RTS Papers / Systematic Theology 3 / Fall 2018
THE REFORMED MARKS: FROM THE INVISIBLE TO THE VISIBLE
Calvin famously wrote that, “Wherever we see the word of God sincerely preached and heard, wherever we see the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, there we cannot have any doubt that the church of God has some existence.” Why is this the case and does the order matter? The answer to both will be found in that same invisible-to-visible order we have seen.
The word of God properly preached. This first mark that the Reformers listed follows the aforementioned causal analysis. If the church is the community of faith, and faith comes by hearing, it follows that the word of God creates the church. This is no cheap slogan. We may liken the “spiritual truths” (1 Cor. 2:13) of the word to the DNA of the body of Christ. This body in-forming shape may have a different emphasis among the Lutheran, say, as opposed to the Reformed, but all of the Evangelical traditions at first would have granted that it is the faithful representation of the gospel in particular that is meant by this. It was not simply that one could set up a book study on some deep theological truth and, viola! A true local church would emerge! No, Christ crucified and risen would be assumed to be central.
Bavinck’s distinction between the institutional and organic dimensions of the church follow from this principle. But it is crucial that we do not misconstrue the distinction. For Rome there was a “teaching church” and a “listening church;” and we might also think of the institutional church as that which serves with the word, and then the organic church which visibly proceeds from it. Conversely we may tend to think of the “real life” of the church going on throughout the week, and the institution, the offices, or “the meetings,” as the mechanical appendage. Bavinck insists, to the contrary of all this, that these two, institutional and organic, do not correspond to the invisible and visible senses of the church in any event. Both are living effects of the Word and Spirit.
The administration of sacraments and discipline may be viewed as extensions of the word. As the one faith makes the one body, so the word (most invisible of the marks) gives sense to the external signs and genuine correction to the conscience in discipline.
That this order was understood by the Reformed tradition is evidenced by some who reduced the other two marks to dimensions of the word’s activity: e. g. “Alsted, Alting, Maresius, Hottinger, Heidanus, Turretin, and Mastricht (et al.)”
The sacraments properly administered. The sacraments are said to be a visible sign of an invisible grace, or even “a visible sermon.”
A few years ago, when the Federal Vision was gaining in popularity, it became acceptable for many to find communion with anyone who was baptized in the Trinitarian formula. Whatever we may think of the legitimacy a Catholic baptism (Is a liberal Protestant baptism any better?) our question is about the line of demarcation between church and world. What marks out a baptized follower of Christ? To answer “baptism” seems a bit circular. Leaving aside the debate between Baptists and the Reformed, there is a sense in which we agree with the priority of belief in the sacraments. While Abraham and Isaac were both given the sign - one after belief and the other long before - yet we Presbyterians speak of “improving our baptism” and we welcome to the table those of faith, cautioning those who would eat in an unworthy manner: the essence of which is failure to discern (1 Cor. 11:29).
Even while we see clear scriptural warrant for the inclusion of covenant children, we understand the membership of their parents to be defined by faith. In short, what makes sacraments marks of true and false is the thing signified.
The fact that the sacraments of the Old and New share in the same substance is proof enough that the invisible precedes the visible here. For instance, circumcision and baptism both signify regeneration (Deut. 10:16, 30:6, Jer. 4:4, Ti. 3:5), and more generally the whole work of Christ (Col. 2:12-13). Now the word of God also marks out the contours of sacramental practice. When Rome withheld the cup from the laity, they stole from the people what Jesus gave. It was as if they were an unwelcome clot to his blood where the wound required its flow. Note that the rationale was the same as their worry that church mice would consume any spilled crumbs of the bread. These were the physical body and blood of Christ.
If Rome and the Reformers both agree that the sacraments are means of grace, then why is it problematic for grace to be conceived as “distributed” by the Church? Can we not call the “minister who serves” (in the Catechism) and the bread, wine, and waters instrumental causes of the grace so received? Again soteriology weighs heavily upon ecclesiology: “it lies in the fact that Rome binds salvation to priests and sacraments, and the Reformation [binds salvation] to the preaching of the Word.”
In light of Luther’s dichotomy between opus Dei and opus hominum, Rome’s error lay precisely in holding out the human action of the Church as a cooperative agent and thus “completing God’s work of reconciliation in the distribution of his grace.” And yet if we take Bavinck’s analysis as accurate, the Reformed excelled the Lutheran ecclesiology in this: that where Luther “looked for its unity and holiness more in the objective institutions of office, Word, and sacrament,” the Reformed granted that while these were God’s ordinary means, “he is not bound to this method.” This must mean either that the Reformed had a lower view of the means of grace or that they held a deeper view of the shaping power of the word. My thesis is that the Reformed held the latter.
The practice of discipline was later added. Proper discipline follows the word. When speaking of ordinary discipline, this is a matter of conscience. Rome and the Reformers both agreed that faith and obedience are demanded, but one’s view of Scripture leads to a particular view of authority over the conscience. To whom do we owe obedience? Withrow remarked that, “It is a distinctive feature of the apostolic government that Church rulers did not render spiritual obedience to any temporal potentate, or to any ecclesiastical chief.” Even the authority of the apostles was conditional.
The authority of discipline is one thing; its relationship to who is “in” and “out” is another. Covenant theology rightly insists that there have been apostates in both the Old and the New. But how do we explain Esau and Saul, Judas and Simon the Magician, unless their participation in the visible elements of the covenant community were nothing but an external shell to the living thing?
That false members are to be conceived of being in the New Covenant era church is plain in the parables about the kingdom (Matt. 13:25, 47, 22:11, 14) as well as the imagery of the branches on the vine (Jn. 15:2).
Both the symbolic keys and the act of “binding and loosing” are a visible reflection of the invisible discipline of the King in heaven. Some have argued that the NASB captures the Greek verb tense best: “will have been bound in heaven” (Mat. 16:19, 18:18).
We conclude by looking at Calvin’s criterion of the “unity of the faith.” This is a most helpful guide to the marks. On the one hand, he can say that the true church follows word and sacrament, and yet “even in the administration of the word and sacraments defects may creep in which ought not to alienate us from its communion.” Here we have a mechanism to hold both charity and discernment in our hands together. Calvin continues,
“For all the heads of true doctrine are not in the same position. Some are so necessary to be known, that all must hold them to be fixed and undoubted as the proper essentials of religion: for instance that God is one, that Christ is God, and the Son of God, that our salvation depends on the mercy of God, and the like. Others, again, which are the subject of controversy among the churches, do not destroy the unity of the faith.”
So there is an outright true and a false, but there is also a spectrum of more or less pure. The same doctrine that divides paradoxically brings about this unity of the faith. That which divides Christians from Mormons, say, unites Catholics and Evangelicals; and yet there is that which divided the Reformers from Rome. If Calvin was correct, then this unity of the faith united these same Reformers with the truer catholic tradition, and revealed that it was late Medieval Rome that was in fact breaking off into schism.
As to the destiny of individual players in the whole drama, we heed the words of Paul, to “not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart” (1 Cor. 4:5). The perfect union of the invisible and visible is eschatological. As the Last Day brings together again the soul with the bodies now in the grave, so shall it unite the church on earth as it is in heaven.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barth, Karl. Dogmatics in Outline. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959 Berkhof, Louis. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1932
Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics, Volume IV: Holy Spirit, Church and New Creation. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008
Clowney, Edmund. The Church. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995
Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994.
Keener, Craig. Matthew: IVP New Testament Commentary Series. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997
Phillips, Richard, Philip Ryken, & Mark Dever. The Church: One, Holy, Catholic, & Apostolic. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2004
Schwöbel, Christoph. “The Creature of the Word” in Colin Gunton & Daniel Hardy, ed., On Being the Church: Essays on the Christian Community, London: T & T Clark, 1989
Turretin, Francis. Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Volume III. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1997
Waters, Guy Prentiss. How Jesus Runs the Church. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2011
Watson, Thomas. The Lord’s Supper. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2004
Webster, John. “On Evangelical Ecclesiology,” Ecclesiology 1 (2004): 9-35.
Webster, John. Holiness. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003
Witherow, Thomas. The Apostolic Church: Which is It? Glasgow: Free Presbyterian Publications, 1997
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