Josiah Concept Ministries

I should note before continuing with this series that I agree with Dave Armstrong that a visible church is spoken of in Scripture. I disagree with some of the evidence that he has offered–for example, applying Matthew 5:14-16 to the church rather than to the obedience of people. Overall, though, Dave and I are in agreement that the church should be a visible entity, not some quiet and mysterious “inner connection” between believers.

However, Dave is long way from proving that the Roman Catholic Church is supposed to be that visible church. Dave is even further from proving that the Pope is to be the head of this body, and he has failed to show that the Catholic Church is even organized biblically. In fairness to Dave, he isn’t trying to prove that with this post–he’s only trying to argue for a visible church. That the visible church is the Catholic Church is a presupposition of his argument. In the second part of his post, Dave looks at Protestant objections and answers them from his book, The One Minute Apologist. Let’s look at the objections and Dave’s answers.

Objection #1: “The notion that the ‘one true Church’ is a visible institution is a false tradition of men.”

Dave, or rather the One Minute Apologist, answers:

It is true that Catholics believe in an “invisible” Church in some sense: namely the mystical Body of Christ. We hold that all Christians who have been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are part of the Church, however imperfectly. But from this it doesn’t follow that there cannot also be a visible, institutional body of believers whose members can be said to properly belong to Christ’s True Church. When Jesus and Scripture speak of the Church, it is usually in terms that suggest a tangible, specific, active presence in the world and in the community of believers:

Matthew 5:14-16: I’ve already answered that in my previous post.  This is talking about believers’ actions, not the church.

Matthew 18:15-17 and 1 Timothy 3:15: I agree with Dave; these verses speak of a church that is active and visible in the world.

Some Christians seem to think that the Apostle Paul was a kind of “lone ranger,” not part of any Church but single-handedly (or with the help of a few friends) preaching and spreading the gospel. The Bible, on the other hand, recounts how Paul was subject to the direction and sanction of the institutional Church. He, too (even though he was an apostle, who wrote much of the New Testament), was under authority:

Now, who’s authority would we suppose that the apostle was under?  My guess is that he was under God’s authority, not the church’s authority.  Let’s see if Dave’s proof texts bear this hypothesis out:

Acts 13:1-4 and Acts 14:26-28: Definitely the Holy Spirit was sending Paul out in these texts.  This goes in the “Sorry, Dave, You Lose” column.

Acts 15:2-3,22-23,30: In this text, I don’t see that Paul and Barnabas are under the church’s authority; it seems as if they are cooperating with the church and its elders to select missionaries to help them.  We’ll put this in the middle column.

Galatians 1:18-19: No authority is taken or given in this verse.  We’ll put this one in the “Sorry, Dave, You Lose” column.

Galatians 2:9: Peter and James give Paul an equal hand and recognize him as an apostle.  Okay, I’ll put this into the “You Got One Right, Dave!” column.

Two strikes, a neutral, and one win for Dave in his proof texts.  But the story doesn’t end there.  What about the verses that Dave never considers, such as Galatians 2:11, where Paul opposes Peter–the very person who gave Paul the authority of apostle–because Peter “stood condemned?”  What about 1 Corinthians 14:37, where Paul says that the things he is writing are commands from the Lord–not from the church?

Paul certainly wasn’t in a vacuum apart from the other apostles, but he certainly wasn’t under the authority of the church the way that Dave supposes that he was.  Nor do I think any believer should be under the authority the church–otherwise, how could Paul claim we are all competent ministers of a new covenant (2 Cor 3:6a)?

Objection #2: “The words of Jesus Himself suggest that the Church is first and foremost invisible, not bound by denominational structures.”

More from the One Minute Apologist:

No, because Scripture also describes the unsaved reprobate as “sheep” (Ps. 74:1), refers to “sheep” that have “gone astray” (Ps. 119:176), and applies the description to the nation of Israel (Ezek. 34:2-3,13,23,30), and indeed, all men (Isa. 53:6). The overall biblical theme concerning “sheep” is in the sense that all men, and particularly Israel, are His children. But this doesn’t require an invisible Church or forbid a visible, institutional Church, because the latter is clearly indicated in the Bible.

I’ve already answered this one. This argument is an insult to the literary device of metaphor and assumes that the same metaphor can’t be used to convey different meanings in different context. Notice that each of Dave’s other examples come from different books of the Old Testament. All this shows is that sheep are useful as a metaphor for various groups of people.

To conclude, I agree that the church should be a visible entity within society, and it should be much more visible than it currently is.  But I think that we need to train people in church history and theology much better than we do, and that will alleviate a lot of the disillusioned people leaving the church for the comfortable delusion of atheism–or worse.  Dave’s article is woefully unconvincing that the Catholic Church is the only visible church, but I don’t think that he was really arguing that point, believing it to be a foregone conclusion.  In the end, Dave is supposing controversy where none exists, and it seems that the ultimate purpose of his post was to squelch a nonexistent controversy.  I think that most Protestants will agree with my conclusions in this article.