Category Archives: Church History

Church History, Church/Ecclesiology

Paneled Houses

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[This will be a little longer post than normal.  Rather than split it up into parts, I wanted to keep the flow together as I interact with MLJ on a very important, albeit controversial subject.]

3 Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, 4 “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? 5 Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. 6 You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes. Haggai 1:3-6

One of the men from whom I have learned from the most is the late Martyn Lloyd-Jones.  His book The Plight of Man and Power of God was my first exposure to his ministry, but helped me to understand the depravity of man and the sovereignty of God.  His sermons on 1 John were an aid not only my own sermon preparation, but a balm to my own soul when I was bridging the gap as an interim youth pastor.  While his book Spiritual Depression helped navigate me out of the darkness that came with being passed over for a full-time pastoral position.  More recently, his lesser known message, Ecclesiola in Ecclesia completely rocked my ecclesiastical world, from which I have yet to recover.  Alongside this, another prominent message, placed into print, has impacted my views on the nature of the church.  It was delivered to the Westminster Assembly at Welwyn on June 19, 1963, later titled “‘Consider Your Ways’: The Outline of a New Strategy” and may be found in the collected works entitled Knowing the Times.  The text for this message has been included above, from Haggai 1:4-5.

After introducing his message, and walking through his reasons for the subject, Lloyd-Jones says, “…our tendency is to say that all is well.  We are in our ‘cieled [paneled] houses’ (Hag. 1:4); everything is all right with me; my church is flourishing; everything is going well; and we tend to forget the conditions that prevail in the greater part of the country.  I am increasingly appalled at this and troubled about it: faithful evangelical people all over the country cannot get fellowship, cannot get spiritual food, and are at their wits’ end as to what is to be done in their areas.  This is a tremendous challenge to us.” (Knowing the Times, pg. 169)

From here, Lloyd-Jones proceeds to decry various evangelical movements and societies which in his day tried to rectify these issues by unifying for various causes.  This leads him to the major question of his message: What is the Nature of the Church?

“In the light of what I have been saying it is obvious that it is the nature of the church which has become the major question and problem.  What is the Christian church?  What is the real nature of the church?  How do you decide that?  We are all agreed in saying that you can only decide the question by the Scripture, but, as I have already hinted, when it comes to the realm of practice and the realm of actual decisions so often we are influenced more by tradition and history than we are by purely biblical exposition.  We are so influenced by the need to maintain the status quo that we start with that rather than with the scriptural teaching.” (KTT pg. 178)

Realizing, with Lloyd-Jones, that this is indeed THE question that needs to be asked and answered, given the current condition of evangelicalism some 55 years after his message, has led me to read, write, and study much regarding how our practice of doing church, whether you call it liturgy or a worship service or something else, has come to be what it is.  Regardless of where we find ourselves on Sunday morning, is there anything that we participate in that looks like or even resembles anything from the New Testament?  As Lloyd-Jones points out, not only in this message but consistently in his ministry, when faced with this question we are guilty of the great error of reading our existing situation back into Scripture, our inherited position as he calls it.

“The argument is that throughout the centuries certain things have happened and developed so that we find ourselves confronted by an existing situation.  That is all right as an actual historical statement but if we make the traditional ‘existing situation’ our starting point, we face a grave danger.” (KTT pg. 178)

Looking to our present circumstances, even looking to history, particularly the post-Reformation era, is simply a blind guide.  The fact is that if we were to take Scripture alone into the Congo jungle, having no prior knowledge of what a church should look like, it would be impossible to produce what it is that we see and experience today.  Therefore we must, as Lloyd-Jones says, return to the New Testament.

After making the case that our churches are given much to the practice of expediency of the times in which we exist, rather than a consistent application from Scripture, he turns to his second great question, “What is a church?”

This is a question that I’ve Iabored long and hard over, fighting through the tendency to answer this question without reading the present situation back into Scripture.  I commend to you the series on ekklesia found in the Doctrinal Index Tab.

The answer, according to Lloyd-Jones, is that the New Testament picture of the church is, “a gathering of people who have been ‘born again’.  It is the association of people who are the body of Christ and member in particular.  It is those who are ‘in Christ’.  That is how the New Testament regards them; that is how it always addresses them.  They meet together, conscious of His presence in the midst, conscious that they are a spiritual society with the Holy Spirit as their companion, as the one who leads them, and the one who inspires them, as the one who has been given to them to lead them into all the truth.” (KTT p. 179)

This definition is a good working definition and a starting point for understanding and defining a church, or better an ekklesia.  Even using Lloyd-Jones’ definition, is it fitting to refer to a universal church?  This becomes one of his closing questions for discussion, “Is there anything spoken of in the New Testament apart from the local church?” (KTT pg. 193)  This isn’t a fringe, Plymouth Brethren, or marginalized Anabaptist asking such questions, this is the good doctor, the revered Martyn Lloyd-Jones.  Again, questions like this from him is why there are 8 posts and Lord willing more to come untangling this misapplication of a universal church (see the Doctrinal Index).

Returning to our question from Lloyd-Jones on what is the church, he brings us to Acts 2:41-47.  We’ll look at this passage in depth another time, but for now conclude with Lloyd-Jones, “Now that is the church.  The people who are being saved, who believe the truth, are conscious of this change in their lives; they have been taken out of the world, and are conscious of a new life and a new outlook, and have the desire to be with others who are the same; and the others gladly receive them.”

Next, Jones asks, “What, then, are the marks of a true church?”  This is naturally the next question.  What should a church look like or how does the ekklesia function when it gathers together.  Of the entire message, this is the only point of Jones’ that I would offer push back on, mainly because the answer to the previous two questions define how this particular question gets answered.  That said, Jones answers the question in accordance with traditional reformed views, The Preaching of the Gospel, The administration of the sacraments, and The administration of discipline are the marks of a church.

Finally, after making some applications of his message thus far to the situations and occurrences of his own day, Lloyd-Jones turns to his conclusion, a series of questions, in which he clearly points out that his goal is not to suggest a blueprint or a solution, only to ask questions and point us back to Scripture as the source of answers.

His first concluding question, which we mentioned earlier, concerns whether or not the New Testament speaks of anything other than the local church (He seems to be arguing against a visible, Catholic church).  Second, Jones says that in our look at history, we must return to the first two centuries.  He cautions that much of our time has been spent concentrating on the third and fourth centuries.  One may argue that this myopic view of history has resulted in a distorted view of the church, for which we are paying the price today.  Jones’ emphasis on the first two centuries is exactly right, and the reason why in our look at the universal church theory, we began with this period in order to see how the catholicity of the church came to be and why.

Third, Jones says that we then need to re-examine the history of Constantine and his supposed conversion.  This occurs in the fourth century, but remember that we must begin in the centuries prior in order to understand the events and circumstances that led to this.  Here is where we begin to find the putrid marriage of church with state.  The Reformers, as much as we may revere and appreciate them, were wrong to limit their views of church vs. state to Augustine and more specifically Constantine.  Jones writes,

“We have to be bold enough, in the light of the New Testament teaching, to query the most honoured names among us.  We have to venture to question and to query Martin Luther and John Calvin.  It would be a pathetic condition if we found ourselves saying that Calvin could never be wrong.  We have to question everybody, not that we think we are perfect – we know we are not – but we recognize that these men were fallible as we are.  We thank God for them; we rever their memories; but we do not believe they were perfect.  And, after all, they were men involved in such a fight and conflict that they could not possibly cover the whole field, and they tended to take certain things over.  To me, one of the tragedies of the Reformation was the way in which Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli tended to take over the notion of the state church.  They did it in different ways, but I think they all did it.” (KTT, page 194)

There is much more that could be said on this enlightening point from Jones, perhaps in a blog post soon, however the take away is that we simply cannot assume the position of the Reformers and adopt that to the twenty-first century.  They were working in a context that was coming out of the authoritarian abuses of the Roman Catholic Church.  Therefore, their audience was largely ignorant and unbelieving.  Why did Calvin preach every single day?  To get the Word of the Lord out to a starved and deprived people.  Unfortunately, as Lloyd-Jones so deftly points out, their position was proverbially out of the frying pan and into the fire.  In order to keep the momentum of the Reformation, avoid utter chaos from growing larger than it already had, and to provide protection against the power from Rome, the first and second generation reformers aligned their movement with the State, maintaining the concept of sacralism.

Not only the first couple generations of Reformers, but this continued into the time of the Puritans as well.  Per Jones,

“they all believed in a state church up to a point.  Their differences were about what form it should take.  We must examine whether they were not all wrong; whether their belief can be justified from the New Testament; and whether they were not guilty of accepting an inherited position.”

Though I genuinely love the Puritans, this indeed was their chief error.  They made some corrections to the positions of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, and they fought against the pretentious ‘church’ buildings of the day, but they didn’t go far enough.  What was their reward for maintaining an inherited position and then realizing its error?  The Great Ejection of 1662.  If the redwoods and oaks of the Reformation were guilty of adopting an inherited position, it is sheer arrogance to think that the same thing is not occurring in our day.  Therefore we must, must, return to the New Testament scriptures.

The final two questions that Lloyd-Jones poses are, “when does the church become apostate?” and the exercise of gifts in the church, specifically, “are we giving the members of the church an adequate opportunity to exercise their gifts?  Are our churches corresponding to the life of the New Testament church?  Or is there too much concentration in the hands of ministers and clergy?”  This section is summarized by the following lengthy, but nevertheless profound statement

“When one looks at the New Testament church and contrasts the church today, even our churches, with that church, one is appalled at the difference.  In the New Testament church one sees life and vigour and activity; one sees a living community, conscious of its glory and of its responsibility, with the whole church, as it were, an evangelistic force.  The notion of people belonging to the church in order to come to sit down and fold their arms and listen, with just two or three doing everything, is quite foreign to the New Testament, and it seems to me it is foreign to what has always been the characteristic of the church in times of revival and awakening.” (KTT, pg. 196)

As he concludes his message, Lloyd-Jones dismisses the idea that he has developed a new blueprint for the church, instead he says, “I do think…the time has come when it behooves us, indeed it is our bounden duty – because we are who and what we are and because of the grace of God to us – to face this question, of the nature of the church, together.

We cannot just go on in the position we have inherited, which we have inherited from mid- and post- Victorianism and Edwardianism.  The machine is still running so many of these things, but is it running to any good purpose?  It is for us to call a halt and to stop.” (KTT, pg. 196)

In my experience, I know of no other question that will generate more controversy, more side-eyed glances, more suspicion, than what is the nature of the church?  Assuming the inherited position is not only expected, it is enforced.  In fact some have gone so far as to suggest that one should not even ask this question, for fear of what might be found.  Jones alludes to as much in the conclusion of his message.

What then are we to do?  Simply put, a reexamination of Scripture on the nature – form and function – of the church, or as we have seen in studies here, the ekklesia.  Those in professional, paid, pastoral positions who assume the inherited position and refuse the allowance of others to Scripturally examine the nature of the church commit malpractice.   Those of us who sit amongst the pews and follow the inherited position like lemmings are guilty of a dereliction of duty.  Martyn Lloyd-Jones was not representing a fringe position in his clarion call to return to the New Testament description and teaching of the church.  His message was as relevant 55 years ago as it is now.  We would do well to follow his guidance and head his call.

 

Knowing the Times

Bible Study, Christian Living, Church History, Hebrews, Theology in Practice

To Let Go and Let God or Strive to Enter

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Several years ago, I was introduced to the popular phrase, “Let go and Let God.”  It’s popularity with the influence of social media has only increased in the last decade because it fits easily into posts, tweets, memes, or whatever the latest medium pithy quotes might fit best (t-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, etc.).  In these uses, and in a wide variety of others, you’ll often find this saying used in reference to struggling through daily life issues independent of whether or not they are spiritual.  For instance, it could be work/employment, financial, family/relationships all which might require the individual to simply, “Let go and Let God.”

Summarizing the origins of this phrase in his helpful overview, No Quick Fix, Andy Naselli, notes its roots may be found in the theology of Hannah Whitall Smith’s The  Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, in which she provides the basis for this phrase as “entire surrender”, i.e. letting go, and “absolute faith”, i.e. letting God.  Since then, circa 1885, the concept has evolved through the teachings of the Higher Life movement and Keswick theology proponents, including more recently by dispensationalism, which was heavily influenced by these aforementioned teachings.  While this phrase, Let go and Let God, may sound like good advice or even a proper exercise of spiritual maturity, it is in fact wrong, misleading, and potentially dangerous.

In Hebrews chapters 3 and 4 we are introduced to the wilderness generation, i.e. those who were delivered out of Egyptian captivity by God through the leadership of Moses up to the doorstep of the Promised Land.  This group is held up as an example of unfaithfulness and disobedience in their rebellion against God and His subsequent punishment of prohibition from entering the Promised Land.  For more, see this post on Hebrews 3 The Builder of the House.

This is the context upon which the Author draws support for his exhortation for believers not to be like the Wilderness Generation, which fell at the hand of God’s wrath, but instead we are to strive to enter His rest

“Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.” Hebrews 4:11

The word translated in the ESV as strive, spoudazo, carries the idea of exertion or diligent effort.  It’s root is also used in Hebrews 6:11, “And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end “

The word of exhortation in Hebrews 4:11 is for believers to exert themselves by faith and obedience, with a constant, diligent effort until they reach the finish line and enter God’s rest.  It is an effort that is led by the Spirit, fueled by grace looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, who has secured our victory and will bring us to the completion of our race.  Nevertheless, it is an active Christian life, not a passive one.  It is a Spirit-led life in which we are clothed with the armor of God and equipped to wield the sword of the Spirit with the expectation of battle.

Letting go and Letting God tells us to, “lie quietly before [God].  Open all the avenues of our being, and let Him come in and take possession of every chamber.  Especially give Him your heart – the very seat of your desires, the throne of your affections. ” (Naselli, pg. 39-40)  However the book of Hebrews presents a drastically different, less passive approach to our pursuit of holiness, which culminates in the finality of reaching God’s eschatological* rest.

It calls us to strive.  To earnestly pursue.  To diligently make it our business.  There is not a letting go, there is a holding on, yet in our Christian duty to pursue Christ with a passion and mortify the deeds of the flesh we may become faint and weary, as did the Wilderness Generation.  We may encounter opposition from within and persecution from without.  Yet it is especially in these moments that we are exhorted to keep on believing and keep on obeying, persevering to the end.  It is here that we may realize that the holding on was through no efforts of our own, but by the preserving hand of Almighty God who has held on to us every step of the way.

 

 

*eschatological – final; ultimate end.

Church History, Church/Ecclesiology

The Historical Development of the Universal Church Theory – Part VII

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[On Thursdays, beginning March 8, 2018, I will publish a series of posts on The Historical Development of the Universal Church.  I began addressing this at an introductory level last year (see index tab) and with nearly a full year of thoughtful reflection, I’ve prepared a series that will overview this important, yet oft-misunderstood doctrine.  It will not appeal to everyone and may not interest anyone, but for the sake of clarifying my own thoughts, at least, I want to publish them here.  Hopefully they will be instructive and thought-provoking.  The majority of them have already been written, so as not to interfere with regular posts.]

The Donatist Controversy, born out of the Diocletian persecution (305 A.D.) raged on from 311 to around 361 A.D., a period marked with ebbs and flows of violence from both sides and forced submission of the Donatists to the newly minted church-state.  By 361, the catholics considered the debate beneath them, resulting in largely a peaceful coexistence.  For thirty-plus years, this controversy laid relatively dormant.

In 393, interest in the Donatists was renewed by one of the most prominent and significant theologians in history, Augustine.  From here until 411, Augustine stirred back up opposition to the Donatists and sought, first their reconciliation but later their coercion to the catholic church.  It is properly at the feet of Augustine where one may find the early formulation of Roman Catholic ecclesiology as well as what would become Protestantism.  It’s with him that our discussion of the universal church theory in the early centuries reaches its apex.

Regarding Augustine’s position on ecclesiology, Louis Berkhof states he “was not altogether consistent in his conception of the Church.”   This inconsistency reverberates to this day and is partly the motivation behind this entire series of posts on the historical development of the universal church theory. This  confusion of Augustine’s is fleshed out more clearly in the following summary from Berkhof

“On the one hand he shows himself to be the predestinarian, who conceives of the Church as the company of the elect, the communio sanctorum, who have the Spirit of God and are therefore characterized by true love.  The important thing is to be a living member of the Church so conceived, and not to belong to it in a merely external sense.  But on the other hand he is the Church-man, who adheres to the Cypranic idea of the Church at least in its general aspects.  The true Church is the catholic Church, in which the apostolic authority is continued by episcopal succession.  It is the depository of divine grace, which it distributes through the sacraments.  For the present this Church is a mixed body, in which good and evil members have a place.  In his debate with the Donatists he admitted, however, that the two were not in the Church in the same sense.  He also prepared the way for the Roman Catholic identification of the Church and the Kingdom of God.”

With Augustine, we find two competing positions on the nature of the church.  First, the church is the communion of the saints, comprised of the elect, those who have been regenerated by the Spirit, and those of internal membership, not external.  To which the dissenting groups that we have discussed in previous posts might give a hearty ‘amen!’

On other hand, as Berkhof notes, Augustine is a product of Cyprianic thought and remains consistent with the view espoused of the day where church refers to a catholic, external, institution which is led and ruled by the episcopate.  It is not merely comprised of the elect, nor is it merely a communion of the saints, but is a mixed body, good and evil, wheat and tares, sheep and goats.  Is it any wonder then that both Protestants and Roman Catholics stake a claim to him?  Augustine is often claimed by the former for his soteriology, but by the latter for his ecclesiology.

From 393-405 A.D., Augustine waged a war of preaching and propaganda against the Donatists.  In the former, he labored for reform amongst the loose and lax catholics that had come to mar the purity of the church.  In the latter, he sought those bishops who had been removed for disciplinary reasons.  Logically, appealing to the marginalized and outcast is generally the path for garnering public support.  But make no mistake, Augustine preached, verbally and in written form, with conviction.

In 405, Augustine’s war against the Donatists took the form of ‘governmental suppression’.  It was in this year that the Edict of Unity was passed which labeled the Donatists as heretics, a label that would last in perpituity as well as making them subject to heresy laws, which resulted in essentially their disbanding.  Again, the work of Christian sacralism.  This period is also marked by Augustine’s well known theory of coercion, “compel them to come in” taken from Luke 14:23, “And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.”  In a letter to Vicentious he writes

I have therefore yielded to the evidence afforded by these instances which my colleagues have laid before me. For originally my opinion was, that no one should be coerced into the unity of Christ, that we must act only by words, fight only by arguments, and prevail by force of reason, lest we should have those whom we knew as avowed heretics feigning themselves to be Catholics. But this opinion of mine was overcome not by the words of those who controverted it, but by the conclusive instances to which they could point.

The Donatist Controversy came to an end in 411, nearly 100 years after it began.  The catholic Emperor called for a comparison of the two sides, a collatio, over which a catholic, Marcellinus, presided.  Not surprisingly, the catholic side prevailed.  In 412, taxes and heavy fines were levied against all those who failed to join the catholic church, again the power and leverage of Christian sacralism at work.

With Augustine, his own confusion and lack of clarity with regard to the church is clearly one that has been perpetuated throughout history.  Remember that our 17th Century Westminster Confession definition of the universal church was both visible and invisible, extending to the elect of all ages.  This dichotomy is rooted in Augustine’s ecclesiology, though he had yet to fully make the distinction between visible and invisible.  In fact, Augustine’s assertion of the church as the elect or communio sanctorum would largely fade away for nearly a thousand years.

In the Patristic Period, the universal church exclusively referred to a visible, external, and headed by the bishop, church.  I’ve found no evidence among the historians to conclude otherwise.  It excommunicated those who disagreed and marginalized those who dissented.  Once it married the state, it then coerced with physical force, tariffs, and later physical death.

As noted, until Augustine, the doctrine of the universal church had been largely focused on an external, visible entity with the bishop at its head.  As such, they were able to concentrate on unity, as a catholic church, against “heresies”.  Augustine, perhaps recognizing the inconsistency with this position, also recognizes that the “church” is comprised of the elect.  His difficulty comes when making a defense against the Donatists where he puts forth the teaching of the church as a mixed community.

This mixed community, for Augustine, finds its source in Matthew 13 with the parable of the weeds.

24 He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, 25 but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. 27 And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 29 But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”

Our Lord provides the interpretation for this parable

36 Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples came to him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” 37 He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40 Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, 42 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.

Excerpts from Augustine’s interpretation are as follows:

You will easily understand, beloved brethren, the hidden meaning of this Gospel, when you remember what we said about some other words of Holy Scripture comparing the just and the wicked in the Church of God to the wheat and the cockle. By this figure we are taught that the threshing-floor is not to be left before the time of the harvest, that the cockle may not be taken away without being separated from the wheat; for the floor would be deprived of its due, and the wheat thus taken off could not be preserved in the barn.

and

But they [Donatists] will, perhaps, say, in order to excuse their errors and justify their conduct, that the Sacred Books were once handed over to the pagans by some Christians afraid of torments and tortures. But since these Christians being unknown, cannot be discovered, now this one and then another is accused of that crime. Yet, whatever may be the truth about these Christians, I ask whether their infidelity has destroyed the Faith which comes from God? Is it not the same Faith that God once promised Abraham, saying that all nations should be blessed in his seed? And what are we taught by this Faith? To let both, that is, the good seed and the cockle, the just and the wicked, grow up in the field of the Church, namely, the world, until the time of the harvest, the end of the world.

and again from Chapter 9 in the City of God

But while the devil is bound, the saints reign with Christ during the same thousand years, understood in the same way, that is, of the time of His first coming.  For, leaving out of account that kingdom concerning which He shall say in the end, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, take possession of the kingdom prepared for you,” the Church could not now be called His kingdom or the kingdom of heaven unless His saints were even now reigning with Him, though in another and far different way; for to His saints He says, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”  Certainly it is in this present time that the scribe well instructed in the kingdom of God, and of whom we have already spoken, brings forth from his treasure things new and old.  And from the Church those reapers shall gather out the tares which He suffered to grow with the wheat till the harvest, as He explains in the words “The harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.  As therefore the tares are gathered together and burned with fire, so shall it be in the end of the world.  The Son of man shall send His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all offenses.”  Can He mean out of that kingdom in which are no offenses?  Then it must be out of His present kingdom, the Church, that they are gathered.

…Therefore the Church even now is the kingdom of Christ, and the kingdom of heaven.

It is plain from the sermon above, that Augustine conflated the church with the world, thereby concluding that the church = the field in the parable from Matthew 13.  From his words in the City of God, this reveals a deeper hermeneutical error in which he equated the kingdom with the church.  This interpretation remained largely intact throughout the medieval period, lending itself to the development of the Roman Catholic Church, until the Reformation of the 16th Century and later where it clearly influenced the Westminster Confession articles on the nature of the church.

The Patristic doctrine of the universal church was clearly in reference to an external, visible, and institutional church, which later joined hands with the state.  This nature of the church reached its apex in the teaching of Augustine, who did not oppose the historical teaching, i.e. from Cyprian, but instead upheld it finding exegetical proofs in Matthew 13, et.al.  This interpretation allowed him to understand and explain why the universal church was so morally bankrupt and equipped him to defend against the arguments of the Donatists.

Unfortunately, his interpretation of the field as the church, rather than the world, undercuts this entire notion of a universal church as it had come to be expressed by the apostolic fathers, from approximately 100-451 A.D.