Truly Catholic: The Impossible Dream

Initially, we probably don’t recognize remarkable similarities between Harold Camping, founder and president of Family Radio Network, and George Barna, founder and president of Barna Research Group. But they both have been in the news recently for similar reasons. Both believe that the visible, institutional church has failed miserably in our day and both suggest that their own organizations may be alternative means through which God may work. Commenting on a recent Christianity Today cover story on his efforts, Barna adds,

There are a number of high profile pastors who have been saying that the local church is the only hope for the future. As emotionally comforting as that may feel, it’s just wrong. Jesus Christ is the only hope for the future; the local church is a human institution that God may or may not work through. In the near future we will inevitably see new models of the local church that don’t look or behave at all like the congregational church we have historically fostered.

Barna offers his daylong seminars, his mentoring programs for “emerging players” in “industries of influence,” and other high-energy schemes as necessary substitutes for the institutional church. As the Christianity Today article reported, Barna targets “sources of significant influence,” which means “movies, television, the Internet, books, music, public policy and law, and family.” The Barna Research Group response to Christianity Today’s article adds, “The Christian church, his research shows, is not among the top dozen influences these days.”

Harold Camping argues similarly, although he would probably see George Barna’s pragmatic approach to truth as part of the problem. The church, Camping believes, is not only ineffective (damning criticism as far as Barna is concerned) but also adulterous. Both Barna and Camping fixate on the state of moral decline as well as on the lack of Christian cultural influence as key indicators of the church’s failure, and both think that their own models and methods are superior to the institutional church’s ministry. In Barna’s case, the institutional church is a merely human invention–a thought that any mainstream Christian in any century would have regarded as heretical. In Camping’s case, the church was divinely instituted but, like the old covenant’s temple or synagogue-worship, is no longer divinely sanctioned. It seems somewhat convenient, however, that the official demise of the church as a divinely ordained institution happens to coincide with what are said to be divinely given visions for their own organizations picking up the slack.

Two things are clear to me. First, the church is not for the most part doing well in fulfilling its commission; and, secondly, contemporary evangelicals hold a lower doctrine of the church than almost any generation of Christians in any part of the world.

Sometimes, I must confess, when I am reciting the Nicene Creed in worship my belief in “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church” is almost theoretical. Unlike the Creed’s other affirmations, this one can strike me as being abstract–or, at least, as one of the most “not-yet-realized” aspects of the kingdom and salvation of our God. How do we reconcile our confession of faith in one holy and universal and biblically faithful church with the churches we find advertised in the telephone book’s Yellow Pages?

Invisible and Visible?

One way to do this is to embrace Augustine’s distinction between an invisible and a visible church. The invisible church consists of all the elect of all ages, whereas the visible church consists of all professing believers and their children. Regarding the church, Augustine observed that “there are wolves within and sheep without.” That is why we can expect to see some in heaven who did not belong to a historic Christian body while some of the visible church’s most illustrious members and clergy will be forbidden entrance. Our Protestant confessions pick up Augustine’s distinction. And reference to the invisible church can be very useful in confessing our faith in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church even as we experience the visible church in all of its worldliness, division, and untruth.

We live with the paradox that we are simultaneously justified in Christ and yet still sinful in ourselves. This seems to be something like the invisible/visible distinction. And, of course, there are parallels. God’s strength is hidden in human weakness. God’s triumph at the cross was, in purely empirical terms, a defeat. Apart from faith-that is, apart from a proper reading of the Old Testament promises of redemption through the Suffering Servant (see Isa. 52:13-53:12 with 1 Pet. 2:21-25; Acts 8:30-35; Luke 22:37)–who would ever think of Jesus’ public execution as a victory? Likewise, my Christian experience does not match the verdict that God has already pronounced over me. Empirically, I cannot be called “holy, just, righteous, and acceptable to God.” Expressed in corporate terms–“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, holy nation, a people for God’s own possession” (1 Pet. 2:9)–the same paradox arises every time we confess faith in one holy, catholic, and apostolic church. Over-realized eschatologies don’t do justice to the fact that we are still on this side of glorification. Just as we are not perfectly sanctified, so the church is not sifted. Wheat and weeds still grow together, as Christ commanded (see Matt. 13:24-30). The fish caught in the dragnet have yet to be separated (see Matt. 13:47-49). The imperfect visible church is not yet identical to the perfect invisible church. The church militant is not yet the church triumphant. Yet in spite of the empirical divisions we see, we can confess faith in there being one catholic (or universal) church for the same reason that we can confess faith in our being justified sinners, that is, because of God’s eschatological promise, which is neither wholly unrealized nor perfectly realized right now.

This paradox also accompanies the other qualifiers concerning the church. The church is one, not in the sense of being visibly united, but in the sense of the faithful–in spite of appearances to the contrary–being the one people of God. It is holy, yet in a definitive and progressive–and not an empirically perfect–sense. It is apostolic not because it is directly led by the apostles themselves, but because it is guided, whenever and wherever it qualifies as “the church,” by the apostolic proclamation and pattern.

Yet such appeals to the invisible/visible distinction can also be used, like the biblically sanctioned distinction between justification and sanctification, to justify a kind of lazy irresponsibility regarding the concrete state of the visible church. The “already” of justification and the “not yet” of complete sanctification can easily be used to underwrite a practical antinomianism. Just as we can disregard our duty to grow in knowledge and obedience on the mistaken assumption that there is no radical transformation of sinners in this life (that is, there is no new birth), we can easily fall into the trap of viewing the church’s visible state as relatively unimportant as long as we affirm the invisible church’s purity and catholicity.

In the New Testament, it is part of the good news of the kingdom that “the age to come” has dawned in the person and work of Christ and in the sending of the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. The blind receive their sight, the deaf hear, the poor have the gospel preached to them, captives are set free, and those “dead in trespasses and sins” are made alive in Christ (see Matt. 11:2-5; Luke 4:18-19; Eph. 2:1-10). This must transform our expectations for the catholicity of the church in this age. To be sure, full experience of this universality only awaits us in glory, as the invisible and visible churches become one. Nevertheless, the one Lord, one faith, one baptism characteristic that defines the true church everywhere and always, gives us reason to say with the reformers that “wherever the Word is rightly preached and the Sacraments are rightly administered, there, it is not to be doubted, is a true church of God.” Just as the holiness of the future glorification of believers has been brought into the present in both the announcement of justification and the commencement of sanctification, so the catholicity of the church that awaits the elect is to be anticipated and gratefully received even in the present by a sinful church on the basis of the Word preached in the power of the Spirit. Just as the Spirit is given to each believer as a deposit guaranteeing final redemption (Eph. 1:14), so the same Spirit is given to the visible church here and now to witness to and even to begin experiencing, however imperfectly, the unbroken unity of the glorified saints in heaven.

Perhaps, then, we should at least supplement (if not supplant) the invisible/visible distinction with a more eschatological (and more biblical) “already/not yet” distinction. There is no ideal church existing somewhere in an eternal, spiritual realm of pure theory with a church of mere “appearances” here below. There is an age to come that is breaking in on this present evil age although it has not yet fully enveloped it. The church will finally enter her Sabbath rest when Christ returns in glory, after the Great Commission has been fulfilled and God has gathered his elect from the four corners of the earth. Until then, Romans 6 to 8 is as true of the church as it is of individual believers: we are baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection unto new life (Rom. 6), while nevertheless constantly struggling with indwelling sin (Rom. 7). Yet we receive joy and strength as we turn our gaze ever anew to the Savior in whom and through whom there is therefore no condemnation, even as we, by the Spirit, are crying out “Abba, Father,” to him who promises to make everything thoroughly new one day, including our bodies and the whole groaning creation (Rom. 8).

So just as we earnestly seek our sanctification (see Phil. 2:12; 1 Tim. 1:7-10; Heb. 12:14) because of an already inherited verdict (our justification: see Rom. 3:24; 5:9; Tit. 3:4-7), an already experienced renewal (the new birth: see John 3:3; Col. 3:5-10), and a firmly expected destiny (our glorification: see Rom. 8:17-18; 1 Cor. 15:42-58; 1 John 3:2), we also seek to embrace the universality of the visible church because it is already holy in Christ, indwelled by the Spirit, and will one day be unveiled as the completed temple of God’s presence in his new heavens and earth (see Rev. 21:1-3 [nas or esv margin]). The church’s catholicity, then, like salvation more generally, is a gift to be received. And even when–not if, unfortunately–we squander that gift, Christ by his Word and Spirit continually gives it, again and again. “Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more” (see Rom. 5:20). That’s good news for us who want to be proper stewards of this gift of catholicity and yet recognize with dreadful regularity our own role in compromising its security, in small and large ways, at the most local and sometimes also at the broadest levels.

If all of this is correct, then what is necessary is a view of the church’s universality that neither identifies the invisible church with a particular visible church (an over-realized eschatology) nor disregards the visible church’s tangible unity (an under-realized eschatology). On one end of the spectrum are Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and specific Protestant bodies that often claim simply to be the catholic church without remainder. On the other end are most evangelical and pentecostal groups that, in their “nondenominational” denominationalism, understand the church as simply the sum total of individuals who are truly born again. The ecumenical movement tended to confuse the unity for which Christ prayed in John 17 with the greater coordination and eventual merger of bureaucracies. Yet movement-oriented evangelicals tend toward a seriously deficient evaluation of the visible church and its tangible (i.e., interdenominational ecumenical) unity.

Churches of the Reformation, however, divided for a variety of reasons today, reflect a somewhat mediating position. On one hand, the gospel creates the church and therefore “wherever the Word is rightly preached and the Sacraments rightly administered, there is undoubtedly a true church.” Therefore, any church may lose its status as a true church if it abandons faithful preaching and right administration of the Sacraments. On the other hand, faithful preaching and right administration of the Sacraments are visible and, as the Belgic Confession puts it, “obvious” marks that objectively distinguish the true church from false churches. It is not up to individuals to decide for themselves simply that churches are “true” or “false”–and, specifically, they are not to do so on the basis of purely subjective standards concerning the condition of various churches.

The Two Chief Threats to Catholicity

The Litany of the Book of Common Prayer beseeches, “From heresy and schism, good Lord, deliver us.” Similarly, a line from “The Church’s One Foundation” laments, “From schism rent asunder, from heresy distressed.” It is reasonable to couple these sins together, because they are usually two sides of the same coin. Schism is regarded by reformational churches as no less sinful than heresy.

Does this surprise you? After all, didn’t the Reformation result from believing that separation from the Catholic Church didn’t matter as much as sound doctrine? This view of the Reformation ignores the historical facts of the case. Many conferences were held throughout the sixteenth century and even on into the early seventeenth century in order to reconcile the factions. The reformers valued the church’s visible unity as much as any of their detractors. But they believed that the apostolic faith–and not the Roman Catholic presumption of an apostolic succession of bishops–was what constitutes true universality, true catholicity. They believed that to be schismatic–to leave this truly catholic church, grounded in the apostles’ witness as found in the Scriptures–is to leave Christ himself (see 1 John 2:19). We should not expect to have a personal relationship with Christ apart from incorporation into Christ’s visible body (see Acts 2:41-42; 1 John 1:3-7). Yet no church should be considered to be part of Christ’s visible body if it does not faithfully preach God’s Word and rightly administer his Sacraments. Significant deviation here constitutes heresy. And heresy must be avoided as much as schism. So there are two equally deplorable errors: heresy and schism.

Today, schism is taken to go hand-in-hand with ferocious zeal for orthodoxy. Yet although mainline liberals have always been especially eager to paint the orthodox as schismatic, it was aggressive heresy in the mainline that created the deepest divisions among the visible churches of the twentieth century. Consequently, as mainline Lutheran theologian Carl Braaten observes, the ecumenical movement of mainline twentieth-century churches

has not yet reached its goal; Christianity is still badly divided. However, the deepest divisions are no longer denominational, say, between Catholics and Protestants, Lutherans and Reformed, Evangelical and mainline churches, and so on, although such divisions lamentably still exist and we should not pretend that the ecumenical movement has swept them all away. The deepest fault line appears where faith and unbelief meet within the churches, among their theologians, bishops, and pastors. Nowhere is this more evident than in the matter of the resurrection.

For all intents and purposes, the ecumenical movement that grew initially out of the missionary conferences of the nineteenth century is now at an end. No doubt, when theologians, pastors, and ecclesiastical bureaucrats meet in solemn assembly to reunite a divided Christendom, a vast array of unforeseen factors on the ground encourage slicing the pieces of the Christian pie in significantly different ways. Yet the remedy for this is not, as many think, to jettison what each church takes to be its biblically based denominational distinctives. In fact, this leads to exactly the wrong place: after each church has surrendered just about anything of doctrinal interest it may have to say, nothing can bind them all together apart from passing political and ideological fads.

Unlike the liberals, evangelicals today at least profess Christian orthodoxy, and so it would seem that the energy has shifted to the evangelicals. And yet the unchurchly enterprise of modern Evangelicalism has introduced its own host of new schisms. No longer are the divisions between Roman Catholics and Protestants, Lutherans and Reformed, Calvinists and Arminians, Paedobaptists and Credobaptists, charismatics and noncharismatics, among others. Today, each of these traditions is internally and increasingly divided along lines dictated by the invisible and supposedly benevolent (or at least neutral) hand of the market. Now “demographicalism,” rather than denominationalism, threatens the catholicity of Christ’s body across centuries and continents. Contextualization is one fancy word for the new sectarianism. The real threat to catholicity over the long haul may be not so much our typical and tragic theological divisions, but the separate traditional and contemporary services, youth groups, and the seemingly endless proliferation of special-interest small groups. “We no longer regard each other in a worldly way,” Paul said, thinking of the familiar secular divisions that are sinfully adopted in the supposedly countercultural “new society” that God is forming in Christ by his Spirit. Perhaps we should add to Paul’s list in Galatians: In Christ there is neither young nor old, rich nor poor, black nor white, urban nor suburban, traditional nor contemporary, Boomer, Buster, X-er, nor Y-er, but all are one in Christ.

The adoption of secular methodologies has gone a long way toward undermining the catholic faith and practice that has united the generations across diverse times and places. And once again, it is not those who recklessly untie these catholic cords who are being judged schismatic but those who would offer a rebuttal. In our new situation, we must wake up to the reality that the church’s catholicity can be denied not only by explicit heresy and doctrinal apostasy but also by a certain kind of cultural captivity masquerading as “mission” and “evangelism.”

Some Realism

The sad reality is that heresy and schism have plagued the church from the very beginning. Besides Old Testament examples (culminating in the divided kingdom), the New Testament churches were, on the whole, quite disappointing. The Corinthian church was a cesspool of immorality, selfishness, disorder, division, and error. The Galatian church was on the verge of being anathematized by the Apostle Paul. There, heresy in the form of works-righteousness and schism in the form of excluding the gentiles went hand-in-hand. The church of Colossae was being threatened by an early version of Jewish gnosticism involving the worship of angels and extreme asceticism. Need we rehearse the failings of the churches in the Apocalypse? There, the church of Ephesus is enduring persecution and yet has abandoned her first love, while Pergamum and Thyatira stand under the Lord’s solemn threat of judgment for their tolerance of false teaching, and the church of Sardis is dead and Laodicea is lukewarm and wishy-washy.

Those who claim descent from the churches of the New Testament and those who pine for the reestablishment of “apostolic churches” ought to recall the actual, empirical character of these churches. They were hardly infallible organs of divine truth; and their worship and daily practice demonstrated that the church was rent asunder by schism and distressed by heresy even while the apostles were still living. How could any church today claim greater fidelity than the churches planted and supervised by the apostles themselves? The church has never been the good news. It was not then; and it is not now. The church at its best can only be the witness to the good news of what God has done in Jesus Christ for sinners like us.

Schism is often in the eyes of the beholder. One person’s schism can be another person’s fidelity. “That the whole cause of schism lies in sin I do not hold to be certain,” C. S. Lewis wrote in one of his letters. To be sure, Rome’s Tetzel and England’s Henry VIII were lost men, but what about the likes of Thomas More and William Tyndale? How can we read either and come away thinking that their disagreement was founded on some bitter disposition or some other vice? On the contrary,

their disagreement seems to me to spring not from their vices nor from their ignorance but rather from their virtues and the depths of their faith, so that the more they were at their best the more they were at variance. I believe the judgement of God on their dissension is more profoundly hidden than it appears to you to be: for His judgements are indeed an abyss.

That is not to say that schism is never the result of vicious personalities. Of the situation in Ireland, Lewis said, “They take lack of charity for zeal and mutual ignorance for orthodoxy.”

Those who weigh the debate over the nature of the gospel lightly will tend to view the Reformation as a mistake-as schism–even if they place the blame at the feet of both parties. Those, on the other hand, who believe that Rome officially denied the gospel at the Council of Trent will see in the Reformation a remarkable example of God’s mercy toward his church in saving a remnant to continue the church’s truly catholic legacy. Sectarianism is the splinter that is so easily detected in someone else’s eye. The Christian Reformed Church (CRC) calls the United Reformed Churches “sectarian,” although the CRC itself is the result of a split; Roman Catholicism calls Protestantism sectarian, although she herself anathematized the East in the eleventh century; and so on. Liberal Protestants regard their orthodox counterparts who have separated from the mainline denominations as schismatic for maintaining the very doctrines that the constitutions of those very mainline denominations historically insisted upon. And the ironies just don’t seem to end, especially when independent, self-educated, and self-appointed charismatic personalities describe creedal and confessional churches as schismatic and sectarian.

Yet we who belong to creedal and confessional churches should not be self-satisfied. While we may escape the clutches of the Roman Catholic, liberal, “progressive,” or independent-charismatic critique, who can doubt that we bear our own enormous burden for division? To be sure, many of our divisions result from geography, ethnicity, and language. Several denominations that emerged early on in North America resulted from migration from various parts of Europe and had little to do with doctrine. But even when these cases are set aside, the number of sets and subsets within the family of Reformation churches is astounding. As a Reformed minister, I think of those within our own clan. I hope that my own parochial ruminations will suggest parallels for those outside the Reformed tradition.

Perhaps the separation from Rome and perhaps even the separation between Lutheran and Reformed traditions during the Reformation can be justified. And there were strenuous efforts at reunification in both cases early on. But what is the warrant for the situation that gives rise to the reference to Presbyterians as “the split ‘p’s”? About the Dutch Reformed there is this joke: “If you have one German, you have a philosopher; a Dutchman, a theologian; two Germans, an army; two Dutchmen, a church; three Germans, a war; three Dutchmen, a divided church.” In conservative Reformed/Presbyterian American circles today there is the unique challenge of independent evangelicals adopting specific Reformed distinctives and then launching new denominations, often with idiosyncrasies shaped by their leaders’ personalities. It is not now enough to be known as “Reformed;” you must be identified as belonging to one of the proliferating tribes with clear antitheses. In these cases, American Fundamentalism and neo-Evangelicalism have clearly exercised as much influence as any confession or catechism.

Why aren’t our ecumenical committees more aggressive to reach full organic union of confessional Reformed/Presbyterian denominations into one body in North America? Are the differences merely historical? Ethnic? Cultural-linguistic? Are there differences of emphasis at certain points? Of course there are. But should they divide Christ’s body? In my humble estimation, we are falling prey to the mainline charge of being sectarian or perhaps even schismatic when we cannot muster the energy to consolidate virtually like-minded denominations. A church–or group of churches–that seeks to be orthodox without being catholic is in danger of being neither. The doctrine of the church is not just a matter of adiaphora; it is something we confess as part of “our undoubted catholic faith.”

Having said all this, the history of human nature in such matters must be taken into account. The ecumenical movement has not reduced the number of mainline denominations in the slightest, although attempts at such major unions have not been lacking. Furthermore, in nearly every union of historic Protestant bodies, new divisions occur by dissenters from the plan. So what if we were able to unite all of the confessional Reformed and Presbyterian denominations? There would, no doubt, be great advantages. And yet, the very act of such a union would, practically speaking, entail new divisions, as sections of at least some of the merging denominations might well resist such a plan. The Confessing Churches of, say, the Presbyterian Church (USA)-if they should leave the denomination to which they now belong, would not be likely to join the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the Presbyterian Church in America, or even the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC)-even though the EPC is in principle acceptable to many of them. The EPC’s low number of ordained women would be intolerable to them. Once we enter the ecumenical business, the danger of proliferating divisions is always real. This is not an argument against ecumenism but a caution against naively believing that there are simple solutions to our visible disunity. Sectarianism takes many forms and it is simply not the case that only conservatives are guilty of it. But conservatives are guilty of some of it. To our impulse toward conserving the faith we need desperately a more liberal spirit, a catholic spirit that-like the reformers themselves–is not afraid of what it does not understand but seeks to take the best of the whole Christian consensus throughout the centuries, measured by the evangelical confession, and refuses to raise the idiosyncrasies of a gifted individual and his circle of friends to the level of “true Reformed orthodoxy.”

The Scandal to Evangelism

Among the tragic consequences of schism is the weight it gives to the belief in the minds of many that a religion so internally divided cannot possibly serve as a reliable guide. How do we respond to this? First, it is important to acknowledge the seriousness of this charge. It makes sense on a certain level and we must recognize that fact. It is a scandal.

Second, we must explain how Christian faith already contains within itself the seeds for a response to this scandal. That response begins with an explanation that goes something like this. The church consists of sinners and has no promise anywhere in Scripture of being so guided by the Spirit that it can ever claim infallibility. It is not the case, then, that multiple churches claim infallibility. If that were so, then it would stand to reason that the average person would be paralyzed in the face of so many options. The actual situation is that the church’s fallible officers are trying, as best they can, to come to grips with the main teaching of the only infallible rule of faith and practice–Scripture. Our different confessions are all based on the Scriptures and are not really mutually exclusive. They share wide areas of convergence. The Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Reformational churches all affirm the ecumenical creeds in common as “the undoubted catholic faith.”

Many outside and even inside our churches today speak of the Lutheran religion or the Baptist religion. Yet the more they learn where difference and agreement really exists, the greater their sense will be that these are different Christian traditions rather than different religions. This is very important, apologetically. C. S. Lewis said that Christians should not talk about their differences in non-Christian company. In such situations, they should stress their agreements. We have plenty of time to talk about our disagreements among ourselves; but I hope that my Reformed, Lutheran, and Baptist friends all would rather that someone become a Christian even in a different confessional tradition than reject Christianity entirely.

So Christianity already has the seeds of response to this scandal sown within it. We are not infallible, it tells us. We are proclaiming God’s Word as true, not ourselves as true. The church is not the gospel but a witness to the gospel. Often it is easier to understand Plato by reading Plato than by reading a commentary on Plato, Lewis reminds us. The same is true of Scripture. Our different confessions represent different commentaries on Scripture. The need for scholars is not eliminated in either case, but nonprofessionals can understand at least the basic lines of biblical teaching on the most essential points. Furthermore, Scripture tells us that our divisions are consistent with its claims about our sinful nature and yet that these divisions will nevertheless be overcome, with all the rest of our sin, by God’s grace. Even if we do not see this now, we will see it fully realized in the age to come.

Third, we should remind our non-Christian friends that if they reject Christianity on the basis of significant and sometimes loud and competing differences of interpretation among Christians, then they should also follow this logic elsewhere in their lives. They would then, for instance, reject medical treatment, because-in spite of enormous gains in modern medicine-strongly diverse opinions and controversies abound about the treatment of a variety of ailments. In fact, the fiercest controversies seem to arise over the most significant diseases. Where the most is perceived to be at stake, the greatest controversy ensues. Should we expect it to be any different with competing religious claims, where the gravest matters are at stake? Science more generally, though popularly regarded as perhaps the least contentious field of inquiry today, is riot with competing claims and schools of thought. And yet nearly everyone, both scientist and layperson, continues believing in a real world as well as in the possibility of achieving greater clarity and knowledge about reality. So the visible unity or disunity of Christian confession is not in itself evidence for or against the truth of Christian claims. It is just evidence that Christian claims are significant and interesting enough to provoke widespread attention and strong reaction through the centuries

Does the Church’s Catholicity Have a Prayer?

Will Christ’s prayer in John 17 ever be answered? Yes. In fact, it already has been. The visible church is rightly called a mixed assembly–elect and nonelect, sheep and goats, wheat and weeds–waiting to be separated by the Lord of the church on the last day. And yet it is to begin even now embodying before the world the fact that, by having raised Jesus from the dead and filling his visible church, the Holy Spirit is forming a “holy nation and a royal priesthood” to anticipate the renewal of all things. To give up on true catholicity–a principled ecumenism based on agreement about what constitutes the apostolic faith–is to give up on the visible church in a gnostic flight from the body. It is like giving up on sanctification simply because we do not yet experience it perfectly. And just as we profess faith in “the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come,” so we profess the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” in visible form. These two articles of the Nicene Creed are related. The wasting away of the “outer man,” as Paul calls it, does not permit us to denigrate the body that will be raised in favor of the “inner man” who is already alive in Christ. Analogously, the external disunity of the body of Christ must be both acknowledged (simil justus et peccator) and repented of in the present.

We already live by the Spirit from the future glorification, although we are still sinful. Christ’s prayer is answered in the absolute unity and communion of the elect of all ages, which is a comfort to us in our distress about our divisions. Yet that prayer remains to be answered in its fullness, just as our bodies long for final redemption. Jesus Christ is already permanently united to his elect body as its living head. Or, to change metaphors, the branches are already living precisely because of their union with the vine. And yet, in the visible church, dead branches are broken off to make room for others. Christ’s prayer was answered at the cross and in his resurrection and ascension, as well as in the current ministry of the Spirit whom he has sent. Our goal, then, is not to achieve the visible unity of the church but to accept, nourish, cherish, and steward that unity that we already possess in union with Christ. We do this by giving equal weight to the preservation of the gospel (the only source of unity) and the peace of Zion.

A final word needs to be said to those who are wondering whether this article of the creed addresses them. Although we have been speaking in pretty grand terms, the church’s catholicity concerns all Christians, not just those who serve on ecumenicity committees. It is at the level of the local churches that catholicity is actually made most visible. Maintaining the bond of peace, as Paul exhorted, is the charge of every believer. Wherever the unity of a church around the gospel of Christ is threatened, even by sincere motives, wherever the main things are subverted by an obsession with secondary, even if important, things, there believers must struggle to keep the peace. We must learn to hold our tongues, to keep from blemishing each other’s reputations, to refrain from seeking our own praise or serving our own ambitions. Beyond praying for the fruit of the Spirit, much applauded in the New Testament, we can and must pray for the peace of Jerusalem-and not in some general, vague manner but in concrete terms plead with God for greater visible unity of his churches. In that prayer, we join our hearts to the heart of the King of the church who promised that the gates of hell-and even the hellish, sinful hearts and tongues of Christians themselves-will never be able finally to withstand his gracious advance.