Yes and no.
It depends on what is meant by the church.
The Church, today, is a hierarchical organization, with its human head and its legal constitution. Thomas Aquinas defines the church as a perfect society, endowed with executive, legislative and judicial powers. The church, according to this theological concept, developed since the fourth century, is a state organization, whose functioning obeys the same rules as any other government.
This is the legal aspect of the visible church.
But what is meant by the church today is something entirely different from the original meaning of this word.
In the Gospel, the word church has nothing to do with this concept. The whole Gospel of Jesus revolves around the central concept of the "kingdom of God", or the "kingdom of Heaven" - and that kingdom coincides exactly with what the Gospel means by the church, but of an invisible church.
The fifth gospel of the apostle Thomas found in Egypt in 1945, explicitly deals with this kingdom of God, in the world and man, this true, internal, real, invisible church.
Jesus denies that the kingdom of God can be discovered by observing and obeying rules and dogmas; that the kingdom of God has a geographical location and we can indicate this or that address saying: "The kingdom of Heaven is located there".
Jesus stated that "The kingdom of God is within you".
The translation "is among you" as if it were only a social phenomenon, is false; both the Greek text of the first century and the later Latin text says "it is within you", i.e., within the human soul. Therefore, based on Jesus' affirmation, it is not a social organization.
The kingdom of God potentially exists in all human beings, and man has to raise consciousness and develop this kingdom.
The church of Jesus has nothing to do with a social or legal organization.
Why then was the visible church founded?
The visible church was founded by men and can coexist with the invisible church, just as the body is the material aspect of the spiritual soul. But it would be absurd to say that the soul has a head, legs, arms, etc.
The essence of the church is the kingdom of God within each individual; the body or the existence of the church can be a visible society, as long as this society does not seek to be superior to the true church, but lives in perfect harmony as a visible manifestation of the invisible church. In case of conflict between the church body and the church soul, we must abandon the body and affirm only the soul.
The invisible soul of this kingdom can manifest itself through several visible bodies - as long as there is no identification between the soul and the body, between the internal kingdom and the external organization.
Since the vast majority of humans are spiritually immature, Jesus' metaphysical message appears in the form of children's pedagogy, as is the whole theology. This pedagogical interpretation of his cosmic message is a necessary evil, because most of humanity is not, and has never been in a position to comprehend and assimilate the spirit of the invisible kingdom - but it is better if the undeveloped masses have a pedagogical discipline than to be without it.
Paul of Tarsus, in the first century, wrote to the Christians: "To those who are infants in Christ, I gave them milk to drink - but to those who are adults in Christ, I gave them solid food".
Although more than twenty centuries have passed, the vast majority of these children have not yet become adults in spirit and this proves that spiritual evolution walks with short steps for long periods!
That’s why many Christian leaders are interested - social, political and financial, and even military - in maintaining Christianity in its infantile stage of blind obedience, for no authority can rule spiritually adult men. Spiritual adulthood is autonomous and self-determining and does not slavishly obey orders established by needs and passions. If all of Christendom were spiritually mature, there would be no need for a visible church, because the church is essentially invisible, it is the kingdom of God within man.
Spiritual leaders can and should be leaders of the people, as indicator arrows along the path, but not intermediaries between man and God. To be a guide for others, man must have realized in himself the kingdom of God, otherwise, he will be a "blind guide leading other blind".
It is not enough to say and do - it is necessary to be, in spirit and truth, what we recommend to others.
The Church of Jesus is the discovery of the kingdom of God within man, the "birth by the spirit", and the subsequent universal love of all beings who are objects of divine love. Part of Roman Catholicism, fortunately, still lives the spirit of Christian Catholicism that it still possesses; unfortunately, the human elements, which were introduced into its ecclesiastical organism, contaminated and intoxicated Jesus' pure messages, the same occurring in other religious forms, which were also contaminated by the human elements that settled in them.
As long as any selfish element is excluded from religion - of individual, political, diplomatic, financial and military selfishness - one can have a personal and profound experience of the spirit of Jesus.
Unfortunately, the idea of "church" prevailed in the world instead of the concept of "religion". Jesus did not found or defend any church, in the traditional sense of the term; he was a religious man, he had the deepest intuitive knowledge of God and the kingdom of Heaven; he did not limit that knowledge to any bureaucratic organization or any ecclesiastical framework, as later it was invented.
Let us admit that the Christian churches are evolutionary stages towards Christianity, more or less happy or unhappy attempts to interpret the Jesus of the Gospel - but none of them is Christianity and the churches that this dare to affirm prove that together with their deep ignorance they allied with the most disgusting arrogance.
Any ecclesiastical theology is a caricature when confronted with the portrait of Jesus that shines in the pages of the Gospel. 16th century Protestantism promised to Christian humanity to reestablish the authentic portrait of the Gospel, so horribly misrepresented by Roman Catholicism, from the 4th century until today. But, despite the real services it rendered to humanity, Protestantism also ended up painting a caricature of the real Jesus.
It remains, therefore, for the sincere man, to close his eyes to all theologies, ancient and modern, and, living intimately the essence of the Gospel, to intuitively rediscover, in the depths of a spiritual vision, the uncontaminated and pure effigy of the eternal and universal Jesus of the Gospel. But whoever does such a thing will be excommunicated as "heretic" and "apostate" by the theologians of the churches, as it happened, twenty centuries ago with Paul of Tarsus who professed the truth about Jesus who healed him from blindness and was therefore reproached and expelled by blind theologians from the "infallible synagogue" of his time and country.
Albert Schweitzer says that today's Christian, properly vaccinated with the serum of ecclesiastical theologies have become immune against the assault of the Christ of the Gospel; the injection of a meek and accommodating pseudo-Christianity immunized them against the revolutionary spirit of aggressive and dynamic Christianity of the catacombs and amphitheatres.
The best way to end Christianity of the Gospel is not direct combat, because open struggle creates opposition, heroes and martyrs; the best way is to vaccinate the Christian with the good "culture" of ecclesiastical theology that, on the outside, looks like Christianity. Whoever does not have any Christianity may be hungry and thirsty since every human soul is Christian by nature, but whoever has a well-done substitution for Christianity lives in the permanent illusion that its erudite theology is the Christianity of Jesus, consequently, all doors to genuine and integral Christianity will remain closed.
The Roman clergy is today, the most powerful political and financial organization within Christianity. Everything that favours the prestige and finances of the clergy is considered good, even if they are opposed to the spirit of Jesus, and everything that disfavours its cause is considered bad, however much it promotes real Christianity. And since the Catholic is all the more Catholic the more submissive it is to the clergy, it follows that, logically, the obedient Catholic cannot discover genuine and integral Christianity; can only accept Christianity in the conditioned form offered to it by the clergy, which does not allow the people the least spiritual autonomy. Knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus would be the principle of emancipation and spiritual maturity, but this emancipation from clerical tutelage disfavours the political-financial cause of the priestly hierarchy, therefore, the Roman clergy is heresy for having abandoned Christianity ...
In the "Acts of the Apostles", we have a parallel to these sacred businesses: When the apostle Paul began the systematic campaign against the trade that the silversmith Demetrius did with the miniatures of the temple of the goddess Diana in the city of Ephesus, Demetrius revolted because he saw that the people, as they start embracing the Gospel preached by the apostle, diminished in their faith and devotion to the idols and amulets that Demetrius sold in huge amounts. Demetrius did what his successors and friends of today continue to do: he defamed Paul as an enemy of religion and incited the popular masses against him, who almost lynched him.
When, in our day, someone favours the cause of Christian Catholicity against the interests of Roman Catholicism, he is invariably punished as "enemy of the church", "heretic", "apostate", "traitor", etc., because there are many Demetrius that still exists today ...
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