Myopic. I truly can't see clearly past my nose, unless it's corrected. My vision, that is, not my nose (which needs to be corrected too, but that's another story).

I've been nearsighted since before I can remember. When I was a small child, I'm told that I could hear airplanes roaring through the sky above me, but when my parents tried to point them out, I'd look up, confused. I had seen pictures of them, and I had heard them, but they were invisible to me.

Understand, therefore, that I was very excited when I was 4 1/2 years old and got glasses. These airplanes I'd been hearing, I could see them! In the sky! Look! I would cry to my parents. An airplane! Of course I developed something of a fascination with them, and I drew more than a few in my notebooks and sketchpads.

But really, nothing prepared me for the glory that came when I was able to ride in one and see, with corrected vision, the whole world beneath me.

Labels: Invisible Church, Visible Church, Wheats and Tares

We have come to the doctrine of the church, at which point it is inevitable that our baptistic blog on a Presbyterian catechism will become controversial. Questions 61 through 65 of the Larger Catechism address the subject of church in terms of a distinction between a “visible” and an “invisible” church. This is problematic not only because it is only rarely understood but also because it is a distinction which has been emphasized in order to allow for unbiblical practice, and as such it often leads to tragedy.

“Church” in its simplest translated form means “assembly.” In the New Testament it is the word used to identify the assembly of the people of God. The most basic lesson of the word “church” is that Christ did not save us to a life of lonely spiritual wonderings, but to a life in which we assemble with others to worship, to fellowship, and to work for the good of God’s kingdom. But what exactly is this assembly?

It is true that the New Testament speaks occasionally of the church in wide and universal terms. Sometimes “church” means the assembly of God’s people who will be gathered at the end of days. This church is “universal” in the sense that it includes every person who ever has or ever will call upon the name of the Lord. Of course this grand assembly has not yet been convened; the universal church has not yet churched together. Most often, therefore, the New Testament rather obviously uses the word “church” for local assemblies. These congregations come together as visible manifestations of the body of Christ on earth.

The Catechism uses the language of “visible” and “invisible” church as a way of addressing the evident fact that there are those who assemble visibly with God’s people who have not genuinely called upon the name of the Lord. They are those who will cry out in the last day, “Lord, Lord!” but He will say, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” Now as Baptists, we do not pretend that any congregation is free of such persons. The Second London Confession of the Baptists retains the language of the Westminster Confession: “The purest churches under heaven are subject to mixture and error.” Until we reach the universal church in heaven, no church will be without the mixture of truth and error - or of true faith and hypocrisy.

But is the distinction between a visible and an invisible church really the best framework within which to define the church? Questions 62 and 63 of the Larger Catechism show us how the Westminster Divines employed the category of the visible church. First, they used it to account for the presence of hypocrisy in the church. Second, they used it to acknowledge the considerable advantages which accrue to even unconverted persons who become in some manner attached to the church. But thirdly (and we suspect most importantly) they used it to create an opening for the doctrine of the covenant child. The children of believers may be considered in the church so long as we say not only that the outward church does not consist exclusively of true believers, but further that it is not intended to be so limited. The visible church, we are told, is broad, while the invisible church is more narrowly defined.

Each of these uses is more or less problematic. We would agree that hypocrisy will always exist within the church, but wonder if we ought to encourage it. Does not the process of church discipline suggest to us that the visible church is at least intended to consist of those who make a credible profession of faith? We would further admit that there are great advantages to being around the church, and even that those advantages are particularly grand for those whose parents believe, but we doubt that the enjoyment of such advantages is the equivalent of being in the church. To eat at a table is not to be a member of a family, and to hear the gospel preached is not to be a member of the church. As for covenant children, we cannot see how unbelieving children are included in an assembly that is founded not on ethnicity, but on common faith. A true child of the covenant, we say with Paul, is one who has a faith like Abraham’s.

So while we share our Presbyterian brothers’ concern with the mixture that is in every church, we cannot agree to define the church primarily according to a visible/invisible distinction that we neither find in Scripture, nor (quite frankly) find simple to explain. The Westminster Confession is, we are afraid, rather baffling on the subject of the church. Chapter 25 begins with a statement of the universal church, which is invisible. Then we are introduced to the visible church, which is also universal. After a perplexing statement about the church being sometimes more and sometimes less visible (?), the confession suddenly introduces a plurality of churches. No explanation of what these “churches” are or where they came from is forthcoming. Are they local? Denominational? We are uncertain.

It strikes us as unsurprising that our infant-baptizing friends have regularly fallen into confusion about the boundaries of the church - whether in the Halfway Covenant of the New England Puritans or the ravages of the Federal Vision today.

The Second London Confession, in Chapter 26, clarifies much. Three citations should serve to exemplify the Bapitst approach to the visibility of the church:

The catholic or universal church, which (with respect to the internal work of the Spirit and truth of grace) may be called invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect… LCF 26:1

And thus ends all that we have to say about the invisibility of the church. It is true that the internal work of the Spirit cannot be seen, and that therefore we are never in this life entirely certain who is and who is not destined to join the great assembly in Heaven. But when that church is at last called together it will be quite visible.

All persons throughout the world, professing the faith of the gospel, and obedience unto God by Christ according unto it, not destroying their own profession by any errors everting the foundation, or unholiness of conversation, are and may be called visible saints; and of such ought all particular congregations to be constituted. LCF 26:2

Particular congregations (local churches we call them today) are to be made up of those who give visible evidence that they are God’s people. The evidence is never perfectly discerned, but it is a type of visibility which is far more helpful than a visibility which excludes evidence altogether. The same visibility is evidenced a few paragraphs later:

The members of these churches are saints by calling, visibly manifesting and evidencing (in and by their profession and walking) their obedience unto that call of Christ… LCF 26:6

I said at the outset that part of our concern with the Westminster approach is that this distinction sometimes leads to tragedy. The danger is that when a visible church is not even expected to be made up of God’s true children, it is possible that too much emphasis may be put upon proper order and form, so much so that waning attention is given the hearts of lost souls within the church. The best of Presbyterians evangelize their children diligently and passionately, but of course there are others who do not. Is it possible that this failing is related to an emphasis on the outward form of the visible church?

Consider the following: both the Westminster and London confessions acknowledge that every church is “subject to mixture and error.” But they conclude that statement very differently. The Presbyterian statement ends in this manner:

Nevertheless, there shall be always a Church on earth, to worship God according to His will. WCF 25:5

Now that is indeed a comfort, and we salute our brethren for their concern that God be worshiped properly. But can this be our only concern? Is it enough that the visible church continue to exist in its outward form?

The Baptist statement is perhaps more complete:

nevertheless Christ always hath had, and ever shall have a kingdom in this world, to the end thereof, of such as believe in him, and make profession of his name. LCF 26:3

God is worshiped, yes. Christ’s name is professed, but more than this: it is professed by those who believe in Him.
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Labels: Invisible Church, Visible Church

From the scriptures one is left to conclude that most of the Jews in Christ's time were convinced that their lineage made them inheritors of God's promises to Abraham, Isaac and Israel. I find it telling then, that the Holy Spirit chose to summarize the entirety of Christ's ministry in Matthew 4:17 in this way, "From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'"

Can you imagine that message in the ears of a Jew who was convinced that the kingdom of heaven was already his? When Christ taught the parable wherein a field was sown with good seed by its owner, and then sown again with tares by his enemy (cf. Matthew 13), the lesson was that not everyone who appeared to be in the kingdom of heaven was in fact a son of of the kingdom. The Apostle Paul echoes this same sentiment in the ninth chapter of his epistle to the Romans when he says, "For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel". In that chapter Paul explains clearly that God's promise to Abraham is inherited by those who are of a like faith, rather than by those who are simply descended from Abraham in the flesh.

I expect that many who read the parable of the field will automatically assume that Christ was speaking about the NT church; since it should be clear to everyone that there are presently tares among the wheat in the NT church. But Christ was preaching about the kingdom of heaven to the very people who were the object of the parable: a mixed crowd of OT Jews; some whom were of the same faith as Abraham, and some whom were not; that is, some of whom were wheat, and some of whom were tares.

Recognizing that Christ was applying this parable to those who were there does not mean that this parable does not apply to present day christian congregations; the parable does apply, and I believe was intended to apply. The question is: how do we know a parable directed at a group of OT Jews applies to the church today? The answer is that it applies to us because we have the same mixed group in our churches today: those who are of genuine faith, and those who are deceived. The faithful OT Jew has this in common with the faithful NT believer: genuine, saving, faith.

In the parable, the good seed sown by the owner pictures the sons of the kingdom - or said another way, it represents those who (by faith) were the inheritors/recipients of the promises given to Abraham. The tares were those Jews who even though they rejected Christ believed themselves to be in the kingdom on account of their ancestry. Christ Himself described these as "sons of the evil one". The distinction Christ was making, even though He was addressing only OT Jews at the time, applies to the church today because it identifies in the church the same two groups: those who are in the kingdom, and those who are not.

The Westminster Catechism identifies genuine believers as the "invisible" church. Invisible because you can't tell (by looking) whether the person is genuine or not. Since some make a genuine profession of faith, and some make a false profession of faith, it follows that both genuine and false believers are going to claim to be Christians. The world makes no distinction between false and genuine Christians: if you claim to be a Christian, and believe yourself to be one, then you "are" one as far as the world is concerned. Consider how CNN lumps Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism under the same label ("Christian") and you get the idea.

Simply stated, among all who profess to be Christians (the "visible" church), only some are genuine believers (these are the "invisible" church). The labels help to simplify discussions where stating the distinction in full each time might so clutter an explanation as to confuse the person receiving the instruction. Take for example how God supplies the invisible church (i.e. those who are genuinely His children) with such blessings as being under His rule. Some might not consider this a blessing, but the command to love one another, to look after one another's needs etc., is quite a blessing to those who are in the congregation. If an unsaved person believes himself to be a Christian, and joins himself to a church, he immediately begins to benefit from hanging around with people who are surrendered to God's rule. One could say that God's blessing, which is directed at the invisible church, spills over into those who are in the visible church, but not in the invisible church. One could just as easily say, I suspect, that the tares benefit from the blessings God pours out on the wheat, even as the tares in the field benefit from the sun and rain that God sends to bless the wheat.

On a practical note, a lot of people, especially those who are younger or less mature in the faith, react to the knowledge that there are unbelievers seeded throughout every Christian congregation by trying to weed them out. They forego God's instructions concerning how to keep the church pure (church discipline) and instead consider themselves to be fruit (of the Spirit) inspectors, judging one another to find out who is and who is not, a Christian. Unhindered by the fact that angels who are greater in wisdom and knowledge are not wise or knowledgeable enough to discern who is who; these take it upon themselves to thrash about boldly (and more or less blindly) where angels are too wise to tread.

What we want to be on guard against is going beyond scripture in our application. There is a distinction made between the children of God's promise, and those who are counterfeit - and we must be aware of that. We must understand that false believers who share our pews receive real, tangible benefits for being there, and that many may, through the grace that is being poured upon them every time they gather, may eventually come to see themselves as lost, and in doing so become found in Christ, but we must be on guard against using such doctrine for practices (or even new doctrines) that cannot find support in scripture.

Labels: Invisible Church, Visible Church

One of the things that's important to note about this effort -- and I mean this specific blog -- to talk about "Calvinism" or "Reformed" theology is that there are no Presbyterians in our ranks as contributors.  So from time to time we run into things which the contributors of the blog may or may not understand (just to be fair to our friends who would critique us), and we disagree with it.  Slavishness to covenantal theology is one of those areas, and it trickles over into a couple of other subjects which are related to how we reason through the question of God making a covenant to save.

One of those areas is the next section of the catechism:


So one of the consequences of having a "covenantal" theology is that God has a visible covenant we has declared, and there are beneficiaries of that covenant, but some of them don't seem to be very good beneficiaries. This whole thing gets wrapped up in baptism and boundary markers and all manner of seminarian shop talk, but it winds up looking like this when people who aren't seminarians find themselves faced with this problem:

.
Which is amusing, but not very helpful.  I mean: if we really believe all that stuff about God making and God doing and people believing as Calvin has helpfully discussed, how do we get ourselves tangled up in this kerfuffle of "invisible" church and "visible" churches?

Here's what I think:

I think we don't like it when Jesus is less clear than we want him to be.  I mean: he's the one who gave us the parable of the Wheat and the Tares, and that ought to be good enough -- the Tares aren't invisible in that parable, but in fact hard to pull up without destroying the Wheat.  There's no invisible church -- just visible tares.  We can act like that's to our discredit, or the Gospel's discredit, but Jesus was simply saying, "it's not your problem."

So those of us here representing "Calvinism" are going to take some effort to expose some of the challenges (good and bad) which the Catechism provides on this topic.  We'll leave the comments open on the more-inflammatory statements we'll make so that those who disagree with us (both more Reformed and more needing-Reform) can have a fair shake at saying something useful about our reflections on this issue.

Enjoy.

Labels: catechism ninja, Invisible Church, Visible Church