Many Protestants, myself one time included, really wrestle with the claim that the Church is a visible unity. One of the reasons for this struggle is, in part, self-preservation. If there is a Church that is one and visible, what if I'm not in it? At least that's the question that has been most real for me.
But another aspect of the struggle has to do with a similar suspected loss: that of the holiness and purity of the Church. The Protestants I know and was/am, believe the Church to be primarily (if not also only) an invisible and spiritual unity of all believers, a unity which transcends the sinfulness of human strife and division, and just plain ol' human evil. The wheat and the tares, sheep and goats, all that sort of thing. If, somehow, the Church's unity is predicated on something visible, tangible and physical (institutional), then it would seem that the holiness of the Church gets sullied by the association with the unholy.
Another aspect of self-preservation, however, is that of the maintaining of diversity of belief. For any one Protestant group to appeal to its own particular structure and doctrine over against everyone else, is to make the Church institutional. So we must maintain the great plurality of Protestant beliefs. (Yet, in something of a contradiction, asserting something like a commonality of essentials. I'll leave aside any questions relating to an acceptable methodology for determining what is or is not essential with regard to Protestant beliefs.) To put it another way, Protestants are more and more taking some satisfaction in the "messiness" of all their varied (and frankly, contradictory) beliefs. By doing so, they can continue to legitmate their own distinctions. Who are we, we Protetants say, to judge? Only God knows the truth infallibly, we must withhold judgment. In fact, goes the assertion, because of the invisible unity of the Church, it is precisely in the midst of this messiness that God is active and loving.
But, then, according to this reasoning, ought we not withhold judgment about the institutions of the Church? Or, to follow the argument, is it not the case that in the midst of the messiness of human frailty and sin (of the Protestant-indicted institutions of the Church) that God is active and loving? Isn't it plausible that just as the Protestants maintin the purity of the invisible Church in the midst of messy schism and heresy, the purity of the one visible Church is maintained in the midst of "institutional sins"?
If we hold to the Protestant view of the Church, we lose the Incarnation. If the Church, which is the Body of Christ, is nothng more than an invisible and spiritual reality, then what does that make of the Incarnate Christ? Isn't the implication that his humanity is divorced from his Godhead? Yet if Christ's humanity and Godhead are intimately joined in one Person, why is that not also the case, according to Protestants, for his Body the Church? Why is it that the invisible spiritual aspect of the Church cannot be joined to the human and institutional? Isn't that the point of the Incarnation?
It seems to me that if we would hold to the Incarnation of Christ, we must also hold to the incarnate reality of the Church. If God can be active and loving in the midst of the messiness of the Protestant divisions, then it seems logical to me to assert that he is also able to be active and loving in the institutions of the Church. The institutions of the Church are the historic Church. If we lose them, we lose the historic Church and replace it with its Gnostic opposite of supernatural otherworldliness that has nothing to do with us here and now in our incarnate lives.
In true Protestant fashion, I'm going to assert the both-and of the incarnate, institutional Church which is the Body of Christ.
Posted by Clifton at February 11, 2003 01:07 PM | TrackBack