¹³ Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”¹⁴ And they said, “Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” ¹⁵ He *said to them,“But who do you say that I am?” ¹⁶ Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” ¹⁷ And Jesus said to him,“Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. ¹⁸ I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. ¹⁹ I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.” ²⁰ Then He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ. –Matthew 16.13-20

⁸ But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, ⁹ that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; ¹⁰ for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. ¹¹ For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.” ¹² For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; ¹³ for “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” –Romans 10.8-13

⁵ For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, ⁶ who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time. –I Timothy 2.5-6

It seems like the Church catholic is diminishing. C.S. Lewis wrote of an attractive reality that he identified as Mere Christianity. A former professor of mine wrote about what he called ‘the core of the core of orthodoxy.’ When we look around at the Church, particularly in our Western and North American contexts (not to mention Western European milieus), it seems like she is waning. Church attendance is down, particularly as we look at up-and-coming generations like Generations Y and Z, if not the Millennials. It seems as if in large swaths of what counts as Christianity in my own American context, that the litmus test for orthodoxy is how much self-help and moralism can be communicated within the time frame of a twenty to thirty minute sermonette. The churches are waning, even ones that traditionally have been known for giving a rat’s ass about teaching doctrine; forget sound doctrine, doctrine itself (as that is understood traditionally, like in the terms of sacra doctrina) has been abandoned in favor of a warmed over ‘moralistic therapeutic deism.’ American evangelicals, not to mention others who would self-identify this way in other regions of the world, have simply made knowing God a matter of personal pragmatism (rather than holiness) such that God, in the main, and in line with Ludwig Feuerbach’s critique, is simply a self-projection of our greatest hopes and desires.

Thankfully the reality of the Church is not contingent on us or even our confession that Jesus is Lord. The Church, as the passages above should highlight for us, is contingent upon Christ’s confession for the Church. It is Jesus’s vicarious yes, in His vicarious humanity for us that stands as the unshakeable ground of the Church catholic’s resilience. Jesus Christ is the ‘ground and grammar’ of all that counts as the Church’s reality. It isn’t the numbers of people who attend Church; it isn’t how much ‘sound doctrine’ is taught; it isn’t reliant upon the faithfulness of the Church’s pastors; it isn’t contingent upon the faithfulness of those who profess the name of Christ. This whole project, known as the Kingdom of Christ, is contingent upon the indestructible life of Jesus Christ. So, while the Church, in the main, seems to be almost fully circumscribed by the secular she remains steadfast as a bulwark insofar as her reality is firmly grounded in the triune life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Church’s esse or essence, think about this, is grounded in the humanity of Jesus Christ as He is the second person of the Trinity. This is how unshakable the Church’s reality remains for all eternity. Even if whole generations are lost (God forbid it!) in ages of darkness and hopelessness the reality of the Church will always and steadfastly remain insofar that Christ is risen and not dead.

For those of us who see this trend, that is the seeming eclipse of the ‘faithful’ in the churches, we need to bear the Church’s reality in mind. We have the power, the resurrection power to bear witness to the reality of our personal lives as we are corporate members of the body of Christ at large (and it is large in the triune Life). The Bible has a theology of remnant present throughout its pages. We need to find solace in this reality and know that the Church has always been populated by wheat and tares; there is always a remnant of ‘wheat’ present even when the Church seems to be fully swallowed up by the tares. There is an invisible Church present in the visible Church and it this ‘hidden Church’ that has the capacity and responsibility to bear witness to the ‘visible Church’ that Jesus is still Lord and they are not. As we are participatio Christi (participating in Christ) we have the capacity to proclaim the evangel as we ought; to both the world at large, and the Church nearby. This is our mission as ambassadors of Jesus Christ; the mission field has largely come to us within the very walls of the Church. The mere Christian is always a possibility within these walls, insofar as we can recognize this we have the ability to bear witness to the rest of the Church and world that Jesus is Lord. It is the confession of Christ, the one we participate in and from as those in union with Christ, that stands as the bulwark of the abiding reality of the Church. The Church at large might fall into apostasy, but the Church scandalous will always be present insofar as she realizes her reality and witness in and from the testimony of Jesus Christ.