Distinction between two churches The first recorded individual in church history to introduce a view of an invisible and a visible church is
Clement of Alexandria. Some have also argued that
Jovinian and
Vigilantius held an invisible church view. The concept was advocated by St
Augustine of Hippo as part of his refutation of the
Donatist sect. However he, as other Church Fathers before him, saw the invisible Church as being contained within the visible Church, unlike the later Protestant reformers who did not identify the Catholic Church as the
true church.
John Wycliffe, often viewed as a
precursor to the Reformation, also believed in an invisible church made of the predestined elect. Another precursor of the Reformation,
Johann Ruchrat von Wesel believed in a distinction between the visible and invisible church. The
Pietist movement later took this concept a step further, formulating the concept of
ecclesiolae in ecclesia ("little churches within the church"). This was viewed as necessary by reformers who hoped to purify a state church; while almost everyone had been baptised as infants, many Pietists believed that most church members were living in sin.
Non-distinction Catholic theology, reacting against the Protestant concept of an invisible Church, emphasized the visible aspect of the Church founded by Christ; in the twentieth century, however, they placed more stress on the interior life of the Church as a supernatural organism, identifying the Church, as in the
encyclical Mystici corporis Christi of
Pope Pius XII, with the Mystical Body of Christ. In Catholic doctrine, the one true Church is the visible society founded by Christ, namely, the
Catholic Church under the global jurisdiction of the
Pope.
Mystici corporis Christi rejected two views of the Church which Catholicism saw as extreme: • A
rationalistic or purely
sociological understanding of the Church, according to which it is merely a human organization with structures and activities, is mistaken. The visible Church and its structures do exist but the Church is more, as it is guided by the
Holy Spirit: Although the
juridical principles, on which the Church rests and is established, derive from the divine
constitution given to it by
Christ and contribute to the attaining of its
supernatural end, nevertheless that which lifts the Society of Christians far above the whole natural order is the Spirit of our Redeemer who penetrates and fills every part of the Church. • An exclusively
mystical understanding of the Church is mistaken as well, because a mystical "Christ in us" union would deify its members, meaning that the acts of Christians are simultaneously the acts of Christ. The theological concept
una mystica persona (one mystical person) refers not to an individual relation but to the unity of Christ with the Church and the unity of its members with Christ in the Church.
Eastern Orthodox theologian
Vladimir Lossky accuses the concept of a Church Invisible of being a "
Nestorian ecclesiology," which would "divide the Church into distinct beings: on the one hand a
heavenly and invisible Church, alone
true and
absolute; on the other, the earthly Church (or rather 'the churches'), imperfect and relative." ==See also==