Was There a Great Apostasy?

Denominations

“… today we see a profusion of denominations, sects, and cults that claim to be Christian… How did these divisions come about? For the answer, we must go back to the first century of our Common Era.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom
The Great Apostasy Develops

Was there a “great apostasy” in the early Christian Church, leading to a need for restoration of true Christianity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?

A number of modern restorationist movements answer Yes, and stake their very existence on it. Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that the faith Jesus founded was corrupted by paganism after the last apostle died, eclipsed for centuries by a counterfeit they call “Christendom,” and restored only in the modern era. The Latter-day Saints (Mormons), Seventh-day Adventists, and other restorationist groups make parallel claims, differing only on when the apostasy occurred, what the corruption was, and who was sent to repair it.

The claim carries enormous weight, because restorationism collapses without it: if the Church Christ founded never disappeared, then a group claiming to restore that Church has nothing to restore. The stakes are total and symmetrical: if the great apostasy happened, historic Christianity is false; if it did not, the restorationist movement is false.

The Watchtower View panel below sets out the claim of Jehovah’s Witnesses in their own words. The Catholic View panel sets out the reply — from Scripture, the historical record, and the testimony of the earliest Christians. The Summary panel puts the case in brief and offers the complete essay for download.

I invite your engagement with me on this question. You may leave comments below, but please be sure to read our policy on commenting before doing so.

Watchtower View

Jump to the Catholic View ↓

Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that a great apostasy overtook Christianity after the death of the apostles, so that the religion later known as “Christendom” is a counterfeit of the faith Jesus founded. On this view the true Christian congregation had to be restored in the modern era, a work they trace to C. T. Russell and the Bible Students in the decades before 1914. Their account is set out in the book Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom (chapter “The Great Apostasy Develops”) and in numerous Watchtower articles on jw.org.1

What They Affirm

The apostles were a “restraint.” Witnesses read Paul’s words about something that “acts as a restraint” (2 Thess. 2:6–7) to mean that the living apostles personally held back the apostasy. For “over 60 years, the apostles had ‘acted as a restraint.’” When John, the last apostle, died about 100 C.E., that restraint was removed and “the apostasy that had slowly begun to creep into the congregation was now ready to burst forth unrestrained.”2

Pagan philosophy corrupted pure teaching. The Watchtower holds that Jesus plainly taught that Jehovah is “the only true God” (John 17:3) and that the human soul is mortal (Matt. 10:28). After the apostles died, “such clear teachings were corrupted as pagan doctrines infiltrated Christianity,” a key factor being “the subtle influence of Greek philosophy.” From this, they say, arose such doctrines as the Trinity, the immortal soul, and hellfire — teachings they regard as departures from Scripture.3

A clergy class arose. Witnesses argue that the first-century congregation had no clergy–laity division: each congregation was overseen by a body of elders of equal authority, since Jesus said, “All you are brothers” (Matt. 23:8). They point to Ignatius of Antioch, who about a decade after John’s death urged each congregation to “follow the bishop,” as evidence that a single overseer was elevated above the other elders — for them a mark of the developing apostasy and the eventual rise of a priestly hierarchy.4

“Christendom” is the counterfeit. The result, they teach, was that “true Christianity was eclipsed by a counterfeit called Christendom,” with a clergy class that “tried to keep the Bible out of the hands of the common people.” The Catholic Church, on this account, is the principal embodiment of that counterfeit rather than the continuation of the apostolic Church.5

How They Argue It

Apostasy was foretold. Witnesses cite Jesus’ warning about “false prophets” in sheep’s covering (Matt. 7:15); Paul’s prediction to the Ephesian elders that “from among you yourselves men will rise and speak twisted things” (Acts 20:29–30); Peter’s warning that “there will be false teachers among you” who “quietly bring in destructive sects” (2 Pet. 2:1–3); and above all Paul’s statement that “the apostasy” must come before the day of Jehovah (2 Thess. 2:3). They take these as prophecies that the corruption would arise from within the congregation.6

The wheat and the weeds. Central to their reading is Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matt. 13:24–30, 36–43). They understand it to mean that after the apostles died Satan “oversowed” the congregation with imitation Christians, so that genuine and counterfeit Christianity would grow together until “the time of the end.” True Christianity, they say, “was never completely stamped out,” but survived obscurely among scattered “truth lovers” through the long centuries of Christendom’s dominance.7

Restoration before 1914. Witnesses teach that in the decades before 1914 C. T. Russell and his associates did “a work like that of John the Baptizer,” restoring Bible truths — the meaning of Christ’s ransom, the rejection of hellfire, and the announcement of the end of the “Gentile Times.” They hold that Christ, enthroned in 1914, then inspected the spiritual temple (Mal. 3:1–5) from 1914 to 1919, identified the Bible Students as the “wheat,” and rejected the churches of Christendom — so that the harvest separating true from false Christianity is now under way.8

Endnotes
  1. The Watchtower’s fullest narrative account is the chapter “Apostasy Develops” (also presented under the heading “The Great Apostasy”) in Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom (Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 1993), esp. pp. 32–36. The theme recurs across the Society’s literature, including the brochure The Time Is at Hand and numerous Watchtower study articles archived at jw.org. ↩
  2. Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom (1993), p. 32: “For over 60 years, the apostles had ‘acted as a restraint,’ endeavoring to hold back the tide of apostasy. … But as the Christian congregation was about to enter the second century, the last surviving apostle, John, died, about 100 C.E. The apostasy that had slowly begun to creep into the congregation was now ready to burst forth unrestrained, with devastating organizational and doctrinal repercussions.” The reading rests on identifying the “restraint” of 2 Thessalonians 2:6–7 with the living apostles. ↩
  3. Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom (1993), pp. 34–35, on the corruption of “clear teachings” by “pagan doctrines” and “the subtle influence of Greek philosophy”; cf. the brochure Should You Believe in the Trinity? (1989), which makes the same argument that the Trinity entered Christianity from Greek philosophy after the apostolic age. The proof-texts cited are John 17:3 and Matthew 10:28. ↩
  4. Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom (1993), p. 35, citing Ignatius of Antioch’s Letter to the Smyrnaeans 8 (“follow the bishop”) as evidence of a single overseer being raised above the body of elders; the appeal to Matthew 23:8 (“all you are brothers”) is standard in Watchtower discussions of congregational structure. ↩
  5. Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom (1993), pp. 35–36: “true Christianity was eclipsed by a counterfeit called Christendom.” The charge that the clergy “tried to keep the Bible out of the hands of the common people” recurs in Watchtower literature on the history of the Bible; cf. The Watchtower, various issues, and Mankind’s Search for God (1990), ch. 11. ↩
  6. The proof-texts for a foretold apostasy are gathered in Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom (1993), pp. 32–33, and in study articles such as “Will the Real Christianity Please Identify Itself!” (Watchtower): Matthew 7:15; Acts 20:29–30; 2 Peter 2:1–3; 2 Thessalonians 2:3. The Catholic reply does not dispute that apostasy was foretold, but that the texts predict a universal apostasy of the whole Church. ↩
  7. On the parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matt. 13:24–30, 36–43) applied to a centuries-long coexistence of true and counterfeit Christianity, see Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom (1993), pp. 33, 42–43, and the regular Watchtower treatment of the “harvest.” The phrases “oversowed,” “never completely stamped out,” and “truth lovers” reflect the Society’s wording. ↩
  8. Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom (1993), pp. 42–46, on the pre-1914 work of C. T. Russell and the Bible Students as “a work like that of John the Baptizer,” and on Christ’s supposed inspection of the spiritual temple (Mal. 3:1–5) from 1914 to 1919, culminating in the rejection of Christendom and the appointment of the “faithful and discreet slave.” The 1914 chronology itself derives from the “seven times” of Daniel 4; see the companion page When Are The Last Days? ↩

Catholic View

The Catholic Church holds that the truth demands a distinction between personal and universal apostasy. That individuals, and even whole groups, can fall away from the Church is not in dispute; Scripture says plainly that they will, and history confirms it. But that is the opposite of what the Great Apostasy requires. The Church Christ founded has been attacked in every century (by persecution from without, by heresy from within, and by the failures of her own members) but she has never ceased to exist, and has never lost the faith committed to her.

Two Kinds of Apostasy

When a person apostatizes, the claim is that he has left the Church; when the Church is said to apostatize, the claim is that the Church itself has become corrupted beyond reform. Catholics hold that individuals fall away; the Church does not. That answer rests on what Christ Himself promised, on the complete silence of the historical record where evidence for an apostasy should be, and on the testimony of the Christians who lived nearest the apostles.

What Christ Promised

The case usually opens with Paul’s warning that the day of the Lord will not come unless the apostasy comes first (2 Thess. 2:3). But Paul is describing events that precede the Second Coming, not the dawn of the Church’s own history, and he knew that a total apostasy of the Church would flatly contradict what Christ had promised:

I will build my Church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18)

I am with you always, to the close of the age (Matt. 28:20)

The Father … will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever (John 14:16)

Pressed on the first of these, a Witness will answer that it means only that hell (death or the grave) will not permanently overcome the Church, leaving room for the gates of hell to prevail completely for eighteen centuries, so long as the Church is eventually restored. That reading cannot survive the Greek. The verb rendered “prevail” (katischyō) is the same word the Greek Old Testament uses for merely temporary domination: in Judges 6:2 the hand of Midian prevailed over Israel for seven years, driving the people into caves; in Exodus 17:11 Amalek prevailed whenever Moses lowered his hand. So when Christ rules out the gates of hell prevailing, He rules out precisely the temporary conquest the Great Apostasy requires.

And the apostle whose warning opened the case describes the Church in terms that rule the theory out. Writing to Timothy, Paul describes the household of God as:

the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15)

A pillar holds a thing up; a bulwark is what an assault breaks against. This is not the language of something expected to corrupt. Ironically, it is the same Paul, in the same letters, who is quoted both as predicting a soon-to-come Great Apostasy and as saying the Church is the pillar and bulwark of the truth. It makes Paul contradict himself.

Set that beside Christ’s assurance that the Spirit of truth “will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). A Great Apostasy requires the pillar of truth to have become the pillar of falsehood, and the Spirit given to guide the Church into all truth and to remain with her forever to have failed at both. A Church guided into all truth by the Spirit who abides with her forever is not a Church that collapses into universal error within a generation.

Christ also provides an image that turns the Great Apostasy into a reductio ad absurdum, and He supplies it in the very terms Paul would later use. Paul warns the elders at Ephesus that wolves are coming (Acts 20:29–30); Christ had already said what a shepherd does when a wolf arrives:

I am the good shepherd … He who is a hireling and not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf snatches them and scatters them (John 10:11–12)

A hireling is defined by one thing: what he does when a wolf comes. The Great Apostasy asks us to believe that Christ did exactly this: saw the wolves coming and let the flock be scattered for eighteen centuries. It makes Christ the hireling of His own parable.

This exposes a clean logical dilemma. If a restorationist founder was right that the whole Church apostatized, then one of four things must follow: either

  1. Christ’s promises were misreported by the evangelists
  2. He said them but did not mean them
  3. He meant them and failed to keep them
  4. or the founder was simply wrong.

The first three destroy the credibility of Christ or of Scripture, the very authorities the restorationist claims to honor. Only the fourth is coherent.

An Apostasy With No Date, No Place, and No Name

Every heresy, council, pope, and reformer in Christian history is documented and named. We know when Arius began to teach, who opposed him, which bishops signed at Nicaea, and what it cost them. Yet the supposed greatest rupture of all, the total collapse of the Church Christ founded, left no record whatever. No date, no place, no council, no name, no protest.

That silence is not what a real apostasy would sound like. The early Church fought bitterly and in writing over far smaller matters: the date of Easter, the readmission of the lapsed, whether heretical baptism was valid. A universal abandonment of the apostolic faith would have provoked an outcry beside which those disputes were nothing. Nobody noticed.

The Society has tested this itself, and the result is buried in its own history. When Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom was being written, the Writing Department assigned Barbara Anderson to identify the faithful Christians who had carried the truth through the centuries. She spent months on it, applying the Society’s own four marks — rejection of the Trinity, of hellfire, and of the immortal soul, together with the ransom as Witnesses define it — and reported that there was not one generation of true Christians linking to a succeeding generation. Her overseer accepted the finding, and the book fell back on the vaguest possible formula: there have always been “truth lovers.” When the organization’s own researcher goes looking for the remnant and comes back empty, the silence is no longer the Catholic’s argument. It is the Watchtower’s own finding.

The nearest thing to a date the theory offers fails on its own facts. Constantine neither legalized Christianity (Galerius did, in 311), nor made it the state religion (Theodosius did, c. 380), nor invented the creed or the episcopal hierarchy, which Ignatius already describes around 107. Nor did he supply Nicaea’s theology. The fullest modern account — A. H. M. Jones’s Constantine and the Conversion of Europe — describes an emperor who pronounced the quarrel “extremely trifling,” begged both sides to agree to differ, and wanted only an inclusive formula that everyone could sign. The exclusive creed the council produced was the bishops’ work — many of them confessors who had endured imprisonment and torture in the Great Persecution rather than surrender that faith — and Jones’s verdict is that they exploited the emperor’s authority, not the reverse. The imperially favored religion of the fourth century was in fact Arianism, which the Nicene bishops and laity resisted. That is the opposite of the conspiracy story.

What the Record Does Show

Where the record does speak, it speaks against the theory. The very doctrines said to be later corruptions are already in the earliest Christian writings we possess, all of them well before Nicaea:

Clement of Rome (c. 95) describes the apostles appointing successors and providing that others should follow them in ministry (Letter to the Corinthians 44). Ignatius of Antioch (c. 107), writing on his way to martyrdom, urges that nothing be done in the Church apart from the bishop, and calls the Eucharist the flesh of Christ (Smyrnaeans 7–8). Justin Martyr (c. 155) tells a pagan emperor that Christians do not receive the Eucharist as common bread and drink (First Apology 66). Irenaeus (c. 180) lists the bishops of Rome in unbroken succession from the apostles as the test of authentic doctrine (Against Heresies 3.3).

These men are not remote from the apostles. Irenaeus heard Polycarp, and Polycarp was a disciple of the apostle John. The chain from the Upper Room to the second century is short, documented, and unbroken, and at every link it looks Catholic.

Where the Argument Breaks Down

It saws off the branch it sits on. The same bishops the theory calls apostate are the ones who settled the New Testament canon in the fourth century. If the Church had already fallen into universal error, its judgment about which books are Scripture is worthless, and the critic has no Bible to argue from. You cannot discredit those bishops and keep their book.

It cannot be tested. The restoration is said to be true because the Church apostatized; the apostasy is “known” because the Church contradicts the restoration. Each props up the other, and no outside evidence is ever allowed to touch either: every Father, council, and liturgy that would test the claim is dismissed as apostate precisely because it disagrees. An argument built this way would prove any sect’s claim equally, which means it proves none.

The Reply in Brief

The Great Apostasy is not a finding of history but a requirement of theology: a premise certain movements must assert in order to justify their own founding, and support afterward with whatever reading of the evidence will serve. That is why the case for it runs backwards from the conclusion: the theory is not built from the record and then tested, but assumed, and the record then sorted into what can be used and what must be dismissed as already corrupt.

Which is the reason it cannot be argued with on its own terms. Every witness competent to refute it (every Father, every council, every liturgy) is disqualified in advance for saying the wrong thing. A claim built so that no evidence could ever count against it has not been established by evidence, and the ordinary work of history was never really invited.

The Society’s own use of the word completes the picture. As the former elder Don Cameron documents from the Governing Body’s correspondence (Captives of a Concept), “apostasy” in Watchtower practice means abandoning not the faith of the apostles but the Body’s own teachings — so that a Witness who dropped the “generation of 1914” chronology before the Governing Body dropped it in 1995 was disfellowshipped as an apostate for being right too early. A word that once indicted the whole Church now polices disagreement with the men who assert it — which is what the Great Apostasy has been doing all along.

This is the short answer. The full treatment (why the theory makes Christ a foolish builder and fails Gamaliel’s own test, the disagreement among the accusers themselves, the early Church’s own test for distinguishing tradition from novelty — Jerome’s rule and the canon of Vincent of Lérins — the irony that the one movement resembling a suppressed ancient party is the Witnesses themselves, recovering the substance of Arianism, and complete documentation for everything asserted here) is available as a Word document at the end of this page.

Summary

Jehovah’s Witnesses (with the Latter-day Saints, Seventh-day Adventists, and other restorationist groups) teach that the Church founded by Christ wholly apostatized after the apostles died, and had to be restored in the modern era. The claim fails on both Scripture and history, for the following reasons.

Scripture promises a Church that cannot fall. Christ said “the gates of hell [hadēs, death] shall not prevail” against His Church (Matt. 16:18), that He would be with her “to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:20), and that the Spirit would “guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). The Greek for “prevail” (katischyō) covers even temporary domination, so a Church overthrown for eighteen centuries is exactly what Christ ruled out.

And Paul calls the Church the pillar of the truth. Writing to Timothy, he describes her as “the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). A pillar holds a thing up; a bulwark is what an assault breaks against. The Great Apostasy requires that pillar to have become the pillar of error, while the Spirit sent to guide her into all truth stayed with her forever and failed. It is the same apostle, in the same letters, who is quoted for the apostasy and who writes this: the theory keeps his warning and discards his description.

The Good Shepherd does not flee the wolf. Christ called Himself the good shepherd by explicit contrast with the hireling, who “sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees” so that the flock is snatched and scattered (John 10:11–14). The Great Apostasy requires exactly that: Christ saw the wolves Paul foretold (Acts 20:29–30) and let the flock be scattered for eighteen centuries. It makes Christ the hireling of His own parable.

The apostasy texts describe some, not all. Every passage the theory relies on (2 Thess. 2; Acts 20:29–30; 2 Tim. 3; 2 Pet. 2; Jude 17–19) speaks of individuals falling away and locates the trial in the “last days,” never of the whole Church becoming apostate. To read “some will become unfaithful” as “the Church herself will become unfaithful” reverses the meaning of the texts.

The apostasy has no date, place, council, or name. Every heresy, council, pope, and reformer in Christian history is documented and named, yet the supposed greatest rupture of all left no record. A universal abandonment of the apostolic faith would have provoked an outcry; the early Church fought bitterly over far smaller matters (the date of Easter, the lapsed, rebaptism). The nearest thing to a date the theory offers fails on its own facts: Constantine neither legalized Christianity (Galerius did, in 311), nor made it the state religion (Theodosius, c. 380), nor invented the creed or the hierarchy (in place by Ignatius, c. 107). And at Nicaea the influence ran the other way: Constantine pronounced the quarrel “extremely trifling” and wanted only a formula everyone could sign; it was the bishops — many of them confessors of the Great Persecution — who forced through the creed no Arian could accept. A rupture of that size would have left a record, so the silence is itself evidence that none occurred.

And where the record does speak, it contradicts the theory. The very doctrines said to be later corruptions (apostolic succession, the presiding bishop, and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist) are already attested by Clement of Rome (c. 95), Ignatius (c. 107), Justin Martyr (c. 155), and Irenaeus (c. 180): men within living memory of the apostles, linked to them by the John–Polycarp–Irenaeus chain, and all of them writing well before Nicaea.

The standard replies concede the point. The “the Holy Spirit preserved the Bible” answer gives the case away: a Spirit able to preserve Scripture through an apostate Church could preserve the Church herself. And the “hidden remnant” turns out, when names are demanded, to be Gnostic sects further from restorationist belief than the Catholic Church ever was.

Three problems the theory cannot escape. It makes Christ a foolish builder whose house fell despite His promise (Matt. 7:24–27; 16:18). It fails Gamaliel’s test (Acts 5:38–39): a Church that had vanished for eighteen centuries would, by that rule, have been “of men.” And it saws off the branch the critic sits on, since the same fourth-century bishops the theory calls “apostate” are the ones who settled the New Testament canon. You cannot discredit them and keep their Bible.

In short: there was no date, no place, no council, no name, and no hidden remnant, because there was no Great Apostasy. There was only the Church Christ founded, attacked in every century and overcoming in every century, handing on the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3; Heb. 13:8).

The Postal Carrier Analogy

Think of the postal carrier again. He can stand at the foot of the street and recite every address on it without a mistake — and none of that accuracy brings him one step inside a single home. The Watchtower reads its three apostasy texts exactly this way. Paul’s wolves (Acts 20:29–30) are quoted to the letter — the address is right — but the reader never enters the house where Christ has already said what a shepherd does when the wolf comes: only the hireling flees, and the Great Apostasy would make Christ the hireling of His own parable. “The rebellion” of 2 Thessalonians 2:3 is copied out correctly — and the household is a passage about events preceding the day of the Lord, led by a man of lawlessness, not an eighteen-century extinction of the Church. And 1 Timothy 4:1 is delivered to the right door — but its first word of scope is some: some will depart from the faith, which is a warning about defectors, not an obituary for the flock. Three envelopes, three correct addresses, three houses never entered. That is the whole method in miniature: a knowledge of Scripture that is real, detailed, and entirely external — the knowledge of the man who walks the route, mistaken for the knowledge of the families who live there. And it is the tell of a man-made religion. A system built from the address side of Scripture is just what unaided human reading produces — personal interpretation, confident precisely where entering the household would have corrected it. An organization actually directed by God would know the families.

For a more complete essay on this topic, download Was There a Great Apostasy? (.docx) or (.pdf)

One more word: if what you have read here has caused you to rethink whether Jehovah’s Witnesses are, as they claim, the restoration of a lost first-century Christianity, the page By What Authority? examines the matter of Watchtower’s claim to divine authority.

Next: By What Authority?