Reformed Ecclesiology: “The Community of Christ”

I teach at a Wesleyan university. One day as I unlocked my office I noticed that someone had posted a cartoon on my door. It showed a man in a suit carrying a briefcase walking out of a prison. The caption read, “A Reformed Theologian.”

Hopefully that is not the picture we have in mind when we consider Reformed ecclesiology and the contribution it might make to our denomination’s present situation.

Philip Jenkins has demonstrated that the future of the Christian church is in the South and the East—in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—where it is growing exponentially. On the other hand, though Christianity will still survive quite well in the U.S., many respond to declining numbers in the Western church with appeals to wisdom from the business world, the latest management guru, or tried and true Disney techniques (as one conference brochure advertised). But I am increasingly convinced that the churches in the West— particularly mainline churches—need to begin with biblically-oriented theology as they seek a cure for what ails them. In fact, it might even change the diagnosis of the illness. With that in mind, we need to consider how biblically-grounded theological insights from our Reformed tradition might guide us in our thinking about the current situation in our church.

It is always good to know the social location of the author, and so I confess that I am one who, as Richard Reifsnyder said when he preached the sermon at my ordination, wandered in the wilderness of Pentecostals and Baptists before entering the Promised Land of Presbyterianism. One of the reasons I embraced the PCUSA 30 years ago was because of its liturgy, its refusal to separate evangelism from social concerns, and its connectional church polity. It is the last that is most relevant to what we are considering here. And it is perhaps more urgent today than it has been in recent history since we who are ambassadors of reconciliation need to demonstrate to a watching world by our life as church that the reconciliation we preach is actually a possibility in Jesus Christ. (And we don’t just have social issues that are threatening this demonstration, but also generational issues that discourage old and young from worshipping together and which compromise our witness of reconciliation.)

What better place to start thinking about a Reformed understanding of the church than with the wisdom of fellow travelers such as John Calvin (a pastor-theologian who had to learn on the job what it meant to be a wise shepherd), Karl Barth, and others.

The Nature of the Church

We should begin by reminding ourselves of the nature of the church. What is the church?

Simply put, it is the Body of Christ. To paraphrase Karl Barth, “The church is because Christ is.”1 And to use the language of Barth’s Römerbrief, the church is “the great crater left by the impact of God’s revealing Word”—the Word whose chief function is to confront us with Jesus Christ. The church exists only as a witness to the One on whom it is dependent—who is its source—who called it into being. Insofar as it ceases to be that witness, it ceases to be the church. In fact, our word “church” evolved from the Scottish and German kirk and kirche, derivatives of the Greek kurios—Lord. This was precisely the concern of Samuel John Stone who wrote his hymn in 1866, supporting Bishop Robert Gray in his accusations against another Anglican bishop John Colenso who had questioned central tenets of the Christian faith: “The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.”

As Paul emphasizes in Ephesians 4 and as the Declaration of Barmen so forcefully insisted, the church has only one Lord, and, as a result, there is only one church—one Body of Christ. Ultimately, there are not two or three or more churches. If that were so, it would be a witness against the singular Lordship of Jesus Christ. This is something we will need to recall a bit later when we consider the question of schism.

The church is not only Christ’s body. It is also our mother. The third-century bishop of Carthage, Cyprian, famously said “He does not have God for his Father who does not have the church for his mother.” That sentiment and his insistence that “there is no salvation outside the church” were repeated by Calvin almost verbatim.2 The importance of the church’s role in the Christian’s life is attested by the fact that ecclesiology takes up one-third of Calvin’s Institutes. It reflects God’s way of accommodating himself to us, said Calvin, as it provides the external means or aids by which we receive Christ’s benefits. In ordinary terms, there is no access to the work of Christ in redemption except through mother church. In fact, our tradition from Calvin to Barth insists that there is no private Christianity; there is only communal Christianity.

And so the church’s role as mother—as the one through whom we receive the means for our spiritual birth and nurture until our sanctification is complete—is no light matter. Our salvation depends on God’s decision to use the church as the reality through which we receive Christ’s benefits.

Yet, in words that have probably been errantly attributed to Augustine, the church is our mother even if sometimes she’s a whore—a biblical concept if the church is anything like Old Testament Israel.3 I suppose that is why Calvin needed to remind us that we do not believe in the church.4 The church is us, and to believe in the church would be to misplace our trust, because “sinners are us.” Instead, the church is the community of Christ in which we are spiritually born and nurtured. It is, as Barth put, the “cultural and historical environment of Jesus.”5

Calvin admitted that the church has some hypocrites. In fact, I think it may be the only institution besides Congress that is expected to have hypocrites in its ranks. As John Huffman often reminds us at St. Andrews, when we welcome people to the gathering of the church, we invite them to another weekly session of “Sinners Anonymous.” But as Calvin went on to insist after acknowledging the presence of hypocrites in the church’s midst, still we are commanded to hold the visible church in honor and keep ourselves in communion with it.6

Augustine also reputedly once said that God has some people the church doesn’t have, and the church has some people that God doesn’t have. And that opens up the notion that there is an invisible church of God’s choosing whose boundaries we cannot always discern. That church is always visible to God, but its invisibility to us is simply a confession of our human finitude. We do the best we can with our limited abilities to know where the true church is to be found. And at that point the Reformers Luther and Calvin were quite helpful.

Where Is the Church To Be Found?

Calvin insisted that the true church cannot be recognized by the individual quality of its members.7 In other words, on this score we in the Reformed tradition do not share the Anabaptist assumption that the visible church and the invisible church are one and the same— that the only true church is the pure church or that the church known only to God and the church that we see are coterminous. For Calvin the visible church is no less the true church for tolerating reprobates in its midst.

Then how do we know where the true church is to be found? Calvin insisted that the marks or characteristics of the true church are two: (1) where the Word of God is rightly preached and heard and (2) where the sacraments are properly administered and received.8 In other words, Calvin explained, “the sacraments have the same office as the Word of God: to offer and set forth Christ to us, and in him the treasures of heavenly grace.”9 So, with the two marks of the true church we are right back where we started: The church is because Jesus Christ is. What distinguishes the true church from the sham is this: The glory of Christ cannot and must not be compromised. Though it might often seem that the PCUSA is held together by little else but pensions and property, we would do well to recall the words of the Confession of 1967: “Obedience to Jesus Christ alone identifies the one universal church and supplies the continuity of its tradition.”

Further, our tradition as articulated in the Second Helvetic Confession10 subscribes to the Augustinian insistence that even if the Word is preached and the sacraments are administered by one who is unholy (or even by a heretic according to Augustine11), still the voice of Christ is to be heard, because the Word and the sacraments do not belong to us; they belong to Christ. Faith is required for the effective reception, but the validity of the Word and the sacraments does not depend on our holiness, but on Christ’s promise.

So, if these Christocentric marks make the church visible to us, and if the invisibility of its ultimate boundaries (i.e., that which God knows) is a confession of our human finitude, then spanning a 500-year gap Calvin urges us with this bit of pastoral advice: by a “charitable judgment” we may hold all to be members of the church who by their faith, conduct, and participation in the sacraments “confess one same God and one same Christ with us.”12

Once again, we come back to where we started. The church comes into existence as it is called into being by the Word of God, and it exists only insofar as it proclaims God’s Word. The particular local church that is not obedient and faithful to proclaim and hear God’s Word—the voice of its Lord—ceases to be the true church. The church lives and is essentially held together by the witness of the Word about Christ. Barth was right to remind us that the true church is not known primarily by its organization or moral quality—not by the qualities that it possesses, but by the divine acts that create and nourish it as heard and seen in the Word and sacraments. But, at the same time, Barth13 and Barmen14 both remind us that the church cannot and must not domesticate or imprison this Word of God that calls it continually to repent and reform. Only as the church listens to the Word can the Church be a faithful witness to the Word and the world. Indeed, we can even make idols of our theological systems. Just as Stephen in Acts 7 argued against those who wanted to confine God in a Temple and to “localize” and confine God in their religious system, we need to be reminded that God cannot be confined in any ecclesiastical political or doctrinal structure of human devising.15

If the church is not known primarily by its moral quality, what are we to do with one of the marks of the church that we confess in the Apostles’ Creed— “holiness”? Or, how are we to understand one of the “P’s” in PUP—“purity”? It is necessary to clarify what we mean by “holy” lest, as Calvin put it, “if we are not willing to admit a church unless it be perfect in every respect, we leave no church at all”!16

The creed’s characterization of the church as “holy” is not meant for self-justification, but for self-examination. It is not a human ideal that the church has achieved, but the divine realty to which the church is called. It has more to do with where we are headed than with how we have arrived. Calvin recognized that

…the Lord is daily at work in smoothing out wrinkles and cleansing spots. From this it follows that the church’s holiness is not yet complete. The church is holy, then, in the sense that it is daily advancing and is not yet perfect: it makes progress from day to day but has not yet reached its goal of holiness….17

In other words, there is no perfect church, and so one must have very solid grounds for leaving it. Conversely, as someone has pointed out, if you do find a perfect church, don’t join it or you’ll spoil it.

To enhance the progress of holiness Calvin instituted discipline. Martin Bucer, who had a significant influence on Calvin when the two were in Strasbourg (before Calvin’s return to Geneva), made discipline a third mark of the true church (as does the Scots Confession—chapter 18), but Calvin put church discipline in the service of communion. For Calvin, discipline belonged to the organization and functioning of the church—as demonstrated by its inclusion in our Book of Order, but discipline does not comprise the church’s definition or essence.

So What About Schism?

Calvin recognized that there were degrees of importance of doctrine. Those having to do with our salvation were to be held with certainty and to go unquestioned. Those that fit more the category of adiophora—the nonessential matters—were not to be the basis of schism. He railed against the holier-than-thou Novatians and the Anabaptists “who wish to appear advanced beyond other people.”18 In correcting what displeases us, Calvin urged us “neither to renounce the communion of the church nor, remaining in it, to disturb its peace and duly ordered discipline.”19 Indeed, Calvin insisted that no one may leave the church due to the unholiness of others in the church as long as the marks of the true church are present.20

So Calvin argued hard against schism in the body of Christ, urging a minimal number of fundamental beliefs that boiled down to Christ as the single foundation of the church. He recognized that there have always been dissensions and strife in the church—even over important matters, such as those debated by Peter and Paul.21 Calvin was surprisingly liberal in his attitude toward Rome in this regard. Though he detested its doctrinal deviations and moral lapses, he could tolerate them, but only if he did not also believe that Rome was fatally in error on the one, fundamental, nonnegotiable point—the doctrine of Christ. And, on that score, he would not concede that he was guilty of schism, but that “Rome was guilty of heresy and schism from the true church by its rejection of God’s Word and above all by its rejection of Christ.” For Calvin, the painful choice, then, was Rome or Christ, and he had to withdraw from Rome in order to cleave to Christ.22

In practice, Calvin admitted that there were particular local Roman Catholic churches that met the Reformer’s criteria of a “true church,”23 but, to repeat, the Church as a whole had wandered from the Christian faith sometime in the past. In fact, perhaps it is here (along with what I will say about cultivating the virtue of patience) that the Reformed tradition is most helpful when it comes to understanding schism. Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor in Zurich, wrote a treatise entitled Der Alte Glaube—“The Old Faith”—in which he argued that Protestants were in continuity with the one covenant God had made since the promise was made to Eve in Genesis 3:15. Therefore, contrary to the Roman argument that it was the Protestants who were schismatics, Bullinger argued that it was Rome that had strayed. These Protestant Reformers would use the language of 1 John 2:19 to describe Rome: “They went out from us.”

Yet, even in this Calvin was not rash; he counseled gentleness, kindness, and moderation. Calvin urged us to speak the truth in love,24 for truth without love can be vicious and love without truth can be insipid.

For Calvin unity was both a gift and a task.25 This is clear from the title of the first chapter of Book IV: “Of the true Church: the duty of cultivating unity with her, as the mother of all the godly.” Let’s not forget, for instance, that it took the church three centuries of theological debate and sometimes nasty church politics to come up with an ecumenical statement about the full divinity of the Son.

Here I would like to interject wise advice that predates Calvin and our Reformed tradition by many centuries, but advice with which I think Calvin might concur. It comes from Tertullian in the 3rd century. He wrote a small treatise on patience. It was the first treatise in the history of the church on a specific virtue—a virtue that, along with humility, was not considered a virtue in the classical tradition. Tertullian had in mind what the Bible calls “long suffering,” an attribute of God that 1 Peter tells us caused God to wait in the days of Noah. The most visible sign of God’s patience, says Tertullian, is the Incarnation. God allowed himself to be conceived in the womb of Mary, theotokos, and waited patiently for nine months to pass before Christ’s birth. He patiently underwent the stages of childhood and adolescence, and, when an adult, did not rush to be recognized. But the supreme example of his patience was his Passion, and now we find the ground for our patience in the Resurrection that allows us to live in hope, the singular mark of patience. To be like God is to abound in patience. To be like the devil himself, wrote Tertullian, is to be overcome by impatience.26

Perhaps Calvin understood this. It would make sense, since Calvin calls us to exercise a “charitable judgment,” especially in light of Jesus’ warning about pulling up the tares that are entangled with the wheat. After referring to Jesus’ allusion, Calvin firmly states two points:

First, he who voluntarily deserts the outward communion of the church (where the Word of God is preached and the sacraments are administered) is without excuse. Secondly, neither the vices of the few nor the vices of the many in any way prevent us from duly professing our faith there in ceremonies ordained by God. For a godly conscience is not wounded by the unworthiness of another, whether pastor or layman; nor are the sacraments less pure and salutary for a holy and upright man because they are handled by unclean persons.27

Still, Calvin did not advocate unity at any price— certainly not at the cost of the truth of the Word. Indeed, the principle of unity itself can become idolatrous. While Calvin insisted that the church cannot exclude all those who are not elect, neither can it tolerate disorder or scandal over doctrine and morals insofar as this reflects upon and is an affront to Jesus Christ with whom we, as his body, are in union. Calvin insisted that rightly ordered churches do not bear the wicked.28 Discipline not only edifies the church and encourages sanctification, but it is for maintaining the honor of God, keeping the good from contaminating the bad, and leading the guilty to repentance (to keep people from endangering themselves).29 Or, as John Leith has said somewhere, in our tradition “church discipline provides the suitable environment for the work of the Spirit in human hearts.”

The Mission of the Church

Just as there is only one Lord and one church, so we in the Reformed tradition insist that the biblical narrative traces the history of only one covenant from the time of the Fall. And we in the church find ourselves in what some have characterized as the penultimate act in the drama of salvation.

The character of the church’s mission emerges out of its place in God’s history-of-salvation. It emerges from that history’s center—Jesus Christ—in whom the church has been chosen before the foundation of the world, and then moves out to the world to participate in God’s redemption of the cosmos.

As Oscar Cullmann put it, the church lives as witness between the D-Day of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection and the V-Day of the fullness of the coming of God’s Kingdom. In between we engage in mopping up exercises as the church testifies to the ultimate victory that Christ’s work has ensured. We have not yet arrived. We are called to pilgrimage—to become in fact what the church is by faith…to move from Ephesians 1-3 to Ephesians 4-6. We are not the Kingdom of God; that would be triumphalism—an intolerable glorification of the church. But the church is a branch office of the coming Kingdom.

In fact, in the context of the inaugurated kingdom, God’s reign is already here proleptically as we live in the light of the final goal of history. One who was influenced by our tradition, Jacques Ellul, said it forcefully:

This, then, is the revolutionary situation: to be revolutionary is to judge the world by its present state, by actual facts, in the name of a truth which does not yet exist (but which is coming)—and it is to do so because we believe this truth to be more genuine and more real than the reality which surrounds us. Consequently it means bringing the future into the present as an explosive force. It means believing that future events are more important and more true than present events; it means understanding the present in the light of the future, dominating it by the future, in the same way as the historian dominates the past. Henceforth the revolutionary act forms part of history: it is going to create history, by inflecting it toward this future…. the incursion of this event [of the coming Kingdom] into the present is the only force capable of throwing off the dead weight of social and political institutions which are gradually crushing the life out of our present civilization…. To abandon this position would mean ceasing to believe that we have been saved, for we are saved by hope, through faith (Rom 8:24), and hope is precisely this eschatological force in the present world.30

When will the church obey the Lord’s voice—“fear not, be anxious for nothing, let not your hearts be troubled”? Only when, with patience, it places its trust in the coming One who is the church’s reason for existence and its future.

The church’s agenda then is eschatological. The future consummation of the Kingdom is the reign of God in all affairs of his creation—a future that not only sustains the church in its present existence and activity, but makes its task necessary. If the Kingdom comes where God’s will is done, as Jesus taught his disciples to pray, then the church must become the present locus of eschatological realities—the portal, if you will, which becomes not merely a preview of a coming attraction, but the means through which the Kingdom actually permeates the world. And, as Paul would remind us, the church is God’s means to this end, but it is not the end itself. It is not even the goal of missions. It is the indispensable agent of God’s mission to the world.

This is serious stuff. We are reclaiming enemy-occupied territory, overcoming the consequences of the Fall, fulfilling the promise of Genesis 3:15 and, as church, participating in the firstfruits of the redemption of the entire creation, as Paul loudly affirms in Romans 8:18-31.

I remind you of those last lines of Bishop Stone’s hymn: “And to one hope she [the church] presses with every grace endued…. ‘Mid toil and tribulation and tumult of her war, she waits the consummation of peace forevermore; ‘til with the vision glorious her longing eyes are blest, and the great church victorious shall be the church at rest.”

This article first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Jan/Feb 2009).