parresia

In fact (and we had this discussion a while back on my site -- it's too bad that I don't have those archives any more), it doesn't even make any sense to talk about an invisible church, at least as a present reality. If the 'invisible church' is the church as God sees it, then how does God see the 'visible church', the church that He Himself established? Is it somehow not the church? It only makes sense to speak of the church as invisible when referring to it as it will be gathered in its fullness at the last day. We don't see it now, and so it is in this sense that it is invisible. How there can be both a visible and an invisible church now is just mind boggling.

The biggest concern I have with the whole visible/invisible church argument, no matter which side you're on, is that the idea of only one visible church is a historical non-reality. It never existed. Christian communities existed from the very first generation outside the Roman empire, for example in Persia and India. These communities and churches either never were and never have (they still exist today) been organizationally linked with Rome or Constantinople, or didn't join with them until centuries later.

But even if we can assume one visible organized church, there's still the matter of wheats and tares. The wheats and tares are not evident to us, but they are to God, who knows which is which. The wheats are the invisible church existing within (and probably in at least some few cases outide of) the visible church.

One body can't be about organization only.

I think it is possible to grant both Ware's point and Martin's first point.

Visible and even institutional unity need not be explicited in terms of sharing a single juridical structure, such as the Roman hierarchy.

Rather, one might argue that the unity of the church is visible and institutional in that the church is present wherever God's baptized people gather together around his Word and Table under the oversight of ministers who are faithful in the apostolic charge that they have received. Indeed, one might say that the one and same catholic church is present whenever and wherever God's people gather in this way.

These are all very much visible marks of the church and they have institutional implications as well, for example, that the validity of baptism should be universally recognized and the authority of God's ministers should be respected.

Of course, this is an ideal which particular churches may manifest more or less clearly. For instance, a church which celebrates the Lord's Supper infrequently is less visibly part of the church.

Likewise, a church that insists on re-baptizing those who come to it as baptized persons of another church is, in that respect, weakening its institutional unity with other churches.

Again, those who think the true church reappeared only in 1517 (or at the Great Awakening or when their own founding pastor planted their congregation) are undermining the unity of the church by failing to respect the ordained ministry that God has always maintained among his people.

But if we are willing to admit that the ancient Christians of India, Persia, Ethiopia, and China were always part of the one, catholic church in virtue of the Word, their sacraments, and the ministry, then I don't see how we can entirely exclude, for example, confessional Protestants or even Bible churches, even if they are, in some ways, at the fuzzy edge of ecclesial unity.

Thank you Joel, Martin, and Wayne. I hope you can trust that I am busily (my fiance will attest to it), and, Lord Willing, faithfully attending to each of your thoughts and arguments.

But, in the words of the recent poet Morrissey: "These things take time; and I know that I'm the most inept that ever stepped..."

I am doing my best however!

God bless us all.