“The passages in which schism and its corresponding verb are found in Scripture, divide themselves into two classes—that in which the word is used literally, and that in which the word is used figuratively. It is used literally in such passages as the following:—Matthew xxvii. 51; Mark i. 10; Luke v. 36; and John xix. 24. The literal is, of course, the foundation of the figurative meaning; but from these and similar passages in which it is found, we can determine nothing in regard to schism, but that it refers to a rending of some kind or other.
The passages in which the term is employed figuratively, are either those which speak of parties who were not believers, or those which speak of parties who were professedly Christian. Of the former class we have John vii. 43; ix. 16; x. 19; Acts xiv. 4; xxiii. 7. These are the passages of the class to which they belong. The persons spoken of were united in ignorance or unbelief of the Gospel. The Gospel is preached to them, or some of its attesting miracles are wrought before them, and there follows a division or schism among them in regard to it. This will not inform us as to the nature of the sin of schism in the church. It is the very division or schism among men which the Gospel is designed to produce; and by producing which, it translates men from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. We must look, then, to the other class of passages, in which the word schism is employed figuratively, for information on the subject we are now wishing to understand. They are only three in number (I. Cor. i. 10-11); (I. Cor. xi. 18); and (I. Cor. xii. 24-25).
“What then were the divisions or schisms in the Church in Corinth? It is apparent at once that they did not consist in separation from the communion of the Church, and the formation of other churches or sects. In order to obtain a proper idea of what is meant by a breach or schism in this application we must form a just notion of that which constituted the union whereof schism was a violation. Now the great and powerful cement which united the souls of Christians was their mutual love. ‘Their hearts,’ is the emphatic language of Holy Writ, ‘were knit together in love’ (Col. ii. 2). This had been declared by their Master to be the distinguishing badge of their profession. ‘By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye have love one to another’ (John xiii. 35). As this, therefore, is the great criterion of the Christian character, and the foundation of the Christian unity, whatever alienates the affections of Christians from one another, is manifestly subversive of both, and may, consequently, with the greatest truth and energy be denominated schism.
*The above extract is from an Introductory Essay to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.
The first passage quoted (I. Cor. i. 10) seems at first sight to indicate such a breach of that visible unity in the outward order settled in their assembly as results from some jarring in their religious opinions. It is unquestionable that there cannot be Christian union or Christian love where there is not Christian truth in its essential or fundamental principles. But the Apostle in his letter to the Corinthians (chap. vii. 19), (viii. 8), allows the greatest latitude consistent with the faithful maintenance of these. (See also Rom. xiv. 4; Phil. iii. 15-16.) Besides, it is manifest that there was no breach in their external unity. When they came together the divisions or schisms took place (chap. xi. 18). The differences among them were in regard to certain chiefs or leaders under whom the people severally ranked themselves, and thus without making separate communions, formed distinctions among themselves to the manifest prejudice of the common bond of love. ‘Now, this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ.’ What it was that gave rise to such distinctions in the Church of Corinth, we are not informed, nor is it material for us to know. From what follows in the epistle, it is not improbable that they might have thought it proper in this manner to range themselves under those who had been the instruments of their conversion to Christianity, or perhaps those by whom they had been baptised, or for whom they contracted a special veneration.
It is evident, however, that these petty differences, as we should account them, had already produced consequences unfriendly to the spirit of the Gospel, for it is in this point of view solely that the Apostle considers them, and not as having an immediate bad influence on its doctrine. Thus, resuming the subject, he says, ‘Ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal?’ (chap. iii. 3-4). Thus it is incontrovertible, in the first place, that the accusation imports that the Corinthians by their conduct had given a wound to love, and not that they had made any deviation from the faith; and, in the second place, that in the apostolical acceptance of the word, men may be schismatics, or guilty of schism, by such an alienation of affection from their brethren as violates the internal union subsisting in the hearts of Christians, though there be neither error in doctrine nor separation from communion, and, consequently, no violation of external unity in religious observances and worship.
Fifty years after the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians was written, dissensions again broke out in the Church in Corinth. Clement, Bishop or Pastor of the Church in Rome, wrote to them in the name of the Church in Rome, ‘a persuasive not an authoritative epistle,’ which is still extant, and in which he speaks of dissensions under the name of factions and schisms. It was not till centuries after, when the liberties of the Christian people were nearly annihilated, the right of private judgment taken away, and the power of the clergy raised into a spiritual despotism, that mere separation from a Christian assembly was accounted schism, ‘irrespective of its causes, and condemned as a heinous crime against God whose authority was said to be condemned when the arbitrary authority of those who claimed to be His sole ministers was not obeyed. The true idea of schism, however, has never been lost. ‘He is a schismatic,’ says a writer of the fourth century, whose doctrinal views were as remote from those of the Bible as the East is distant from the West, ‘who, holding the same opinions and practising the same rites with others, has pleasure only in the dissensions of the Church.’ ‘It is to be inquired,’ says a learned Romanist of the sixteenth century, Cassander, who laboured with more heart than judgment, to reconcile Popery and Protestantism, ‘how rightly and justly it is determined of Protestants that they are heretics and schismatics. For there is to be considered as to the Church, the head and the body. From the head there is no departure but by doctrine disagreeable to Christ the Head; from the body there is no departure by diversity of rites and opinions, but only by the defect of love.’ ‘Whatever violates Christian love,’ says John Howe, ‘is the most destructive, mortal schism; as much worse than an unwilling breach of outward order, as malicious tearing in pieces of a man’s living body, is worse than an accidental rending of his clothes.’
Having examined all the facts as we called them; all the Scriptural passages that bear on our subject we are now prepared to deduce and expound general principles, and these, so obvious are they, have necessarily been anticipated. The chief and most obvious of them is simply this, that there may be schism without separation. It was so, we have seen, in the Church in Corinth. Wherever uncharitable strifes and dissensions exist to break the internal unity of the faithful, or wherever there wants the spirit of love, there is already a schism in the body. Let a church fall into a state of internal dissension; there may be no controversy in regard to doctrine; there may be no separation from the body; but the bond of love is broken, we shall suppose—it matters not as to the cause—contention and ill-will prevail: that church is in a state of schism. Paul would have addressed it as he addressed the Corinthians, “I hear that there be schisms among you, and I believe it.” Every member in whom had died the spirit of love, and in whom dwelt the spirit of contention, must be accounted schismatic. Be the model of government Episcopalian, or Presbyterian, or Congregational, external unity may be unbroken, while schism reigns within. The case of a church will be still worse, if there is super-added to a breach of the bond of love, a difference in regard to ecclesiastical polity, or a difference in regard to fundamental doctrines, or if any of these differences be the occasion of a breach of the bond of love. In fact, if there be an essential difference in regard to doctrine, it renders Christian love impossible; it divides the body into two spiritually unconnected parts, Christian and non-Christian; and separation, instead of being a sin, will become a duty.
The Scriptural principle we are expounding, namely, that there may be schism where there is no breach of external unity, strikes at the root of every theory which, like the Roman, makes the unity of the church to depend on anything external. Every such theory partakes of the essentially un-Christian vice of attaching too much importance to what is outward. The apostolic method was to account everything of an outward or ritual character as subordinate to what was moral and spiritual (I. Cor. xiii. 1-3). Those who un-Christianise all who possess not the benefits of a supposed or real apostolic succession, account everything moral or spiritual as secondary to what is ritual. With Paul, a departure from essential truth incurred the highest displeasure; a breach of love was schism. With the patrons of a via media between Rome and Protestantism, essential error may be tolerated, and its poison become food through the virtues of a falsely so-called apostolical order; internal hatred and war may reign—there is no schism, till the bonds of that order are broken.
The converse of the principle we have been illustrating, is likewise true and obvious, that there may be separation without schism. Separation may be the result of the legitimate exercise of Church discipline: and the Church which excludes a party from its communion, for a Scriptural reason, and in a Christian spirit, is not guilty of schism in its act. With the party excluded the separation is of course involuntary; and, therefore, by whatever previous sins he may have exposed himself to such treatment, his separation, so far as he is concerned, possesses no moral character.
There is another situation in which voluntary separation may take place without schism:—a Church may have departed so far from the faith, or cherish within it such an admixture of un-Christian men, as to render voluntary separation an act of obedience to God. Is this doubted? Then, what means the Scripture, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness, and what communion hath light with darkness?” (II. Cor. vi. 14). Or what means the direction given by Paul to the Thessalonians—“Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us?” (II. Thes. iii. 6). Here the churches are commanded to exclude the “disorderly,” those who lived in disobedience to the Saviour’s laws, and to do it not in wrath but in love, still to account the excluded as brethren, and to admonish them as such for their restoration. But if the influence of the disorderly themselves so preponderate, or if the views of duty in regard to the matter on the part of the orderly be so defective, that this command is not obeyed, how are those to act who know the will of Christ and are desirous to do it? The Bible is ready with its answer:—“Come out from among them, and be separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (II. Cor. vi. 17-18). “Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not her plagues” (Rev. xviii. 4). Will it be schism to obey these precepts? If it will, our Lord has commanded us to commit it. But no, we break no bond of love in thus acting. We come out from those whom we do not love as brethren, because we do not esteem them as such; and if we leave Christian brethren behind us, we need not cease to love them, because we cease to join with them in what we account wrong. Luther, when hurling his bolts at the corruptions of Rome, shrunk with a still superstitious sensitiveness from leaving the Roman communion. John Knox, on the contrary, judged that the Reformation was in constant peril of absorption into the body of anti-Christ, while the reformed associated with the worshippers of Rome, and wisely hastened the formation of a new and separate communion. Were the fears of Luther enlightened? The short-sighted haste of Leo X., and the guidance of Providence soon overcame them. Was Knox guilty of schism when he came out of the fellowship of a community with which he had already ceased to have any spiritual sympathy or any spiritual connection? Speak not of the beauty of the seamless garment of the Saviour, nor tell us of the presumption of tearing it; it was already so defiled by Rome, that the Saviour Himself would loathe and disown it.”