Your word study and the claim that you can't find 'it' in the Bible have led you down a blind alley. The Bible also doesn't use the words Trinity, Millennium, Rapture, Sacrament, and many, many other terms that we use in order to refer quickly to various concepts that certainly ARE in the Bible. Do you therefore conclude that they don't exist, aren't Scriptural, or have no importance to a Christian?
I'm looking at the results of a search on "church." The majority of uses seem to be a specific local church. But there are times when it means everybody. I thought we all used a creed that talks about the holy catholic Church. This is just a weird argument. The only other time I've heard it has been with Catholics, where it's "no the Church isn't invisible. It's identical to Catholic Church." (upper-case C, meaning all churches in communion with Rome.)
What's not true?
So does being a part of Christ's church.
No, and I don't attend the monthly meeting of humankind, my political conservatism, my love for music, or my German ancestry. As a matter of fact, most of the value systems you or I adhere to are not capsulized into some organization with a Constitution and By Laws that holds membership meetings.
Yes, but many o f these terms involve a further interpretation of Scripture and the considerable use of extra-biblical material. For example, Scripture implies a Trinity, true. However, it does not work it out in any real detail. Hence, the Trinitarian formulations use loads of extra-biblical materials and concepts, such as "substance," which comes from Hellenic metaphysics.
I don't see how that changes anything. The point was that saying "it's not in the Bible" is true only if the word itself is not there. That is what Brian was arguing.
Because as Hedrick said -- better than I, apparently -- "church" has several different meanings, and it's virtually undeniable that one of them refers to what some Christians call the "invisible church."
