Confessing Evangelical

John H Wednesday 28th July, AD 2004

Despite its title, the aim of my post, “Where does the church stop?”, was to define the centre of the church, rather than to mark out its boundaries.

It is perhaps helpful at times to look at the church as a “centred set” rather than a “bounded set”. This applies both to the church in the strict sense, of those who truly believe, and the church in the wider sense, the congregation gathered around the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments (see this post for an explanation of these terms).

It is not easy to define the boundaries of the church: the point at which so much of the Gospel and Sacraments have been jettisoned that a given congregation is no longer the church in the wider sense; the point at which someone’s confession is so heretical that they lose their salvation. The crucial task is to define the centre clearly, and to have as true a ministry of Gospel and Sacrament as one can, as true a confession of Christian doctrine as one can.

However, this “centred set” versus “bounded set” imagery is often used by those who seek to justify their own doctrinal errors/indifferentism or impenitent behaviour, and to argue for an “inclusive” rather than “exclusive” attitude in the church (“inclusive” in the strange modern sense of “indifferent to heresy and sin”, rather than in the sense of “extending the Gospel promises to all”). See this Google search for a number of examples of this.

This abuse of “centred set” imagery has its roots in complacency about salvation. Those who “have failed to consider the weight of sin”, who fail to appreciate the searching demands of God’s Law (with its terrifying command to “be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect”) or the full fury of God’s wrath and judgment against sin, can feel quite at ease wandering freely around the “centred set” of the church and of Christian doctrine and behaviour, confident that no one can seek to “exclude” them on the basis of some spurious “boundary marker”.

However, the fact that the boundaries are sometimes difficult to identify doesn’t mean they are not there: the boundaries are there, and they can be crossed. Here’s one example; here’s another; and here’s another. That’s precisely the reason why it’s vital to know where the centre is, since one can never be sure how far from the centre it is possible to stray without crossing a boundary.

The church isn’t an open moorland on which we have the “right to roam”; it’s a life-raft on which we are saved from the raging tempest of sin, death, hell and Satan. The further we stray from the centre, the more we run the risk of being swept overboard. Best to stay as close to the centre as you can, rather than wandering about aimlessly or (as many seem intent on doing) standing on one foot with your eyes closed, leaning out over the edge…

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