The Problem of Christian Immorality

One of the most common arguments made against Christianity is the argument from Christian immorality: the frequent failure of Christians to live according to their own moral teachings makes it hard to believe that Christianity is true. Throughout history, and down to the present day, many Christians have lived in ways that are seriously incompatible with the moral teachings of the New Testament. Some of the examples most frequently brought up are the Crusades and other Christian “holy wars,” as well as the tortures and executions of the Inquisition. In U.S. history, many Christians condoned the unjust displacement of Native Americans with a twisted theology of Manifest Destiny, and condoned an oppressive system of racial slavery. These are just a few examples of how Christians often fail to actually live like Christians.

At first glance, it might seem like this argument is merely an example of an ad hominem fallacy, and so can simply be dismissed (an ad hominem fallacy tries to argue that a person’s beliefs are false because they are a bad person). However, this is not actually the case. According to Christian theology, God is working to bring salvation to the world through the Church, which is the body of Christ. And, each member of the Church, each Christian, has God’s Holy Spirit in them, uniting them to Christ and conforming them to His image. The argument from Christian immorality argues that, given how unChristlike many Christians are, this theological belief is unreasonable. 

Thus, the argument from Christian immorality cannot simply be dismissed. The frequent failure of the visible Church to live out its identity as the body of Christ does raise questions about the reasonableness of the Christian worldview. However, I do not think that this argument is as strong as its skeptical proponents seem to think.

Throughout the Old Testament, we see that God’s covenant people were repeatedly unfaithful. Although God’s Holy Presence dwelled among them, and God gave them His Torah to tell them how to live righteously, they repeatedly failed to live out their identity as His holy covenant people. The story of the Old Testament is not a story of how God’s people are better than other people; it is a story of how God is faithful to His covenant people, in spite of their unfaithfulness.

The New Testament is a continuation of this same story. However, it brings a significant turning point as Jesus comes to save God’s people from their sins. In the New Testament, there is an expectation given that God’s people can finally be empowered to live faithfully and obediently by being transformed through their union with Christ. 

However, there is no expectation given in the New Testament that sin will automatically disappear from individual Christians or from the Church as a whole. There are many examples in the New Testament itself of Christians failing to live faithfully as disciples of Jesus. Although Christians have been freed from the power of sin and have the power to live faithfully, they also have the freedom to sometimes choose to live unfaithfully. 

The New Testament presents being conformed to the image of Christ, not as an instantaneous event, but as a lifelong process of gradually being cleansed from sin. And if the Church is composed of individuals who are in the process of being cleansed from sin, many of whom will be not very far along in this process, it is inevitable that the Church will always contain a significant amount of sin. The Church is not a museum of perfect saints, but a hospital for sinners. Just as it is unreasonable to expect a hospital to be free of disease, it is unreasonable to expect the Church to be free of sin.

Even given this, though, don’t the many egregious evils carried out by Christian individuals and even by the Church as a whole in history make it hard to believe that all Christians have mystical union with Christ and are being conformed to His image by the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit? They do. But we must make a distinction between the visible Church and the invisible Church. As theologian John Calvin explains, explains, in the visible “Church there is a very large mixture of hypocrites, who have nothing of Christ but the name and outward appearance: of ambitious, avaricious, envious, evil-speaking men, some also of impurer lives, who are tolerated for a time, either because their guilt cannot be legally established, or because due strictness of discipline is not always observed. . . The invisible Church [made up of all true Christians]. . . is manifest to the eye of God only.”^[1]John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapter 1, Paragraph 7.

Just because someone claims to have faith in Christ and outwardly participates in the sacramental life of the Church, this does not necessarily mean that they are truly a child of God.  The New Testament clearly teaches that there can be hypocritical “false believers” within the Church (Gal 2:4).  In some times and places, such nominal Christians may make up a large portion or even a majority of the visible church. The potential for this to happen was greatly exacerbated by Christianity becoming the established religion of the Roman Empire at the end of the fourth century. As a result of this, many people without genuine faith in Christ were basically forced into the visible Church. This problem continued in Western Christianity up into the modern period, and its effects are still being felt today. 

If one looks at the visible Church, it is often hard to believe that the Church really is the body of Christ through which God is bringing salvation to the world, since it often looks not very different from the rest of the world. However, if one makes a distinction between the visible Church and the invisible Church, this belief becomes reasonable. There are many people within the visible Church who are far from the Kingdom of God. And there are many people outside the visible Church who are “not far from the Kingdom of God” (Mark 12:34), since God’s prevenient grace is active even outside the Church, drawing people to Him. However, God’s saving action in the world is still centered in the Church, as He establishes His Kingdom through the genuine disciples of Jesus who make up the invisible Church. 

Thus, it is reasonable to believe that God is working to bring salvation to the world through the Church, the body of Christ. And it is reasonable to believe that each member of the Church, each genuine Christian, has God’s Holy Spirit in them, uniting them to Christ and conforming them to His image. While it is understandable that the problem of Christian immorality could raise doubts in some people’s minds about the truth of Christianity, it is not ultimately a successful argument against the truth of the Christian gospel.