What Is the Church?

by Jack Rogers

About 13 years ago, when I was on the staff of the Theology and Worship Unit, I wrote a paper entitled, "What is the church?" In it I noted that we had different definitions of the church, dating from different eras of our history. These differences exist in our Constitution, in the Book of Confessions and the Book of Order. My concern was that we seem not to have integrated them into a coherent whole in our theological and ecclesiastical thinking. We are now experiencing the fruits of our failure genuinely to embrace these valuable, but diverse, emphases.

The definitions of the Church in the 16th century confessions differ from those in the 20th century confessions in the Book of Confessions. In the Scots Confession (1560), for example, there is a distinction between the "invisible church" known only to God, consisting of all those believers who ever have lived, beginning with Adam (3.05), and including all those who ever will believe in God revealed in Jesus Christ (3.16). There was also a "visible church" like the ones Paul wrote to in Corinth, Galatia, and Ephesus, and all of the particular congregations in Scotland and around the world. These churches can be identified by three marks: The true preaching of the Word of God; The right administration of the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion; and, for Knox, ecclesiastical discipline uprightly ministered (3.18). All Reformed bodies agree with the first two marks. The Second Helvetic Confession understood these churches to be arks of salvation. "The Church is an assembly of the faithful called or gathered out of the world" (5.125).

In the 20th century, the emphasis shifted. In the Barmen Declaration, by which the church protested the incursion of Nazi ideology in 1934, the church is defined as "the congregation ...in which Jesus Christ acts presently as Lord in Word and sacrament through the Holy Spirit." To this is added the call to the church to "testify in the midst of a sinful world, with its faith as with its obedience" (8.17). The Confession of 1967 picks up and extends the emphasis of Barmen and affirms that "obedience to Jesus Christ alone identifies one universal church and supplies the continuity of its tradition" (9.03). Speaking of the members of the church, it says: "Their daily action in the world is the church in mission to the world" (9.37).

The church is not only an ark of salvation into which believers can withdraw for personal nurture, but also an agent of social change in the sinful world. Some Presbyterians, and especially some advocacy groups within the church, in reading the Book of Confessions, accent the first emphasis on the church as the ark of salvation and others stress the 20th century definition of the church as an agent of social change. Both emphases are biblical and Reformed. Both are necessary if the church is to be whole and to fulfill Christ's call to us in the world. We need to listen to and talk with one another until we come to a coherent and constructive integration of these two emphases.

The differing emphases that can be identified in the Book of Confessions also exist in the Book of Order. The Book of Order appears to assume the Scot's Confession's emphases on the three-fold marks of the church. There is, however, a new emphasis, since 1983, in the post-reunion Book of Order. Its new chapter three, "The Church and Its Mission," highlights two additional marks of the church in the 20th century. To be in mission in the world in the name of Jesus Christ is a mark of the true church (G-3.0400). Second, the true church is "a community of diversity" (G-3.0401). It becomes a "visible sign of the new humanity" by "providing for inclusiveness" (G-3.0401b.) Mission and inclusiveness are also biblical marks of the church. They are necessary emphases if the church is to be whole and to fulfill Christ's call for us to bring His realm into this world.
Once again, in reading the Book of Order, some individuals and some advocacy groups dwell almost exclusively on the personal, congregational, nurturing aspects of the church. Other individuals and advocacy groups emphasize the public ministry of the church in mission in the world and stress our need to be inclusive of all sorts of people whom God has called to be part of the Body of Christ.

Perhaps the 21st century can be the time when we take seriously the whole of Scripture, and our Constitution, and integrate into a comprehensive theology and polity both the personal and the public aspects of the visible church to which we belong.

Jack Rogers
1-15-02