Biblical Basis for the Invisible Church

[ConfusedTim]

What is the Biblical basis for saying that the church is an invisble collection of all Christians rather than a visible, authoritative body?

 

[Petergee]

Great question. Now watch our resident protestants wriggle and twist to try to manufacture an answer out of nothing. Or else they’ll just ignore you in the hope that you go away.

 

[JRKH]

Great question. Now watch our resident protestants wriggle and twist to try to manufacture an answer out of nothing. Or else they’ll just ignore you in the hope that you go away.

Now - Let us be charitable and wait for our non-catholic bretheren to respond before making comment.

Peace
James

 

[Rightlydivide]

The words invisible church is not found in scripture. Our church is quite visible so I have never understood this concept since first hearing about it here of all places.

 

[ConfusedTim]

How do we know who is in this visible church is it a belief in the bible and therefore it includes Jehovas withnesses, Mormons and all the other heretical groups from the past who used the bible to come up with their own forms of Christianity?

 

[Rightlydivide]

How do we know who is in this visible church is it a belief in the bible and therefore it includes Jehovas withnesses, Mormons and all the other heretical groups from the past who used the bible to come up with their own forms of Christianity?

How do you know? They would hold the same beliefs and practices of the Bible. Listen you have a visible church and so do we. You believe you represent biblical Christianity and so do we.

 

[GeorgeSword]

How do you know? They would hold the same beliefs and practices of the Bible. Listen you have a visible church and so do we. You believe you represent biblical Christianity and so do we.

The JWs are non-Trinitarian, are they not? Is the Trinity not a central point of our faith?

 

[GeorgeSword]

How do you know? They would hold the same beliefs and practices of the Bible. Listen you have a visible church and so do we. You believe you represent biblical Christianity and so do we.

The problem is, the Bible, when read by you or I, can be interpreted a thousand different ways. It can be interpreted to be in perfect support of your beliefs, in perfect support of mine, or even in perfect support of the Mormons. That is why I don’t give myself the authority to interpret it.

 

[SyCarl]

I think much of the concept of the invisible church comes from Augustine.

1. The second rule is about the twofold division of the body of the Lord; but this indeed is not a suitable name, for that is really no part of the body of Christ which will not be with Him in eternity. We ought, therefore, to say that the rule is about the true and the mixed body of the Lord, or the true and the counterfeit, or some such name; because, not to speak of eternity, hypocrites cannot even now be said to be in Him, although they seem to be in His Church. And hence this rule might be designated thus: Concerning the mixed Church. Now this rule requires the reader to be on his guard when Scripture, although it has now come to address or speak of a different set of persons, seems to be addressing or speaking of the same persons as before, just as if both sets constituted one body in consequence of their being for the time united in a common participation of the sacraments.

Augustine (On Christian Doctrine, 3:32)
newadvent.org/fathers/12023.htm

Augustine differentiates between the true body and the mixed body on the basis of who will ultimately be with Jesus in eternity. Those who will not, appear to be in the Church but are not really part of it. They are in what he calls the mixed Church, which would be the visible Church. They are excluded from the true Church.

The true Church is invisible in the sense that you cannot identify anyone in the visible Church who you know with certainty will be with Jesus in Heaven.

Augustine notes that the word church is used in Scripture it is important to discern which sense it is being used.

There was only one visible Church in Augustine’s time. Now people who will be with Jesus can be in various visible churches or denominations. It is this invisible church against which the gates of Hades will not prevail.

 

[lna419]

How do you know? They would hold the same beliefs and practices of the Bible. Listen you have a visible church and so do we. You believe you represent biblical Christianity and so do we.

It’s interesting how you answer a question with another question to start. It gives meaning to the name you chose (rightlydivide).

Rightly, don’t forget to ask questions as your thinking of your responses. You say “they would hold the same beliefs and practices of the Bible”. How can you determine what those beliefs and practices are?

By what process do you go by to determine an explanation of the bible? Did you pick up the bible one day and decided that what you read means A,B,or C? How do you come up with your conclusions? Where do you go for your final authority of interpretation?

 

[lna419]

I think much of the concept of the invisible church comes from Augustine.

Augustine (On Christian Doctrine, 3:32)
newadvent.org/fathers/12023.htm

Augustine differentiates between the true body and the mixed body on the basis of who will ultimately be with Jesus in eternity. Those who will not, appear to be in the Church but are not really part of it. They are in what he calls the mixed Church, which would be the visible Church. They are excluded from the true Church.

The true Church is invisible in the sense that you cannot identify anyone in the visible Church who you know with certainty will be with Jesus in Heaven.

Augustine notes that the word church is used in Scripture it is important to discern which sense it is being used.

There was only one visible Church in Augustine’s time. Now people who will be with Jesus can be in various visible churches or denominations. It is this invisible church against which the gates of Hades will not prevail.

Your way off. There is no such thing as an invisible church. Augustine was talking about hypocrites within the church. People starting to spread heresy within the church. It has nothing to do with what you explained.
Ignatius of Antioch speaks of a visible Church when he outlines its nature in 107, marking it, for the first time of which we have record, as the “Catholic Church”: “Where the bishop is found, there let the people be, even as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”

Here’s another way to look at things. Structuring Christian belief upon the Bible alone, Martin Luther’s sola scriptura principle, makes no sense if Christ founded a visible Church commissioned to act upon his behalf until the end of time (Luke 10:16). But if the only Church with a sensible claim of going all the way back must be ignored because not all its teachings can be accepted, one ends up embracing the hallmark of Protestantism, the idea that the universal Church must be invisible.

Certainly it was to a visible, authoritative body that Christ declared, addressing its first earthly leader, “I will entrust to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 16:19). What good would it have done to bestow the keys upon a Church so formless as to defy any effort to identify it? Then, too, Christ speaks of a visible Church when he recommends recourse to it for settling disputes among his followers: “Refer it to the Church” (Matt. 18:17). He tells his followers, who make us the Church on earth, that they are “the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house” (Matt. 5:14-15; see also Luke 8:16,11:33).

The visibility of the Church is no light matter. It underlies the ultimate source of Christian belief: Church or Bible? Its importance surpasses that of other divisive issues, such as the veneration of saints or confession.

 

[ConfusedTim]

If there is no biblical scripture to support the notion that the “church” means all christian believers then we have to accept the statement that there is a single visible, authoritative body. This “church” must either be one of the Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, etc, etc. churches that we see today because we know that Jesus said that the gates of hades would never prevail against his church. i.e. the one true church is still around.

This being the case you have to look at whether your “church” closely matches that ONE true church, i.e. it MUST be able to trace its roots further back further than any other church that leads to Jesus and the apostles.

 

[Petergee]

I think much of the concept of the invisible church comes from Augustine.
…
Augustine notes that the word church is used in Scripture it is important to discern which sense it is being used.

There was only one visible Church in Augustine’s time. Now people who will be with Jesus can be in various visible churches or denominations. It is this invisible church against which the gates of Hades will not prevail.

Nonsense. There were many visible heretical “churches” in St Augustine’s time. He frequently railed against them and pointed out that none of them is the true Catholic Church founded by Christ.
e.g.
*" Whether they wish or not, heretics have to call the Catholic Church Catholic" (“De vera religione”, xii). **“Although all heretics wish to be styled Catholic, yet if any one ask where is the Catholic place of worship none of them would venture to point out his own conventicle” *(Contra Epistolam quam vocant Fundamenti, iv).

 

[Petergee]

The words invisible church is not found in scripture. Our church is quite visible so I have never understood this concept since first hearing about it here of all places.

Fair enough.

May I ask who founded your visible church, and on what authority? What gave him the right to found a new visible church in opposition to the one visible Church which had existed since Christ founded her?

 

[JRKH]

Fair enough.

May I ask who founded your visible church, and on what authority? What gave him the right to found a new visible church in opposition to the one visible Church which had existed since Christ founded her?

This is the crux of the matter of the “invisible church” issue. As it is in most issues between faith communities.
Those who espouse the “invisible church” are those who, in the main have rejected the authority of “The Church” to authoritatively bind and loose for ALL of the faithful universally. The concept of the “invisible” church" allows them to explain away the fact that different christian communities hold different, and sometimes opposing, beliefs that they cannot, of themselves, resolve.

Peace
James

 

[Libertarian_FL]

I’m going to be bold and say as a non-Catholic there is none in fact I’m very sure the first church and likely the one church Christ intended was the proto-Roman Catholic Church, not making a case for Peter as the first Pope just its clear. Apostles plus Pentacost tends to support the central Church being a central Church.

The real question did Christ withdraw this support for other options for failing in the early to later Catholic Church opening up new options?

 

[JRKH]

I’m going to be bold and say as a non-Catholic there is none in fact I’m very sure the first church and likely the one church Christ intended was the proto-Roman Catholic Church, not making a case for Peter as the first Pope just its clear. Apostles plus Pentacost tends to support the central Church being a central Church.

The real question did Christ **withdraw this support for other options **for failing in the early to later Catholic Church opening up new options?

I think first you would have to prove that Christ EVER supported “other options” and what those “other options” are that you think Christ supported.

Second you would need to prove that 1) Christ failed, “in the early to later Catholic Church”, and 2) That after such a failure there is any reason to continue to have faith in, what essentially would be, a failed messiah.

Christ Promised to be with His Church, through the Apostles and their successors, till the end of the age. He promised to protect His Church so that the gates of hell would not prevail. If the Church failed at any time, then Christ failed, and the whole Christian Structure fails for it would be shown to have been founded, not on th Son of God, but on a false prophet.
Thankfully this is not the case. His Early Church succeeded and has continued to succeed, under His protection and guidance, from Pentacost to today.

Peace
James

 

[Tomster]

What is the Biblical basis for saying that the church is an invisble collection of all Christians rather than a visible, authoritative body?

The negation of the visible character of the Church of Christ, and of its hierarchical constitution, has led to to such stress being laid upon the visible, tangible aspects of the Church that those who are not Catholics have come to think of it in terms of its external organization and of its dogmatic definitions, and not a few Catholics, concentrating their attention upon the argumentative, apologetical, and controversial side of the doctrine concerning the Church, have been in danger of overlooking theoretically - though practically it is impossible for them to do so - the supernatural, the mysterious, the vital, the overwhelmingly important character of the Church as the divinely established and only means of grace in the world, as the Mystical Body of Christ. Practically the doctrine of the supernatural life, of sanctifying grace, of the developement of the spiritual life, has safeguarded these deep truths; though even there individualism has asserted itself to the detriment of the collectivism of Christian activity. The stress laid by St. Paul on the edification of the body of Christ, on the benefit the whole derives from the perfection of the members, has tended to be passed over where the social value of the contemplative life is not appreciated.

It is in and through the Church that Jesus has willed to effect the salvation of mankind. From the beginning that Church has been a complex entity, and its history is filled with incidents in which men have concentrated upon some one essential element of its constitution to the exclusion of another equally essential element, and have drifted into heresy. The Church has its visible and its invisible elements, its individual and its social claims, its natural and its supernatural activities, its adaptability to the needs of the times, while it is uncompromising in vindicating that which it holds from Christ and for Christ.

 

[Rightlydivide]

Fair enough.

May I ask who founded your visible church, and on what authority? What gave him the right to found a new visible church in opposition to the one visible Church which had existed since Christ founded her?

The main elder of the church started it with two other people. You would have to give the lead initiative to him.
As far as authority and “founding” a church, do you believe that Titus was written to the church or just Titus?
I think we would need to clarify and agree to define authority in a similiar manner.

2:14 Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
Tts 2:15 These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.

As far as a church in opposition, what do you mean opposition?
Are you assuming that a Catholic ever shared their church teachings with him or that he would agree that of the hundreds of churches claiming to be apostolic he agreed that you have the best claim to that?
Or are you saying that every other church is in opposition to Catholicism by virture of not being a Roman Catholic Church ( I use that term to differentiate the score of other churches that have that in their name as well).
Thanks

 

[Petergee]

The main elder of the church started it with two other people. You would have to give the lead initiative to him.
As far as authority and “founding” a church, do you believe that Titus was written to the church or just Titus?

It’s clear from the text that St Paul wrote the letter to St Titus, not explicitly to anybody else. Though the tone of it seems to imply that St Paul wanted his advice passed on to those whom St Titus in his turn would ordain as bishops. Much later, the pope and bishops of the Catholic Church decided that the letter is divinely inspired, imparting God’s Truth to all.

I think we would need to clarify and agree to define authority in a similiar manner.

The normal dictionary definition will do just fine. It’s clear from the Bible record that St Paul received his authority in the Church from St Peter, and that he passed on this authority to St Titus, St Timothy and the other bishops he ordained through the laying on of hands. And the bishops whom the Apostles ordained passed the authority down through an unbroken line of other bishops to the bishops of the Church today.

I repeat, where di “the main elder” of your church get his authority to start a church and decide what its beliefs and practices would be?

As far as a church in opposition, what do you mean opposition?
Are you assuming that a Catholic ever shared their church teachings with him or that he would agree that of the hundreds of churches claiming to be apostolic he agreed that you have the best claim to that?
Or are you saying that every other church is in opposition to Catholicism by virture of not being a Roman Catholic Church ( I use that term to differentiate the score of other churches that have that in their name as well).
Thanks

Again I am using the standard dictionary sense of “opposition”; no need to twist words around trying to manufacture some unique meaning for them in your situation. Obviously anyone who rejects the Church’s authority and starts up his own church with one or more different doctrines, is opposing the Catholic Church.

It’s true that most of the 30,000 -odd protestant churches didn’t break off directly from the Catholic Church, they broke off from earlier offshoots of offshoots. But all of them derive their Scriptures and apostolic doctrines, traditions and practices directly or indirectly from the Catholic Church. (Please don’t use the term you used for the Catholic Church, Catholics find it offensive and historically it has been used to imply that Catholics are liars and traitors to Christ and to their country.)