Marks of the True Church: From the Invisible to the Visible
The Nicene Creed is among the most famous statements of the Christian faith in the world. In it we find this confession: “We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” What we have here are four attributes which we might call “catholic,” in the sense that all Christian churches in the following centuries believed the same in principle. Or, at least, that was the idea. It is true that the Donatist error and the division between East and West severely challenged this belief. On the other hand the real controversy was only ever about who gets to lay a claim to such a church, not primarily over whether the words were true.
When the Protestant Reformation developed its own three marks of the true church, its greatest theologians would never have positioned the Word, sacraments, and discipline against those older catholic marks. Rather these were offered precisely to distinguish between true and false meanings of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. Consequently, where the Reformers protested against Rome, they sought a true catholicity, not less of a catholicity. The question of authenticating marks for them was exceedingly practical. After all they were being charged with innovation and schism.
This essay will put forth the following thesis: The “catholic” and “Reformed” marks of the true church belong together, and are each best understood from the invisible to the visible. That is, we know their essence from the perspective of the invisible acts of God. Both essential metaphysics and the gospel will demand this.
By this distinguishing order—from the invisible to the visible—I will mean something rooted in the basic necessities of monotheism: that nothing so united to God in Christ, such as the church, ever could operate from the visible to the invisible. Not in terms of its ultimate causal explanations. And I will also mean an ecclesiology that is rooted in the ordo salutis, since it is by the whole Trinitarian work of salvation that we find ourselves in this entity called the church.
This will not be meant in any atomistic sense. That is, we will have no room for the idea that the church is nothing but a gathering of those who have come through the ordo salutis, as isolated individuals, only to then grace the church with their incidental presence. Rather we are saved immediately into and even as the church. Nevertheless, salvation is logically prior to the church in that only those whom Christ redeems are members of his body.
Now both the catholicity-minded sacramentalist and the modern Evangelical will struggle with all of this: the former because he will confuse this with the modern Baptist picture that the covenant community and invisible church are logically coextensive, and the latter because he will worry that one will now have to first “believe all the right things” to be in the “only true church.” Obviously there will be quite a few ghosts to chase away here!
This essay will move from a conceptual analysis of this essence of the church, to a causal analysis of the same, to a reading of the four catholic marks and three Reformed marks in that light.
THE ESSENCE OF THE CHURCH: A CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS
By conceptual analysis I only mean to focus our minds on the very definition. The a priori approach has paid dividends many times in church history. As Anselm reasoned for God’s existence by the very definition of “greatest conceivable being,” so here I would argue for the “invisible-to-visible” essence of the church by its very definition. In doing so, we will assume the historic distinction between the invisible and visible church. Of course these are not two different “churches,” but rather one church in two dimensions. But where do we get off saying that the very definition of the church implies its invisible-to-visible nature? Think of the word for “assembly” or “congregation,” regardless of how the etymology of the “call” part has often been overextended.
Certainly we would all at least say that the church is ultimately called out of the world not by anyone in the world—but by the One who made the world. Is it not by the word of the Lord that things always seem to get going from cover to cover in the Bible? And this is nowhere more true than in the creation of the church. As God called Abraham out of Ur by his word, and revisited his people by the prophets by his word, and then of course preeminently in Christ (Jn. 1:1-3, 14). So before we fixate too much on this or that view of the invisible church—as to its membership and relation to the visible—let us get first things first: the invisible word alone pierces all of the hiding places of space and time to create Christians out of the crowd of sinners.
The simple terminology of the invisible church testifies to its status as the esse of the church. Turretin goes as far to say that the definition of church per se is enough to show this: that all of the most basic imagery used of the church draws attention to the invisible workings of grace. Interestingly the last of his eleven such arguments in Volume III of his Institutes is that the fathers confess the same. He then gives a more concise, plain list, that,
“whatever things constitute the church properly so called are internal and invisible: election and effectual calling, union with Christ, the Spirit, faith, regeneration and the writing of the law on the heart, the reasonable (logikos) and spiritual worship.”
When Paul says, “the Lord knows those who are his” (2 Tim. 2:19), one of the implications comes by way of contrast. Consider how we do not see as the Lord sees. What else does this mean but that we do not see the reality or the true condition of one’s inclusion into the eternal church? Paul speaks with even greater clarity to the church in Rome about one who is “a Jew … inwardly” (2:29) and that “not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel” (9:6). In the former he speaks of circumcision and obedience to the commandments, whereas in the latter his topic is election as the reason why the promises of God had not failed. Both passages demand not only that there is a distinction between the invisible and visible, but that the invisible is, in a sense, the truer foundation. On the simplest level, we might think of that faith in Jesus’ parable that is like “smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants” (Mk. 4:31-32). This is likened to the whole kingdom, but what is true of the whole is first true of each of its parts.
So, even of all the very earthy images used of the church, we can see the essence being an invisible substance. The church is called an assembly, a family, a bride, a building, a city, and a plant for harvest. These all seem very tangible at first glance. However a closer look reveals a call, a blueprint, a seed and sower, and a covenant of love—all grounded, according to Bavinck, in “an object of faith, for what one believes is not visible.” As to other imagery, we are not quite a whole kingdom, but a colony of one. The kingdom of heaven is not exhausted by the church, but it is manifested in this age through the church. Even of our King it is said, “you do not now see him” (1 Pet. 1:8). So he who is most real and essential about the church reigns and rules from heaven. All that we have, we have by union with him: the whole body flowing from him as its source (Eph. 1:22-23, 4:15-16, Col. 1:17-18).
Neither the common nor the diverse senses of ἐκκλησία detract from the point that a gathering of souls is an intelligent and volitional phenomenon. Both the local and the universal, or for that matter the regional or the ecclesiastical, are all expressions of the hearing with faith that visibly assembles. The invisible makes the visible at every level.
An objection should be met at this point. The priority of the invisible over the visible will be called “Platonism,” or at any rate, some other kind of dualism. However, as the Westminster Confession says about the divine decree establishing (rather than violating) human agency, so we may say that the divine work on the church is that which lasts and is manifest in its human and visible form. Indeed the invisible and visible dimensions of the church are subsets of the divine decree and human responsibility: for we are responsible, as the church, to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic; to preach the word, and to administrate and participate in the sacraments and discipline. Consequently the primacy of the invisible essence of the church does no violence to the visible marks, but rather it is precisely this invisible essence which establishes and gives shape to what we mean by the visible marks.
THE ESSENCE OF THE CHURCH: A CAUSAL ANALYSIS
The church, Turretin said, is “the primary work of the holy Trinity.” The church must be viewed first as a divine work, whatever else it may be. Schwöbel ingeniously argues that the invisibility of the church as God’s power to create it is actually vital to be able to confess the church as an object of faith. Unless this is what we mean by “the church” in our creed, we are placing faith in something less than God.
Of course Barth said something similar in the words: “Credo in Spiritum sanctum, but not Credo in ecclesiam. I believe in the Holy Spirit, but not in the Church. Rather I believe in the Holy Spirit, and therefore also in the existence of the Church.”
However this is really a way of saying that how God redeems us into his church defines the marks. Bavinck placed his ecclesiology under the heading, “The Church’s Spiritual Essence.” For him, the body of Christ on earth was the ultimate organism, deriving its eschatological perfection from the essence of the triune God. He made this point by analogy:
“Just as in Christ there is the union of a divine and a human nature, and in humans the union of soul and body, and in the sacraments the union of the sign with the thing signified, so in the church there is a visible and an invisible side. Christ is the efficient as well as the exemplary and the final cause of the church.”
What all of this really means, in the words of Clowney, is that we view the marks of the church in light of the “gospel.” While Christ is the ultimate cause as Builder (Mat. 16:18), renewed souls the material cause as “living stones” (1 Pet. 2:5), God’s glory in a worshiping sanctuary the end cause (Heb. 12:18-29), our main focus will be on the formal cause.
Whether one analyzes the texts on the “assembly” (קָהָל) in the Old Testament or in the New (ἐκκλησία), we must focus on the immediate, formal cause. What is it that does the gathering of the people? We could discuss the role of the Spirit in bringing about faith, but here I only mean the most immediate cause. The answer is surely “the word of truth” (Jam. 1:18; cf. Rom 10:17). That the word creates the church has other consequences. As creatura verbi divini, “the way in which the church is constituted by divine action determines the character and scope of human action in the Church.”
This gospel cause of the church is also soli Deo gloria: God makes the church to speak about himself. Divine attributes are displayed by the way he creates the church. For instance, we may argue that because God is simple—all that is in God is God—so the marks of the church are also a unity. Naturally there is composition in the church, as the church is creaturely; but by way of analogy this divine excellence is displayed. In other words, God has so ordered the church, as a display of his own glory, that its defining marks are all shared with each other. A few examples could be given. The church’s oneness is holy. The church’s discipline is catholic. The church’s apostolicity is in its word. And so on with the others.
THE CATHOLIC MARKS: FROM THE INVISIBLE TO THE VISIBLE
The oneness of the church refers to its unity. The first mark in the Creed has biblical warrant: “there is one body” (Eph. 4:4). The unity of the church is primarily spiritual. Bavinck remarks that though the universal church may not be historically prior to the local church, “it is logically so.” In fact, what he meant by historic priority is what my thesis means by visible priority. Rome perceives a division in the body to the extent that one has disagreed with Rome. The “eternal city” became the epicenter of the one church. But the Scriptures recognize the root of division to be splitting the roots of true doctrine: or, in a word, heresy (cf. Rom. 16:17, 1 Cor. 11:19, Ti. 3:10, Jd. 19).
“The unity of the church,” for Turretin, “supposes a preceding unity of faith in which believers are joined.”
Whereas the basic error of Rome is to see the essence “only in externals and things striking the senses,” the relevant uses of the word for church in the New Testament demonstrate “a unity and conjunction of persons, not identity of place.”
This will not make people-in-place unimportant. Quite the contrary. It will elevate the importance of place by making the people more like people, not as deriving their significance by any sign but its substance. Berkhof quotes Moehler to make this point: “‘The Catholics teach: the visible Church is first,—then comes the invisible: the former gives birth to the latter.’ This means that the Church is a mater fidelium (mother of believers) before she is a communio fidelium (community of believers).”
Now if Rome gradually defined unity around the papacy, the modern ecumenicalist does so by diffusing orthodoxy. What is thought to cause division now is doctrinal precision and urgency. There is a false assumption behind this about our own role in unity. Richard Phillips cites the words of Jesus and Paul against this:
“according to Paul the church is already united. He says, ‘There is one body and one Spirit’ (Eph. 4:4). Not that there ought to be one body, but that there is one body, one unified church. We are not exhorted to ‘create’ unity among Christians, but to maintain it, that is, to serve and promote the unity that is already a fact (Eph. 4:3). Likewise, Jesus prayed to the Father, not to us, for church unity, and we can be sure that his prayer was answered.”
Paradoxically, the catholic idea has an exclusive sense to it. Cyprian famously said that, “Outside the church, there is no salvation,” and Augustine added that, “I would not have known God as my Father unless I knew the church as my mother.” It may surprise the nascent Reformed student that Calvin and Turretin both reaffirmed these sentiments. However, some qualification is in order. The church is a “mother” to us in its nursing capacity. At this point it is helpful to bring in the only cause we did not yet consider: the instrumental. The ministries of the church are, collectively, doing this “mothering” or “nurturing” activity. But we must ask whether or not there is a hierarchy among the means of grace so ministered. First Peter gives us a clue in speaking of “the pure spiritual milk” of the word (2:2). Our chapter breakdown conceals that this comes on the heels of referring to the imperishable “seed” (1:23) of that same word that gives birth to us to begin with. Thus the church that is mother is but a channel for the real source of life: the invisible word.
The holiness of the church refers to its purity. Holiness too comes from the invisible word: “Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you” (Jn. 15:3). Holiness indeed is made visible, but its essence is the spirit and not the letter (2 Cor. 3:6), the heart and not the outward appearance (1 Sam. 16:7). Of course the first act and attribute of holiness is the divine act of carving us out of this common world and calling us holy. Such an action must be unilateral and free on the part of God. Given our pervasive sin nature, which continues after being initially regenerated, this initiating act of holiness makes a large part of the ordo salutis foundational for the holiness of the church. Justification must precede the holiness of the church: for it must precede sanctification in each believer. And this makes Rome’s conception of church holiness particularly dubious.
Webster points out that no matter what aspect of the Trinitarian economy of salvation we view things from,
“God separates the Church. The Church does not separate itself, for it has neither mandate nor competence to do so.” Accordingly, this attribute of the church is “an alien sanctity.”
If the ground of the church’s holiness were in the natural pedigree or the activities of its priesthood, then they would have grounds for boasting.
The catholicity of the church refers to its universality. This is the broadest conception of the church, transcending space and time. Therein lies the irony of the name “Roman Catholicism.” How can such a concept be pinned to a point on a temporal map? Romanism does not transcend space and time. Neither does Donatism, which pit visible holiness against catholicity. Calvin saw the Anabaptist recapitulating the same error as the Donatist here. The Reformed definition of the essence of the church sailed between these space-time-bound extremes. The essence of the church belongs to true believers, and yet false professors fill her ranks.
We have reason to question the famous Warfield statement, in which Augustine’s ecclesiology and soteriology are placed at odds: the Reformers being the beneficiaries of the latter. There is a truth in it. On the other hand, it would seem as if Augustine was working with categories that distinguished between the “true church” and a “mixed body.” In short, the Augustinian ecclesiology was not a catholicity that flowed from the visible to the invisible, nor one that held the two in a tension of metaphysical equals. To the contrary it was Augustine who gave such a deep, spiritual manner to the communio sanctorum.
The Reformed confessions are not shy to speak of catholicity; but when they do, they trace the roots back to the invisible work of the triune God. The Belgic, Helvetic, and Westminster all speak in this way: “one single catholic or universal church—a holy congregation and gathering of true Christian believers,” “namely, of those who truly know and rightly worship and serve the true God in Christ the Savior, by the Word and holy Spirit, and who by faith are partakers of all benefits which are freely offered through Christ.”
The real problem with “Roman Catholicity” is not the presence of exclusivity but the absence of objectivity; to cite Bavinck, “in a real sense Rome has no marks or criteria by which the true church can be known. These, after all, presuppose a standard that is above the church and by which it may be judged by everyone.”
When Rome challenged the Reformers, “Where was your church before Luther?” the opinions of Luther and Bellarmine were weighed by Turretin. The former said that the essence of the church belongs to “faith and internal piety alone,” yet the latter answered that “No one can certainly know who are truly righteous.” This would indeed be a problem if we confused the essence of the church with all of our pastoral obligations to members. Turretin says that the twofold call of Word and Spirit issues forth into a twofold form, external and internal. Since the invisible and divine act precedes, its immediate effect is the more real and foundational essence.
The apostolicity of the church refers to its inheritance from the first church. We are instantly face to face with the Roman Catholic controversy. Where Rome claims “apostolic succession” in the sense of a lineage that extends from Peter to the present pope, the Reformed tradition would speak of a different line of succession. Is the teaching of the church the same as that of the apostles? That is the mark. Did not John speak in exactly these terms?
“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us … We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know hthe Spirit of truth and the spirit of error” (1 Jn. 2:19; 4:6).
So, as far as the Apostles themselves were concerned, it was by their teaching that we are to distinguish the apostolic from the non-apostolic, not by bloodlines or other physical pedigree, as if we are dogs being bred or something of that sort.
Vatican I had made “the church herself” self-attesting by various marks. It also rendered the argument circular. If the Roman Church indeed originated the Scriptures, she would have done us all the greatest favor to have mentioned at least once the expectation of apostolic succession. She would have also served us well to have pointed to Rome as anything other than under the euphemism of Babylon (cf. 1 Pet. 5:13). In this light the argument from Matthew 16:18 cries out for other support. Apostolicity and catholicity come together in the Reformers’ historical self-consciousness. As Schwöbel remarks, they were neither progressives nor conservatives: aiming without rudder into the future or returning to some golden age. Their compass had a more timeless quality.
THE REFORMED MARKS: FROM THE INVISIBLE TO THE VISIBLE
Calvin famously wrote that,
“Wherever we see the word of God sincerely preached and heard, wherever we see the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, there we cannot have any doubt that the church of God has some existence.”
Why is this the case and does the order matter? The answer to both will be found in that same invisible-to-visible order we have seen.
The word of God properly preached. This first mark that the Reformers listed follows the aforementioned causal analysis. If the church is the community of faith, and faith comes by hearing, it follows that the word of God creates the church. This is no cheap slogan. We may liken the “spiritual truths” (1 Cor. 2:13) of the word to the DNA of the body of Christ. This body in-forming shape may have a different emphasis among the Lutheran, say, as opposed to the Reformed, but all of the Evangelical traditions at first would have granted that it is the faithful representation of the gospel in particular that is meant by this. It was not simply that one could set up a book study on any old subject (even a deeply theological subject) and, viola! A true local church would emerge! No—Christ crucified and risen would be assumed to be central.
Bavinck’s distinction between the institutional and organic dimensions of the church follow from this principle. But it is crucial that we do not misconstrue the distinction. For Rome there was a “teaching church” and a “listening church;” and we might also think of the institutional church as that which serves with the word, and then the organic church which visibly proceeds from it. Conversely we may tend to think of the “real life” of the church going on throughout the week, and the institution, the offices, or “the meetings,” as the mechanical appendage. Bavinck insists, to the contrary of all this, that these two, institutional and organic, do not correspond to the invisible and visible senses of the church in any event. Both are living effects of the Word and Spirit.
The administration of sacraments and discipline may be viewed as extensions of the word. As the one faith makes the one body, so the word (most invisible of the marks) gives sense to the external signs and genuine correction to the conscience in discipline. That this order was understood by the Reformed tradition is evidenced by some who reduced the other two marks to dimensions of the word’s activity: e. g. “Alsted, Alting, Maresius, Hottinger, Heidanus, Turretin, and Mastricht (et al.)”
The sacraments properly administered. The sacraments are said to be a visible sign of an invisible grace, or even “a visible sermon.” A few years ago, when the Federal Vision was gaining in popularity, it became acceptable for many to find communion with anyone who was baptized in the Trinitarian formula. Whatever we may think of the legitimacy a Catholic baptism (Is a liberal Protestant baptism any better?) our question is about the line of demarcation between church and world. What marks out a baptized follower of Christ? To answer “baptism” seems a bit circular. Leaving aside the debate between Baptists and the Reformed, there is actually one sense in which we agree with the priority of belief in the sacraments. While Abraham and Isaac were both given the sign—one after belief and the other long before—yet we Presbyterians speak of “improving our baptism” and we welcome to the table those of faith, cautioning those who would eat in an unworthy manner: the essence of which is failure to discern (1 Cor. 11:29). Even while we see clear scriptural warrant for the inclusion of covenant children, we understand the membership of their parents to be defined by faith. In short, what makes sacraments marks of true and false is the thing signified.
The fact that the sacraments of the Old and New share in the same substance is proof enough that the invisible precedes the visible here. For instance, circumcision and baptism both signify regeneration (Deut. 10:16, 30:6, Jer. 4:4, Ti. 3:5), and more generally the whole work of Christ (Col. 2:12-13). Now the word of God also marks out the contours of sacramental practice. When Rome withheld the cup from the laity, they stole from the people what Jesus gave. All such rationale for restriction parallels the same as their worry that church mice would consume any spilled crumbs of the bread. These were the physical body and blood of Christ.
If Rome and the Reformers both agree that the sacraments are means of grace, then why is it problematic for grace to be conceived as “distributed” by the Church? Can we not call the “minister who serves” (in the Confession) and the bread, wine, and waters instrumental causes of the grace so received? Again soteriology weighs heavily upon ecclesiology: “it lies in the fact that Rome binds salvation to priests and sacraments, and the Reformation [binds salvation] to the preaching of the Word.” Even if one wants to argue in the most careful Aristotelian fashion for the Lutheran baptismal regeneration, such a one would be moving in this direction, away from the waters as efficient cause.
In light of Luther’s dichotomy between opus Dei and opus hominum, Rome’s error lay precisely in holding out the human action of the Church as a cooperative agent and thus “completing God’s work of reconciliation in the distribution of his grace.” And yet if we take Bavinck’s analysis as accurate, the Reformed excelled the Lutheran ecclesiology in this: that where Luther “looked for its unity and holiness more in the objective institutions of office, Word, and sacrament,” the Reformed granted that while these were God’s ordinary means, “he is not bound to this method.” This must mean either that the Reformed had a lower view of the means of grace or that they held a deeper view of the shaping power of the word. My thesis is that the Reformed held the latter.
The practice of discipline was later added. Proper discipline follows the word. When speaking of ordinary discipline, this is a matter of conscience. Rome and the Reformers both agreed that faith and obedience are demanded, but one’s view of Scripture leads to a particular view of authority over the conscience. To whom do we owe obedience? Withrow remarked that, “It is a distinctive feature of the apostolic government that Church rulers did not render spiritual obedience to any temporal potentate, or to any ecclesiastical chief.” Even the authority of the apostles was conditional.
The authority of discipline is one thing; its relationship to who is “in” and “out” is another.
Covenant theology rightly insists that there have been apostates in both the Old and the New. But how do we explain Esau and Saul, Judas and Simon the Magician, unless their participation in the visible elements of the covenant community were nothing but an external shell to the living thing? That false members are to be conceived of being in the New Covenant era church is plain in the parables about the kingdom (Matt. 13:25, 47, 22:11, 14) as well as the imagery of the branches on the vine (Jn. 15:2). Hence one need not choose between the denial of New Covenant era apostates and remnants (as in the Baptist view) or else a logically coextensive invisible and visible church (as the Federal Vision certainly painted the picture). The key to situating the rosters of the invisible and the visible is to observe the classical metaphysical ordering of the invisible to the visible.
Both the symbolic keys and the act of “binding and loosing” are a visible reflection of the invisible discipline of the King in heaven. Some have argued that the NASB captures the Greek verb tense best: “will have been bound in heaven” (Mat. 16:19, 18:18).
More could be said here about how the Reformed viewed such authority to bind and loose as a declarative and ministerial authority—that is, exercised from the invisible word (the gospel) out to the all of the visible demonstration of the person’s confession and either sin or repentance.
We conclude by looking at Calvin’s criterion of the “unity of the faith.” This is a most helpful guide to the marks. On the one hand, he can say that the true church follows word and sacrament, and yet “even in the administration of the word and sacraments defects may creep in which ought not to alienate us from its communion.” Here we have a mechanism to hold both charity and discernment in our hands together:
For all the heads of true doctrine are not in the same position. Some are so necessary to be known, that all must hold them to be fixed and undoubted as the proper essentials of religion: for instance that God is one, that Christ is God, and the Son of God, that our salvation depends on the mercy of God, and the like. Others, again, which are the subject of controversy among the churches, do not destroy the unity of the faith.
So there is an outright true and a false, but there is also a spectrum of more or less pure. The same doctrine that divides paradoxically brings about this unity of the faith. That which divides Christians from Mormons, say, unites Catholics and Evangelicals; and yet there is that which divided the Reformers from Rome. If Calvin was correct, then this unity of the faith united these same Reformers with the truer catholic tradition, and revealed that it was late Medieval Rome that was in fact breaking off into schism. As to the destiny of individual players in the whole drama, we heed the words of Paul, to “not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart” (1 Cor. 4:5). The perfect union of the invisible and visible is eschatological. As the Last Day brings together again the soul with the bodies now in the grave, so shall it unite the church on earth as it is in heaven.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
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