The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.
As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have erred; so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith.
by Tony Hunt
There was an article recently published in the Christian Century in which a man confessed to not attending church. This by itself would hardly be worth mentioning. What was curious, and in my view alarming, about the article was that it was written by someone who makes a living teaching about the Church’s mission at a seminary and consulting with churches about how to live more fully into that mission. And he can’t even be bothered to put down his magazine to participate in a Sunday service.
In a world where one sees no need to participate in the life of a church, the Church has all but disappeared. It is invisible.
The question of who is truly a part of the Body of Christ and who is one in appearance only has become important at various times in the Church’s history where there has been a perceived crisis of faithfulness. St. Augustine in the late 4th and early 5th centuries, in debates with the Donatists, was one of the first to examine the distinction between the “visible” and “invisible” church. But during the Protestant Reformation the question was of central importance. As Christian groups began to splinter off one from another (from another…), people fought over who was truly being faithful to the Gospel – over where the “true” Church was. “Can a church err?” they asked. Who are “the faithful?” That is, who is part of the people whom God has chosen for salvation? Can you know if you are one? If so, how? This debate is why the second part of Article XIX exists. It is a polemical point, asserting that a church can err “in matters of faith.” And if a church can err, as they believed the “Church of Rome” had, then one can be justified for breaking from it. For this point the Article draws on precedent in the Church’s history – “As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch…” It goes beyond the scope of this essay to explore these controversies, but I think it is important to understand how this part of the Article is functioning.
It is only very recently that a charitable, ecumenical spirit has marked relationships between churches. For most of post-Reformation history, churches often considered other bodies faithless to some fundamental part of the Gospel. Over time, as Protestant churches continued to multiply and vie for political legitimacy, the question of what constitutes a true church became more and more complicated. Presbyterians, Anglicans, Anabaptists, and assorted free churches all believed that how an institutional church was organized mattered a great deal. But in the absence of means or a will to negotiate a shared Christian life, the many churches end up sitting alongside each other. The very thing that could help a group navigate divisions, a common order, was the thing that could not be agreed on. Unity in the structure of a church, be it episcopacy, universal Christian democracy, or a presbytery, was unable to unambiguously demonstrate the legitimacy of one church against others.
The second way Christian churches in this time sought to legitimate themselves against other groups was by claiming that they held to true doctrine. It’s not that church order and correct doctrine were necessarily pitted against each other, but there were some who thought that how one organized their church was of secondary importance. It may seem somewhat quaint now, given the sheer number of Protestant churches, that it was ever thought a group could guarantee absolute purity with regard to everything one must believe for salvation, but the Reformers had great faith that Scripture plainly expresses its own truth. The Bible did not need an historical community in order to disclose its manifold content. It can speak for itself.
What we can see here are the beginnings of a profoundly significant development in the history of Christianity. Here is the latent belief that some can be Christians “by themselves.” They have no need of shared practices for corporately discerning the truth about God. Neither have they need of historical actions that show an intention to participate in the catholic Church. Though churches are everywhere in view, the “True Church” has become invisible.
In the beginning of the mid-nineteenth century in England a handful of people in the Church of England began to compose a series of essays that proved to be quite controversial. These “Tracts for the Times” changed the way Anglicans have thought about themselves ever since. There are several of these tracts on “The Visible Church.” These articles were originally letters exchanged between friends. The first letter, contained in Tract 11, is by John Henry Newman, who quotes his friend as saying this:
“Why may I not be satisfied if my Creed is correct, and my affections spiritual? Have I not in that case enough to evidence a renewed mind, and to constitute a basis of union with others like minded? The love of CHRIST is surely the one and only requisite for Christian communion here, and the joys of heaven hereafter.”
For this person, it is enough to have the right beliefs and to have the right feelings. These are enough to constitute him as Christian, and to show that he has access to the same Spirit as every other Christian. I wonder if we can see here the connection to the person I mentioned at the beginning of this essay. You’ll recall that despite being a “church leader,” he isn’t a regular member of a parish. Indeed after visiting many churches in his area he says “it would take a lot of gumption for me to leave my NY Times app for any of them.” He describes a litany of reasons that none of them “fit” him and his family. Despite giving some money to one of them regularly, he hasn’t been there in months. The modern phenomenon of church shopping, though in many respects lightyears away from the crises that sparked the Reformation debates, bears a striking relationship to the marginalizing of the “Visible Church” that ensued in the centuries after them. When the Church has disappeared into a “spiritual” realm, it makes sense that beliefs and affections, both of them in a way invisible, can become the marks of inclusion in the “true Church.”
In response to his friend, Newman says:
“Scripture makes the existence of a Visible Church a condition of the existence of the Invisible. I mean, the Sacraments are evidently in the hands of the Church Visible.”
Here the Blessed Newman hits at what the Article we are discussing says. Article XIX says that the Church is made visible in coming together to share in the sacraments. These are the actions the Church habitually performs. They are the means by which the Church becomes what it is. It represents itself in re-presenting the the story of Jesus.
The Church gathers. It is a “congregation” of faithful people. The Article doesn’t mean by this a single isolated group such as is envisioned in congregationalist polity. Anglicans are organized around bishops, who themselves are ordained in “apostolic succession.” Bishops stand in an historic relationship with the Church before them. There is not a sense that we’re in this by ourselves, or that we can make a clean break from other churches so organized. Newman again: “Thus the Visible Church is not a voluntary association of the day, but a continuation of one which existed in the age before us.” A congregation is a group that congregates. We respond to the powerful acts of God in thankfulness and praise. In the language of the Book of Common Prayer, we assemble “to render thanks for the great benefits that we have received at his hands, to set forth his most worthy praise, to hear his holy Word, and to ask, for ourselves and on behalf of others, those things that are necessary for our life and our salvation” (41).
We join this congregation through the sacrament of Baptism. “All we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death” (Romans 6:3). It is a participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus; the means of incorporation into his Body. It effects the forgiveness of sins, which is our adoption into the covenant people of Israel. But notice the language: Adopted, incorporated, sharing… they all connote a pre-given society. “Every one who is baptized, is baptized into an existing community” (Tract 11).
So the Church baptizes. And the baptized people “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” in the Divine Service. The Sunday celebration is usually separated into a “service of the Word” and a “service of the Eucharist.” But of course these categories break down. What is the Eucharist but the Word par excellence? And what is the Word but a declaration of the work of God in Jesus, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the cosmos? A proper, full response to this work involves praise, thanksgiving, confession; hearing the word, sharing our gifts – the sacrifices of the people – and the true gift of the Eucharist, the real Body and Blood of Jesus. Both offering and offered, giver and given, here most truly and most fully is the Church transformed into what it already is; here it is rendered visible, because it is the work of all the people, not of voluntarily associated individuals who have arbitrarily elected to do such and such a thing on such and such a day.
The Liturgy of the Word includes the readings from Holy Scripture, the homily, the Nicene Creed, and the Prayers of the People. Sometimes “the pure Word of God being preached” in Article XIX gets conflated into meaning only the homily. But that would be to reduce the proclamation of the Word to a mere portion of the whole liturgy. As Richard Hooker reminds us (Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Bk V.xviii-xxii) preaching includes the reading of Scripture itself, which does not need human commentary to be efficacious. The “Word” is always Jesus, and the entirety of Scripture speaks of him, as does the symbol of the Church’s faith (the Creed).
There is also the word of reconciliation. The Church is a Body that is reconciled, and that shares in the “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18). There is a wonderful little bit of the liturgy that very rarely is used, but has been in the Books of Common Prayer since very early on, called the Exhortation. In it the Church is reminded that it is a grave matter to come to the Eucharistic Table while not being in right relationship with others. Christians are urged to:
Examine your lives and conduct by the rule of God’s commandments, that you may perceive wherein you have offended in what you have done or left undone, whether in thought, word, or deed. And acknowledge your sins before Almighty God, with full purpose of amendment of life, being ready to make restitution for all injuries and wrongs done by you to others; and also being ready to forgive those who have offended you, in order that you yourselves may be forgiven. And then, being reconciled with one another, come to the banquet of that most heavenly Food (317).
This is why we have the general Confession, but especially the Peace. We might at most times take the Peace for a chance to catch up with people in the parish, but it is also a moment of great importance. If we are not at peace with each other, then it must be made before we receive the Eucharist. Because in the Eucharist we are made one Body. We must discern the true nature of the Church, as St. Paul puts it.
Time fails me to give a full account of all the sacraments. But this is not a piece on sacramental theology, per se. Article XIX asks us to consider where the Church is, what it looks like, how it is made present. It tells us that the Church is not in our heads. It’s not for solitary persons trying to pick their church like they pick from a row of cereal. The Church is a concrete reality, even if the full nature of it cannot be limited to the senses – we pray with the Saints, after all!
Tony Hunt is a postulant for Holy Orders in the diocese of Minnesota. He is currently pursuing an M.Div. at Luther Seminary and his previous education was in Greek and Latin at the University of Minnesota. He tweets at @adalehunt.