pilgrim people

I thought it might be helpful to follow up the recent series of posts on creeds, confessions, and Sola Scriptura, with a few posts on the Protestant distinction between the visible and invisible church. This is a very important distinction for us to make, because the church, as it is in this age, is both visible and invisible. Being a Christian is not a mere privatized, individual affair. There is a real, visible church which Christ has instituted. Membership in a real, local manifestation of that church is necessary for the Christian. And yet, membership in the visible church does not guarantee one's union with Christ and justification by God. The visible-invisible distinction helps us understand this properly.

In the Reformed churches, we confess this distinction in Article 29 of the Belgic Confession when we say that there are “hypocrites, who are mixed in the church along with the good and yet are not part of the church, although they are outwardly in it.” Likewise, Chapter 25 of the Westminster Confession of Faith points out that “the catholic or universal Church which is invisible consists of the whole number of the elect” and that “the visible Church…consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion and of their children.”

Protestants confess this because we recognize that this is the clear teaching of Scripture. The Bible portrays the church as both the elect people of God, whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life (Rev 21.27) but invisible to the world, and the visible community of faith established on earth (Matt 28.18-20). Yet, as Scripture also shows us, these two are not always one and the same. There is the church as we see it and the church as God sees it. What is discernable to us with the physical eye is not exactly the same as what is known to God in his omniscience. That is why the Reformed and Presbyterians have included specific language in their confessions to uphold this important distinction as part of their ecclesiology.

But we also speak of this distinction because it guards us against two unbiblical and spiritually dangerous extremes: that of a superstitious formalism on the one hand, and that of a radical individualism on the other. Perhaps the Nineteenth-Century Scottish theologian John MacPherson put it best when he said, “Protestantism sought to find the proper mean between the magical and supernatural externalism of the Romish idea and the extravagant depreciation of all outward rites, characteristic of fanatical and sectarian spiritualism.” These are the two perilous errors that the visible-invisible distinction helps us avoid. In the next couple of posts, I will take up each of these dangers that the visible-invisible distinction helps us to avoid.