Early Protestant Doctrines of the Church
Early Protestant Doctrines of the Church
The sixteenth century was a period of crucial importance for reflection on the nature and identity of the Christian church. The reformers were convinced that the church of their day and age had lost sight of the doctrine of grace, which Martin Luther (1483–1546) regarded as the center of the Christian gospel. Thus, Luther declared that his doctrine of justification by faith alone was the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae, “the article by which the church stands or falls.” Convinced that the Catholic church had lost sight of this doctrine, he concluded (with some reluctance, it would seem) that it had lost its claim to be considered the authentic Christian church.
His Catholic opponents responded to this suggestion with derision: Luther was simply creating a breakaway faction which had no connection with the church. In other words, he was a schismatic – and had not Augustine himself condemned schism? Had not he placed enormous emphasis upon the unity of the church, which Luther now threatened to disrupt? Luther, it seemed, could only uphold Augustine's doctrine of grace by rejecting Augustine's doctrine of the church. It is in the context of this tension between two aspects of Augustine's thought, which proved to be incompatible in the sixteenth century, that the Reformation understandings of the nature of the church are to be seen.
In what follows, we shall consider early Protestant doctrines of the church, noting some of the most distinctive developments within both the mainstream (or “magisterial”) Reformation and the smaller radical wing of the Reformation. We begin by considering the new lines of development found in the writings of Martin Luther.
Martin Luther (1483–1546)
Luther's early views on the nature of the church reflect his emphasis on the Word of God: the Word of God goes forth conquering, and wherever it conquers and gains true obedience to God is the church:
Now, anywhere you hear or see [the Word of God] preached, believed, confessed, and acted upon, do not doubt that the true ecclesia sancta catholica, a “holy Christian people” must be there, even though there are very few of them. For God's word “shall not return empty” (Isaiah 55: 11), but must possess at least a fourth or a part of the field. And even if there were no other sign than this alone, it would be enough to prove that a holy Christian people must exist there, for God's word cannot be without God's people and conversely, God's people cannot be without God's word. For who would preach the word, or hear it preached, if there were no people of God? And what could or would God's people believe, if there were no word of God?
Neither an episcopally ordained ministry nor an institutional continuity with the apostolic church is therefore necessary to safeguard the existence of the church, whereas the preaching of the gospel is essential to the identity of that church. “Where the word is, there is faith; and where faith is, there is the true church.” The visible church is constituted by the preaching of the Word of God: no human assembly may claim to be the “church of God” unless it is founded on this gospel. It is more important to preach the same gospel as the apostles than to be a member of an institution which is historically derived from them. A similar understanding of the church was shared by Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), Luther's colleague at Wittenberg, who conceived of the church primarily in terms of its function of administering the means of grace.
But, if the church was defined not in institutional terms but by the preaching of the gospel, how could Luther distinguish his views from those of more radical reformers? Luther himself had conceded that “the church is holy even where the fanatics [Luther's term for the radicals] are dominant, so long as they do not deny the word and the sacraments.” Luther asserted the need for an institutional church, declaring that the historical institution of the church is a divinely ordained means of grace. But, in countering the radicals by asserting that the church was indeed visible and institutional, Luther found himself having difficulty in distinguishing his views from those of his Catholic opponents. Luther was thus obliged to assert that “the false church has only the appearance, although it also possesses the Christian offices.” In other words, the medieval church may have looked like the real thing but it was really something rather different.
It will thus be clear that there are certain difficulties and shortcomings associated with Luther's approach. In part, this may reflect the general belief within reforming circles during the 1520s that separation from the Catholic church was a temporary matter. What point was there in developing extensive theories of the church – to give legitimation to the breakaway evangelical factions – when reunion with a reformed Catholic church was only a matter of time? It was only in the 1540s, when such a reunion was finally realized to be nothing more than a dream, that Protestant theologians began to give sustained attention to formulating distinctively Protestant doctrines of the church. John Calvin (1509–64) is perhaps the most significant such writer.
John Calvin (1509–64)
An event of major importance to the Reformation took place in 1541. The Colloquy of Ratisbon collapsed. This conference, held at Regensburg, represented a last-ditch attempt to reach a compromise between Catholics and Protestants which would allow the latter to rejoin the church from which they had temporarily withdrawn. It must be stressed that the reformers initially regarded themselves as having removed themselves from the Catholic church only temporarily. There was a full expectation of a return, once the situation had improved. The failure of Regensburg put an end to any such hope.
A new situation now developed. Up to 1541, there had been no real need for Protestant writers to develop theories of the church. Luther's early ecclesiology was actually a holding measure, designed to justify a temporary withdrawal from the church. It lacks rigor and conviction, precisely because Luther believed that there was no need to develop a full-blown theory of the church. After all, a return to the Catholic church was just around the corner. The second generation of reformers, among whom Calvin stands out as supreme, was faced with the challenge of developing a coherent and systematic ecclesiology, on the basis of the realization that separation from the main body of the Catholic church would continue indefinitely.
Calvin rose to this challenge, and offered what is widely regarded as the most sophisticated statement of a Protestant ecclesiology of the sixteenth century. For Calvin, the marks of the true church were:
If these two criteria were met by a community, Calvin declared, then it was a truly Christian church:
Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and listened to, and the sacraments administered according to Christ's institution, it is in no way to be doubted that a church of God exists. For his promise cannot fail: “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them” (Matthew 18: 20). [...] If the ministry has the Word and honors it, if it has the administration of the sacraments, it deserves without doubt to be held and considered a church.
The true church is therefore to be found where the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly administered.
Calvin drew an important distinction between the visible and the invisible church. At one level, the church is the community of Christian believers, a visible group. It is also, however, the fellowship of saints and the company of the elect – an invisible entity. In its invisible aspect, the church is the invisible assembly of the elect, known only to God; in its visible aspect, it is the community of believers on earth. The former consists only of the elect; the latter includes both good and evil, elect and reprobate. The former is an object of faith and hope; the latter of present experience. The distinction between them is eschatological: the invisible church is the church which will come into being at the end of time, as God ushers in the final judgment of humanity. Calvin stresses that all believers are obliged to honor and to remain committed to the visible church, despite its weaknesses, on account of the invisible church, the true body of Christ. Despite this, there is only one church, a single entity with Jesus Christ as its head.
The distinction between the visible and invisible churches has two important consequences. In the first place, it is to be expected that the visible church will include both the elect and the reprobate. As we saw earlier, Augustine of Hippo had made this point against the Donatists, using the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13: 24–30) as his basis. It lies beyond human competence to discern their difference, correlating human qualities with divine favor (in any case, Calvin's doctrine of predestination precludes such grounds of election).
Having defined the nature of the church, Calvin proceeds to explore its importance. Why is there any need for a church – understood, that is, as an institution, rather than a building – in the first place? Just as God redeemed human beings within the historical process through the incarnation, so God sanctifies them within that same process by founding an institution dedicated to that goal. God uses certain definite earthly means to work out the salvation of the elect. The church is thus identified as a divinely founded body within which God effects the sanctification of the elect. Calvin expresses this idea as follows:
I shall begin then, with the church, into the bosom of which God is pleased to gather his children, not only so that they may be nourished by her assistance and ministry while they are infants and children, but also so that they may be guided by her motherly care until they mature and reach the goal of faith. “For what God has joined together, no one shall divide” (Mark 10: 9). For those to whom God is Father, the church shall also be their mother.
Calvin confirms this high doctrine of the church by citing the two great ecclesiological maxims of Cyprian of Carthage: “You cannot have God as your father unless you have the church for your mother” and “Outside the church there is no hope of remission of sins nor any salvation” (see pp. 370–1). The institution of the church is thus to be seen as a necessary, helpful, God-given, and God-ordained means of spiritual growth and development.
The Radical Reformation
For theologians of the radical Reformation (or “Anabaptism”), such as Sebastian Franck (1499–1543) and Menno Simons (1496–1551), the apostolic church had been totally compromised through its close links with the state, dating back to the conversion of the emperor Constantine. As an institution, the church was corrupted by human power struggles and ambition. Franck wrote thus:
I believe that the outward Church of Christ, including all its gifts and sacraments, because of the breaking in and laying waste by antichrist right after the death of the Apostles, went up into heaven, and lies concealed in the Spirit and in truth. I am thus quite certain that for fourteen hundred years now there has existed no gathered Church nor any sacrament.
The true church was in heaven, and its institutional parodies were on earth. The church thus needed to separate itself from secular society, especially the authority of the magistracy. The radical Reformation conceived of the church as an “alternative society” within the mainstream of sixteenth-century European culture. Just as the pre-Constantinian church existed within the Roman empire yet refused to conform to its standards, so the radical Reformation envisaged itself existing parallel to, but not within, its sixteenth-century environment. For Menno Simons, the church was “an assembly of the righteous,” at odds with the world and not a “mixed body”:
In truth, those who merely boast of his name are not the true congregation of Christ. The true congregation of Christ is those who are truly converted, who are born from above of God, who are of a regenerate mind by the operation of the Holy Spirit through the hearing of the Word of God, and have become the children of God.
It will be clear that there are strong parallels with the Donatist view of the church as a holy and pure body (see pp. 358–9), isolated from the corrupting influences of the world and prepared to maintain its purity and distinctiveness by whatever disciplinary means proved necessary.
This notion of the church as a faithful remnant in conflict with the world harmonized with the Anabaptist experience of persecution by the forces of Antichrist, personified in the magistrates. The radical Reformation was generally hostile to the use of coercion and advocated a policy of nonresistance. Jakob Hutter (c.1500–36) gave this apolitical stance a theological justification through an appeal to the example of Christ: “As all can see, we have no physical weapons, such as spears or muskets. We wish to show, by our words and deeds, that we are true followers of Christ.” Hans Denck (1495–1527) appealed to the meekness of Christ, and his silence before his accusers, in declaring that “force is not an attribute of God.”
The clearest statement of the general Anabaptist attitude toward secular authority may be found in the Schleitheim Confession (1527), the sixth and seventh articles of which explain and justify the policy of noninvolvement in secular affairs and nonresistance to secular authorities. Coercion has its place “outside the perfection of Christ” (that is, outside the radical community); inside that community, physical force has no place:
The sword is ordained of God outside the perfection of Christ. [...] It is not appropriate for a Christian to serve as a magistrate, for the following reasons. The government magistracy is according to the flesh, but the Christian's is according to the Spirit. Their houses and dwelling places are in this world, but the Christian's is in heaven; their citizenship is of this world, but the Christian's is in heaven; the weapons of their war and conflict are physical, and against the flesh, whereas the Christian's weapons are spiritual, against the fortification of the devil. The worldlings are armed with steel and iron, but the Christian is armed with the armor of God, with truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the word of God.
Anabaptism maintained discipline within its communities through “the ban” – a means by which church members could be excluded from Anabaptist congregations. This means of discipline was regarded as essential to the identity of a true church. Part of the Anabaptist case for radical separation from the mainstream churches (a practice which continues to this day among the Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania) was the failure of those churches to maintain proper discipline within their ranks. The Schleitheim Confession grounded its doctrine of the ban on Christ's words, as they are recorded in Matthew 18: 15–20:
The ban shall be used in the case of all those who have given themselves to the Lord, to walk in his commandments, and with all those who are baptized into the one body of Christ and are called brothers or sisters, yet who lapse on occasion, and inadvertently fall into error and sin. Such people shall be admonished twice in secret, and on the third occasion, they shall be disciplined publicly, or banned according to the command of Christ (Matthew 18).
The ban was seen as being a deterrent and remedial in its effects, providing both an incentive for banned individuals to amend their way of life and a disincentive for others to imitate them in their sin. The Polish Racovian Catechism lists five reasons for maintaining rigorous discipline within Anabaptist communities, most of which reflect its policy of radical separation:
Despite its pastoral intentions, the ban often came to be interpreted harshly, with congregation members often avoiding all social contact (known as “shunning”) with both the banned individual and his or her family.