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1. A basic problem with Knox's whole analysis of the church in The Early Church and the Coming Great Church is that he fails to recognize – -- clearly and consistently – -- the important distinction between the "visible" church, on the one hand, and the "institutional" church(es), on the other. (Revealing in this connection is his use of the phrase, '''visible' institutional church" on 87.) Part of the reason for this failure, I suspect, is that he has nothing that adequately corresponds to my concept-term "witness," together with my distinction between "witness" (referring to the singular variable) and "witnesses" (referring to the plural values of the variable). By analogy, "the visible church" may be said to refer to the singular variable, "the institutional churches," to the plural values of the variable, in which the visible church is "sometimes more, sometimes less, visible."

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3. The closest Knox comes to making an adequate distinction between "visible" and "invisible" church is in a statement such as this: "If ... we mean by 'church' the many actual groups in various lands organized and conducting their affairs in various ways, then the church is certainly not one and has never been; but if, when we speak of the church, we are speaking of the particular kind of shared experience that at least to some degree is characteristic of these various groups – -- if by 'church' we mean the distinctive common life – -- then the church is one, indivisible, and everywhere the same. Since it is this shared experience, this community, which really constitutes the church, the church is eschatologically (or, if one prefers, ideally) all but identifiable with the community, and we can make such statements as, 'Let the church be the church'; that is, 'Let the church fully realize and express the community which makes it the church"' (51). Even this statement, however, is inadequate when compared with that typical of some of the Anglican theologians of the seventeenth century, who distinguish, not between "church" and "community," but between two communities, in the sense of two kinds of "communicating,1I or sharing. There is the kind characteristic of the called who communicate or share in "the profession of supernatural verities revealed in Christ, use of holy Sacraments, order of Ministry, and due obedience yielded thereunto," which communication is "discernible"; and there is the kind characteristic of the elect or chosen, who alone communicate in "those most precious effects, and happy benefits of saving grace," which communication is "not discernible," but "invisible" (Anglicanism: 44).

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