Talk:Church

I know that quite a few people haven't liked the style of the contents pages and overview pages in WikiChristian. I've liked how they have allowed for a nice tree-structure with topics and also how they've allowed for clear links to opinion articles. Still, I see why people don't like the style. What do people think about this style? --Graham grove 05:15, 31 January 2007 (EST)

Visible church

@Graham You added: "Protestant churches, especially those with Baptist leanings in theology, tend to emphasize the invisible church, whereas the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches have often emphasized the visible church." For me this sentence makes no sense. From what I understand Protestants claim that the invisible Church is something different from the visible church whereas Catholics (and Orthodox? I'm not so sure about them) claim that both are identical. This is not a matter of emphasizing. In catholic doctrine the supernatural aspect of the church is quite important. --Benedikt 14:01, 23 July 2008 (PDT)

Okay. I can see what your saying. At the same time, I was trying to fix up the sentence you put in that is contradictory to what you've just said above. In your sentence you said something about the Catholic church recognizing some people outside the Catholic church to be part of the invisible church - or at least that is what it seemed to be saying. Perhaps we should just simplify the sentence for the time being to "Different denominations have slightly different understandings of the meanings of visible church and invisible church." We could start two new articles titled "Visible church" and "Invisible church" and expand in that. --Graham grove 14:11, 23 July 2008 (PDT)

I'm looking at your sentence and wondering if the confusion is simply an English thing. You wrote: "In roman catholic doctrine the invisible and the visible church are identified although it is admitted that elements of the invisible church are present outside the visible (i.e. the Catholic) church." Did you mean "In Roman Catholic Doctrine the invisible and visible church are mostly considered identical although there is recognition that some elements of the invisible church can be present outside the visible (i.e. Roman Catholic) church." - Is that what you meant? --Graham grove 14:14, 23 July 2008 (PDT)