Confessing Evangelical

As we saw in my previous post on this topic, Hermann Sasse argues that the church is both an article of faith, hidden from our sight, and a reality in this world. The one holy church "is identical with the visible assembly insofar as this church is present in, with and under this assembly". This means that:

There are, then, not two churches but the one church, which the eyes of men see as a congregation or church body, but in which the eyes of God see those who actually and truly belong to the church ... That is the church proprie dicta, the church in the real sense, in contrast with the church large dicta, the church in the broader sense. It is, however, always the one church which is spoken of, whether it is in the strict or the wider sense.

Sasse contrasts this distinction between the church in the "strict" sense and the church in the "wider" sense with the Reformed distinction between the visible and invisible churches. This is found, for example, in the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles, whose 19th Article adopts Article VII of the Augsburg Confession almost verbatim, but with the crucial insertion of the word "visible" ("the visible Church of Christ is the congregation of faithful men..."). Dr Sasse continues:

Our Confession does not make this distinction between an invisible and a visible church ... It would have been better for Lutheran theology never to have spoken as though there were two churches, one visible and another invisible. This distinction derives from the Reformed doctrine of predestination.

Just as the Reformed distinguish between an external Baptism which is merely the outward sign of an inward baptism with the Holy Spirit, so they distinguish between the visible church of the baptized and the invisible church of the predestined:

This distinction is rejected by the Lutheran Church as unbiblical. Baptism according to the New Testament is not only a sign but the means that washes away sins (Eph 5:26), "the washing of regeneration" (Titus 3:5). So there are not two churches, one the visible fellowship of those who have received a sign of regeneration, and the other the invisible fellowship of those who have been born again by the Holy Spirit to eternal life.

The biblical and Nicene teaching of "one Baptism" is a defence "not only against the idea that Baptism can be repeated, but also against the Platonizing splitting up of this sacrament into a physical baptism and a spiritual baptism". So also with our confession of "one church":

Our Confession confesses only one church, and not two ... When the question is put of whether Article VII of the Augsburg Confession is speaking of the invisible church, as the Reformed understood this article, or of the visible church, as the Anglicans interpreted it for themselves, we simply have to say that the question is wrongly put: the article does not know this distinction, and neither does the New Testament.