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A couple of weeks ago the Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, began a heated debate with these comments in her opening address to the Episcopal Church General Conference: The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of use alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of all being.

This comment has been taken in many quarters to equate to the statement of Cyprian of Carthage:

Outside the Church there is no salvation
Part of the reason that this was taken negatively was that it seemed to be addressed at particular churches and dioceses that were departing from the Episcopal church and realigning in their own, new ecclesiastical structure.  For more on how this was taken within the Anglican world as an insult or threat you can check out comments from VirtueOnline, Anglican Curmudgeon, and Sydney Anglicans.  In the broader blogosphere there were comments, as much about the theology as the church politics, from Apprising Ministries, Internet Monk, and Bible Belt Blogger.  Maybe most notable were comments from two seminary presidents — Richard Mouw at Fuller and Albert Mohler at Southern Baptist.

The comments got me thinking both about confessional Christianity as well as the ecclesiastical relationship to salvation.  I’ll leave the former to another time and just address the latter now.

Let me state my thesis right at the beginning:  Based on my understanding of Scripture and Reformed thought this is not an either/or proposition but a both/and situation.  To put it in the simplest form — The Church is the bookends around individual salvation.

Part of the expressed concern is a long-standing theological tension that exists between individual salvation and corporate salvation.

On the individual side there is the ancient confession that “Jesus is Lord,” and the more modern tool – the Sinners Prayer.  As Dr. Mohler nicely points out in his piece, the mechanistic use of these formulae can be manipulative and gives a simplistic representation of the meaning and depth of salvation.  There is also concern for “Lone Ranger Christians” and the “Jesus and Me” situation, both of which are labeled heresies by some, where the only thing that matters is if a person has a right relationship with Jesus exclusive of the role other Christians play in that relationship.  All of this presents a simple view of the rich experience of Christianity.

On the other side is the belief that all you need to do to be a Christian is to jump through the hoops to become a member of the church.  The individual relationship with God is not what is important, but rather it is the relationship in the community — fidelity to the teachings of the church and participation in its sacraments.  You are saved by being a member — corporate status precedes salvation.  This view negates the personal call and responsibility that is involved in the Christian life.

Now most theological positions are more complex and I have caricatured the two extremes.  The varying theological positions are generally found in the middle ground.  Dr. Mouw in his article reflects this by saying that individual salvation is important but “that individual salvation is not enough.” (emphasis his)  He also mentions the centrality of the church in salvation.  I suggest that the answer to individual versus corporate lies very close to the center of this spectrum.

To begin, let us turn to the first post-ascension, and in many ways the archetype, conversion experience — the Day of Pentecost.  On that day one of the men in the crowd asks Peter “what should we do?” (Acts 2:37) and Peter responds:

Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:38)

The center of the conversion story is the recognized need, individual repentance and baptism leading to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

But note the full context in the story — It begins with the believers receiving and being empowered by the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:4)  When the crowd mistakes their divine empowerment for inebriation (Acts 2:13) Peter preaches a sermon (Acts 2:14-36).  Only then comes the question about what they should do.  And the response includes baptism.

For those of a Reformed bent you probably caught where I am going with this, but for those who are not as familiar with it, the Reformed view of the marks of the church can be expressed like this:

Hence the form of the Church appears and stands forth conspicuous to our view. Wherever we see the word of God sincerely preached and heard, wherever we see the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, there we cannot have any doubt that the Church of God has some existence, since his promise cannot fail, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” (Matth. 18: 20.)  [Calvin, Inst. 4.1.9]

The repentance and conversion experience are bracketed by the Word preached and the sacraments administered.  The individual is buttressed and supported by the corporate.

And what happens?  “And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:47b)

The interplay of the corporate and individual is remarkable.  The core of the experience is individual — you must repent for yourself.  But the initiative belongs to God in the empowering by the Holy Spirit that produced a sermon that with the Spirit’s touch convicted those that heard it such that they were “cut to the heart.” (Acts 2:37a )  The first Great End of The Church: The proclamation of the Gospel for the salvation of human kind.  But the story does not end there because with individual repentance comes the sacrament of baptism that produces new believers that are added to “their number,” that is the New Testament Church, daily and share the breaking of the bread.

Empowered by God the Church supplies the preaching of the Gospel that leads to individual repentance which through the sacraments bring those individuals into the Covenant Community that is the Church.

In fact, in John Calvin’s thinking, salvation through election and the Body of Christ found in the Church were inseparable and each presumed the other.

Sometimes when [the Scriptures] speak of the Church they mean the Church as it really is before God – the Church into which none are admitted but those who by the gift of adoption are sons of God, and by the sanctification of the Spirit true members of Christ. [Calvin, Inst. 4.1.7]

I won’t repeat the argument here that I made in my last Calvin post, but the essence is that if salvation is the act of adoption by God into His family then the Church and Salvation are two sides of the same coin.  It reverses Cyprian’s statement so that “Outside salvation there is no Church.”

Now I won’t pretend that either Scripture or the writings of John Calvin are totally clean cut on the issue.  There is the story of Paul and the jailer in Acts 16:25-35 where the jailer, after the earthquake, asks what he must do to be saved.  And the story of Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10 where Cornelius has a vision and sends for Peter.  In both cases there is a divine prodding, earthquake and vision, and there is a proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  There is also a baptism of those present after hearing the Gospel proclaimed.  The nature of the repentance or individual acceptance of the good news is a bit murkier.  It is clear that in both cases the head of the household has an individual conversion experience.  But the result is the baptism of the whole household.  It is left as an exercise for us, the readers, to decide if all members of the household had an individual conversion experience or if the repentance of the head of the household, and maybe some others, was enough.  I won’t pursue that any further except to affirm that at a basic level there was the pattern of divinely assisted proclamation of the gospel, some level of individual repentance, and the inclusion of multiple individuals into the Covenant Community through baptism.

From another perspective, Calvin includes in the Church Invisible, the true church known only to God, individuals who are not part of the visible church body but who have none-the-less not rejected Christ or the Church. (Inst. 4.1.9)  While this might argue against the need for the role of the Church and the possibility of isolated individual salvation, remember that Calvin is viewing this in the context of the Church Invisible.  Community and salvation form an indivisible union.  From a practical standpoint, and from my reading of the Institutes, this represents a particular moment in time and does not necessarily speak of the conversion which came before or the Christian life that is to follow.  And of course, this all ultimately falls in the realm of the Sovereignty of God and His perfect will.

It is probably also necessary to acknowledge that the idea of “individual salvation” takes on a nuance for the Reformed side that is not part of the view of much of the rest of the Church.  This difference is not a major issue for the discussion here where the focus has been on individual salvation in the sense that salvation comes to each of us individually apart from whatever role the wider community plays in the process.  Outside Reformed circles the “individual” nature of salvation also includes the idea that there is an individual choice in accepting salvation based on our human free will.  The Reformed view is that our condition is far enough corrupted by our sinful nature that left to ourselves we can not make the free choice for salvation and God must do that for us.  So while God saves each of us individually, as opposed to a chosen nation of the Old Testament, we can differ over what role an individual can play in that salvation.

So in summary, what scripture gives us as examples of salvation in the New Testament church is the necessity of the corporate component and the individual part, but neither is sufficient by itself.  The church’s ministry of Word and Sacrament are the foundation on which in individual receives salvation — the Word to convict and the Sacraments to affirm.  It is not individual salvation or corporate salvation but individual salvation through the corporate presence.