Holy Joys Podcast
A discussion of theology and ministry practice, all for a holy, happy church. A ministry of holyjoys.org.
Holy Joys Podcast
The Church: A Central Doctrine
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Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss why ecclesiology (the study of the church) should be of central importance to every Christian, especially pastors, and explore several key concepts that are neglected or misunderstood.
There's no way to be connected to Christ without being connected to his body. There's no way to say I have the spirit without it being the spirit informer of the church.
SPEAKER_03The Christian life is incomprehensible apart from the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_02You're listening to the Holy Joyce Podcast, co-hosted by Jonathan Arnold and Dr. David Fry. Visit us at holyjoys.org and stay tuned for weekly discussions of theology and ministry practice. All for a holy, happy church.
SPEAKER_00Hey, welcome back to the Holy Joyce Podcast. I'm David, and Jonathan is here as well. And today we are uh recording another episode, and we often come back to this topic, Jonathan, because we're pastors, and that is the topic of ecclesiology or the doctrine of the church. And that really, I think probably everything we do uh touches on this. Uh it's right at the heart of holy joys, right? That's what we're all about. Uh before I dive into what I've been working on, uh, do you want to make a connection particularly about holy joys and that what we are for the church?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, we're for a uh holy, happy church, uh, which is a healthy church. So we've got to be clear on what the church is. What does it mean for the church to be holy? What does it mean for the church to be happy? What does it mean for the church to be healthy? Um and so when we're talking about the doctrine of the Trinity or the atonement or the incarnation, um, we are always thinking about, okay, what are the implications for the life, worship, ministry of the church? Um, how does this relate not just to the individual members, but to the corporate body? Um, so yeah, we're we're all about the church. And I think specifically when it comes to theology in general, um we share a conviction that uh, first of all, doctrine of the church is often neglected, but then also it's not often placed in its systematic relationship to other doctrines. So we we don't want to just look at the church as an isolated issue, um, but how does it relate to the the overall work of the triune God? And you know, in the in the creed, Apostles 19, you know, you've got the Father in creation, you've got the Son in redemption, and then the whole thing culminates in the spirit and the church. Um, there's a great Reformed theologian, Francis Turitan, he says that the Holy Church is the primary work of the Holy Trinity. So everything else in theology is bringing us to the church. And so I think that's something we're both really passionate about, and that kind of has its imprint on everything that we do at Holy Joys.
SPEAKER_00It is, and I I think I would have to admit that my interest in ecclesiology as a field of systematic theology did not arise until after I was back into pastoral ministry. So I had been in pastoral ministry coming out of Bible college. I was in pastoral ministry through seminary and then uh came out of pastoral ministry for the years while I was uh working on my PhD, and came back in to pastoral ministry without really appreciating the church. In fact, it was still a very live question for me why the church? Is the church just a convenient place where you just come and kind of get encouraged and go on? But you know, I was still pretty much in this, you know, it's Jesus and me. It is, you know, a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and no robust understanding of how anyone else really fits into that. Uh, of course I appreciate the church because I'm a social person. I love being around people, and I, you know, I'd I'd rather do something with somebody than alone, generally. So, you know, I it's it's not hard for me to to get by with uh you know having other people around and being in in in relationships, but then when I came back into the pastorship, this I I really had to grapple with this because now all of a sudden I am again responsible for convincing people that they that God wants them, even requires them, to be connected to a body of believers. And uh and so I had to uh really get serious about what what is all of this about, and so the opportunity came up to teach um a a class on ecclesiology. Um I wasn't actually asked to teach that, I was just asked uh to teach something in systematic theology, and I said, you know, I this is what I want to do. This is something I need to explore in more detail, and something I had already started doing so, and and so for God's Bible School in College for the graduate uh program, uh I think in 2014. That was in 2014 when I first taught the class, and uh I don't know how many times I've I've taught it most years. And uh getting ready to offer it again uh here in about a three weeks, uh I think we started up. So uh I've been back into it again every time I I teach uh the doctrine of the church, I I seem to do major revisions to the class. Uh the lectures are are uh uh hopefully improved, but uh not drastically different than what I've done in the back past, but uh continue to develop uh the projects uh that we do in the class and really look forward to it. One of the things I've noticed this time around, uh I I love to give uh my students uh some options when it comes to their assignments. So I have required assignments, of course, textbooks and and essays and and papers, uh, but then I have some optional assignments as well. And uh so as I have been putting those together, uh I try to have some audio, so some podcasts, uh some videos, so something perhaps from YouTube. And I can put almost any concept. Uh just you know, take take a concept like uh one that appears in Ephesians uh one uh verse verses twenty-two uh and twenty-three where it says uh that the church is is the fullness of Christ, right? So historically that's the totus Christus. Uh we've talked about that before. And so I'll punch in okay, totus Christus, or the whole Christ. And um if I you know plug that into a podcast search or a YouTube search, it comes up with you know several dozen uh hits. But uh 70% of them are Roman Catholic and the other 30% are uh you know Desiring God uh and ligonier ministries, right? You know, John Piper and R. C. Sprohl. So for from a very you know strong reformed perspective. And by the way, I I've gained some really good things from both of those perspectives, from the Roman Catholic and from the Reformed. I like almost two totally different sides of the spectrum. Um but there's like that's it. There's very little outside of those two uh circles. And so uh I do have a few holy joy things in there. Uh and uh so I was really surprised on some of these, uh yes, a little bit more esoteric concepts like you know, the Todus Christus, or we've talked about the sort of the ancient Christian doctrine of the extra ecclesium, uh, you know, outside the church, you know, from from Cyprian. Uh he said outside the church there's no salvation. You know, what's that mean? And and um you know there's been there's a lot that's been written on that and discussed, and you don't find anything about that from from either a Roman Catholic perspective that's going to have a very definite slant on it to a reformed perspective that generally is going to be very um anti uh you know Catholic in the sense that they're gonna reject even any idea of Todus Christus. Now Kevin Van Hooser, who I appreciate uh very much, he has he's reformed, but he has a he actually embraces these ideas and has a really nice Protestant understanding of of some of these more difficult concepts. So I appreciate that, but uh you gotta read it. You can't find it in a podcast, you can't find it in a in a YouTube video anywhere. And uh a lot of our listeners, and a lot of students even, they they like to be able to to listen and to to digest. A lot of people digest things in these other mediums and not uh not through through reading, first of all. So uh I'm hoping to be able to produce some of that um even through this podcast as well as some videos. Um but uh you know these things they they matter for for uh they really matter for the church because these are some of the doctrines that made me aware that uh the church is not incidental to God's plan of salvation. And uh too many people who have been around the church for a long time uh still don't have a robust view of the church, right? As it's supposed to be.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um as you're talking, I kept thinking about what it means to be an evangelical because um evangelicals tend to struggle with their doctrine of the church in general, and I think that's because one of the hallmarks of evangelicalism is this really strong emphasis on the need to be born again, have personal relationship with God. Um it's it's really focused on making sure that the individual doesn't get lost. And recently we were on vacation and I visited um a church and I was a little apprehensive. I couldn't find a lot on their website, but I was just struggling to find a church in the area, and it was coming down to the wire, and I thought, hey, we'll give it a shot. And uh anyway, I went to this church and they had a beautiful liturgy. Um, but I found out partly through the service they were LGBT affirming, and it was like the dead, the spiritual deadness was like palpable in the air. It was like almost painful. And Lexi and I finally just left and uh got the tail end of a Presbyterian service, evangelical Presbyterian service. Um, but anyway, I told Lexi, man, I am such an evangelical. Like it is in my blood. It really is. Uh, it's one of the reasons why, you know, I've been attracted to some other traditions, but um, I probably will always be where I'm at because I I really do believe with all my heart that um, you know, at the end of the day, we have to make sure that each individual person um has a right relationship with God through Jesus Christ, they have personally repented of their sins, they have personally trusted Jesus. Um I do not feel like that needs to or does come into conflict with a really robust ecclesiology. Um and I think for some reason um there's this misconception that as soon as you begin talking about things like you know church authority and um church discipline and um especially concepts like the extra ecclesium, um, that that will somehow um undermine the evangelical piety that we have. It doesn't need to. Um I'm still a very evangelical preacher. Um, I still am in my preaching very clear on repent, believe, um, but also be baptized in the church. And I think that's that's how I've approached it with our church is just to try to reiterate over and over and over again that when scripture calls on individuals to be saved, it always entails baptism into the church, into the covenant family, and participation in a covenant community. And what we have in the New Testament are letters to and about churches, not uh individuals. And so, you know, it's it's the Christian life is incomprehensible apart from the body of Christ. And so if you um you can't follow the head without being a part of the body, you can't follow the shepherd without being a part of the sheep. Um, you know, it's just it's it's again it's incomprehensible. So I feel like we've been making progress, but honestly, it is a slow road in the local church because people have been accustomed to hearing things like I I heard this from an evangelist one time. I don't really care if you get baptized, I don't really care if you become a church member, all I care about is that. And it's this like reductionistic um evangelicalism, you know, and so I Fred Sanders uses this illustration of how a knife, a knife has a sharp cutting edge. And that sharp cutting edge is the most important thing about the knife. But if you don't have the heavy steel behind it, that sharp cutting edge loses its power. And um, we have so that's the difference between reductionism and kind of a holistic view. Reductionism tries to separate the sharp cutting edge from the heavy steel behind it. And I want to say, yes, the sharp cutting edge is the message of repentance and faith, but the heavy steel behind it is that those who receive Christ are saved by being incorporated into his body. And so then the Christian life is life in community. And um, to talk about faith and piety in the Christian life necessitates a robust ecclesiology, or there's going to be innumerable consequences for our daily Christian lives.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you mentioned uh earlier the how the doctrine of the church touches on uh all of the areas of theology. And uh one of the uh uh ways I approach the doctrine of the church in in this class is uh after looking at what the Bible has to say about the church, then we s then we treat the church in relationship to to God as triune being, then specifically to the sun, uh all the images of the church that regard uh its its relationship to the sun, uh, which you could spend weeks there, right? Um and and then to the spirit. And again, there's a tremendous amount of material, especially in the epistles, in regard to the relationship of the church to the spirit. And y you can't, and that's just the first few weeks, you can't come out of that without recognizing that there's no way to be connected to Christ without being connected to his body. There's no way to say, I have the spirit without it being the spirit of the the resurrected Christ and former of the church, right? The the one who forms the church, that brings it together, that conceives the church and gives it birth. Uh that's that's the spirit. One of the ways we know that we have the spirit is that we are living in the spirit, which is in community, right? And uh and so coming out of that study, especially uh biblically and theologically, um, I think early on, I hope students are convinced that uh that the church is it's the church is not elevated to the place of God. And that's the other that's the other ditch, right? The other ditch is that the church would be elevated to that, and that's why I am Protestant Evangelical, right? So you you mentioned evangelical there. Uh the reasons I'm pr I I'm a Protestant is because um the the church is is uh uh one part of the Spirit's work. It's not it's not even the totality of the Spirit's work, right? But it is part and it's a vital part of it, and it is a central part to what the Spirit does in the world today. Uh but the church is must not be elevated to to the Godhead. And so uh when it comes to this idea of the whole Christ, the totus Christus from Ephesians 1 23, uh, you know, the Roman Catholic view is that we are in some way, the church is in some way the continued incarnation of Christ. Well, in our uh call me a modern, uh that's fine, but that doesn't make sense to me, right? There's just there's no way to make metaphysical m metaphysical sense of that. And so as a Protestant, you know, I reject that idea that in some sense we are uh I am not Christ incarnate, and neither are you, and uh and you put all of us together, we're not. But that doesn't mean we're not Christians. You know, it doesn't mean that we're not little Christs, that doesn't mean that we're not a in continuity with Christ, just not quite in the way that uh the Roman Catholic Church presents that. And so there are other ways of understanding that. So what happens then is is most Protestants, or many Protestants I should say, they will say, Well, okay, yeah, we understand that Paul says that the church is the fullness of Christ in Ephesians 1.23, but we reject this whole idea of to his Christus. Uh it's just yeah, it's just it's just a spiritual thing, you know. It's just so you kind of over over-spiritualize things then. So that's kind of the other the other ditch is over-spiritualizing it to where it becomes meaningless. Uh it's it's really not anything meaningful at all. Um, you know, it's the church is invisible. Uh and we kind of uh some people will just kind of resign to that invisibility. You know, who are you to tell me that I have to join the church? What do you mean? I I I'm part of the church. Um and there's no robust understanding of actually being a part of the visible church, which you know, membership is one of those things. Baptism, you know, participating in the sacraments, other aspects of being the church. I I like what Kevin Van Hooser says, and I've I've probably said this probably a dozen times in this podcast over the years, but he says, you know, the church, the church is not everywhere, but it's always somewhere. And that's what we mean by the church visible. It's always somewhere. So what is it that helps a person, especially on the outside, but also on the inside, to identify where the church is? Yeah. Right. I mean, I think that that question has to be taken seriously. Uh and um uh and there are a lot of different answers to that. There's a whole spectrum of of answers uh to that from from um okay, well the church is where you know where the bishop is, right? Where the bishop is and is presiding over you know the sacrament. Or to the other extreme where um the church is, you know, where where people feel a certain ecstatic, you know, call it the glory of God or whatever else they may call it, some sort of ecstatic experience. Well, that's if you have an ecstatic experience, it doesn't matter what it is, then that must be proof that you know that's where the church is. So there's a whole spectrum of answers to that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so I I have been trying to keep a very positive uh and edifying Facebook presence. Uh so I didn't comment on this, but recently I saw a post going around um about how the church is not a building. We are the church, therefore, um you know, through the week we should be doing this and that in our community. And yeah, okay, right, there's definitely some truth there. But it just, it just every time I saw it, it made me cringe a little bit because if the church doesn't mean, and where are you going to meet it's not a building, right? In a place locally, there is no there is no church. Like that that's always the church has to take a visible um have a visible manifestation in a specific particular location. So sometimes we hear things like the church isn't a building, it's a people. Okay, but the church is a people in a place, in a location always. And um the New Testament, you are hard pressed to find verses in the New Testament that um refer to the church in its invisible form. Even the verses that refer to the church universal, to the single church, are always in the context of discussing the life of the local church. It's never separated. And I think this is an important distinction. I mean, I affirm the need for a distinction between the visible and invisible church. Sure. I utilize it, but I don't think that modern evangelicals are utilizing it the way that Protestants have traditionally utilized it. Um, it's to say that within the visible church, there are those who are not genuine believers, they're not regenerate, and ultimately they will be exposed in the end for not being, but not this concept that um, you know, you can be outside the visible church, and all that really matters is that you're part of the invisible church to the end. You know, you'll be in the end, you'll be saved. Um, the two are held together, and the invisible church is always made visible somewhere, and you need to be a part of that. There's these two verses that I've I've cited different times, and recently here I put them together, and I think it's it's powerful. So in the Westminster Um Confession, it cites Acts 2, see if I can find it here, uh 47 as a proof text for why um every Christian needs to be a part of uh of the visible church, why outside of the visible church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. So the extra ecclesium with that qualifier ordinarily, Acts 2.47. The Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. So the number is the number of people breaking bread, praising God, praying together, devoting themselves corporately to the apostles' teaching, the fellowship. So here we have a description of the visible church, and then we have this statement those who were being saved, God added to their number. So if God receives you as his child, he adds you to the number of his church. If you're not added to the number of church, if you don't become a member of the visible church, something that's an indicator that something is going awry somewhere. But then there's this verse in 1 John 2.19 on the negative side of things, and I think when you put these two verses together, it's it's powerful. They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might become plain that they all are not of us. So in the mind of the apostles in the New Testament, if you get saved, you become a member of the visible church. If you leave the visible church, it's because you weren't really saved in the first place. Now, are there exceptions to that? Yes. Let's say somebody's only encounter with a church is a very corrupt church or a false church. And there's enough truth, gospel truth, that they get saved, but they get so traumatized by the church or they get so fearful of the church that they just avoid it altogether. They're still a child of God. Now, is that going to handicap their spiritual life? Yes. And I believe the Holy Spirit will be faithful to that person to try to gently shepherd them towards a healthy local church. But ordinarily speaking, you're not a member of the visible church, you're not a Christian. If you leave the visible church, um, you probably weren't a Christian in the first place.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that that's you know, what's Cyprian is is arguing in his his book on the unity of the church, uh, when he argues for the the thesis that outside the church there's no salvation. He's talking about people who he's not talking about sinners, he's talking about people who are professed believers but separate themselves. He's talking about the first same thing as first John 2 19. You know, they were part of it, but they left, and that's as John says, that's evidence that they were not part of it. Uh so Cyprians make the same point. It was interesting that on this uh issue, visible in the visible church, that uh I've had a really difficult time finding material um uh uh other than in in reading in books, uh finding material that really lays out a a balanced uh evangelical process uh Protestant uh view. So obviously the Roman Catholics you know have a very strong idea of of the visible church, uh and then you know kind of the generic evangelical view is uh you know, membership that matter, baptism that matter, you know, we're all part we're all part of the invisible church, and that's all that matters, you know. Uh but um somewhere in the middle is is a I believe the the proper biblical understanding, and uh and I do affirm, as Protestants do, we do affirm both the visibility and the invisibility of the church. Um and by invisibility that is referring uh primarily, I believe, to uh the personal and spiritual aspect of a relationship with God, which is real. That the that must be. When I say that I, you know, to me salvation was you know all about a personal relationship with God, I'm not disparaging a personal relationship with God. I'm saying that's necessary, but to say that that's all that there is is problematic.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00And uh you know, in and even even you know, I'm not opposed even to saying that uh it it especially needs to be personal. Like you so that's why we say, you know, even when we come forward to take the the the sacrament, uh you know, draw near with faith, right? There's a personal aspect of it, draw near with faith. Now in our drawing near together, there that that togetherness is an act of faith as well, but it but also has to be personally appropriated. So the visibility, invisibility are is a way of articulating both the personal aspect and the corporate aspect of being a believer in Christ and a follower of Christ. Uh invisible referring more to that personal and sort of spiritualized aspect, the visible, to the uh accompanying corporate and you know tangible uh way of of um of of following Christ in you know in our real life and not just making a claim that is empty of any substance.
SPEAKER_03Right. You said something like I don't know what words you use, two two dimensions or something, but it's not like there's two churches. It's that there's two dimensions or two I don't know, two forms that the churches take church takes. That's not the right way of putting it, but the idea is that there's one church, and that church has a spiritual mystical existence, um, which is involves the the real spiritual union of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit with all real believers. And then there is that visible, that spiritual entity takes a visible form in the world, and in the visible form which it takes, there are chaff among the weed. You know, there are false believers that aren't even going to be exposed until the very end. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive in the visible church to be a faithful representation of this of the invisible church and to weed out, you know, to cleanse out the old leaven, to purge from among us those who are not true believers, and to um apply church discipline gently and lovingly to correct faults. And that's elders leaders are included in that correction, right? So we we don't want to get this idea, this strong bifurcation. I think that's when we start getting into trouble and one of two categories. It's one church, that church is always made visible, but we keep in mind that spiritual dimension because I am one, I'm members of every other genuine believer in other congregations that I may never even encounter in the form. And that's a beautiful thing. Um, but it shouldn't mean it shouldn't be used to undermine the necessity of visible church membership.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And and let me back up and actually and and broaden out uh what the invisible church means as well. I I kind of emphasize the personal spiritual aspect, but uh, what else we mean by the invisible church is is to include or incorporate all of those saints who have gone before us as well. So, you know, we we do not see them, right? They're not with us. So this includes you know those who have died, they are still part of the church, but they're not part of the visible church that we are part of now. The visible church is is the present manifest church, uh, but it's more than the what we see and experience now.
SPEAKER_03Right. Jesus died to create a new humanity, a new people on this earth, invisible, embodied personal fellowship. But inevitably, um, because of our nature as finite beings, um, the visible manifestation of his body is limited by geography and language and time. And the concept of the invisible church says that in its mystical dimension, the church transcends even those things. Even though there may be a body of true believers with whom you'll never be able to fellowship on this earth because they speak a different language than you and they're halfway across the world, you are still members one of another according to that mystical. And that's a pretty, pretty awesome thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. So the visible invisible church, uh, that is a uh yeah, it's a big topic within ecclesiology. It's one I hope to uh talk more about in this class. And uh there are there are you know, we continue to to dig into you know what that means, and I continue to try to uh you know find some good material that gives a balanced approach uh to that. I now uh let me let me close my comments by uh referring to a uh I can't remember his name, but it's a an Eastern Orthodox theologian, contemporary theologian, who who said this about our relationship with Christ. He said we are not uh he said we are the church present is an extension of Christ, but is not the essence of Christ. And uh and I think these two ideas of the whole Christ, the Totus Christus Christus with the visibility and invisibility of the church. Now those concepts are so close, uh closely tied up here. Uh we've kind of gone in between those two, but they're they're tied up. Uh there you can't separate those. And to understand ourselves as an extension of Christ should automatically elevate our understanding of what God's intent for the church is. Whether or not we understand that in its fullness or even feel that, uh, it should elevate our our appreciation and cause us to to want to know better what God's purpose is for the church, because it is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all, according to Paul. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Beautiful. Um, only thing that I have in conclusion is every time you mention Cyprian and the extra ecclesium or ecclesium, I'm not sure how to pronounce that, uh, is that I always think about John Calvin because people can hear Cyprian and think, oh, he's one of those church fathers from way back there. He was a proto-Roman Catholic. Of course he said that. But then I always think of uh Calvin, who basically so Cyprian said that, a whole bunch of other people said that. Um Augustine famously said that. And and then John Calvin, I think, picks up on uh Augustine's statement of the extraclass almost verbatim. And in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, um, book four, he says, to those whom God is a father, the church must also be a mother. And actually, now that I think about it, I think that comes from Augustine's Sermon to the Catechumens, because I just revisited that. He's expounding the creed and he says, For have you now merely heard that God is Almighty, but you begin to have him for your father when you have been born by the church as your mother? So he's drawing, tweaking it a little bit there, but he's drawing from Augustine. So this was affirmed by Protestants. And Martin Luther makes a um a really strong claim along the same lines in his Christmas sermon, where he basically says, outside of the church, there is no Christ, no salvation. Pretty strong statement as well. So this is this is thoroughly Protestant, thoroughly evangelical. It doesn't need to undermine our emphasis on personal faith and repentance. Um but if we don't have a reflective physiology, we fall into a reductionistic that's full too.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for listening to the Holy Joyce Podcast. Email your questions to podcast at holyjoys.org. Holy boys for holy happy churches are supported by generous listeners like you. Please grab a colour with us at holyjoys.org for slash domain.
