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visible and the invisible Church, others lost sight of this. The Socinians and the Arminians of the
seventeenth century, though indeed speaking of an invisible Church, forgot all about it in actual
life. The former conceived of the Christian religion simply as an acceptable doctrine, and the
latter made the Church primarily a visible society and followed the Lutheran Church by yielding
the right of discipline to the State and retaining for the Church only the right to preach the
gospel and to admonish the members of the Church. The Labadists and Pietists, on the other
hand, manifested a tendency to disregard the visible Church, seeking a Church of believers only,
showing themselves indifferent to the institutional Church with its mixture of good and evil,
and seeking edification in conventicles.
b. During and after the eighteenth century.
During the eighteenth century Rationalism made
its influence felt also in the doctrine of the Church. It was indifferent in matters of faith and
lacked enthusiasm for the Church, which it placed on a par with other human societies. It even
denied that Christ intended to found a church in the received sense of the word. There was a
pietistic reaction to Rationalism in Methodism, but Methodism did not contribute anything to
the development of the doctrine of the Church. In some cases it sought strength in casting
reflection on the existing Churches, and in others it adapted itself to the life of these Churches.
For Schleiermacher the Church was essentially the Christian community, the body of believers
who are animated by the same spirit. He had little use for the distinction between the visible
and the invisible Church, and found the essence of the Church in the spirit of Christian
fellowship. The more the Spirit of God penetrates the mass of Christian believers, the fewer
divisions there will be, and the more they will lose their importance. Ritschl substituted for the
distinction between the invisible and the visible Church that between the Kingdom and the
Church. He regarded the Kingdom as the community of God’s people acting from the motive of
love, and the Church as that same community met for worship. The name “Church” is therefore
restricted to an external organization in the one function of worship; and this function merely
enables believers to become better acquainted with one another. This is certainly far from the
teaching of the New Testament. It leads right on to the modern liberal conception of the
Church as a mere social center, a human institution rather than a planting of God.
QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY:
Does the history of the Church begin at or before the day of
Pentecost? If it existed before, how did the Church preceding that day differ from the Church
following it? To what Church does Jesus refer in Matt. 18:17? Did Augustine identify the Church
as a spiritual organism, or the Church as an external institution, with the Kingdom of God? How
do you account for the Roman Catholic emphasis on the Church as an external organization?
Why did not the Reformers insist on entire freedom of the Church from the State? How did
Luther and Calvin differ in this respect? What controversies respecting the Church arose in
Scotland? What accounts for the different conceptions of the Church in England and in