*** w03 9/1 pp. 4-5 One True Christian Faith—A Reality ***
A Unified Congregation
We should not think of that first-century congregation as “a world-wide, universal, organized society such as we mean nowadays when we talk about the catholic church,” says The New Dictionary of Theology. Why not? “For the simple reason,” it says, “that such an organized, universal society scarcely existed.”
No one can rightly disagree with the fact that the early Christian congregation bore no resemblance to the institutionalized church systems we see today. But it was organized. Individual congregations did not operate independently of one another. They all recognized the authority of a governing body in Jerusalem. That body—consisting of the apostles and older men of the Jerusalem congregation—helped to preserve the unity of the congregation as the “one body” of Christ.—Ephesians 4:4, 11-16; Acts 15:22-31; 16:4, 5.
What happened to that one true congregation? Did it become the mighty Catholic Church? Did it evolve into the denominational, fragmented Protestant church system that we see today? Or did something else happen?