Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus II (Pars Altera): Demonstratio Catholica

The defenders of the invisible Church themselves appeal to certain texts from the mouth of Christ, the apostles, and Christian antiquity. And indeed:

1. From the mouth of Christ they cite these words: Mt 13, 44: "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in a field." But it is not the external organism of the Church, but the internal worth of the Church or of the messianic kingdom that is compared to a hidden treasure. That the Church herself is visible is evident from the antecedent and consequent context, where the kingdom of heaven is likened to the grain of mustard seed and to the net.¹ But even in the text the kingdom of heaven is presupposed to be a visible treasure, albeit hidden; for in what way could it be found, if it were invisible?

Lc 17, 20. 21: "The kingdom of God does not come with observation (μετὰ παρατηρήσεως); neither shall they say: behold here, or behold there. For behold, the kingdom of God is within you (ἐντὸς ὑμῶν)." The meaning is that the kingdom of God was not to come with that external apparatus with which the Jews expected the messianic-political or -eschatological kingdom; rather, Christ announces that the messianic kingdom had already come without noise and was in the midst of the Jews, since the Messiah stood among them, as John the Baptist had already affirmed: "There has stood one in the midst of you, whom you know not."²

Io 18, 36: "My kingdom is not of this world." Pilate thought that Christ was thinking of founding a political messianic kingdom. That Christ denies with the cited words, without, however, saying so much as a word about an invisible kingdom or Church.

2. From the mouth of the apostles they bring forward these words: Hebr 12, 18. 22. 23: "For you have not come to a palpable mountain, but you have come to Mount Sion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem ..." In these words Paul certainly opposes the Church to the synagogue; yet not as the invisible to the visible, but as the spiritual to the earthly, as the perfect to the imperfect.

1 Petr 2, 5: "Be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ."³ With these words Peter inculcates only this, that Christians should be bound to Christ not only by the external bond of society, but by the internal bond of love, and so build themselves up not only into a material house, but into a spiritual one, offering not bloody and carnal sacrifices, but spiritual sacrifices of virtues.

3. From the mouth of Christian antiquity they object with that article of the Creed: "I believe in the holy Church." If it is believed, it is not seen, they say, following Luther. Yet unjustly. For the Church is believed in one respect and seen in another. It is believed with regard to its divine nature (the invisible soul of the Church); but it is seen with regard to its external organism (the visible body of the Church). In exactly the same way man is visible with respect to his body, invisible with respect to his soul.⁴ But just as man, although he has an immediately invisible soul, is nevertheless simply called visible, so the Church is rightly called wholly visible, although it is not visible according to the whole.