Christian Church Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==Reformed tradition== [[Reformed theology]] defines the Church as being [[Church invisible|invisible]] and [[Church visible|visible]]βthe former includes the entire [[communion of saints]] and the latter is the "institution that God provides as an agency for God's saving, justifying, and sustaining activity", which [[John Calvin]] referred to as "our mother".<ref name="McKim2001">{{cite book|last=McKim|first=Donald K.|title=The Westminster Handbook to Reformed Theology|date=1 January 2001|publisher=Westminster John Knox Press|language=en|isbn=9780664224301|page=34}}</ref> The Reformed [[confessions of faith]] emphasize "the pure teaching of the gospel (''pura doctrina evangelii'') and the right administration of the sacraments (''recta administratio sacramentorum'')" as "the two most necessary signs of the true visible church".<ref name="Adhinarta2012">{{cite book|last=Adhinarta|first=Yuzo|title=The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Major Reformed Confessions and Catechisms of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries|date=14 June 2012|publisher=Langham Monographs|language=en |isbn=9781907713286|page=83}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page