Josiah Concept Ministries

Dave Armstrong has a rather fascinating article on whether or not the church should be a visible or invisible entity. I thought I’d take a look at it as an exercise in putting Bible verses in proper context.

Most Protestants (especially evangelicals) see unity and oneness subsisting primarily or solely in the inner, invisible, spiritual unity of those who are in fact in Christ by virtue of being justified, or born again, or regenerated (with or without baptism, depending on denomination). For them, the church consists of the Spirit-filled, predestined elect, who will persevere and are saved, now and in eternity.

But Catholics see it differently, according to Dave Armstrong:

The Catholic Church has always proclaimed this unifying characteristic also, under the broad and rich concept of the Mystical Church (under which it acknowledges Protestantism), yet it doesn’t pit the Mystical Church against the institutional, or visible Church, as most evangelicals do. For Catholics, then, the issue of oneness is substantially related to organizational and practical aspects of ecclesiology. Catholics believe that the Church is both organism and organization, not merely the former. The Mystical and visible “churches” are like two circles which largely intersect, but which are not synonymous. They exist together - somewhat paradoxically and with tension - until the “end of the age.”

First of all, let’s look at this from a biblical perspective. The church has clearly been organized in the Bible with the offices of elder (Titus 1:5-6), bishop (1 Tim 3:1-7; Titus 1:7-9), and deacon (1 Tim 3:8-13). Nowhere does the Bible say that we are governed by a specific bishop of a specific city.

Dave continues:

At this point in the discussion Catholics appeal to the hierarchical, or episcopal (that is, under the jurisdiction of bishops) nature of Church government. Furthermore, Catholics maintain that this form is divinely-instituted and biblical, therefore not optional or of secondary theological importance.

Dave is already off base in claiming that the Catholic Church is “divinely instituted” and “biblical”. It isn’t organized as prescribed in Scripture. It has no elders, only a single monarch–the Pope.

Now Dave appeals to Matthew 5:14-16 as evidence that this church is to be visible. Let’s look at those verses really quickly, in their proper context. Jesus is talking to a group of people gathered for His famous Sermon on the Mount. He’s not talking to the church, He’s not talking to the apostles themselves. So these verses are not talking about the church.

The Sermon itself was all about the Law, and how the Law is impossible to follow. So a better fit for these verses is that they are talking about obedience to God. Why hide it? As St. Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” Let people see what it means to be a Christian first, says Christ in these verses.

Looks like Dave took those verses out of context to make his point.

Protestants often cite Jesus’ analogy of sheep and shepherd (John 10:1-16; cf. 2 Timothy 2:19, 1 John 2:19), who know each other (10:14), as evidence that the Church consists of the elect only. Yet the analogy breaks down when we find that Scripture also applies the term sheep to the unsaved reprobate (Psalm 74:1), the straying (Psalm 119:176), Israel as a nation (Ezekiel 34:2-3,13,23,30), and, indeed, all men (Isaiah 53:6).

When I say that I’m stuck “between a rock and a hard place,” I’m using a metaphor to convey something that would otherwise be difficult to put into words. This is the same thing that Christ is doing. The Bible also fairly consistently uses the Rock as God. Since Dave’s examples all came from different books of the Bible, that must mean that metaphors are universal everywhere and always, right? That means that when I say I’m stuck between “a rock and a hard place,” that I’m talking about God, right?

No, of course not. It means what it means, just as those metaphors from other books in wholly different contexts mean what they mean. This argument is an insult to the literary device of metaphor.

Other passages which presuppose a visible, identifiable, “concrete” Church include Matthew 18:15-17, in which believers are exhorted by our Lord to take errant and obstinate brothers to the church, which will then determine the appropriate verdict. It would be contrary to the tenor of the New Testament if this were a reference to a local church alone - even apart from the utterly impractical consequences of such a scenario (where the sinner would simply attend another denomination and move on with his life, as is tragically all too often the case today).

Here, Dave and I are actually in agreement.  It is a sad state of affairs when someone just goes to another church because he doesn’t like what his current church has to say about his sin.  But the Bible still isn’t supporting his case here, since the writers didn’t foresee the ability to hop from one McChurch to the next just because a person didn’t like what the current church said about some issue.  In those days, there was one church per town, and that was how they evidently thought it would stay.

But even then they had competing theologies; most of the New Testament is about correcting errors taught by heretics.  Back then they had people who read the Scriptures daily and knew theology much better than the average person today.  The average person today thinks that you have to be a good person to get to heaven and that Jesus is only one path of many!

No, people today aren’t schooled in the basics of theology.  That is the problem, not some imagined church authority, or lack thereof.

And St. Paul, in 1 Timothy 3:15, describes the “church of the living God” as “the pillar and bulwark of the truth.” This statement is similarly almost nonsensical in the context of competing and often contradictory denominations. Where would a sincere, uninformed, unsophisticated religious seeker go to find this certain truth? Only within the sphere of a serious attempt at actual visible oneness of doctrine can this verse attain any pragmatic possibility.

And elsewhere, Paul seemed to encourage differences in doctrine (Rom 14:1-12), but concludes “. . . whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Rom 14:23b)–which merely reinforces the fact that it is faith that is the cornerstone here, not the church or denomination that one belongs to.

I will answer the material from the One Minute Apologist tomorrow.