by Matthew Gaetano

In a previous post, we discussed Suarez’s view of the Church’s visibility. He offered a “Counter-Reformation” ecclesiology that put faith and the way in which faith united us to Christ’s mystical body (and thus the Church) at the center of his reflections. This position raised some concerns for other Roman Catholics who wanted an account with more emphasis on visibility. Theologians like Robert Bellarmine seem to have wanted a conception of the “congregation of the faithful” which would, for instance, clearly exclude schismatics.

There are other interesting issues here about the way in which individuals baptized in Protestant churches would be members of the Church not only for Suarez but also for other Roman Catholic theologians. Broadly speaking, this debate shows that a less “rigid” understanding of the Church existed long before the Second Vatican Council.

But I wanted to turn to the question of the Church’s visibility in Lutheran orthodoxy. Of course, this is a topic too broad for a single post, but the Lutherans are especially interesting because, like Catholics, they reject a view of the true church as the assembly of the elect. (Of course, Reformed theologians qualified this claim as well.) Furthermore, this point emerged in a controversy which involved a colleague of mine, Dr. Korey Maas, several months ago. In reply to Maas’s arguments about the nature of the Church, David Breitenbeck, said the following:

Christ is not words on paper or high lessons. He is a man, solid and real. A man who tromped the Earth with his feet, struck people with his hands, and sweat and bled from his body. He is hard, brute, unmistakable Reality, and his bride the church is no different. She is no invisible collection of believers, but men and women bound by words spoken aloud under the same law and the same doctrine: doctrine that means one thing and not another. A visible, objective entity upon Earth, just as he was and is. You Protestants do not have that. You have pieces that you tore off and carried away. 

Now, perhaps, Breitenbeck would argue that, even if Protestants recognize the importance of the visible Church, they still “do not have that.” But there’s an important distinction here. It’s one thing if I disagree with my Protestant brethren about where the true visible Church can be found. It’s quite another if we are disagreeing about whether the true Church is visible or merely “an invisible collection of believers.”

I’ve introduced Abraham Calov in previous posts. I’ve discussed Calov’s view of the Church as a communion of the faithful and holy ones (“the saints”). I planned to discuss his view of the Church’s visibility, but he has a rather lengthy discussion of the point and does actually identify invisibility (along with unity, holiness, and continuity (perennitas)) as attributes of the Church (vol. 8, art. 2, ch. 2). Of course, he talks about the Church’s visible features, but I thought that a more concise discussion of the point from a Lutheran theologian would be more appropriate for this context.

David Hollaz, mentioned briefly in the post about Calov, is one of the last major theologians in the period of “Lutheran orthodoxy” as described by Robert D. Preus. Hollaz was born in the middle of the seventeenth century, studied in Erfurt and Wittenberg, and died as pastor in Jakobshagen in 1713. His Examen theologicum acroamaticum is sometimes considered the last major textbooks of “Lutheran scholasticism.”

In an early discussion of the “Christian religion” and the articles of faith, Hollaz took up the question of whether one could be saved in every religion. The “libertines” and others argued that, while there might be “one Christian, Catholic religion,” the “particular sects” (the “papists,” Lutherans, Reformed, Socinians, etc.) merely participated in the one Catholic Church and were all contaminated by “particular blemishes” (37). So, for these “libertines,” the issue of the true visible Church was not an urgent one.

In reply, Hollaz argued that the Christian, Catholic Church is not merely a abstraction. The Church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord” (Eph. 2:20-21, ESV). True religion is where the “dogmas of faith and precepts of morality are handed down and inculcated.” The Catholic Church cannot be “a universal idea existing nowhere outside the intellect” but must be “a certain assembly (coetus) of human beings” who embrace the true religion. The Church is not a Platonic idea or a intellectual abstraction but the “assembly of those who believe” – the account of the Church provided by his Lutheran predecessor Calov (as well as Suarez).

Hollaz’s rejection of the Catholic Church as merely an abstraction or an idea is immediately applied to the issue of the Church’s visibility. In reply to the “libertines” and perhaps some early Pietists who said that being a member of the invisible Church is all that mattered, Hollaz makes a distinction. He says that the Church is considered visible when thinking of the “matter,” that is, “the assembly of human beings that meets our sight.” On the other hand, he thinks that the Church’s invisibility is relevant to a consideration of the true Church’s “form.” The “internal form” of the Church is its “mystical union with Christ the Head,” a “spiritual union that arises through faith” (Eph. 3:17). Recall that Suarez wrestled with the issue of the Church’s visibility in light of the invisibility of its “form.” Besides the issue of the spiritual and interior character of its form, Hollaz thinks that the Church might also be called “invisible” inasmuch as its “splendor” is often obscured by persecutions or heresies. Examples of this sort of obscurity (or invisibility) are the account of Elijah as one of only 7,000 who did not bow the knee to Baal (1 Kings 19:18), the period immediately after the Crucifixion, the catacombs, and so on.

Nonetheless, Hollaz concludes this discussion of whether one can be saved merely by being a member of the invisible Church by saying that the Church is not invisible, speaking absolutely and simply. The true visible Church is wherever one finds the “pure preaching of the Word” and the “legitimate administration of the sacraments.” One finds the “invisible Church”–the “little flock” (Luke 12:32) of those who truly believe and who are elect–within the visible Church. Indeed, Hollaz invokes the ancient formula regarding no salvation outside the Church and says that those who “rashly neglect” the true visible Church would not be granted salvation. This is true because the Word, the efficacious sacraments of grace, and the means of salvation are there (John 3:5, 1 John 5:8). So, again, while the form of the true Church is invisible, this should not lead to the indifference of the “libertines.”

In Hollaz’s ecclesiological treatise, he takes up this issue even more directly. The assembly of those who believe spread throughout the world is not always “conspicuous” or easy to discern (1281). The Church’s unity and catholicity are sometimes hidden. It is not always easy to distinguish the true Church from false or corrupt assemblies. The point above about persecutions and heretics obscuring the Church’s splendor is relevant here: “it can happen, with God’s permission [of an evil], that the true Church might be visible in no part of it” (1282). This is almost certainly a reference to the period before the Reformation. There have been times when there was no “conspicuous or clear assembly of men publicly professing true doctrine”; there have been times “where heretics … predominate everywhere.”

Hollaz is not saying (as Protestants were often accused by Roman Catholics) that there are two distinct Churches – one visible and one invisible. The one Church is visible or invisible in different respects. The Church is visible with respect to those who are called under the influence of Word and Sacrament but invisible with respect to the reborn and elect. The Church is visible in its “flourishing state” but invisible when oppressed or corrupt. The Church is visible in its external form: the harmony and public society in the doctrine of the faith; it is invisible in its internal form: the spiritual communion with Christ through faith.

As Hollaz said in the discussion from the beginning of the book, membership in the Church might be considered materially–that is, as those “called” human beings “professing celestial doctrine and using the sacraments.” This aspect is visible. The Church’s membership might be considered formally–that is, inasmuch as those who are reborn, holy, and elect make up the Church. Faith, internal sanctity, and election are invisible.

Hollaz does explicitly contrast his view with the Roman Catholics because they do not grant any invisible Church. Of course, he also rejects the views of some Protestants (perhaps partly with reference to the early Pietists) who argued that the true Church is not visible (1283).

But is the view that the Church is both visible and invisible some sort of contradiction? Is this middle way between Rome and the “libertines” tenable? Hollaz denies that it is a contradiction, affirming once again that there is only one Church that is merely understood in distinct ways or respects, just as there is no contradiction in describing the moon as visible or invisible depending on the time of day (or on the lunar cycle).

As Hollaz develops his response to the charge that there is a contradiction in this way of thinking about the Church, he again states that the Church is an assembly of faithful human beings. Members of the Church can be seen inasmuch as they are human beings but not inasmuch as they are believers (1284). In response to the argument, based on James 2, that faith is known by works, Hollaz argues that, while the faith of Christians is made conspicuous through good works, this knowledge is not “certain and infallible” (1285). Hypocrisy is always a threat to an assumption that works point directly to true faith.

When it comes to biblical images employed by Catholics to show the character of the Church’s visibility, Hollaz at times denies that those images really apply to the Church. For example, Christ’s image of the “city on a hill” is not as much an image of the Church as a reference to the “apostolic task,” the preaching of the Gospel, which should be done with supreme liberty and not in hiding (1284).

One of the last discussions in this section of Hollaz’s text is a response (perhaps) to the Jesuit Bellarmine’s comparison of the Church to a civil commonwealth (1285). (Earlier Lutherans explicitly criticized this comparison – cf., Calov, p. 264 of the treatise cited above). In this analogy, a civil and ecclesiastical polity both have three aspects: a multitude of people, an external rule (regimen), and something internal. For a civil polity, there is the internal affection of citizens; for the Church, there is internal faith and charity. The first two attributes (the multitude and the regime or rule) are visible; the third is invisible. But Bellarmine and his followers would argue that the “internal” character of civic friendship obviously does not make Venice or France invisible.

Hollaz’s reply is that the comparison breaks down. For a civil commonwealth, the polity is an “external society” that is constituted by the “order of subjects and those who command.” While civic friendship may be invisible, this is not what makes them citizens (it is not their formal character). In other words, if one lacked this affection or patriotism, one does not cease to be a citizen. On the other hand, the Church, “strictly and properly speaking,” is formally and through its very essence an “internal society of those who truly believe and are holy, conjoined with Christ their Head by the bond of faith and with one another by the bond of charity.” If one lacks faith, one does cease to be a true member of the Church. The senses cannot discern this reality as it can perceive the order of rulers and subjects in a civil commonwealth.

Some conclusions

For Hollaz, the Church is one but has both visible and invisible aspects. The assembly of those hearing and preaching the Word and administering and receiving the sacraments is visible. The form, though, of true faith and mystical union with Christ is invisible. He sees the “libertine” and (perhaps) the Pietistic view of the Church as undermining the importance of the visible Church, where the word is preached, the sacraments are administered, and believers are gathered together in love. But Hollaz also rejects the Roman Catholic view which, at the very least, overemphasizes the Church’s visibility.

The difference between Hollaz and Suarez is less clear than the difference between Hollaz and Counter-Reformation theologians who thought of Church members as those who professed the faith. Like Hollaz, Suarez saw true faith as the form of true Church membership. It would be interesting to see Hollaz’s engagement with Suarez’s view that the signs of faith are “sufficient for seeing the body of the Church.” Individuals might be hypocrites; like Hollaz, Suarez says there is no infallible certitude about any individual being a member of the Church. But he says that the “universal body” cannot deceive us. Another key difference is of course Suarez’s view of the Petrine office which makes the visibility and perpetuity of the Church evident. Hollaz believed that the universal Church is indefectible by grace and the assistance of Christ, but any particular Church (whether in Rome, Constantinople, Wittenberg, etc.) can cease to be a true Church (1319-1320, 1315). While Hollaz and Suarez obviously disagree about where to find the true Church and about the character of its visibility, they both think that its form is the spiritual and invisible reality of faith and that it is visible as an assembly of human beings engaged in certain practices, etc.

Western Christians today will not be able to understand one another if Catholics accuse all Protestants of believing that the Church is merely “an invisible collection of believers” or if Protestants accuse all Catholics of thinking of the Church as merely an institution.

Several decades before Hollaz, a Reformed Christian, William Ames (d. 1633), said in reply to Bellarmine that “no controversy remains about whether the nature of the true Church is visible or not” (51-52). The issue for Ames is whether the whole Church Militant is “visible in its dependence … upon one visible head or upon one certain order of government.” For Ames, the broad agreement between Protestants and Catholics on the Church’s visibility is obscured because, in his view, Roman Catholics are not really talking about the Church’s visibility (or the manifestation and nurturing of true faith in a visible community where the word is preached and the sacraments are administered). Instead, when they are arguing about the visibility of the Church, they are really setting up their claims about the pope and the order of bishops.

This charge may be unfair to Suarez and even Bellarmine. But my point is that we should take seriously the claims of theologians like Hollaz and Ames about the broad agreement on the Church’s visibility. They believed that it was a calumny to charge Protestants with denying the visibility of the Church. They wanted to focus on the points of real disagreement back in the early modern period. The question of whether the Church was visible was not one of those issues.