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]
James Bannerman, a minister in the Free Church of Scotland, puts the matter well in his highly regarded book The Church of Christ (1869).
In the case of a number of organized societies, no less widely differing from each other in profession and in practice, in the confession of faith that they own, and the form of order and government they adopt, yet all of them claiming in common to be called Churches of Christ, and not a few of them denying that name to any body but their own, there must be some criterion or test by which to discriminate amid such opposite and conflicting pretensions . . . [2]
In our time, the traditional marks which were thought to identify the “true church” have been eclipsed by pragmatic, and experiential “marks.” Many now understand a church’s size, how they felt and what they experienced, a charismatic, celebrity preacher, and the church’s social media presence, along with a menu of activities as indicators of places where “God is working.” The category of a “true church” is long forgotten or ignored as a sectarian relic of the past.
The Belgic Confession (1561)
The longest statement on the question of the “marks of the church” in the commonly used Reformed standards is The Belgic Confession, Article 29. The article on the marks of the church makes clear the occasion for the questions: “What is the true church?” “How do we find it?” “What do we look for?”
To start with, the Belgic Confession (BC) clarifies that this is not a question about hypocrites within the church, but rather about how to distinguish among Christians assemblies which make competing claims to be “the church.” Then the BC lists three marks that give assurance of recognizing “the true church”
1). The pure preaching of the gospel
2). The pure administration of the sacraments
3). The practice of church discipline
After a brief discussion of the marks of true Christians who belong to this church (something not to be overlooked), the BC moves on to describe “the false church,” which manifests the following three characteristics:
1). The false church assigns more authority to itself than to the Word of God, and does not subject itself to the yoke of Christ
2). The false church does not administer the sacraments as commanded in the Word, but adds to or subtracts from them
3). The false church rebukes those who live holy lives and rebukes the true church
The last statement is striking: these “two churches” are easy to recognize and distinguish. This was true at the time the BC was written (1561), because the author knew only of the Roman Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran, and Anabaptist churches, a matter which is far more complicated now.
The Heidelberg Catechism (1563)
The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) does not address this issue explicitly, but Q&A 83 of the catechism calls preaching the gospel and discipline the keys of the kingdom
Q 83: What are the keys of the kingdom?
A. The preaching of the holy gospel and Christian discipline toward repentance. Both of them open the kingdom of heaven to believers and close it to unbelievers.
The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647)
The Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) chapter 25 approaches the subject somewhat differently from the BC.
CHAPTER 25 – Of the Church
1. The catholic or universal church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the Head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all.
2. The visible church, which is also catholic or universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.
3. Unto this catholic visible church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints, in this life, to the end of the world: and doth, by his own presence and Spirit, according to his promise, make them effectual thereunto.
4. This catholic church hath been sometimes more, sometimes less visible. And particular churches, which are members thereof, are more or less pure, according as the doctrine of the gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them.
5. The purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error; and some have so degenerated, as to become no churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan. Nevertheless, there shall be always a church on earth, to worship God according to his will.
6. There is no other head of the church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof.
Rather than speaking of the true and the false church, the WCF says that particular churches are “more or less visible and more or less pure” (25.4).
But what determines this degree of purity? “According as the doctrine of the gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them.” The first two marks are similar (“ordinances” is broader than just sacraments—Westminster Larger Catechism 154), but the third is public worship instead of discipline.
In 25.5, the WCF affirms that the purest churches are subject to mixture and error, and some such churches have degenerated so as to become no church at all. Like BC 29, the Westminster Standards affirms a distinction between true and false churches, but within the WCF there is a range of degrees of purity. There’s nothing really contradictory here, and ultimately puts things in terms of true and false churches.
Bavinck, writing about developments in Reformed thinking on this matter, points out the tension here:
There was a difference . . . between a true and a pure church. “True church” became the term, not for one church to the exclusion of all others, but for an array of churches that still upheld the fundamental articles of Christian faith but for the rest differed a great deal from each other in degrees of purity. And “false church” became the term for the hierarchical power of superstition or unbelief that set itself up in local churches and accorded itself and its ordinances more authority than the Word of God.[3]
Why the difference? The development of Reformed doctrine in response to Roman and Lutheran polemics, different cultural situations, with a far greater number of churches in the mid-17th century, probably goes a long way to explain why the WCF allows for a range of purity of churches. I think this is a helpful advance.
How Do We Identify the Marks?
The Roman church is clear as to where it stands. “The Pope is the one sufficient mark of the true church.”[4] Only those who acknowledge the Pope as the head of the church can possess any marks of fidelity. Yet, Cardinal Bellarmine (1542-1621) a Jesuit theologian, who was perhaps the chief figure of the Counter-Reformation, identifies 15 marks of the church:
(1) The very name, (2) The antiquity, (3) The long duration, (4) The multitude and variety of the believers of the Catholic Church, (5) The succession of its bishops, (6) Its agreement in doctrine with the ancient church, (7) The unity of its members among themselves and with their head, (8) The holiness of its doctrine, (9) The efficacy of its doctrine, (10), The holiness of life of the early fathers, (11) The glory of its miracles, (12) The light of prophecy, (13) The confession of its adversaries, (14) The unhappy fate of those who oppose the church, and (15) Temporal happiness.[5]
Bellarmine sees these marks as extensions of the four attributes given in the Nicene Creed (unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity).
The Reformed take a different approach. The BC identifies three marks, but this isn’t the unanimous Reformed view. In his Church of Christ, Bannerman took a one mark view:
There is an important distinction between what is necessary to the being of a Church, and what is necessary to its well being. . . . We recognize this distinction every day in regard to a Christian man; and it is no less to be recognized in its application to a Christian society. . . . The practical difficulty in applying the distinction does not do away with the distinction itself.[6]
In other words, a church can meet and have a valid worship service without the celebration of the Lord’s Supper or a baptism.
Bannerman notes that one way to address this is to distinguish those things for which the church was instituted (e.g. declaring and upholding the truth) and those things (e.g., office-bearers) that were instituted for the sake of the church. Since “the great object for which the Christian Church was instituted” is “the glory of God, in the salvation of sinners, by means of the publication of the gospel . . . .to hold and to preach the true faith or doctrine of Christ is the only sure and infallible note or mark of a Christian Church.”[7]
What about sacraments and discipline? Since “the ordinances, office-bearers, and discipline” have been instituted for the sake of the Church, “they may be necessary, and are necessary, for the perfection of the Church, but they are not necessary for its existence.” “The only true and infallible note or mark of a church of Christ is the profession of the faith of Christ.” To make the latter “as necessary to constitute a Christian Church,” you “make them of primary, and not, as they truly are, of secondary importance.”[8] Bannerman says his view is that of WCF 25.2. Is it, really? [9]
Berkhof takes a two mark view, but adds,
Strictly speaking, it may be said that the true preaching of the Word and its recognition as the standard of doctrine and life, is the one mark of the Church. Without it there is no Church, and it determines the right administration of the sacraments and the faithful exercise of Church discipline. The sacraments should never be divorced from the Word, for they have no content of their own, but derive their content from the Word of God; they are in fact a visible preaching of the Word. As such they must also be administered by lawful ministers of the Word, in accordance with the divine institution, and only to properly qualified subjects, the believers and their seed.[9]
He adds, though the exercise of discipline may not be peculiar to the church, that is, is not found in it exclusively, yet it is absolutely essential to the purity of the church.”[10] He adds,
This is quite essential for maintaining the purity of doctrine and for guarding the holiness of the sacraments. Churches that are lax in discipline are bound to discover sooner or later within their circle an eclipse of the light of the truth and an abuse of that which is holy. Hence a Church that would remain true to her ideal in the measure in which this is possible on earth, must be diligent and conscientious in the exercise of Christian discipline. The Word of God insists on proper discipline in the Church of Christ, Matthew 18:18; 1 Corinthians 5:1–5, 13; 14:33, 40; Revelation 2:14, 15, 20.[11]
Given the issue at hand, we need to be clear about what it is we are looking for to evaluate a local church with which we ought unite.
The goal is not to simply identify things that ought to characterize the church or Christians generally. If we were examining the degree of purity of a church or its well-being, we would have to develop a long list of such things.
Instead, we’re really trying to determine whether a church exists at all. Every church will have many failings, so obviously this doesn’t make a body no longer the church. What must a church have/do? What are the essential things which constitute a church? This must be something observable (cf. BC 29). The whole point of the discussion of the “marks of the church” is to help ordinary people make judgments about the church–especially which one they ought to attend.
Thus there are three things which should be present:
1). The pure preaching of the gospel
2). The pure administration of the sacraments
3). The practice of church discipline
To be continued . . .
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[1] Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 576.
[2] James Bannerman, The Church of Christ, 59.
[3] Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.316.
[4] Summarized by Bavinck Reformed Dogmatics 4.305-07) from Henry Denzinger’s, The Source of Catholic Dogma, trans., Roy J. Deferrari (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Company, 1954), secs. 1821-1840 (Pius IX, “Dogmatic Constitution I on the Church of Christ,” July 1870).
[5] Cited in Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.307. See R. Bellarmine, “De eccl. Mil.”, in Controversies, III.10.
[6] Bannerman, The Church of Christ, 60-61.
[7] Bannerman, The Church of Christ, 60-61.
[8] Bannerman, The Church of Christ, 64-65.
[9] According to the Westminster Confession of Faith 25.2. “The visible church, which is also catholic or universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.”
[10] Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 576-577.
[11] Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 577-578.