weekend, and when my parents drove me back one Sunday night (I wasn't driving yet), we stopped at a book store and I found a book on the Mass by Scott Hahn, a convert. The cover looked cool, so I got it (I'm a bit vain). I started reading it and was blown away by the evidence he had to support the Real Presence (and this section was only a few pages long). I had planned on doing my paper on a different subject, but since I was now convinced of this doctrine, I was extremely excited to find out everything I could and put it on paper.

Since then, I transferred to a different college and took a course on the Bible, reading most of the books in the class and "finishing it" on my own a few days before my birthday. And since then (that was my second year of college- I'm about to enter my fourth) I have begun exploring Church history. Everything I read- particularly from Augustine, whose anti-Pelagian works I'm reading now- have kept me firmly in my faith.

To sum it up, I was a Catholic because it's the faith I was already familiar with, and I was searching for meaning. I am a Catholic because continued personal study has led me to accept its claims.

 

[drjean]

It is determined by GOD's WORD regarding the basic beliefs. God is Truth; He IS the Word.

God did not create denominations, man did. It was done because there were varying ideas of the beliefs beyond the basics (and at time the basics of salvation as well). But man created religions/denominations so they wouldn't be fighting within themselves (rut roh) all the time, but be able to have fellowship of "like" believers.

It was done for fellowshipping.
It was also done for mission work.

Some did not wish to do mission work at all, while others felt they should go to other countries and others said no, we start at home. So varying sects within denominations began to spring up because of mission statements and funding of those missions. (Some prefer to send it to central body who distributes it, selects missionaries etc., others want to choose or send their own missionaries and fund them directly, for examples.)

 

[Tolworth John]

have long wondered how all the people who call themselves Christian get through all the disagreements and disputes over essentials doctrines to determine which denomination is the true form of Christianity.

In pretty much the same way Jews determine the truth between liberal, strick, ultra orthodox forms of Judaism.

While there are a great many differences between the varrious branches of Christianity. The esential doctrines are believed by all.
Thouigh there is debate as to what is or is not esential.

 

[Duvduv]

The comparison is incorrect. For thousands of years Judaism has taught the divine origin of the Torah and compliance with the teachings of the Talmud. The non-traditional forms of Judaism don't believe in these things and their form of Judaism is sort of a social services feel-good Love Israel "religion." They don't even claim that they are following the "truth" because they don't even believe there is a "truth."

 

[Sanoy]

Christianity is imaging Christ, that is the only true Christian religion. If someone says they are the true Christianity because they believe in doctrine X they are mistaken. Doctrine is believed and argued as historical fact by nonChristian Biblical Scholars and their belief in doctrine X fails to make them a true Christian, and it will fail to make anyone of us a true Christian. True Christianity is found in the heart, not the knowledge found in ones mind. It is gained in the heart and lost in the heart.

 

[Undead]

Sectarianism is carnal.

There is no religion, only relationship with Jesus.
Everyone else is fighting over insignificant nonsense like what color the curtains should be, and if we should have pews or chairs. If it is not significant to salvation, it is not worth fighting over.
Pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib.. just bickering with no real winners.

But as a Jew, I suspect you don't really want an answer, you just want to poke fun that there are 100,000 denominations and counting.

Do you want to find the Messiah or not?

 

[Duvduv]

You minimize the Theological differences, but each denomination considers them essential ever since Nicaea.
I know about the Messiah, a humsn being who will banish evil and set everything straight. Nothing of Christian divinity.

 

[Moral Orel]

Makes me think of Corinthians 2:14. Time and time again Christians have pointed that verse at me to tell me I just don't understand the Bible because I'm a Godless heathen, and understanding the Bible takes spiritual discernment. So if every single denomination thinks the Bible says something different, could there be more than one denomination that is truly Christian and has the spiritual discernment to understand what the Bible really says? We could take that a step further. Even within denominations there are more minor disagreements, so could it be said that every single Christian thinks the Bible says something different (at least in one place or another)? Is there even more than one person that is truly Christian and has the spiritual discernment to understand what the Bible really says?

What do I know, though. I'm just going on what some Christians have told me, since I couldn't understand it myself. Unless they also lacked spiritual discernment because they weren't really Christians...

 

[Inkfingers]

Do Christians merely observe all this and say that whatever denomination they grew up in or switched to is "the truth," and "don't confuse me with any other details"?? How do they handle all this?

I was raised an Atheist / Agnostic so my Christianity does not reflect my upbringing (I'm not a cradle Calvinist). Instead its a matter of aesthetics - finding practice that I think best embodies my understanding of scripture.

 

[ViaCrucis]

A similar question was asked on another board a while back, my response to the question of how one chooses which denomination was the following:

"Best I can offer is my own personal experience; granted I grew up as a Christian and so that makes things quite different. In my late teens/early twenties I reached a place where I had become effectively "homeless"; I had been raised a particular way but certain pressing questions had led me to become disenchanted with much of my hitherto Christian experience. Fundamentally, I attribute this to two distinct incidents, though I may avoid mentioning one so as to avoid the possibility of theological debate in your thread; the one I'll focus on was that I stumbled upon the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. This was something that had never been taught to me in all my years of going to church, attending a Christian private school, attending Sunday school, youth group. It came about because I had been reading the Bible, I don't remember the exact passage I read which made me pause, but it did lead me to go onto the internet to see if I was the only person who got the impression that the Bible was saying that the dead rise on the last day. I was thoroughly and entirely shocked at what I discovered, not only was I not alone, it turns out that it's one of the most basic and universal teachings of the Christian religion, and then I came across a multitude of passages of Scripture which I had somehow managed to never have seen before. When I began asking questions, of my parents, of youth leaders from two different churches, my friends, etc they all were equally as puzzled as I had been. I wasn't alone in not having been taught this, somehow something so basic to Christian religion was simply either not being taught or not filtering itself into the common faith of virtually everyone I knew.

My response to all of this ultimately was to ask myself what else was I missing out on. Which led me to bury myself in a great deal of study, discussion, debate--which is why I'm here on Christian Forums today discussing and debating theology, history, etc even over 15 years later.

I read the Bible more for starters, but I didn't just read it on my own, I read it and also engaged in discussion and conversation with other Christians from across different denominations and traditions; I also wanted to know what the historical opinions and views on various subjects were. It wasn't enough for me to merely ask, "What do I think this passage means?" I wanted to know what the earliest Christians meant and understood, and that meant becoming acquainted with the ancient fathers of the Church. And so I became very interested in Church history, and read a lot on the subject and have continued to do so, I also have tried to make it a point to bother to understand what different Christian traditions and denominations say.

Ultimately, for many reasons, I eventually found myself becoming a Lutheran--quite by accident I should point out. I'm not going to tell you or others to become Lutheran, that's not my point, it's just where I ultimately found myself in my journey.

If I had to describe my methodology, insomuch as it was a methodology at all, it would be something like as follows:

1. What is the historic teaching of Christianity? That is, when I investigate the historical record, what are the ideas and teachings that I find?

2. What is the common teaching of Christianity? That is, when I look across the landscape of different Christian denominations/traditions/groups what are the ideas which are held in common, as opposed to ideas which are more peculiar, particular, or idiosyncratic.

3. Where do I find the overlap of what I read in Scripture, see in Christian tradition, and current Christian teaching/practice? That is, when I see Scripture, historic Christians teaching, and the teaching of a church today, are they all ultimately saying the same thing, or different things--I should want them to be saying the same thing instead of different things.

4. Where, ultimately, does my conscience and convictions lead me? At the end of the day I won't be able to violate conscience and conviction, where can I be where my conscience is not violated and my conviction is not compromised?"

---------------------------------

A TL;DR version: I wanted to take seriously the question of what has been believed and confessed since the beginning. I believed that to get there meant I had to look into the history of the Christian religion. Lutheranism is where I ended up, basically on accident, because it took seriously the historic catholic faith and provided a lexicon by which to address major issues of theology that I didn't see elsewhere. If I wasn't a Lutheran I'd either be Anglican (Episcopalian here in the US), Orthodox, or Catholic--and most likely in that order. I take the history and catholicity of the Christian religion very seriously, and could not in good conscience be part of a faith community that didn't plug itself into that history and tradition.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ViaCrucis]

Makes me think of Corinthians 2:14. Time and time again Christians have pointed that verse at me to tell me I just don't understand the Bible because I'm a Godless heathen,

I'd say people who say such things are offering a cop out. I think the Bible is complex and no one is going to just crack it open and figure it out on their own; but the complexity is because it is comprised of many different texts written by many different people at different times, places, and covers a wide range of literary genre. And so like any ancient collection of literature it's going to take time and a willingness to learn about those texts in addition to just reading a translation of them. There's a body of scholarship surrounding the Bible that stretches back many hundreds of years for a reason, and to ignore it and think God is going to just beam truth into one's brain is a surefire way to read the Bible wrongly.

The Bible is complex, but it's not magic.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Duvduv]

I'm still not clear as to how an ordinary person could make a determination as to which of so many denominations contains the "doctrinal truth."

 

[Undead]

I'm still not clear as to how an ordinary person could make a determination as to which of so many denominations contains the "doctrinal truth."

Are you interested in becoming a Christian, but not sure which denomination might be the best fit, or are you interested in poking fun at Christianity?
If it's the latter, then there is no point in continuing to debate with a Jewish man regarding denominations. That's putting the cart before the horse.

This is called the "trivial objection". Most of the differences between denominations have little to do with salvation issues. This is the one area we can mostly agree on: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
Now--each atheist, and each Jew will have a different outlook on life and perhaps believe slightly different than even their own mother and father that raised them.
How does that grab you?

 

[Duvduv]

I really don't know why you're so jumpy and defensive. I simply wanted to know how Christians feel about such matters. Your own personal feelings aren't the issue. But maybe you don't know how Christians feel about such matters. Maybe other participants do know.

 

[Undead]

Yes, pethaps you are right. Perhaps I am not "qualified" to answer whereas other participants in demonizations.. err denominations are.

I will sit off to the side and watch this story unfold-- one where a Jew would like to become a Christian if he could only decide between Baptist, Lutheran or Methodist.

 

[Uber Genius]

I have long wondered how all the people who call themselves Christian get through all the disagreements and disputes over essentials doctrines to determine which denomination is the true form of Christianity.

This question highlights a common false beleif. Namely that Christian differ about essential doctrine.

There are essentials that are highlighted by a handful of creeds developed during the first 400 years of the life of the Church.

Jesus is God
There are three persons that make up one God (God's tri-personal nature)
Mankind is not in good moral standing before God
Jesus died to empower us to be forgiven and reunited with God as our father

There are a handful of others at most.

Whether we think the sacraments are means of God imparting attributes to us or we think that they are only ordinances, things we do to remember or commemorate events, is not essential doctrine.

I have had people in my church I who believed in sacraments even house they were Protestant. These are not essential in that someone doesn't become a non-Christian if they hold the wrong view.

So cult groups, like Mormons, or Jehovah's Witnesses, reject Jesus as God. They both think Jesus was created, rather than eternal. In fact JOseph Smith taught God the father was just a man at one time who grew to become a God. Opps.

So essential vs non-essential is the question.

Finally, many non-believers think that the broad diversity demonstrates how limited our human knowledge is in terms of God and often expect us believers to think, "All epistemic uncertainty is created equal." Well it is not.

The fact that I think my wife told me she put the keys on the counter by the sink as opposed to the sink by the garage door where the key rack sits, has different warrant than my beleif that my wife exists!

So one can be very confident of God's existence and less confident about where God lands on non-essential doctrine. Non-essential doctrines that as a result of leader immaturity end up producing schisms and multiple denominations.

 

[ViaCrucis]

I'm still not clear as to how an ordinary person could make a determination as to which of so many denominations contains the "doctrinal truth."

100% certainty isn't a luxury in most areas of life, and that may be especially true in matters of faith and religion.

How can I know, with 100% certainty, that Lutheran Christianity is the right one? Or how to even know if Christianity broadly is utterly and absolutely true? I can't, and I don't.

The only thing a person can do, at the end of the day, is to seek, search, and go by conviction and conscience. I am confident in my Lutheran-ness, not because I have some kind of absolute certainty about it, but because of reasons I've expressed above. I am confident that the apostolic witness concerning the Person and works of Jesus are true, and I believe that that witness is faithfully conveyed in the writings which make up the New Testament, and that they were faithfully passed on to succeeding generations of Christians who continued to believe, confess, and practice that religion born out of the original followers of Jesus. That catholic, historic, orthodox Christianity is a true, accurate, and faithful inheritance of the apostolic deposit of faith. And I am confident that the reform movement that came to be known as "Lutheranism" isn't a departure from that ancient catholic Christianity, it is not a departure from the apostolic witness, and tradition passed on through the centuries; but is a faithful adherence to it. To be Lutheran is to be a faithful catholic Christian and member of the holy catholic faith. Thus when I confess in the Creed faith in "one holy catholic and apostolic Church" I am professing faith in the catholic Christian Church which Jesus Christ instituted two thousand years ago, and which has been confessed, professed publicly throughout the world for the last two millennia.

And I make this confession not to say that other Christians in other communions, traditions, or denominations are not Christians; I am not excluding them from the Communion of Saints by making my confession. I am instead saying that this is where I make my confession and make my stand as a matter of faith, it is where conviction and conscience has brought me and, as I already said, at the end of the day one can only go with conviction and conscience.

Perhaps Catholics are right. Perhaps the Orthodox are right. Or perhaps Christianity isn't true at all, perhaps Judaism is right, or Islam, or Buddhism. Or perhaps no religion is true and atheism is correct position--all those are distinct possibilities that I acknowledge as possiblities. But those aren't where my convictions and my conscience have taken me. And while I can dress it up theologically, to speak of the guidance of the Holy Spirit (and I do believe this is true as well), that's an inconsequential argument to make in this context since it demands a high level of a priori assumption on the inherent truthfulness of "the Holy Spirit" as a concept at all.

So I'm not going to stand here and tell people to be what I am, as though I've attained some level of absolute certainty and knowledge, or as though I have attained some level of authority. I can only, instead, speak of my own experiences, my own convictions, and my own conscience about where I am.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Duvduv]

The inherent difficulty is that no denomination can prove that they have the true path to salvation, AND the problem is where people who think they are justified and saved may not be at all. Christianity provides no guidelines. Thus, a Lutheran and a Baptist and an Adventist may all be unsaved, and only a Catholic is, or vice versa.