What Is the Church to a Protestant?
A Catholic who understands the Church's nature—that is, knows his ecclesiology—will have an easier time defending the Church from Protestant attacks.
One of the areas the average Catholic struggles with today is ecclesiology: the study of the nature of the church Christ established. Ecclesiological discussions usually revolve around the attributes of the Church—namely, perpetuity, indefectibility, visibility, and infallibility. We will examine each of these in order to have a better awareness of the church Christ established, and how each fares with those who broke away from the Church during the Protestant revolt.
Indefectibility and perpetuity go hand in hand. The former means that all the Church’s essential features will not fail. The latter means that the Church’s indefectible features will exist until the Second Coming of Christ.
What are these features? We say them when we recite the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed during every Sunday liturgy: the Church is one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic. Indefectibility and perpetuity mean that the Church cannot lose any of these features, and they will exist in every age, from moment the Church was established until the Second Coming.
What is the biblical foundation for these attributes? Christ promised that the “gates of hell” would not prevail against his church (Matt. 16:18). He also promised that he would remain with his church until the end of the age (28:20). These Scripture passages, among others, ensure the church’s indefectibility and perpetuity.
The two attributes of indefectibility and perpetuity especially are a problem for Protestantism, because Protestants struggle to answer how the Church has been indefectibly and perpetually one and apostolic from the first century unto the present. After all, the multiplicity of Protestant denominations makes it hard to provide an objective answer on how the Church is one, and it is difficult to trace Protestant roots to the apostles through an unbreakable line of episcopal ordination.
Thus, Protestants must reinterpret what it means to be one and apostolic in order to preserve these features in their recitation of the Nicene creed. For instance, some Protestants have said they do have apostolic succession, but they define this as merely being in continuity with the preaching of the apostles. Aside from the issue that this redefines what was meant in the creed by apostolic, Catholics too can claim to be in continuity with the preaching of the apostles, but, unlike Protestants, Catholics can also offer objectivity to this claim by appealing to a tangible connection with the apostles through the ordination of the Church’s bishops, which can be traced back to the apostles.
The third attribute mentioned above is the church’s visibility. Most Christians affirm the notion that individual Christians are visibly identifiable. After all, hardly anyone would find it reasonable to claim Christians are disembodied spirits in this present life! Thus, visibility should not be understood as identifying a particular Christian or even a certain Christian ceremony or rite. Rather, it refers to the identifiability of the authority structure that Christ instituted. In other words, Catholics can demonstrate that the Church’s teaching and governing authority (the Magisterium) can be traced back through apostolic succession to the apostles, whom Christ, in Matthew 28, gave full authority to preach, sanctify, and govern. This authority structure is visibly identifiable in the successors of the apostles, the Catholic bishops, and the pope, of which it may be said that “he who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16).
Protestants struggle with the visibility of the Church, since the various forms of Protestantism lack a visibly identifiable authority structure that can trace its roots back to the apostles. For this reason, many Protestants will say the Church is visible insofar as one can see some of those who are true members of Christ’s invisible church, but this invisible church is not identifiable with any visible institution. This again redefines what is meant by visibility, and it forfeits any kind of claim to a visible institution that can be traced back to Christ. This severely weakens Protestantism’s credibility, as any group can claim to participate in an invisible, and thus unidentifiable, church.
Infallibility is the fourth attribute of the Church. This attribute tends to be more familiar to the average person than the other three, and it is commonly known to pertain to the Church’s teaching office. In Matthew 28:18-19, Christ established a teaching office that was to go out into the world and teach all that Christ said should be observed. He also expected this teaching office to endure beyond the apostles, as it was to last “until the end of the age.” Lastly, he guaranteed that this teaching office would be infallible when he promised that the gates of hell “shall not prevail against it” and that the Holy Spirit would “guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13).
Protestants have forfeited this attribute, as they tend to claim that the only infallible rule on earth is Sacred Scripture. It is true that some would say there are other authorities outside Scripture, such as creeds, church councils, or even local church governments. However, they would say these are fallible authorities and must be judged by the sole infallible rule of faith—namely, Scripture. Thus, they have abandoned any notion that there is an infallible teaching office that endures after the apostles.
Certainly, there are responses that Protestants would attempt to offer to the above points. However, they tend to both have forfeited a visibly identifiable authority structure that has indefectibly maintained all its features in every age. Having a better awareness of ecclesiology—especially concerning the Church’s attributes—will help Catholics better engage these separated brethren.