The Riddleblog

Christ's Spotless Bride -- Holiness as an Attribute of the Church (Part Seven)

The Second Attribute in the Nicene Creed: Holiness

While the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) and perhaps the Eastern Orthodox Church (EOC) have some claim to an outward unity that the Reformed do not have, they certainly have nothing of the sort when it comes to holiness. The Roman Catholic Church may be externally the Roman Catholic church, but it’s not externally the holy catholic church. This fact raises the question: “If the Roman and Orthodox churches need to look to an objective gift of holiness rather than focus on a visible holiness, does not this bolster the Reformed case that this is true for unity too?

Michael Horton makes an interesting big-picture comparative observation:

In both Roman Catholic and free-church ecclesiologies . . . . the church’s visible holiness is inherent, although for the former it flows from the one to the many and for the latter from the many to the one . . . . In both paradigms . . . , the means of grace employed . . . are oriented first of all toward an infused, inherent, and inward holiness . . . . Covenant theology has taken a different route than either of these paradigms. Regardless of the personal holiness of its members, the church . . . is holy because it is the field of divine activity, in which the wheat is growing up into the likeness of its firstfruits, even though weeds are sown among the wheat.[1]

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EcclesiologyKim RiddlebargerSeptember 11, 2024The Holiness of the ChurchComment

Christ's Spotless Bride -- On the Marks of the Church (Part Four)

Reformed Confessional Teaching on the “Marks of the Church”

The discussion of the marks of a true church is important—especially in our day and age—because of the competing claims of various religious bodies and organizations to be “Christ’s church.” There are a myriad of churches who make such a claim–some associated with recognizable church bodies. Other groups who identify themselves as “churches” are more the product of the American entrepreneurial spirit, possess a trendy name, and an undefinable identity. They see themselves as radical and relevant, not stale and stuffy.

Reformed theologians have understood the marks of the church to be an especially important matter since multiple church bodies claim to be the only (or the true) church, yet their various claims are questionable in terms of biblical teaching and doctrine. This raises the question under discussion here: “how do we distinguish valid claims to be a true church from invalid claims?”

Louis Berkhof points out that there was not much of a need to consider the marks of the church when it was clearly one (i.e., during the apostolic church), but after heresies arose it became increasingly necessary to speak in the terms of a true/false, biblical/unbiblical dichotomy of any assembly of people professing to be Christians and followers of Jesus. Responding to heresies requires a response and doctrinal explanation. Oftentimes these explanations lead to further division.[1]

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EcclesiologyKim RiddlebargerMay 22, 2024The marks of a churchComment

Christ's Spotless Bride -- More New Testament Images of the Church (Part Three)

This is part three of a series on the doctrine of the church entitled Christ’s Spotless Bride. In the previous post, I introduced how the New Testament images of the church are but one way of approaching the doctrine of the church (attributes and marks are other such categories). To understand the value of these images, an analogy to the doctrine of God (theology proper) is in order. Scripture teaches us about God (who is incomprehensible in himself) not only by ascribing certain attributes to him (e.g., justice, knowledge, power) but also by identifying him as a certain kind of person or having a certain kind of role (e.g., king, shepherd, warrior). These New Testament images are analogical and anthropological. God is like but also unlike human kings, and being a king does not exhaust who God is.

The first half of this list of New Testament images of the church can be here. This essay picks up where I left off last time.

Bride of Christ

The imagery of the church as the bride of Christ illustrates the relationship between Jesus and his church as well as his authority to rule over it. According to Michael Horton,

This covenantal relationship [between God and his people] can also be expressed in terms of the marriage analogy, rooted first of all in the union of male and female, becoming “one flesh,” a point that will be developed more fully . . . [in] consideration of the body of Christ. It is especially in the prophets that the marital analogy is appealed to, particularly as a way of highlighting the gravity of Israel’s infidelity to the covenant.[1]

Paul describes the church as Christ’s bride in Ephesians 5:25-31. In the Book of Revelation, Jesus uses the term explicitly in 21:2, 9; 22:17 (cf. 19:9). “Bride” is the last designation used of the church in the New Testament . The Marriage Supper of the Lamb is said to await the people of God when the bridegroom returns for his bride on the last day.

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EcclesiologyKim RiddlebargerMay 3, 2024New Testamwnt Images of the churchComment

Christ's Spotless Bride -- New Testament Images of the Church (Part Two)

In an age of growing uncertainty, increasing angst, and divisive tribalism, a number of strategies (often politically focused) have been proposed to stem the rising tide of unbelief and the social havoc of our times. But one important area of doctrine which speaks to these issues is often overlooked—ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church. In the first of this series (Christ’s Spotless Bride) I addressed some of the reasons why the doctrine of the church is not of interest to many, and why I think reflection on the nature and mission of Christ’s church offers important, if overlooked, answers to many of our current woes. In this and the next piece in this series I will consider a number of the images given us in the New Testament in order to stimulate thinking about how the church offers solutions to these contemporary problems, and then address some of the ways we ought to think about the church. These images of the church in the New Testament, along with the attributes and marks of the church (which will be taken up later), help us to better understand the nature of the church and the comfort to be found in the new covenant community.

New Testament Images of the Church

There are a number of images used in the New Testament to describe Christ’s church. Such images are but one way of approaching the doctrine of the church.[1] To understand the value of these images, an analogy to the doctrine of God (theology proper) might help. Scripture teaches us about God (who is incomprehensible in himself) not only by ascribing certain attributes to him (e.g., justice, knowledge, power) but also by identifying him as a certain kind of person or having a certain kind of role (e.g., king, shepherd, warrior).

But these attributes of God are analogical and anthropological and cannot be absolutized. God is like but also unlike human kings, and being a king does not exhaust who God is. Similarly, the church displays the images given us in certain respects, but none of them describes the church comprehensively. Louis Berkhof speaks of “figurative designations of the Church, each of which stresses some particular aspect of the Church.”[2] That is my approach here. There are certainly a number of these images given us in the New Testament which are well worth consideration.

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EcclesiologyKim RiddlebargerApril 5, 2024Images of the church Comments

Christ's Spotless Bride -- Some Thoughts on the Doctrine of the Church (Part One)

Some Thoughts on The Importance of the Doctrine of the Church —

Or How I introduced My Ecclesiology Course to Students

I understand that ecclesiology is not everyone’s favorite topic. No doubt it is the least read section in any systematic theology text—and that is not merely because the doctrine of the church usually comes at the end of the volume. For a host of reasons American Christians tend not to be interested in the topic. But after serving as a pastor and professor for over forty years, I have come to believe that ecclesiology is one of the most important topics for our time and well worth thinking about.

Here are the main points for consideration I made whenever introducing the topic to Reformed seminarians.

First, during my post-seminary days I taught graduate systematic theology and apologetics courses to mostly “five-sola” evangelical students at the Simon Greenleaf School of Law (now the Trinity Law School in Santa Ana, CA). Berkhof’s Systematic Theology was my text. I always dreaded coming to the closing chapters on the doctrine of the church because the class was filled with students who came from various evangelical churches. Many were professing Christians but had no ties to any church. Many were still in mainline Protestant churches but were soon to leave. Others stayed in the churches in which they were raised, or they followed the crowd to a celebrity pastor. Many of these students had picked their churches for reasons that had little if anything to do with ecclesiology or doctrine. Reading Berkhof pulled the church rug out from under their feet.

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EcclesiologyKim RiddlebargerMarch 11, 2024Church as Bride of Christ, Importance of ecclesiologyComment