Marks and Signs

Marks and Signs

The identity of the church as the people of God and the mystical Body of Christ is hidden in the forms and rituals of the church’s life. Even so, theologians through the ages have insisted that there are outward signs that attest the authenticity of any particular church Body, and these continue to be a subject of dispute in academic theology.

Theology tends to divide on the question of whether the Spirit or the Word constitutes the basic evidence for the apostolicity and catholicity of the church. Irenaeus seemed to endorse a pneumatocentric theology when he declared, “Where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church, and every kind of grace.”43 At the same time, he also contended that the Word and the Spirit are the two hands of the Father working together in an indissoluble unity. Moltmann is closer to a pneumatocentric perspective in his claim that “the church is present wherever ‘the manifestation of the Spirit’ takes place.”44 The Reformers and the tradition of Protestant orthodoxy were prone to uphold a logocentric theology in which the church receives its identity and mission from the Word. Calvin asserted, “God begets and multiplies his Church only by means of his word. … It is by the preaching of the grace of God alone that the Church is kept from perishing.”45 Wolfhart Pannenberg, on the other hand, avers that “the Reformation view of the church as a creation of the Word … stands in danger of a one-sided christological constriction” resulting in “a theocracy of proclamation.”46 The Reformation at its best stressed the dialectical inseparability of Word and Spirit, and Pannenberg acknowledges that the fuller Reformation perspective can be retrieved by stressing “the relation of Word to Spirit no less than that of Spirit to Word.”47

Theologians from all communions generally endorse the classical marks of the church as contained in the Nicene Creed—oneness, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity. Contemporary theology, however, is not in agreement on the meaning of these marks. Does oneness refer to the church as an institution or to the invisible fellowship of the saints on earth and in heaven? Does apostolicity signify that the ministers of the church are linked to the apostles through a special rite of laying on of hands by bishops in an unbroken historical succession, or does it not refer to a continuity in the message of faith that was first articulated by the apostles? Nathaniel Micklem voices the concerns of many Protestants in his criticism of the Catholic conception of apostolic succession: “Our protest is not against that which episcopacy represents, but only against that view which would make Word and Sacrament contingent upon the office, not the office on the Word.”48

Roman Catholic theologians are presently rethinking the marks of the church especially in the light of Vatican Council II. For Avery Dulles the unity or oneness that we attribute to the true church is not “the external unity” of a visible institution but rather “the interior unity of mutual charity leading to a communion of friends.”49 On catholicity Dulles maintains that what is most important is “not the accomplished fact of having many members or a wide geographical distribution, but rather the dynamic catholicity of a love reaching out to all and excluding none.”50 Walter Kasper articulates the vision of the church in the new Catholicism:

  The unity and catholicity of the Church are always and in every case still in fieri; they will always remain a task. The solution cannot lie either in mutual absorption or in simple integration of individual ecclesiastical communities, but only in the constant conversion of all—i.e., in the readiness to let the event of unity, already anticipated in grace and sign, occur ever and again in obedience to the one gospel as the final norm in and over the Church.51

The magisterial Reformation was inclined to define the church in terms of the right preaching of the Word and the right administration of the sacraments. Questions that forced themselves to the center of discussion in post-Reformation Protestantism include the extent of the efficacy of Word and sacraments in situations where faith is rare or nonexistent. Moreover, are there other marks besides the Word and sacraments that should be given special attention today?52

In the light of the Pentecostal awakening, the role of signs and wonders as attestations of the gospel has become a major theological issue. Is the message of the church validated by miraculous signs, including physical healings, or is the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit sufficient to make the message persuasive and authentic? P. T. Forsyth mirrors the Reformed distrust of dependence on signs and wonders: “They are tests of nature and not of faith, tests of feeling rather than insight, tests of empirical experience instead of soul experience, of success rather than of devotion.”53 Christoph Blumhardt by contrast is convinced that people on various stages of faith’s journey need signs and wonders: “Even now, during this time when we must have patience and until the time when signs and wonders will be seen everywhere, until all the wretched are truly helped—in this time of battle, we need signs and wonders.”54 It is possible to argue on biblical grounds that signs and wonders may strengthen faith, but they do not demarcate the boundaries of the true church, since they are found in non-Christian religions as well.

Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov expresses a welcome reserve in delimiting the boundaries of the church so that the great host of humanity is summarily excluded: “We know where the Church is, but it is not for us to judge and to say where the Church is not.”55 The missionary proclamation must go out to the whole world, but we dare not presume on where or how the Spirit of God may work, nor should we deny that the hidden Christ may be at work in the most unexpected places in preparing people for the new dispensation of grace.

Donald G. Bloesch, The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 39–41.