The Incarnation and the Doctrine of the Church

It matters where we begin with our theologizing.  Calvin began with the sovereignty of God and produced a powerful and formidible structure but missed the mark  when it comes to correspondence of his thought with that of the Fathers.  Scripture gives us a better place, as far as Economic thought about the Truth is concerned. (The Greek Fathers of the Fourth Century made a clear distinction between theologia and economia, which were based on two different aspects of church life. On the one hand was the direct experience of the Trinity, with no references to the activities of God in the world. On the other hand was the philosophically developed teaching on the incarnation, salvation, the incarnation, the church and its mysteries, the second coming of Christ and so forth. The Fathers called this latter teaching  economia.  http://books.google.com/books?id=Jah8iEYDxtUC&pg=PA56&lpg=PA56&dq=economia+and+theology+orthodox&source=bl&ots=1k5sXvNtjN&sig=Xha-ifQOrwfU10JtLSgqEAWDVi4&hl=en&ei=iB4PSueYEZWstgftxuSICA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4)  Scripture tells us that the foundational confession is that of the Incarnation. We glean this from I John 4:1.   That this is so is because the Truth is Jesus Christ who is fully human and fully Divine, united in one Person, and who in Himself unites all Truth both of creation and of the Uncreated.  

The Economia of Christian thought wherever it proceeds must of necessity, confess the Incarnation and its implications to be thoroughly Christian, so that men have minds remade and transformed by the light of Christ (Romans 12:1,2).  

Ecclesiology, the study of the Church, falls under the domain of economia, and because the Church is the body of Christ, manifesting His Life in the visible world, it is also a subset of Christology.  The Church is the on-going ministry of Jesus Christ in the world, according to Grace and the Energies of God.  Consequently, the things that pertain to the Incarnation  in the Union of Two Essences in the One Person, pertain also according to the Church  in the Union of Two Energies, in the One Person of Jesus Christ.  (definition:  The Energies of God are the presence of God outside of His Essence.  The Energies are knowable; the Essence is Unknowable; the Energies are expressed in His Immanence; the Essence in His Transendence (see The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware).  Thus, the Church of necessity is both fully human, having as the body of Christ a many-membered incorporation with all the human implications thereof,  and also fully Divine, having as Its head, the fully Divine Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, whose Energies fully animate the Church.  Any ecclesiology, then of necessity, must have both components, to fully confess the Incarnation.  

In the 11th Century, the Bishop of Rome asserted as his right to rule over the other Bishops of the Church, including the right to alter the Creed which had been agreed upon in Council of all the Bishops including the Bishop of Rome.  He was the first protestant in this sense, asserting the right of an individual over the universal claim of the Church in fulness to be the Foundation of the Church. In the 16th Century, the consequences of the unilateral assertion of authority led to a deep distrust of the same by Western Christians and produced the Reformation.  The leaders of the Reformation for the most part held to a doctrine of the Church consistent with the Fathers in that they held to a doctrine of the Visible Church, but in consequence of the lamentable disunity of doctrine and practice and administration that emerged immediately upon the heels of the Reformation, the idea of an Invisible Church came to be broadly and popularly held amongst the children of the Reformation.  In the contemporary Protestant world, so much has the notion taken hold that now it is considered hubris and the height of arrogance and unenlightenment to assert, in any fashion, a doctrine of a Visible Church.  

How does that square however with the Incarnation?  An Invisible Church, though it is described in different ways, asserts that the Church is only known unto God, and that it consists of all true believers. The visible expressions of Christian life on earth are given a lesser status. For the Anglicans, at least in their Classical variant, speak of the branches of the Church.  Others speak of a distinction between the Church which is visible and the institutional Church which is not. Others also speak of the Church which is invisible and the clubs of Christians which are visible and that have particular rules that they embrace that give them visible historicity in distinction to the invisible Church.  

However, the invisible church doctrine is expressed, it devolves to one uncomfortable fact, that the Church, since it is invisible is not fully human in the totality of that word.  It does not have a historical footprint; it does not have institution which is the means for propagating and maintaining a historical presence; it doest not have a visible human authority for making decisions on earth that are binding on heaven, nor does it carry out in the visible world those things that Christ did in the world as the visible and Incarnate Lord, most chiefly, the forgiveness of sins.  Forgiveness of sins, in the invisible Church is not done at all on earth but only in the Divine and has no human component, being only the acts of the Divine and invisible and spiritual savior.  

The invisible Church then posits less than the full humanity of the Church, in favor of its 

Divinity.  In the Great Councils of the Undivided Church, this same expression of belief with respect to Christology was called monophysitism and to hold it was to hold the monophysite heresy, which was rejected by the 4th Council of the Church.  The Invisible Church doctrine is Christologically monophysite and is an inadequate expression of Christology in the doctrine of the Church.  

One may ask does it make any difference and I would suggest that it leads immediately to a form of sin, the sin of schism, or at least tends to it; for it makes any attempt to practice the visible unity of the Church wrong-headed, and any recognition of Insitutional authority suspect, leading to all sorts of anarchies and the flourishing of a multitude of heresies in thought and practice to the inordinate expression of the individual , in the place of the manifestation of Jesus Christ, in His Fullness, in His Body the Church.