by Noel Smith — Founding Editors (1950-1974) of the Baptist Bible Tribune
From a series of articles published in 1955
I have emphasized in previous articles that the Greek word ekklesia was translated church instead of assembly by the King James revisers, but from here on out, in the interest of smooth reading, I am going to uniformly employ the term church.
In the New Testament, we have the church, first of all as a universal institution. We have the church in abstract, as in Matthew 16:18 and Ephesians 5:22. But what a great many people forget is, before an institution can mean anything, it must be translated into the concrete. It must be particularized. It must be localized. As Gilbert K. Chesterton said, “Nothing is real until it is local.” The church as an institution is meaningless until it assumes concrete shape and form.
Now, conceivably, the church could have been particularized as a universal monarchy with a succession of bishops — as the Roman Catholics claim. It could conceivably have been particularized in regional form, or in some other form.
But when you turn to the New Testament what do you find? You find that when the church assumes concrete shape and form it is the form of a local, organized, visible, independent, complete assembly. In the New Testament, you don’t find the “the church” at all; you find churches — the church at Jerusalem, the church at Antioch, the church at Corinth, the church at Ephesus, the church at Philippi. There are the churches of Galatia, and the churches of Asia. You don’t find the Southern Missionary Baptist Church. You don’t find the General Baptist Church. You don’t find the Roman Catholic Church. You don’t find the Episcopal Church. You don’t find the Pentecostal Church. You don’t find the Methodist Church. You don’t find the Presbyterian Church. You don’t find the Four Square Church. You don’t find the Central Assembly.
In the New Testament you find only local churches. And you find local churches from Jerusalem clear to the last chapter of Revelation. “The church” is not a New Testament term. It is not New Testament language. The New Testament term is churches.
Nearly everybody on earth refuses to acknowledge this. The Apostles’ Creed refused to recognize it. “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church.”
I don’t. I believe in New Testament churches. (Half the Baptist churches are not New Testament churches; they range all the way from Unitarian to third-rate Sunday civic clubs.) In the New Testament there is no “true, invisible, universal church.” The church is universal, but there is no universal church. The family is universal, but there is no universal family. The jury is an English institution, but there is no English Jury.
You don’t have the family until you first have local, visible families. You don’t have the jury until you first have local, visible juries. You don’t have the church until you first have local visible churches.
I love all my brethren in Christ. If a 300 lb. Negro in an African jungle is in Christ and Christ is in him, that man is my brother. (Editor’s note: Mr. Smith wrote these words in 1955 when the word “Negro” was commonly used where we would more likely use the descriptors “black man” or “African-American.” More than a few of Mr. Smith’s counterparts in the South would have refused to call a black man a brother in Christ in those days, so while the language may seem impolite to us today, the point he was making was valid.) And I will treat him as my brother, although I will not demand that his habits be like mine. I won’t demand that he take a cold bath every morning if he doesn’t want to. But I will love him.
But when I hear these brethren talking about belonging to “the true, invisible, universal church,” I want to kick them on the shin. Brother, you are not nearly so pious as you sound. Why don’t you take your collections from your “true, invisible, universal” church? When collection time comes, you want a local, visible church; local visible ushers, local, visible collection plates and visible lucre — preferably the folding kind.
Are you a member of the “true, universal, invisible” family?
Woman is a universal institution. But none but bachelors and theologians are interested in a generic, abstract, universal, invisible woman. A real man wants a woman particularized, visible, and localized — preferably by the lakeside, gazing at the moonbeams teasing the waters, while wandering zephyrs toy with her hair. I think I can venture to assert, without fear of successful contradiction, that when my universal, invisible, true church brethren want lips to kiss, they want visible, material, perfumed lips. (To my confirmed bachelor friends I humbly apologize for embarrassing you. And I trust I am not inadvertently guilty of laying temptation in your pathway. But, really, there ain’t nothing like it.)
When does your “true, universal, invisible” church ordain elders, and where does it ordain them? When does your “true, invisible, universal” church appoint deacons, and where does it appoint them? When does your true, invisible, universal” church authorize the baptism of converts, and where does it do it? When does your “true, invisible, universal” church observe the Lord’s Supper, and where does it observe it? The Bible says that Christians should not forsake the assembling of themselves together. Where does your “true, invisible, universal” church assemble, and how often does it assemble? Which leads in public prayer? Who takes the offering that has been laid aside as God has prospered?
The church must exercise discipline over its members. “But if he neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church” (Matthew 18:17). Come now, brother: tell me how two or three visible church members can bring a visible, disorderly brother before your “true, universal, invisible” church?
Those who talk so piously about “the true, invisible, universal” church aren’t nearly so profound as they sound. It’s pretty shallow philosophy. The original purpose of God in creating Adam and his race was to materialize His Spirit. The invisible God would become visible; He would manifest Himself in visible, material, local form. That is the philosophy of creation. That is the philosophy of the Incarnation. “The Word became flesh.” God became man. In the Last Adam, God became visible, material, local (as He had in the first Adam). In Christ dwelt “all the fullness of the Godhead BODILY.”
What is the philosophy of the church? The local church as a corporate entity is “the body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:27). The church is Christ in visible form. The church is Christ in flesh and blood. The church is Christ in the heat and cold, in famine and peril, in war and pestilence. As He was sent by His Father in material form — so we as Christians, and as a church in this weary world, are sent.
Why, brother, the whole emphasis is on, not invisibility; but on just the opposite — VISIBILITY.
If I, a visible man, am flat on my visible back, on a visible bed in a visible hospital, I don’t want some invisible pastor of some “true, invisible, universal” church flying through the window in the form of some kind of a pious ghost; I want a visible preacher from a visible church to come to see me. I want him to extend to me a visible hand, and I want to hear and see a visible man reading the Bible and praying.
Your abstract, institutional love and compassion are not worth a thin dime to a fellow lying on a hospital bed. I know that from experience.
We are indebted to the Protestant Reformation, not the New Testament, for “the true, universal, invisible” church. In those heavy, dark days, the Roman Catholic Church, sustained by the civil treasury and sword, claimed that the Church — and the only Church — was the visible, monarchial Roman Catholic Church. In an effort to counteract that false claim and its devastating spiritual and moral effects, the Protestants claimed that “the true” church “may exist without visible form, because it is both visible and invisible. The invisible church is composed of all who are united to Christ. The visible church consists of all who profess to be united to Christ.”
In 1561 the Confession of Faith of Scotland said: “This (the Catholik) Kirk is invisible, knowin onlie to God, who allone knowth whome he has chosin, and comprehendis alsweall the Elect that be departed, (Commounlie called the Kirk Trimphant), as those that yit leve and feght against syne and Sathan.”
And so, eventually, “the universal, invisible” church included the dead in Christ.
In the New Testament — to go back a little way — wherever you find the church particularized, you find a local, visible church. And that is the only kind you do find. This New Testament Christianity not only has a faith, it has an order as well. Ignore the order and you won’t long have the faith. The Apostle Paul is just as authoritative when he is talking of “the churches” as he is when he is talking of the resurrection.
Ignoring the order of Christianity has been the chief contributor of this current sentimental, subjective religion which has substituted Reader’s Digest for the Bible and Norman Vincent Peale for St. Paul. All of your high and holy feelings and intentions are worthless unless you have a method of translating them into the concrete. In the New Testament when you find the church in the concrete, it is CHURCHES, not “the church.”
*Adapted from Noel Smith, “New Testament Christianity, Part VI: Church or Churches?” Baptist Bible Tribune (Springfield, MO), Vol. VI, No. 3, July 29, 1955, pp. 4-5, and Noel Smith, “The Care of the Churches, not the Church was Upon Him,” Baptist Bible Tribune (Springfield, MO), Vol. VI, No. 12, October 7, 1955, p. 4.