1Cor 3:4,5 For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere men? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe— as the Lord has assigned to each his task.
The immature and unspiritual seek to inflate their view of themselves or of their group over that of others. That's human nature. Even when there is no legitimate basis for doing so, one church may reckon itself superior to others. And as we see in this case, even groups of Christians in the same church will do so. Paul and Apollos were not divided. And they were legitimate Christians leaders. But the immature would pledge allegiance to one over another so as to divide the Christian community for their own vanity's sake. There are countless examples of this in the history of Christianity, not only concerning divisive allegiances to legitimate Christian leadership and ideas, but also allegiances to theologians advocating unBiblical theologies. Leadership itself shows its spiritual immaturity by playing to this sentiment.
In later years the "veneration" of the saints turned into idolatry. And Catholicism even made "saints" as a special category of Christians. The Orthodox invoke their post-Biblical Seven Ecumenical Councils as their standard. In Protestantism, though they claimed "Sola Scriptura" (the scriptures alone), yet their commentaries make much of John Calvin, Augustine, Luther, and the like. And there is a great amount of denominationalism among Protestants. The history of Christianity has been dominated by immature, unspiritual, worldy Christians, even to its highest levels.
How do you identify yourself? Are you a Calvinist, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, or the like, or are you a Christian? Is there some post-Biblical theologian that you reckon infallible, above scrutiny? Whom do you quote to express your beliefs? Whom do you invoke to validate your beliefs?
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