I was recently criticised by a Reformed Protestant apologist for writing the following in response to another anti-Mormon Evangelical Protestant:
One has to understand the anti-biblical presuppositions informing McKeever’s rejection of the true Church being a visible structure, not just an invisible structure of "true believers," as preached by much of modern Evangelicalism.
The problem for the Protestant apologist is that (1) much of modern Evangelicalism does have a very low ecclesiology (e.g., the so-called “non-denomination” denominations one encounters); furthermore, informed Protestants do use “invisible” with respect to Protestant ecclesiology; note the following from an author my misinformed critic has endorsed on the Trinity when discussing the difference between the ecclesiologies of Rome, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism:
Protestants, who believe that the true Church is an invisible, spiritual reality . . . (Gerald Bray, Creeds, Councils, and Christ: Did the early Christians misrepresent Jesus? [Ross-shire, Great Britain: Mentor, 1984], 34)
The protestations (pun intended) notwithstanding, my understanding of Protestant theologies, historical and modern, is accurate, and the concept of the Church being "invisible" (in such theologies) is something stated by Protestant apologists and theologians.
