The Catholic Christian Church⤒🔗

We believe and profess one catholic or universal Church, which is a holy congrega­tion of true Christian believers, all expec­ting their salvation in Jesus Christ, being washed by His blood, sanctified and sealed by the Holy Spirit.

This Church has been from the beginning of the world, and will be to the end thereof; which is evident from this that Christ is an eternal King, which without subjects He cannot be. And this holy Church is pre­served or supported by God against the rage of the whole world; though it sometimes for a while appears very small, and in the eyes of men to be reduced to nothing; as during the perilous reign of Ahab the Lord re­served unto Him seven thousand men who had not bowed their knee to Baal.

Furthermore, This holy Church is not con­fined, bound, or limited to a certain place or to certain persons, but is spread and dis­persed over the whole world; and yet is joined and united with heart and will, by the power of faith, in one and the same Spirit.Belgic Confession Article 27

Answer 54 of the Heidelberg Catechism defines the Church as a missionary Church. Article 27 of the Belgic Confession also had a broad view of the Church. It speaks of this Church as "catholic or uni­versal" and says that it is "spread and dispersed over the whole world."

This was surely a statement of faith on the part of Guido de Bres when he wrote this confession. In 1561, when de Bres wrote, Columbus had discovered America, but no effort to colonize America had as yet been made by Protestants. The Portuguese had learned how to sail around Africa to India and China, but were in no mood to welcome Protestants to do the same. The Protestant nations of Britain and Holland did not really begin to explore the world until after the Spanish Armada had been de­feated in 1588, 27 years after de Bres wrote the con­fession.

When de Bres wrote, the far corners of the world had scarcely been touched by Catholic sailors, not to mention Protestants. Nonetheless de Bres con­fidently asserts:

This holy Church is not confined, bound, or limited to a certain place or to certain per­sons, but is spread and dispersed over the whole world.

De Bres knew that the gospel would spread until it covered the entire globe, for he had read the promise of this in the Bible. He also knew that mis­sionaries would carry this gospel world-wide for in article 36 he wrote that civil authorities were to "countenance and preaching of the Word of the Gospel everywhere, that God may be honored and worshipped by every one, as He commands in His Word."

There is a problem here regarding the separation of church and state, to which we must return later. But this problem should not be allowed to cloud de Bres' view of the catholic Christian Church as a mighty work of God, embracing all.

Article 29, which deals with the marks of the Church, is subordinate to article 27, which defines the Church. Pure preaching, pure sacraments, and effective discipline are simply guides to help us distinguish the true Church from the false. They are important guides, to be sure, but they do not define the Church. If we allow them to define the Church, we get a distorted view of the Church's task in the world. This would especially be true if we forget that all men everywhere are sorely in need of the pure preaching of the gospel. When the article that defines the Church (art. 27) is combined with the ar­ticle that sets the boundaries of this Church (art. 29), the missionary thrust of the Belgic Confession is clear and compelling.

This missionary thrust is also implied in the first two paragraphs of Article 36 of de Bres' work which reads as follows: (Reformed Churches in the Nether­lands and North America have now amended them.)

We believe that our gracious God, because of the depravity of mankind, has appointed kings, princes, and magistrates;

... Their office is not only to have regard un­to and watch for the welfare of the civil state, but also that they protect the sacred ministry, and thus may remove and prevent all idolatry and false worship, that the king­dom of antichrist may be thus destroyed and the kingdom of Christ promoted. They must therefore countenance the preaching of the Word of the gospel everywhere, that God may be honored and worshipped by every one, as He commands in His Word.

In 1493 the Pope drew a line down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, giving Portugal jurisdiction over everything east of this line and giving Spain jurisdiction over all the lands west of this line. The Pope did this because in the Catholic view of mis­sions, the cross and the flag were to be planted to­gether. Military conquest and religious propagation were to go hand in hand. This is the way in which much of barbarian Europe had been converted and this is the way in which the spectacular spread of the Islamic faith had been achieved.

Although the early Protestants questioned many Catholic practices, this is one that they took for granted. It seemed very natural to them that mis­sions were a cooperative venture of church and state. The state would "pacify" a new area and the church would teach the people of that area. This view of missions was enshrined in the Belgic Confes­sion in 1561. In a book entitled The Netherlands In­dies one reads as follows:

The question is often asked why the churches of the Reformation failed to take a larger part in missionary work during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This failure was not due to an inherent lack of faith or sense of vocation, but to the prevailing conception in both Roman Catho­lic and Protestant circles on the function of the State and its rulers in promoting Christianity. The Roman Church had granted to Spain and Por­tugal the right to exploit all newly discovered lands and to carry to them the Gospel, and indi­vidual effort on the part of Protestant mission­aries was impossible until the Protestant powers also became colonial powers. Both theoretically and practically, therefore, it was impossible for the protestant Church to carry on missions to the heathen.Rauws, Kraemer, Van Hasselt, & De Bruine; London, World Dominion Press, 1935:33

Although missionaries no longer expect the cross and the flag to go together, they still appreciate the protection sometimes given to them by their respec­tive governments when they are in other lands. They still look to governments to preserve peaceful conditions and freedom of religion — two important ingredients for vigorous church planting. To this day the confession states that governments must "countenance the preaching of the Word of the gos­pel everywhere." To countenance means to encour­age or support. I suspect that if the confession were written by a Reformed scholar today, a milder verb would be used.

But the main point is this: The Belgic Confession makes provision for missions both in its definition of the Church and in its description of civil govern­ment. Were we to write the confession today, we would wish to make this provision more explicit. But this should not blind us to the fact there is provision for missions both in the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession as these documents now stand. The question that individual Reformed Chris­tians must ask themselves is this: Do I take this part of the creeds seriously?