a community of concentric circles

In this age, the community of the messiah exists in concentric circles. The outer circle (circulus ad extra) is porous and visible to the world. The inner circle (circulus ad intra) is nonporous and impenetrable. The outer circle is the visible people of the messiah "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets," the Old Testament Israel and the New Testament church. The inner circle is the elect "chosen in him before the foundations of the world." And, as in Jesus's parable of the wheat and the tares (Matt. 13.24-30), "both of them grow together until the harvest."

It is easy to enter the outer circle. No one can forbid it. One is born into it or one bids for membership out of personal desire or in response to an invitation. And there is a liturgical sign of entry. In Deuteronomy 28:9, directly after God says "The Lord will establish you as his holy people," he commands circumcision as a visible token of membership. Male babies were to be circumcised shortly after birth, and through them, the nation is circumcised. Circumcision was replaced by baptism in the Messianic, New Testament community. Members of the circle have public access to the benefits of the community.

It is impossible, by human effort, to enter into the inner circle (see Opening a Closed Circle, 83). Its members are elect by God. The language and benefits of the community are reserved for and active in the elect alone. They are the invisible community of the inner circle "born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." The inner circle is the church militant (Ecclesia militans). It is the burning bush in which God dwells by the Spirit and every man, woman, and child is on fire.

It is impossible and evil to fix another's place on the inner or outer circle, aside from their making an overt declaration. And it can be challenging, in the day to day, to know where to place oneself.

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[1] The history of the dogma of an invisible and invisible church begins with Martin Luther. Luther's protest against Roman Catholicism demanded a new answer to the question "Who makes up the church?"

Luther called the Roman Catholic Church a “false church” (his sermon Von der heiligen christlichen Kirche in 1531). He set a true or hidden church over against it. His hidden church was separate from the visible church, the workaday church or the communio sanctorum of human beings harassed by sin and suffering, existing on and by God’s grace. This visible church was a mixture of good and bad. It was streaked with sin and harbored sinners even though it was diligent to combat sin and the perversion of doctrine. Inside it was the hidden church. "The church must appear in the world. But it can only appear in a covering (larva), a veil, a shell, or some other kind of clothes which a man can grasp, otherwise it can never be found," (WA Briefwechsel 9, 608). For Luther, then, the church is like a sacrament: the visible and hidden can be distinguished but not separated in this age. The visible may be handled and, underneath it, the hidden made available.

The false church does not value the scriptures. And, therefore, it cannot properly offer the sacraments or preach the gospel. The false church has no life in it--no inner grace, no hidden church.

Luther also perceived an analogy to his visible-and-hidden ecclesiology in the incarnation of Jesus, where God and man are one. The hidden church suffers in its flesh, even as its head, Jesus, suffered. And through that suffering the gospel life is made available to human beings.

Calvin, as is to be expected, sums up the work of the first Reformers:

"The Church," he says, "is used in the sacred Scriptures in two senses. Sometimes when they mention the church, they intend that which is really such in the sight of God (quae revera est coram Deo) into which none are received but those who by adoption and grace are the children of God and by the sanctification of the Spirit are the true members of Christ. And then it comprehends not only the saints at any one time resident on earth but all the elect who have lived from the beginning of the world.

"But the word church is frequently used in the Scriptures to designate the whole multitude dispersed all over the world who profess to worship one God and Jesus Christ, who are initiated into his faith by baptism, who testify their unity in true doctrine and charity by a participation of the sacred supper, who consent to the word of the Lord and preserve the ministry which Christ has instituted for the purpose of preaching it. In this church are included many hypocrites, who have nothing of Christ but the name and appearance; many persons, ambitious, avaricious, envious, slanderous, and dissolute in their lives, who are tolerated for a time, either because they cannot be convicted by a legitimate process, or because discipline is not always maintained with sufficient vigor.

"As it is necessary therefore to believe that Church which is invisible to us, and known to God alone, so this Church, which is visible to men, we are commanded to honor, and to maintain communion with it." (Institutes Bk. IV.1 § 7)

This post is a work in progress.
Its existence is to be a short, model ecclesiology,
 combining my model of "Saint Augustine's church",
 something on the two sacraments, and election.

Note: your grammar is not quite right.
Barth has some good tweaks.
see https://postbarthian.com/2016/04/29/
karl-barths-rejection-visible-invisible-church/ 

As if to say that the circle one should care
about is not the circle of exclusion between
people, but the circle of election.

Previous post links an available hermeneutic
to a welcoming ecclesiology.

The mission-stance of the church mirrors
the mission-stance of the Triune God.

You were not wrong to bring in the
Trinity ad extra / ad intra. Put that
back in.

The private ascesis of the Sermon on the
Mount can be appended to this as well.

The circle of the Spirit is wider than the
circle of the church.

All people are made in the imago Dei,
albeit now marred by sin. Only saints are
made into a kingdom of priests

A Note from Class: Baptism's Old Testament backgrounds

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever;

to him who by understanding made the heavens,
to him who spread out the earth above the waters,
to him who divided the Red Sea in two,
and made Israel pass through the midst of it;

it is he who rescued us from all our foes,
he who gives food to all,
for his steadfast love endures forever.
(Psalm 136 ESV)

Over the last several weeks, we have been diving deep into the Old Testament background of baptism. We started knee-deep in the muddy water of the Jordan River with John the Baptist, and, diving down as far down as we could, we felt the squishy, dark silt of creation at the bottom.

Do you recall the symbols we looked at?

• The black water of chaos
• The authoritative word of God
• The birdlike (dove-like) wind-wings of the Spirit blowing back the waters, making order from chaos
• The dry land appearing
• A change from one thing to another

Moving forward through the great story of the Bible, we found those symbols again and again. We found them in Noah's ark. We found them in the Exodus of Israel from the slavery of Egypt, and we saw them again as Israel crossed the Jordan River into the land God promised.

Israel became a people when the crossed those waters: the Red Sea and the Jordan. They left Egypt terrified as escaped slaves, but they walked onto the opposite bank of the Jordan River a unified, hopeful people.

John's baptism was a call to redo that. John was saying "Come to the Jordan again. Go into the water confessing your sins and come out of the water true Israelites again."

"But after me," said John,"is one more powerful than I who will baptize you with the Spirit and with fire." Just as Israel crossed the Red Sea from Egypt into the wilderness and then crossed the Jordan from the wilderness into the promised land, so there were two crossings to make: John's, "a baptism of repentance," and Jesus's, "a baptism of the Spirit." One leap on two legs.

Three of the gospels record Jesus's baptism.

"In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1:9-11 ESV)

All of our symbols are there, even the dry land. Theologians for hundreds of years have equated the body of Jesus with the emergence of the dry land of a new creation.

For you see, what we are talking about is creation: the creation of the earth; a second creation with Noah; a re-creation of a royal people from base slavery; and, through Jesus's life, death, and resurrection, a new creation. "According to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13 ESV).

Baptism = creation. To go into the water is to go back into chaos and death. To come out is to be created anew (resurrection). "Jesus rises from the waters, and a drowned world rises with him." ~ Gregory of Nazianzus.

Baptism is an act of God accomplished in the power-working of the Spirit according to his word.

So consider your baptisms, friends. You have gone into the water. And, with Christ, in the power of the Spirit, you have come out. You were slaves to sin and to the powers of this age. But now you are delivered onto the dry land of the promised land, you are citizens of the Kingdom of God.

Listen in on the apostle Paul as he talks about this with the Christian community of the Roman town of Colossae:

"Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all." (Colossians 3:5-11 ESV)

And finally, I quote the German reformer Martin Luther, "A Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism once begun and ever to be continued."

Remember your baptism, friends. Remember your baptism. "For his steadfast love endures forever."

I can't believe I forgot this, but it is so important!

Community.

Creation is a plural thing. The Israelites walked as a people into the promised land. We are baptized into the body of Christ, that is, into the church--a community. (The root word "church" is the Greek word for a community of people, εκκλησια.)

This is why baptism has throughout church history been the sign (sacrament) that joined people to the church.

Justin Martyr, a church father who lived in Judea in AD 100-165, described baptism in the early church:

"Those who believe what we teach is true and who give assurance of their ability to live according to that teaching are taught to ask God’s forgiveness for their sins by prayer and fasting, and we pray and fast with them. We then lead them to a place where there is water and they are reborn in the same way as we were reborn; that is to say, they are washed in the water in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the whole universe, of our Savior Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit."

Baptism creates community: it restores the one baptized to fellowship with the community of the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and it joins the one baptized to fellowship with the community of the church, the people of God.

Church Dogmatics 1.1.3 Preaching as "the audible sacrament"

This section was a complete challenge to me. Barth not only discusses preaching, but he discusses why preaching exists, how it is arrived at by an ecclesiology that is itself immersed (baptized) in revelation.

Preaching has always been a given from my youth. We read the Bible. We talk to others about what we’ve read or hear from them what they’ve read. Preaching is this same thing but broadcast out with greater authority due to the calling of the preacher and the deference of the community of hearers.

Yet, this isn’t a preaching supported by dogmatics, rather sociology or cultural anthropology. This is an emotional or intellectual appeal. Not that the preachers from my youth have not been sincere men. Not that they did not understand their own ministries dogmatically--they may have and probably did. No, I mean my understanding was largely a shallow one.

Later Reformed theology taught me to respect the Word preached, but the dogmatic apparatus was still missing.

Now I completely see the oversight; “in this dogmatics preaching is not only assigned less importance, but virtually no importance at all“ (65)! And without the confessional apparatus, how can one truly address oneself to or urge the church on to attend to proclamation? How can one understand what should be preached and why? “Proclamation along these lines can only end with its dissolution. Proclamation as self-exposition (read, oh twenty-first century, the term “authentic” or “authenticity”) must in the long run turn out to be a superfluous and impossible undertaking” (64). Indeed, without preaching the church is either the mystery of performance or a center of social justice practiced by human beings “alone in and with (the) world” (Ibid).

And now I am left to wonder about proclamation as a sacrament. “The Word is the audible sacrament and the sacrament, the visible Word” (71). I may be instructed by preaching, but do I receive grace in the hearing--a grace that allows for the “hearing of the promise” and for “obedience to it” (67)? So is grace available--I speak as if it is a substance--as a punctiliar judgment once-for-all applied or is it an ever flowing stream “whose waters make glad”?

Church Dogmatics 1.1.2

You say what you are. That’s what Barth is getting at in this section. Perhaps “are” is the wrong term, as it presupposes a metaphysic of being (and the personal jury is still out as to whether Barth’s is a metaphysics of ontology). Nevertheless, Barth’s doctrine of revelation--what you say--is dictated by what you are. Say, then, that you are God, then Truth is what you are. So what you say of yourself, what you reveal of yourself, is Truth. Say, then, that you are a human being. Limited. A created thing. A creature. Your “saying” is also limited and created, encompassing at best only a world of created things.

But when the Church becomes--when it is elected in God’s providence for faith in the God-man, Jesus of Nazareth, then it confesses what it knows to be there, but with created lips. And so Truth erupts eschatologically into the world through its confession--a confession it is given, not one it has appropriated, a confession born of seeking not of obtaining. “It does not have to begin by finding or inventing the standard by which it measures [what is true]. It sees and recognizes that this is given within the Church. It is given in its own peculiar way, as Jesus Christ is given, as God in His revelation gives Himself to faith. But it is given” (12).

There are two levels of knowledge, even as they are two levels of what can be expressed. Because it is Jesus who speaks, and because Jesus is the incarnate Son, and because the Son enjoys the pure agape of trinitarian fellowship with the Father, then his word can be trusted. His word, he himself, is an analogia fidei (τὴν ἀναλογίαν τῆς πίστεως) which is a true canon. “He is the truth, not merely in Himself, but also for us as we know Him solely by faith in Jesus Christ” (12).

The one level is a level of perfect comprehension and speech--a “charismatic theology from within” whose characteristic theologian in Paul. The other is steps out after, asking and fumbling according to the ontology of those who ask. “As the Church accepts from Scripture, and with divine authority from Scripture alone, the attestation of its own being as the measure of its utterance . . . (16 emphasis mine). This is a “theology from without” whose characteristic theologians are the second-century apologists. “It alone creates fellowship and can be ecclesiastical and scientific” (22). Nevertheless, it is “always undertaken as an act of penitent obedience” and its chief method is prayer born of faith that the Spirit “will guide you into all truth” (Jn. 16.13 ESV). It believes that “in, with and under the human question [note the inference to Luther’s doctrine of the Eucharistic presence] dogmatics speaks of the divine answer” (12).

I should note, as well, that this two-layered matrix of speech, the Truth and the questions that point to the truth, is very reminiscent of the scholastic argument that the efficacy of the sacrament was not bound to the piety of the officiant, or lack of it.

I like that Barth is not content to set out on beaten paths. He goes to foundations and comes back with a doctrine of revelation that I’ve heard lampooned and spoken against my whole life. Barth’s theology can make a dead dog into divine revelation. He denigrates the scriptures, they say, and dissolves revelation into subjectivity.

Most of these criticisms and the critics that wield them have not read Barth, or, if they have read him, have not attempted to understand him--at least that is my governing hypothesis. I do not think he denigrates church history, the creeds, or the scriptures. They are, in fact, the matrix upon which his Dogmatics is built. So the truth of the matter is more subtle.

I have the feeling Barth is not out to change the accident but the substance of theological activity in the world. And I have a feeling he is wresting the podium from the hands of confident rhetoricians and reminding everyone, “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great” (Prv. 25.6 ESV). The self-revealing of the Triune God is a power beyond the epistemological dictates of scientific reductionism, and He is coming into the world.

And I wonder if Barth is reading Calvin better than Calvin has been read in a very long time. I wonder if Barth is breathing the spirit/Spirit of the Reformers and grasping the true sense of ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda, the church reformed and always reforming, and therefore calling subsequent comfortable Protestant-scholasticism what it is.

Karl Barth; revelation; analogy of faith; election