The Nature of the Church – Supplementary Paper

A Supplementary Study Paper Prepared for the Curriculum Consultation Committee

Prepared by the Department of Religious Education
February, 1968

In a broad, inclusive sense, the church refers to community of men from Moses to the present who have experienced, confessed and attempted to live out the reality of communion or covenant with God. As such a community, the church has understood itself as “the people of God.”

But ecclesiology can easily become ecclesiolatry. To understand oneself as “the people of God” can easily become a descriptive label indicating a natural or sociological fact rather than a metaphor delineating a divine vocation. It is easy for the church to let its existence as the people of God become a separate status instead of a way of living in the world. For the church as for ancient Israel, being God’s people was a condition demanding continual appraisal and renewed dedication. The divine purpose stands above the church, as it stood above Israel, calling it to a higher vocation than it would have chosen on its own.

There are various levels of discourse about the church. The empirical or operational level describes functions, programs, people and structures. At another level, denominational theories are the focus. Baptists speak of “congregations faithful to their Lord, listening to his word, illumined by his spirit and bound together by the ties of selfless love.” Methodists speak of the church as “a community of regenerate Christians going on to perfection.” Reorganized Latter Day Saints often quote the words of the Doctrine and Covenants, ‘Whosoever repenteth and cometh unto me, the same is my church; whosoever declareth more or less than this, the same is not of me, but is against me; therefore he is not of my church.” (D. & C. 3:16)

But such levels of discourse are of limited value in establishing what it means to be the church. Throughout the New Testament, the church is spoken of in terms of its calling and its mission. Emphasis is laid upon what God asks of such a community and how he promises to work within it. Thus such symbols as the People of God, the New Israel, The Word of God, The Body of Christ are employed to describe the vocation of the community. Such symbols also point to the dimension of transcendence or the holy in the life of the church, to the ways in which God works within the church in judgment and in grace. Such metaphors are not a description of the nature of the church, its ontology, so to speak. Rather are they descriptions of its calling and its charter. But a distinct ontology does underlie an interpretation of such symbols, namely that the nature of the church is a social community among other social communities, but one with a peculiar vertical or religious relation within which God works quite uniquely for the salvation of the total human community–a salvation employing the vehicles of preaching, mission, worship, sacraments and behavior patterns of life.

Thus the church can be assisted in its self-understanding by serious study of the Biblical symbols. Understanding itself as a social community among other social communities, the symbols such as People of God, Body of Christ, etc., inform the church of the transcendent dimension of its life. They are witnesses, on the basis of divine promise, to the possibility of the holy within the community’s life, and as indicating the means through which the divine action takes place, or can take place within the community.

This paper will explore then three central Biblical symbols of the church which have had overwhelming significance for it, determining its understanding of itself and so guiding its self-formation.

The Church as the People of God, the New Israel,
the New Humanity

(Acts 13:16-34; Rom. 4:12-17, 22-25; Gal. 3:29, 4:28-29; Eph. 3:5-6;
Heb. 8:4-13, 9, 10; I Peter 1:10-12, 2:1-10)

The church understands itself fundamentally as a community, not primarily as an organization, building or ecclesiastical structure, important as these may be in facilitating its mission. As a distinct community, the church sees its identity emerging out of its convental relationship to God. In fact, it understands itself as called to be the New Israel the continuation and renewal of the ancient covenant community. But in addition to the rich heritage it absorbs from the Israelite pilgrimage, it adds a new dimension. It also understands itself as embodying a new humanity, the renewal of the creature which had fallen in Adam but now risen to new life in Christ Jesus.

In understanding itself as being called to be the New Israel, the church says a good deal about its communal existence. It sees itself as called to continue the long history in which God has been creating this holy people, now reconstituted through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Moreover, it affirms that through the power of Christ it takes for itself the calling of becoming the Holy People of God who fulfill the divine will of justice and love one to another. In both these affirmations the church points to the divine intentionality of God in shaping a community of believers. The church was not an accidental secondary element in the Christian faith–as if God had really willed to save individuals, who through some misguided gregarious instinct mistakenly formed for themselves a community of worship. The church as a community, as the People of God is a fundamental part of the divine purpose, willed by God and established by him.

We said earlier that the church adds to the ancient People-of-God identity a new dimension having to do with a new humanity. This symbol of the New Humanity (Rom. 3:23-31; 5:12-21; I Cor. 1:22-24) is the church’s way of bearing witness to the new possibility for mankind. The church understands itself as a new beginning for the whole human race. Where once Israel had as its center the divine law addressed to a particular people, the church has as its center Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord who has come that all men might be brought into the people of God. The church is thus the New Humanity in Christ. In the new covenant people, the whole community of mankind is to be refashioned by the divine purpose and gracious will. The church is where the new humanity is to become visible.

In Adam all men had died; in our sinful history, in other words, the created differences between men, differences in sex, race, culture, and nationality, have become not a source of richness within a common human community, but rather the source of mistrust, exploitation, conflict, hatred and tragedy. Differences have, by sin, become translated into barriers. Diversity which might enrich has, by sin, destroyed community. But now in Christ a new age has arrived. The old humanity of sin is to be cast off and men have in Christ become new creatures who are to serve rather than oppress one another. The church is called to be the center where these amazing powers of the kingdom are to be manifested. Just as barriers (hatred and conflict) characterized the old human community, so koinonia (forbearance in love and unity in the spirit) is the animating life of this new community. In this deepest sense the church has become the Holy People of God–so says the symbol, pointing as it does to the ethical purpose of the church as a community of men.

As the People of God. the church is called to mediate the holiness of God’s law, his judgment, and his grace to the world around it. Quite obviously, the church does not refer to God’s only people. While the covenant relationship is unique, it is not closed or limited in the sense that those who belong to the church are the only people loved and ruled by God: in fact, to be among God’s people, in the sense of conscious participation in his purposes is to be acutely aware of the universality of divine compassion and of the divine dominion. If the covenant circle includes me in spite of my limitations and rebellion, in principle and in intent it includes everyone.

The Church as the Hearers of the Word

(Eph. 1:22-23, 5:23-27; Col. 1:18-20)

A second major symbol which charts the course for the church and shapes its unique identity centers in Christ, the living Word, as head of the church. From Him, and Him alone it draws its power to be the people of God, and in Him alone it lives. The church is properly admonished, “This is my beloved Son, Hear Him.”

The church acknowledges the Word as the message of God’s act of salvation in Jesus Christ. This message was both said and done by our Lord. The church is called to proclaim it and do it. It is by and through this message that men are personally “called out by God” to form the ecclesia, the commissioned community. It is by this message in scripture, preaching, and life-style that the church maintains its living knowledge of its head, Jesus Christ. The Word that creates and recreates the church is neither a system of doctrine nor a series of scriptural passages. It is, rather, the living impact of God’s revelation in Christ on a community of men. Such a living impact issues in doctrinal insights and creates scripture, but the incarnate word is prior to and stands in judgment upon any subsequent discourse about it. It is the immediate address to a community of God’s judgment on their sins; of his forgiveness and love with which they are received into fellowship again; and of the personal promise of his grace by which they may live in hope.

Thus the Word is never heard by a living congregation merely in terms of intellectual agreement to a set of traditional dogmas. It is heard and received only by our repentance for our own particular and specific sins, and by the reawakened personal trust. obedience, and dedication of self that true knowledge of Jesus Christ always brings.

This symbol of the living Word points the church to its responsibility to mediate truth to men. The church was called into being by the word of truth in Christ Jesus. Men pressed into it because of its word of truth. Men’s ties to the church must be based on their faith in the word the church proclaims. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that denominational affiliations today are valued by people merely for their cultural effects, that they provide moral and social stability, not for the fact that they provide truth. This may be true in part because of the secularization which has shaped the thinking of many church members. Often, for such people, doctrines are not received as being true statements about the real world, but as unreal and meaningless slogans somehow connected with a church which for quite other reasons is valued and supported.

Obviously, no man will recognize the authority of a gospel he no longer regards as true. If one holds to a church solely for reasons of social stability, then surely he shall reject it whenever it threatens the way of life he is unconsciously seeking to preserve.

The church thus is called to re-present the word in terms that are intelligent, convincing and relevant to the life and world in which we actually live. It is far less important that traditional language be used than that the retranslation express the transcendence or holiness of God’s claim upon us in Jesus Christ, and his judgment and grace in our lives.

The church as the Hearers of the Word must have a word which is intelligible, relevant and credible–lest all holiness vanish in dogmas that are conventional, but ignored. It is the vocation of the priesthood to mediate this living word to the church–to lead it through preaching, teaching and counsel as well as the ordinances, to become aware of this claim of God upon us.

The Word the church hears and declares is Christ. He alone is the head of the church. From Him and not from its own virtue it draws its relationship to its full measure of holiness, and so its ability to mediate the holy to men.

The Church as the Body of Christ

(Romans 12:4-5; 1 Cor. 12:12-31; Eph. 1:22-23;
5:22-23; Col. 1:12-18)

A third major symbol of the church which witnesses to the possibility of the divine in the life of the community is the Body of Christ. The covenant community is called to acknowledge that it is to be “the habitation of God through the Spirit.” It is the body in which the spirit of its Lord dwells. The Church is formed then not merely by the mutual agreement to come together by a repentant and regenerate people. For the church to be the church it must witness to being indwelt?–to the community being called by the presence and power of Jesus Christ to? faith and obedience.

The early church focused its fellowship with the living Lord in its worship, especially through the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper. It was in and through such experiences of worship that the Lord’s presence was realized and inwardly appropriated. Thus the church is a worshipping community for the sake of encounter and indwelling. A denomination may be filled with creative ideas and overflowing with good works, but unless there be a genuine encounter with the holy by which the life of the community is deeply informed, its ideas will be little more than an echo of the world it addresses and its good works indistinguishable from others who would do good.

Forms Which Enable the Function

Having said this about the basic nature of the church, it is important to recognize that the church, as any human community, requires formal structuring to its life if it is to achieve certain functional goals and if it is to have historical perpetuation. There is the need in all human activity for a systemization and organization which takes man beyond the point of haphazard association.

In recognizing the church as having a particular style of life and a particular mission in life, it is also necessary to then speak of the need of the church to become organized to more effectively and efficiently bring about these concerns. On the one hand, the church must have organization for ministering to and building up the members of the body. Here are the functions of pastoral ministry, worship and education. And the church must also organize itself to carry out its mission, which is God’s mission of the salvation of the world. Here are the functions of witness and service.

After formerly speaking of the church in its spiritual, or living expression, we now speak of the church in its institutional expression. This is how the denominations which today comprise the “church universal” must be understood. These are the church of Christ expressed in different institutional forms, being both one and many. Wherever and whenever a body of disciples gathers itself under a specific institutional identity and character we have the process of denominationalism. The important thing would seem to be that of how we understand the relationship of the denominations, given this oneness of life and mission in variety of organizational expression.

Any denomination accepts to itself those structures, forms and procedures which it feels most adequately facilitates the life and mission of the body of Christ. In this it is all to often true that denominations become rigid and unchangeable, a characteristic of late dubbed “morphological fundamentalism.” In this they have lost the sense of form following function. Their structures have ceased being means to ends, and have themselves become the ends. Trueness to organizational exactness has replaced trueness to the life and mission of the church as the body of Christ. In recognizing the inevitable importance of the institutional church, then, it is crucial to maintain the proper perspective on the purpose of the institutionalization. Its value, authority and correctness is to be constantly judged with respect to the purpose of the church. In this way the authority and correctness of any denomination is directly proportional to the functional authority (i.e. its ability to express the divine purpose) and correctness of its institutional character.

The question of comparative judgment amongst the denominations arises at this point. It must first be suggested that such comparative judgments are extremely dangerous, and especially so when they involve a type of total qualitative judgment that leads to denominational particularity. Such comparative judgments are inappropriate between denominations, each denomination more properly being concerned with the degree of its own authority and correctness. The denomination that concerns itself with particularity might well miss the “beam” in its own eye. One’s trueness to the gospel and the mission of the church, then, and not one’s particularity should always be the primary point of concern.

Implicit in such a position is the recognition that the church in its numerous institutional expressions is yet one in its function and purpose. The existence of the denominations is to be understood more in terms of their complementary function than in terms of their competitive claims. Analogy could be made with a war being fought on many fronts. Each military unit has its own particular battles to fight, its own particular duty to perform. The question, finally, is not whether this unit is better than that, but when, in fact, each performs decisively at their own point of battle. And, of course, the outcome of the war depends on every unit performing its particular function and duty. A war with many battles; the one church of Christ in many institutional expressions.

This analogy is not to suggest an uncritical acceptance of all denominations and movements as being of equal validity. Not all who say “Lord, Lord” are by virtue of that confession, faithful to the kingdom.

In consideration of our own denomination we recognize that, first of all, our legitimacy is grounded in the event of Jesus Christ and our purpose the extension of his mission in the world. The Restoration churches have from their beginning evidenced concern for the corporate shape of the church institutional, and this concern has continued to be central in the Reorganization. Out of this concern has emerged many valuable principles and patterns of organization which have uniquely equipped the Reorganized Latter Day Saint church to function authoritatively and relevantly as the church of Christ. In appreciatively recognizing these assets, however, it is yet important that the church be careful not to become caught up in a concern for how we qualitatively compare with other denominations, or, in other words, how we are “better” than others.

Perhaps a contributing factor to the persisting particularity conscience amongst Reorganized Latter Day Saints is the way in which “Restoration” has been commonly understood. It is suggested here that the idea of restoration is a valuable symbol and one which the Reorganized Church can use to good advantage. The term can most helpfully refer to that process of renewal and revitalizing which, by the grace of God, fosters a more faithful witness. What needs to be restored continually is that vitality of mission which authenticates the church as being faithful to its Lord. This the institutional church is ever in danger of losing either because of misplaced emphasis or because of inappropriate or outmoded structures. Restoration, then, more appropriately refers neither to the reestablishment of the true body of Christ, nor to the reinstitution of some one particular structure and organization. Rather is it saying something about the relationship of means and ends, and the continual necessity to rework and rejuvenate the former in light of the latter. By identifying the real enemy, not as other Christian communities but as the wickedness and suffering that abounds in the world, we are saying in effect that the task before the church is first of all equipping itself for effective ministry, and not ranking its standing amongst other churches.

The Church and Culture

Having employed Biblical symbols of the church which reach back into the Old Testament to appropriate “the covenant people” concept, we can likewise find in Israel a paradigm of the church’s relation to culture. Israel was aware of the cosmic activity of God. His mighty acts occurred within and without the boundaries of the covenant community. While Israel was his elect people, the whole world was the focus of his concern and the object of his redemptive work.

Yet the Old Testament portrays Israel’s historic communion with God as being repeatedly threatened and compromised by gross and subtle misunderstandings. Israel often defined herself as a morally superior people, as God’s only people, or as a professedly or intrinsically religious people.

Similar temptations confront the church. To be the church does not necessarily denote being a morally superior people. The church is not composed of those who are intrinsically worthy of divine honor, people who–in contrast to others–deserve to be God’s. The goodness that belongs to God’s people is either the common goodness familiar in all creation in spite of man’s alienation from God or it is the good work of God through- the historical covenant on our behalf. This is not meant to deny the serious demands for righteousness of life which appear throughout the scriptures. It is only to affirm the prior truth that God has created the possibility of righteousness by drawing the covenant circle within which we stand in spite of our frailty.

Again, drawing from the experience of Israel, the church struggles with the temptation to believe that it is God’s only people. The covenant relationship, to be sure, is unique, but it is not closed or limited in the sense that those who belong to the church are the only people loved and ruled by God.

Provincialism plagued the career of Israel and its shadow falls across the New Israel as well. One must accept the caution against making the church coterminous with the whole activity and purpose of God. The church as a visible organic reality is not coterminous with the entire purpose of God because his purpose runs through many other organisms of human life, some of which do not even have their specific historical focus in Jesus Christ or the Bible. There are many groups and individuals who advance the humanization of society in a way faithful to the best insights of the historically visible church. They are genuinely involved in the process of humanization, understood largely in immanently and empirical categories, and part of the same process the church conceives as human redemption or salvation understood largely in symbolic categories derived from its own special history.

Then again, the church faces the temptation, as Israel, to believe that it is limited to intrinsically religious people. This temptation increases as the church becomes exclusively equated with activities carried on with a sacral building or under the auspices of a formally religious organization. The fact is, God’s people are not those who happen to be of a more pious or ecclesiastical bent than other men. Rather, God’s people are those who stand within the circle of his covenant and who find themselves joyously and awesomely compelled to live the whole of their lives in the light of the covenant. God’s people are his people just as they are and wherever they are, in their homes and jobs, their sports and courtship, their eating and celebrating, fully as much as in formal religious activities. In fact, there are times when being the church means challenging what passes for the church–standing in judgment on some of its effete and debased expressions.

Thus we see the church, as Israel, standing in the tension between human weakness and divine grace. We never pass beyond the mystery of the inadequacy of the church, which is nevertheless called to be God’s instrument. The church is a means for the divine grace to manifest itself to the whole of human life, but the church can be the means of grace only insofar as it is the consequence of grace.

In summary, we have affirmed the commitment of God to the entire cultural milieu of which the church is one segment. We have asserted that the activity of God in history is not coterminous with visible organism of the church. He works through it, but also works outside it. His interpenetration of the entire cultural system is part of the mystery of his being. Yet the fact that the church is not the exclusive locus of his redeeming work does not mean that the church is made obsolete. It simply affirms that the church bears a particular relation to culture which in itself is crucial to the entire cosmic enterprise. To the specifics of that relationship we now turn.

The Church is Separated From Culture

The church is characterized by demarcation from culture in the sense that it is that distinct community within culture which recognizes the God who acted in Israel and in Jesus Christ as the God who is presently working, and orders its life collectively and individually by participation in the present activity of God. Thus the form of demarcation is not in the creation of a substitute world in which to live, but in consciously choosing an identity by which life in the existing world is informed.

The Church Incorporates Culture

Secondly, the church relates to culture in outreach and incorporation. We have affirmed that the church is demarcated from culture by virtue of its unique confession that God is now at work in culture. Thus its demarcation provides the necessity for its outreach into culture and its incorporation of culture. The church which remembers Jesus becomes open toward events and movements, crises and processes in which the God who was in Christ is seen at work portentously in destruction and reconciliation. The church puts its finger on the world’s pulse; it locates the forces, events, and persons which are catalytic for setting the reality of the church into motion, Inasmuch as the church is in no position to know fully in advance how God’s activity will take shape, it will be open to the gestures of culture at every point, straining to catch a clear sign of what God is doing. It will sense that God is always rocking the boat of human affairs. The question will be: in which of the increasingly changeful dimensions of human life is God portentously and demandingly at work? The outreaching and incorporating church will not be grabbing a mere novelty nor will it be tricked into reading more into social and political changes than is there. But it will seek for the depth and direction of change, for the human possibilities that are thwarted or liberated in the changes. It will open itself to culture in this sense and incorporate into its witness and life those cultural events which herald the coming kingdom.

The Church Attracts Culture

We have said that the church is demarcated from culture by virtue of its unique confession. This demarcation also issues in an identification with culture inasmuch as part of the unique confession the church makes is that God is at work in culture and therefore joins with God’s action wherever it is discerned. A third point of interaction may be seen in the movement of the world or culture toward the church. In this relationship there is both danger and opportunity. One of the perils is that the archaic or highly specialized culture-world of the church may attract refugees of lost cultures for nostalgic or reactionary reasons. On the other hand the church may be sought out for the sake of providing resources with which to deal with an existing culture. There is a deceptively thin, but actually sharp line between seeking in the church resources to face any culture and seeking in the church solace for a culture that is past.

From another direction the church may be sought for what it can do strategically toward preserving or serving particular interests or toward effecting social change. In some cases what is to be preserved and what is to be changed may on balance be desirable, and the church will have its part. It must always be remembered that such alliances however are partial and provisional. The church must never mistake the immediate conjunction of interests for conversion to the historical faith, on the one side, or diminution of the confession of the church on the other. In each case the criterion for judging participation in causes must be the activity of God as best the committed church can discern it.

The Church as Part of God’s Activity
in Culture

Undoubtedly the most difficult phase of church-culture relations is the church’s acceptance of its limited and provisional character. The consequence of God being hidden is that at points the church is also hidden. That is to say that God functions within culture through instrumentalities other than the church. Thus, by using the term “church” generically to refer to all those communities or organisms through which God acts in the life of the world, there is an invisible church. Such invisibility simply points to the fact that church-functions and church-characteristics are found at work in culture outside the bounds of the covenant community. Thus culture itself contains as a continuous potentiality a sort of invisible or crypto-church. which cannot be grounds for disbanding the confessing church, but which also cannot be reduced to the confessing or visible church or ranked hierarchically beneath it.

To speak this way is but to speak sensitively about culture itself. It is to be sensitive to its operations and its functions. It is to be alert to the ways in which it serves to humanize life (i.e. to enrich, diversify, deepen. liberate human relations) rather than to dehumanize (i.e. standardize, impoverish, constrict, encumber human relations). It is to be able to recognize that one of the ways God works is precisely in and through the process of humanization, which is a central work of culture.