Does a Church Die?

The Reformed Confessions consider a set of questions concerning what the true Church is. While they each differ slightly in detail they agree on certain principles. The Church is one, not many. It is a company of those chosen by God. It has certain integrity. That is, not every organization calling itself a church, is, in fact the true Church. This opens the question for me concerning whether a true Church ever becomes a false Church.

Knox Confession: “As we believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, so we firmly believe that from the beginning there has been, now is, and to the end of the world shall be, one Kirk (Church), that is to say, one company and multitude of men chosen by God, who rightly worship and embrace him by true faith in Christ Jesus, who is the only Head of the Kirk, even as it is the body and spouse of Christ Jesus.”

Among the signs of the true Church is right worship and true faith in Jesus Christ. We read this in the Second Helvetic Confession.

And those who are such in the Church have one faith and one spirit; and therefore they worship but one God, and him alone they worship in spirit and in truth, loving him alone with all their hearts and with all their strength, praying unto him alone through Jesus Christ, the only Mediator and Intercessor; and they do not seek righteousness and life outside Christ and faith in him. Because they acknowledge Christ the only head and foundation of the Church, and, resting on him, daily renew themselves by repentance, and patiently bear the cross laid upon them. Moreover, joined together with all the members of Christ by an unfeigned love, they show that they are Christ’s disciples by persevering in the bond of peace and holy unity.

When the General Assembly of Presbyterian Church (USA) approves a statement questioning the exclusive place of Jesus in salvation one wonders if that is a sign that many of its members deny the “true faith in Christ.” That statement claims we cannot know if salvation can be secured apart from faith in God through Jesus Christ. They affirm that Jesus is a way to God but perhaps not the only way. Our confessions teach that those in the true Church “do not seek righteousness and life outside Christ and faith in him.”

I am encouraged by the Second Helvetic Confession where it speaks of the Weak Church (my term) and the Weak Believer. The weak and even wayward Church is still the “holy” Church. The writers of the document remind us that the Churches in Corinth and the foolish Galatia congregations, with all their moral and doctrinal error are still called “holy.” [(I Cor. 1:2; Gal. 1:2]  Maybe there is reason to believe that the Presbyterian Church (USA) with all its moral and doctrinal errors is still (by God’s mercy) “holy.”