Is the Catholic Church a Christian Church?

When we talk about God we often need to talk about him in parts. Because God is so big and our brains are so small, we need to be able to talk about him in manageable chunks. That is why we sometimes talk about the doctrine of the Trinity, or of Christ, of the church, of creation, and so on. However, because God is one and presents himself to us as a person, Jesus Christ, he is not reducible to those different parts; all these parts impact on and affect each other. You can’t change your doctrine about Jesus without it affecting your doctrine of the Trinity, for example. That is why when we learn and teach about God we study in a systematic way—so we can understand God best through an integrated and coherent system of truths, not isolated ideas.

Sometimes, as Evangelicals approaching Roman Catholicism, we look at various parts of Catholicism without considering how they relate to the whole Catholic system. For example, some might say Roman Catholics believe in the Trinity and the ancient creeds but that they have got the doctrine of Mary, Christ, salvation, the Bible and the church wrong at various key points. This atomization of Catholic teaching can lead us into saying things like, “The Roman Catholic Church is Trinitarian and creedal, and therefore more Christian than the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons”. One of the consequences of this error is to be less likely to be intentional in our evangelism of them. However, you cannot have a different teaching about Jesus and Mary and the church and salvation and the Bible without it profoundly affecting your teaching about the Trinity and your understanding of what the creeds mean.1

Gregg Allison and Leonardo De Chirico have done some very helpful work in critiquing the Roman Catholic system from a biblical perspective.2 In short, they suggest that the Roman Catholic system is best understood by the interaction of two key relationships. Firstly, there is the relationship of what they understand as the realms of Nature and of Grace. We might call them the physical world and the spiritual world. The second key relationship is the relationship between Christ and the Catholic Church. Catholics understand the Catholic Church to be the physical and spiritual continuation of Christ. The spiritual world is separated from the physical world and requires a mediator: Christ and the Catholic Church. Read More