The visible and invisible church

One church, seen two ways

The church on earth includes both true believers and some who belong only outwardly. Jesus warned, "Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 7:21), and Paul wrote, "not all who are descended from Israel are Israel" (Romans 9:6). Who truly belongs to Christ, God will show at the end.

Nevertheless, God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are His,” and, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord must turn away from iniquity.”

2 Timothy 2:19

The distinction does not mean there are two churches. The invisible church is the whole people God knows as his own, including "the congregation of the firstborn, enrolled in heaven" (Hebrews 12:23); the visible church is that same church as it appears now on earth, professing the faith and gathering together. It keeps believers from presuming to judge hearts. On the parable of the wheat and the weeds, Jerome wrote that "we are warned that we should not hastily cut off a brother, since one who is today corrupted with an erroneous dogma, may grow wiser tomorrow" Jerome.

What the church has said

Augustine taught that the church on earth is a mixed body of good and bad, and that the two cities are entangled with each other in this world Augustine, The City of God. Jan Hus described the church as the company of the elect, with Christ alone as its head Hus, On the Church, and Luther wrote that the church is hidden and the saints unknown Luther, The Bondage of the Will. Calvin observed that Scripture speaks of the church in two ways: as all the elect before God, and as the whole multitude on earth who profess the same faith Calvin, Institutes 4.1.7. The Westminster Confession states:

The catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.

Westminster Confession 25.1

The visible church, it continues, "consists of all those, throughout the world, that profess the true religion, and of their children" 25.2, and outside it there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.

Where the traditions differ

The Catholic and Orthodox churches do not divide the church in this way. The Catholic Church teaches that the visible society with its hierarchy and the mystical body of Christ are not two realities but one, made up of a human and a divine element Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 8. The Orthodox likewise confess one church that is at once a visible eucharistic community and a spiritual reality.

Among Protestants, the question is who makes up the visible church. Presbyterian and Reformed churches include those who profess the faith together with their children. Baptists and many free churches hold that a local church should be made up of those who profess faith and live by it Second London Baptist Confession, ch. 26. On either view it is God, who has chosen his people (see election), who knows the true believers; Christians are not to leave the visible church but to grow together within it. See also the lesson What the church is.