Heschmeyer's fallacy
Regarding the "invisible church"
[Author’s note: my wife and I recently welcomed our third daughter into the world. Everyone is doing well, but progress on my Whelton series (and basically everything else) is somewhat delayed. In the meantime, as I continue to finalize the next rebuttals to Whelton’s assertions about the Ecumenical Councils, I offer to you, dear reader, the following philosophical objection to something from a recent Catholic book.]
This essay critiques an argument from Joe Heschmeyer’s otherwise excellent book Pope Peter. The criticism does not mean that I have a low view of Joe’s work. On the contrary, I think he is one of the better Catholic apologists. He describes opposing viewpoints fairly and his own arguments, historically informed and clearly articulated, have proven helpful in my own studies. His juris doctor from Georgetown Law Center bears witness to his formidable intelligence, and I commend his Youtube channel and writings to every reader.
However, a subtle fallacy emerges in Chapter 2 ("I Will Build My Church") of his book Pope Peter, and I believe it is instructive to explain why it is fallacious. Specifically, he challenges the notion of an "invisible church", which says that the church just is the group of people who believe in the gospel—or whatever happens to be the Protestant condition for membership.
Heschmeyer contends that this notion reduces the Church to a mere concept or measurement akin to a “collective label”. He employs the following quote from Carl Sagan to illustrate his objection:
I am a collection of water, calcium, and organic molecules called Carl Sagan. You are a collection of almost identical molecules with a different collective label.
Here’s what Heschmeyer says:
If “you” are just the sum total of your cells, and that precise sum total only exists for a fraction of a second, then you don’t functionally exist. To put it another way, if Sagan is right, a different person began reading this sentence from the one who finished reading it. Plus, as Sagan notes, you and I are each made up of water, calcium, and organic molecules—so what makes one collection you and another collection me?
Sagan's view of human anthropology is rightly criticized, but Heschmeyer extends the same criticism to the "invisible church" position:
If the Church is just a cross-section of believers, then it exists only as a concept or a measurement, like “the set of left-handed people” or the temperature outside. It’s a mere “collective label,” to use Sagan’s term. The result is that you’re left with nothing, which is how you get a Church that can’t do anything… Like Sagan’s body, the body of Christ is in constant flux, as members come to faith and are baptized on the one hand and physically or spiritually die on the other. If [this] is right, the Church is perhaps never more than a few seconds old. That doesn’t sound like the Church established by Christ two thousand years ago, over which he promised that the gates of hell wouldn’t prevail. Rather, the church… is wiped out by the gates of hell every few moments.
According to Heschmeyer, if I am nothing but a collection of cells, then a "new" me would come to be whenever a cell dies or another is added to the original collection. That's an absurd consequence; therefore, I must be something more than just a collection of cells.
Similarly, he thinks, if the Church is nothing but the collection of people who believe the gospel—if it is merely a cross-section of believers—then the church exists only as a concept or measurement and is constantly in flux. This means that the Church changes to something new whenever one new member believes or an old member dies. This would conflict with the enduring nature of the Church established by Christ.
However, the flaw in Heschmeyer's critique lies in the analogy between Sagan's atomistic view and the "invisible church" position. Sagan's view encounters difficulties with the unity and identity of a person over time. If I am nothing but a collection of cells, then we must be able to tell which ones make me and why those in particular. But doing that will, at some point, presuppose a principle of unity and identity that is not a collection of cells. Consider: what condition must a cell satisfy to be a member of the collection of cells which comprise me over time and not someone else? Try to answer that without ultimately presupposing me—i.e., that I already exist. You can’t.
In contrast, the "invisible church" position defines the church as consisting of people who meet a specific condition, such as believing in the gospel. This is a functional description, which makes the “invisible church” more than a mere cross-section of believers; it allows for changing membership without compromising the unity and identity of the Church over time. Hence, this position is not like Sagan’s and does not fall to the same objection.
If there are ten believers now, but there were fifteen believers yesterday (supposing five died), then it doesn't follow that the church yesterday is different from the church today. It's the same church with fewer members. That's because the description—"the collection of people who believe in the gospel"—provides the mark of unity and identity over time and doesn't specify any particular number; whatever is the number of believers at a given time, that number comprises the church.
As a Catholic, I do not believe in a merely invisible church. However, I hope I've shown that Heschmeyer's criticism, though philosophically interesting, is a mistaken way to argue against it.