Where Is the Christian Church?

Luther's Answer: The Church Is Where Christ's Gospel Is Taught

In his 1537 Smalcald Articles, Luther wrote:

Thank God, today a child seven years old knows what the Church is, namely, the holy believers and lambs who hear the voice of their Shepherd. For the children pray thus: I believe one holy Christian Church. This holiness does not consist in albs, tonsures, long gowns, and other of their ceremonies devised by them beyond Holy Scripture, but in the Word of God and true faith.

Luther explained what this "true faith" is in the article that directly follows this definition of the Christian Church:

[B]y faith, as St. Peter says [Acts 15:9], we acquire a new and clean heart, and God will and does account us entirely righteous and holy for the sake of Christ, our Mediator. And although sin in the flesh has not yet been altogether removed or become dead, yet He will not punish or remember it.

And such faith, renewal, and forgiveness of sins is followed by good works. And what there is still sinful or imperfect also in them shall not be accounted as sin or defect, even [and that, too] for Christ’s sake; but the entire man, both as to his person and his works, is to be called and to be righteous and holy from pure grace and mercy, shed upon us [unfolded] and spread over us in Christ. . . . We say, besides, that if good works do not follow, faith is false and not true.

Who, what, or where the church is therefore directly related to what the Smalcald Articles call the “first and chief article” of the Christian faith which cannot “be yielded or surrendered,” namely:

That Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins, and was raised again for our justification, Rom. 4:25. And He alone is the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world, John 1:29; and God has laid upon Him the iniquities of us all, Is. 53:6. Likewise: All have sinned and are justified without merit by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in His blood, Rom. 3:23f.

Now, since it is necessary to believe this, and it cannot be otherwise acquired or apprehended by any work, law, or merit, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us as St. Paul says, Rom. 3:28: For we conclude that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the Law. Likewise 3:26: That He might be just, and the Justifier of him which believeth in Christ.

In the Large Catechism, Luther again tied the Christian Church to this true faith in Christ the Savior that justifies and is followed by good works. He did so in his explanation of the Third Article of the Apostles' Creed, a key part of which he referenced in the Smalcald Articles above, "I believe one holy Christian Church, the communion of saints." What does this mean?

I believe that there is upon earth a little holy group and congregation of pure saints, under one head, even Christ, called together by the Holy Ghost in one faith, one mind, and understanding, with manifold gifts, yet agreeing in love, without sects or schisms. I am also a part and member of the same, a sharer and joint owner of all the goods it possesses, brought to it and incorporated into it by the Holy Ghost by having heard and continuing to hear the Word of God, which is the beginning of entering it. For formerly, before we had attained to this, we were altogether of the devil, knowing nothing of God and of Christ.

As Luther explained, this Word of God is the gospel by which the Holy Spirit makes us holy, or sanctifies us, in the unity of the Christian Church by distributing the redemption from sin, death, the devil, and all evil Christ won for all:

[N]either you nor I could ever know anything of Christ, or believe on Him, and obtain Him for our Lord, unless it were offered to us and granted to our hearts by the Holy Ghost through the preaching of the Gospel. The work is done and accomplished; for Christ has acquired and gained the treasure for us by His suffering, death, resurrection, etc. But if the work remained concealed so that no one knew of it, then it would be in vain and lost. That this treasure, therefore, might not lie buried, but be appropriated and enjoyed, God has caused the Word to go forth and be proclaimed, in which He gives the Holy Ghost to bring this treasure home and appropriate it to us. Therefore sanctifying is nothing else than bringing us to Christ to receive this good, to which we could not attain of ourselves.

What is "this good" or "this treasure"? It is simply that "the Son obtains dominion, whereby He wins us, through His birth, death, resurrection." As Luther put it in his explanation of the Second Article of the Creed, this simply means that "Jesus Christ, true Son of God, has become my Lord. But what is it to become Lord? It is this, that He has redeemed me from sin, from the devil, from death, and all evil. For before I had no Lord nor King, but was captive under the power of the devil, condemned to death, enmeshed in sin and blindness."

The Holy Spirit conveys Christ's lordship, redemption, and freedom by the gospel. Faith in the gospel is created by the Holy Spirit by the gospel to appropriate Christ's lordship, redemption, and freedom. It incorporates the believer into the Christian Church, the body of Christ, under Christ as the head.

This is what Luther meant when he, in the Smalcald Articles quoted above, stated that the Christian Church is "the holy believers and lambs who hear the voice of their Shepherd." Luther, therefore, thought about the Christian Church primarily in terms of the communion of those in whom the Holy Spirit has created "true faith" in Christ by means of the gospel, i.e., the good news that Christ has freed us from the dominion of sin, death, and the devil.

The Christian Church on earth is therefore a spiritual entity because it consists of sinners whom the Spirit has gathered around the gospel by faith to take this gospel to the far ends of the earth until Christ returns. In other words, the Christian Church on earth is the kingdom of God's grace obtained by Christ's redemptive life on earth.

The Christian Church on earth is therefore wherever this gospel is proclaimed in Word and the sacraments of baptism and communion. Christ and the gospel concerning Christ is the rock on which the Church is built (Matth. 16:13-19; 1 Cor. 3:11).

Outside of this kingdom of faith and grace, there is no forgiveness or salvation because outside of this kingdom there is no gospel and no Holy Spirit. Outside of this kingdom there is also no genuine sanctification in the sense of a daily growth in holy living that is a fruit of genuine faith and the Holy Spirit that will come to perfection after the resurrection of the dead.

The Christian Church is therefore not primarily a human institution that, according to God's Word, must have the pope as its human head, as Luther taught in the Smalcald Articles. Instead, as noted, the Church's one head is Christ, while the pope "is only the bishop and pastor of the Church at Rome."

Luther therefore rejected that, in order to be saved, it is necessary to be subject to the pope, as asserted by Pope Boniface VIII in 1302. As Luther noted, this assertion "amounts to nothing less than saying: Although you believe in Christ, and have in Him everything that is necessary to salvation, yet it is nothing and all in vain unless you regard me as your god, and be subject and obedient to me."

As a result, Luther had no difficulty affirming that there are genuine Christians who will be saved by faith in Christ outside the "Lutheran" church. As noted, wherever Christ's gospel sounds forth--even in the Catholic Church, even among those who deny Christ's presence in the elements of the Lord's Supper--there the Holy Spirit gathers believers in Christ. There the Christian Church is, even among a multitude of those who believe wrongly and who are therefore not members of the Christian Church.

Evidently, if errors concerning salvation are taught that turn people away from Christ's gospel, saving faith is endangered and may well be driven out. The type of teaching one listens to is therefore not a matter of indifference.

At the same time, Luther affirmed that even where the saving gospel is taught properly, there are those who do not believe the gospel, who merely go through the motions without being moved by the Holy Spirit from a renewed heart. Those who lack "true faith" are not members of the Christian Church, even if they are outward members of a congregation that teaches the gospel correctly.

But what about those who've never had a chance to hear the gospel? Luther constantly affirmed that "there is no other name given by which we must be saved," Jesus Christ (Acts 4:12), and that "no one comes to the Father except through [Christ]" (John 14:6). Luther also affirmed that the gospel concerning Christ has been proclaimed since immediately after the fall into sin (Gen. 3:15). Luther also affirmed that all those who would be saved were predestined to be saved by faith in the gospel of Christ.

This is what Luther taught because this is what is revealed in God's Word. Instead of speculating about some other way to God and salvation besides faith in Christ, we should also focus on what God has revealed about his saving will in the bible.

The Catholic Church does not teach that salvation is by faith and trust in Christ. For instance, the Council of Trent--conducted after Luther's death--teaches that faith (understood as an infused acceptance of the divine truths of revelation (i.e., "historical faith")), while it is "the root of all justification," cannot achieve eternal life without love and hope being added to this faith.

"Faith" in the "Catholic" sense is therefore not faith in Christ that saves because it apprehends Christ and the treasure of his redemption from sin, death, and the devil. Faith is merely an intellectual disposition--an acceptance of truth--that must be supplemented by other dispositions and actions, love and hope, to obtain eternal life. This type of faith may well coexist with an impenitent life without love and hope. Christ merely merited the help of divine grace that makes it possible for humans to have faith, love, and hope.

Accordingly, the Catholic Church also teaches that there might be salvation outside the Catholic Church by appealing to the doctrine of "invincible ignorance" concerning the truths of the faith. This is not really a new doctrine, even though it has come to be emphasized after the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s to define the relationship between the Catholic Church and those who are not members of that church body "through no fault of their own."

Luther object to applying the doctrine of "invincible ignorance" in the Church. Already in his 1517 disputation against Scholastic theology, he noted that ignorance of God, of oneself, and of good works is always invincible to fallen human nature (Am. Ed. 31:11). Indeed, as he taught in the Large Catechism and the Smalcald Articles, without the Holy Spirit's proclamation of the gospel, no one could know the saving truth about God and Christ.

In his Genesis lectures (1535-1545), Luther recognized (on Gen. 12:17 and Gen. 29:25) that the notion of "invincible ignorance" has its proper place in moral or political matters where it functions as a complete excuse for any errors committed. But the introduction of this notion into theology--it is about man's relationship to God--would mean that "all men would be saved" because what makes human ignorance invincible in theological matters is original sin that is common to all humans, as Luther indicated in his 1517 disputation (Am. Ed. 2:313-315; 5:303).

A Catholic Challenge to the Catholic Doctrine of the Church?

As noted, the Second Vatican Council was held in the early 1960s. Praised by some as an authentic opening of the Catholic Church to the modern world, the Council was harshly criticized by others in the Catholic Church as a Protestantizing compromise with that modern world that deviated on several key points with the received traditional teachings of the Catholic Church.

Prominent among the critics of the Council is the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), founded in 1970 by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991). The SSPX is part of the broader "traditionalist" Catholic movement. A rallying point for all these groups is the "traditional Latin mass" (TLM), i.e., the orders of service adopted following the Council of Trent in 1570 based on earlier traditions but supplanted by the (vernacular) mass of Pope Paul VI in 1970. While traditionalist Catholicism includes "sedevacantists," i.e., those who believe that there has not been a valid pope since 1958, SSPX accepts the current pope as such.

SSPX has instead recently made headlines by (again) ordaining bishops without the approval of the current pope they generally accept. They justified this action--as Lefebvre had done when he ordained bishops without papal approval in 1988--as a case of necessity because the Church, since Vatican 2, had acted against "holy tradition" and, according to Lefebvre, had "lost the Faith." While canon law generally accepts this argument based on necessity, the Vatican already rejected harnessing this argument for ordaining bishops without papal approval in 1996. As a result, the Vatican again branded the 2026 ordinations as "schismatic" and excommunicated those who participated in them.

One of the disagreements between the SSPX and the Vatican is the extent to which membership in the Roman Catholic Church is necessary for salvation, which in the view of the SSPX had become controversial because of certain teachings of Vatican 2. Accordingly, in a May 2026 declaration of faith addressed to Pope Leo XIV, the SSPX stated:

There is only one Faith and one Church by which we may be saved. Outside the Roman Catholic Church, and without the profession of Faith that she has always taught, there is neither salvation nor remission of sins. 

Consequently, every man must be a member of the Catholic Church in order to save his soul, and there is but one baptism as the means of being incorporated into her. This necessity concerns the whole of humanity without exception and embraces without distinction Christians, Jews, Muslims, pagans, and atheists.

This bold confession now poses the question for those excommunicated by the Vatican: Are they still members of the Roman Catholic Church? In other words, will they be saved?

The Catechism of the Council of Trent--certainly a "traditional" Catholic source--teaches: "excommunicated persons are not members of the Church, because they have been cut off by her sentence from the number of her children and belong not to her communion until they repent." And in his 1943 encyclical on the mystical body of Christ, Pope Pius XII had stated that while not every sin severs a person from the Catholic Church, schism, heresy, and apostasy do. Meanwhile, those whom SSPX would consider "modernist" Catholics teach that excommunication does not sever the ties between the excommunicated person and the Catholic Church and salvation.

The SSPX therefore seems to be in a trap. They accept the pope while maintaining that the pope and those who support him are essentially modernist heretics. At the same time, the Vatican's position vis-a-vis Lefebvre and the SSPX does not appear to have changed significantly from that articulated in a comments made by Pope Paul VI at a 1976 consistory:

Contemporary authority is rejected in favor of that of a bygone era. . . . It is this group of people [around Abp. Lefebvre]—and not the Roman Pontiff, nor the College of Bishops, nor the Ecumenical Council—that claims the right to determine which of the countless traditions are to be regarded as norms of faith! . . . [T]his course of action calls into question that divine will which appointed Peter and his legitimate successors as Head of the Church—to strengthen their brethren in the faith and to feed the whole flock (cf. Luke 22:32; John 21:15 ff.)—and established him as the guarantor and guardian of the deposit of faith.

Within the Catholic ecclesiology SSPX endorses and promotes in the name of "Tradition," there cannot be a different outcome, it seems. As "Head of the Church," the pope is the final arbiter who gets to determine by divine right "which of the countless traditions are to be regarded as norms of faith." Everybody else must obey, as the pope says what is "the" tradition.

This is what Luther recognized 500 years ago: There cannot be a peaceful coexistence between the papal office conceived as this type of lordship over the Church--i.e., as having final authority in matters of faith and morals--and Christ himself who rules the Christian Church by the Holy Spirit through God's Word.

This is why Luther and his associates constantly contrasted the one, perpetual Church of Christ and the apostles to the ever innovative church of the pope and his associates. Indeed, there is consensus that the papal office--understood as that of the "universal bishop"--is itself an innovation unknown to, and unintended by, Christ and his apostles.

When faced with the need to call pastors to preach God's Word because the bishops refused to send them faithful preachers, Luther and his associates pointed the Church to the fullness of her irrevocable spiritual authority as Christ's royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9) to teach God's Word and charged the Church to call men from her midst to preach God's Word in a faithful and orderly fashion (Am. Ed. 39:309-314).

There was, in other words, a genuine necessity--an emergency, we could say--for the Church because the regular church leadership (bishops, pope, etc.) refused to allow the gospel to be proclaimed--the gospel by which alone the Holy Spirit gathers the Christian Church on earth. But God, as Luther showed from God's Word, had provided a way to respond to this necessity.

At the same time, Luther appreciated and commended in his Smalcald Articles the truly traditional, apostolic way of governing and preserving the Christian Church on earth without the pope as its self-appointed human head:

The Church can never be better governed and preserved than if we all live under one head, Christ, and all the bishops equal in office (although they be unequal in gifts), be diligently joined in unity of doctrine, faith, Sacraments, prayer, and works of love, etc., as St. Jerome writes that the priests at Alexandria together and in common governed the churches, as did also the apostles, and afterwards all bishops throughout all Christendom, until the Pope raised his head above all.

It was therefore no loss to Luther and his associates when Pope Leo X as the head of the innovative church excommunicated them as heretics in 1521. This action was no loss because they remained in communion with Christ, his apostles, and prophets by faith in the unchanging gospel. Despite the pope's sentence of "perpetual condemnation and interdict," they remained with Christ in the one holy Christian Christian Church. Indeed, the Holy Spirit now uses their writings to call, gather, and enlighten Christ's Church on earth.