The “Notes” of the Church
The “Notes” of the Church
A central theme of ecclesiology relates to the four “notes” or “marks” of the church – that is to say, the four defining characteristics of the Christian church, as stated in the creeds of Christendom. These creeds affirm belief in “one holy catholic and apostolic church.” The four adjectives included in this phrase – “one,” “holy,” “catholic,” and “apostolic” – have come to be known as the “notes” or “marks” of the church, and have been of importance to ecclesiological discussion since the fourth century. In what follows, we shall consider each briefly.
One
The unity of the church has been of central importance to Christian thinking on the subject. The World Council of Churches, one of the more important agencies in the modern period to be concerned with Christian unity, defines itself as “a fellowship of churches, which confess our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior.” Yet that very definition concedes the existence of a plurality of churches – Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Orthodox, Presbyterian, and so on. How can one speak of “one church” when there are so many churches? Or of the “unity” of the church, when it is so clearly disunited at the institutional level?
Two episodes in church history may be noted as being of especial importance in relation to this question. The first relates to North Africa in the third century, when division within the church became a potentially destructive issue. The Decian persecution (250–1) led to many Christians lapsing or abandoning their faith in the face of persecution. Division arose immediately over how these individuals should be treated: did such a lapse mark the end of their faith, or could they be reconciled to the church by penance? Opinions differed sharply, and serious disagreement and tension resulted. (The Donatist controversy, discussed earlier, may be regarded as a development of this unresolved problem, in response to the later Diocletian persecution.)
In his important treatise On the Unity of the Catholic Church (251), written in direct response to the crisis arising from the Decian persecution, Cyprian of Carthage insisted upon the absolute unity of the church, comparing it to the “seamless robe of Christ” which could not be divided because it had been woven from the top throughout. Destroy its unity and its identity was simultaneously devastated.
Anyone who cuts themselves off from the Church and is joined to an adulteress is separated from the promises of the Church, and anyone who leaves the Church of Christ behind cannot benefit from the rewards of Christ. Such people are strangers, outcasts, and enemies. You cannot have God as father unless you have the Church as mother. If any had been able to escape outside Noah's Ark, there might have been a way of escape for those who are outside the church.
There is only one church, and outside its bounds salvation is impossible. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus – “outside the church there is no salvation.” Cyprian was subsequently martyred by the Roman authorities in 258, with the result that his distinctive ideas on unity within the church achieved considerable status within the region. As Cyprian was a local martyr, the respect and veneration attached to his person were easily transferred to his theological ideas. This forced Augustine to give them considerable weight in his own writings on the topic.
The sixteenth-century Reformation also witnessed controversy over this issue. How, asked the critics of the Reformation, could the reformers legitimately break away from the established church, and form breakaway bodies? Surely this was nothing more and nothing less than a violation of the unity of the church? (It must be recalled here that the Reformation took place in western Europe in the early sixteenth century, when the only significant ecclesiastical body in the region was the more or less undivided Catholic church.) As we noted earlier, the reformers' response to this important criticism was to argue that the medieval church had become corrupted to the point at which reformation was inevitable. The medieval church remained, in their view, a Christian church. Yet it was in danger of losing sight of its distinctive identity and vocation, and required reform and renewal. If this could not be achieved from within, it would have to be achieved by breaking away and forming a reformed church outside the flux of medieval Christendom.
Once the principle of breaking away from a parent ecclesiastical body for doctrinal reasons had been established, little could be done to check it. This often led to a cascade of fragmentation within such breakaway bodies. The Church of England broke away from the Catholic church in the sixteenth century; controversy within the Church of England led to an exodus of some of its clergy and people, leading to the formation of the Methodist church; controversy within the Methodist church in the nineteenth century led to the formation of Wesleyan and Calvinist groups, each claiming to be “Methodist.” From the sixteenth century onward, it became clear that the classic creedal idea of “one church” could no longer be understood in institutional terms. But was it meant to be understood in this way in the first place? Earlier Christian writers, especially in the first phase of the patristic era, had known this tension and been able to make sense of it.
Faced with this apparent tension between a theoretical belief in “one church” and the brute observable reality of a plurality of churches, Christian writers developed approaches to allow the later observation to be incorporated within the framework of the former. Four major approaches to the issue of the unity of the church may be noted, each of which possesses distinctive strengths and weaknesses.
In recent years, many theologians with sympathies for ecumenism (deriving from the Greek word oecumene, “the whole world,” and now generally understood to mean “the movement concerned with the fostering of Christian unity”) have argued that the true basis of the “unity of the church” requires to be recovered, after centuries of distortion. The maxim ubi Christus, ibi ecclesia (“Where Christ is, there is also the catholic church”), which derives from Ignatius of Antioch (see p. 364), is argued to point to the unity of the church lying in Christ, rather than in any historical or cultural factor. Throughout the New Testament, these ecumenical theologians argued, the diversity of local churches is not regarded as compromising the unity of the church. The church already possesses a unity through its common calling from God, which expresses itself in different communities in different cultures and situations. “Unity” must not be understood sociologically or organizationally, but theologically. The Catholic theologian Hans Küng (born 1928) stresses this point in his magisterial study The Church (1967):
The unity of the church is a spiritual entity. It is one and the same God who gathers the scattered from all places and all ages and makes them into one people of God. It is one and the same Christ who through his word and Spirit unites all together in the same bond of fellowship of the same body of Christ. [...] The Church is one, and therefore should be one.
The point that Küng makes is that the unity of the church is grounded in the saving work of God in Christ. This is in no way inconsistent with that one church adapting itself to local cultural conditions, leading to the formation of local churches. As Küng puts it:
The unity of the church presupposes a multiplicity of churches; the various churches do not need to deny their origins or their specific situations; their language, their history, their customs and traditions, their way of life and thought, their personal structure will differ fundamentally, and no one has the right to take this from them. The same thing is not suitable for everyone, at every time, and in every place.
An illustration of this may be provided from Anglicanism, a family of churches which owes its historical origins to the English Reformation. The Thirty-Nine Articles (1563), which established the identity of the movement at that time, do not commit Anglicanism to anything other than an affirmation of the main points of the Christian faith, allowing a considerable degree of freedom in relation to areas of potential division (evident in the nuanced discussion of the highly contentious issue of predestination at article 17). If Anglicanism possesses “essentials,” they are “essentials” that are common to the whole church of God, of which Anglicanism is part. Anglicanism's distinctive features may be argued to lie in its application of the gospel to a specific historical situation – England, and subsequently the British colonies. The American Anglican theologian Louis Weil (born 1935) states this point as follows:
The gospel in Anglicanism is, then, one facet in a vast mosaic. In its essentials, it corresponds to the gospel as it has been proclaimed and believed all over the world. Yet it is also characterized by its particularity as an experience of God's saving work in particular cultures, and is shaped by the insights and limitations of persons who were themselves seeking to live the gospel within a particular context.
This represents an affirmation of the fundamental unity of the Christian church while noting the need for adaptation to local circumstances.
The rapid growth of evangelicalism in the modern church is of considerable importance in relation to the doctrine of the church. Evangelicalism is a worldwide transdenominational movement which is able to coexist within every major denomination in the western church, including the Catholic church. Evangelicalism is not inextricably locked into any specific denominational constituency. An evangelical commitment to a corporate conception of the Christian life does not entail the explicit definition of a theology of the church. Precisely because evangelicalism has no defining or limiting ecclesiology, it can accommodate itself to virtually any form of church order.
This is well illustrated by the history of the movement. Evangelical attitudes are now known to have been deeply embedded within the Italian church during the 1520s and 1530s, with prominent Italian church leaders (including several cardinals) meeting regularly in a number of cities to study Scripture and the writings of the Protestant reformers. No tension was seen between an evangelical spirituality and a Catholic ecclesiology; it was only when the situation was radically politicized in the 1540s through the intrusion of imperial politics into theological debate that evangelicalism came to be seen as a destabilizing influence within the Italian church.
Similar developments are now known to be taking place within the Catholic church in the United States, as an increasing number of members find evangelicalism conducive to their spiritual needs yet do not feel (and are not made to feel) that their espousal of an evangelical spirituality entails abandoning their loyalty to Catholic church structures. The unity of the church is here grounded not in any specific ecclesiastical organizational system but in a common commitment to the evangel – the good news of Jesus Christ.
Holy
Earlier, we noted that the idea of the unity of the church appeared to be fatally compromised by rampant denominationalism. The theoretical unity of the church appeared to be contradicted by the empirical reality, in which the church appeared as divided and fragmented. Precisely the same tension between theory and experience arises through the assertion that the church is “holy” when both the past history and present experience of that institution point to sinfulness on the part of both the church and its members.
How is the theoretical holiness of the church to be reconciled with the sinfulness of Christian believers? The most significant attempt to bring experience into line with theory on this question can be seen in sectarian movements such as Donatism and Anabaptism. Both these movements laid considerable emphasis upon the empirical holiness of church members, leading to the exclusion from the church of members who were deemed to have lapsed from these public standards of sanctity. This rigorist approach seemed to contradict substantial parts of the New Testament, which affirmed the fallibility and forgivability – if the neologism may be excused – of believers. Others have asserted that a distinction may be made between the holiness of the church and the sinfulness of its members. This raises the theoretical difficulty of whether a church can exist without members, and seems to suggest a disembodied church without any real connection with human beings.
A different approach draws upon an eschatological perspective. The church is at present as sinful as its members; nevertheless, it will finally be purified on the last day. “Whenever I have described the church as being without spot or wrinkle, I have not intended to imply that it was like this already, but that it should prepare itself to be like this, at the time when it too will appear in glory” (Augustine of Hippo). For Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–74), the church will only be “without spot or wrinkle” in “our eternal home, not on the way there.” The church is made up of human beings, who are sinful in this life. As Aquinas remarks, “we would deceive ourselves if we were to say that we have no sin, as 1 John 1: 8 reminds us.”
Probably the most helpful approach to this mark of the church is to explore the meaning of the term “holy” in greater detail. In ordinary English, the term has acquired associations of “morality,” “sanctity,” or “purity,” which often seem to bear little relation to the behavior of fallen human beings. The Hebrew term kadad, which underlies the New Testament concept of “holiness,” has the sense of “being cut off” or “being separated.” There are strong overtones of dedication: to be “holy” is to be set apart for and dedicated to the service of God.
A fundamental element – indeed, perhaps the fundamental element – of the Old Testament idea of holiness is that of “something or someone whom God has set apart.” The New Testament restricts the idea almost entirely to personal holiness. It refers the idea to individuals or communities, declining to pick up the ideas of “holy places” or “holy things” from its Jewish past. It is people, whether as individuals or groups, who can be considered to be holy, not places or objects. People are “holy” in that they are dedicated to God and distinguished from the world on account of their calling by God. A number of theologians have suggested a correlation between the idea of “the church” (the Greek word for which can bear the meaning of “those who are called out”) and “holy” (that is, those who have been separated from the world, on account of their having been called by God).
To speak of the “holiness of the church” is thus primarily to speak of the holiness of the one who called that church and its members. The church has been separated from the world in order to bear witness to the grace and salvation of God. In this sense, there are obvious connections between the church being “holy” and the church being “apostolic.” The term “holy” is theological, not moral, in its connotations, affirming the calling of the church and its members and the hope that the church will one day share in the life and glory of God.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) sets out an account of the issues concerning the holiness of the church which emphasizes both the theological foundation and the practical application of this belief:
Christ, holy, innocent, and undefiled, knew nothing of sin, but came only to expiate the sins of the people. The Church, however, clasping sinners to her bosom, at once holy and always in need of purification, follows constantly the path of penance and renewal. All members of the Church, including her ministers, must acknowledge that they are sinners. In everyone, the weeds of sin will still be mixed with the good wheat of the Gospel until the end of time. Hence the Church gathers sinners already caught up in Christ's salvation but still on the way to holiness.
The holiness of the church is here grounded in the person of Christ. Those who are drawn into the church through their quest for holiness begin a journey of transformation, penance, and renewal. But this process is under way, and not complete.
Catholic
In modern English, the term “catholic” is often confused, especially in nonreligious circles, with “(Roman) Catholic.” Although this confusion is understandable, the distinction between “Catholic” and “catholic” must be maintained. It is not only Catholics who are catholic, just as it is not only eastern Orthodox writers who are orthodox in their theology. Indeed, many Protestant churches, more than a little embarrassed by the use of the term “catholic” in the creeds, have replaced it with the less contentious word “universal,” arguing that this brings greater intelligibility to belief in “one holy universal and apostolic church.”
The term “catholic” derives from the Greek phrase kath' holou (“referring to the whole”). The Greek words subsequently morphed into the Latin word catholicus, which came to have the meaning “universal or general.” This sense of the word is retained in the English phrase “catholic taste,” meaning a “wide-ranging taste” rather than a “taste for things that are Catholic.” Older versions of the English Bible often refer to some of the New Testament letters (such as those of James and John) as “catholic epistles,” meaning that they are directed to all Christians (in contrast to those of Paul, which are directed to the needs and situations of individual, identified churches, such as those at Rome or Corinth).
At no point does the New Testament use the term “catholic” to refer to the church as a whole. The New Testament uses the term ekklesia to refer to local churches or worshiping communities, which it nevertheless understands to represent or embody something which transcends that local body. While an individual church is not the church in its totality, it nevertheless shares in that totality. It is this notion of “totality” which is subsequently encapsulated in the term “catholic.” The term was introduced in later centuries in an attempt to bring together central New Testament insights and attach them to a single term. The first known use of the phrase “the catholic church” occurs in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch, who was martyred at Rome around 110: “Where Christ is, there is also the catholic church.” Other writings of the second century use the term to refer to the existence of a universal church alongside local congregations.
The meaning of the term changed fundamentally with the conversion of Constantine in 313. By the end of the fourth century, the term ecclesia catholica (“the catholic church”) had come to mean “the imperial church” – that is, the only legal religion within the Roman empire. Other forms of belief, including Christian beliefs that diverged from the mainstream, were declared to be illegal.
Further expansion of the church in this period contributed to a developing understanding of the term “catholic.” By the beginning of the fifth century, Christianity was firmly established throughout the entire Mediterranean world. In response to this development, the term “catholic” came to be interpreted as “embracing the entire world.”
In terms of its early development, the term “catholic” as applied to the church thus went through three stages of meaning:
The developed sense of the word is perhaps best seen in the fourth-century catechetical writings of Cyril of Jerusalem. In his 18th catechetical lecture, Cyril teases out a number of senses of the Greek work katholikos:
The church is thus called “catholic” because it is spread throughout the entire inhabited world [oikoumene], from one end to the other, and because it teaches in its totality [katholikos] and without leaving anything out every doctrine which people need to know relating to things visible and invisible, whether in heaven or earth. It is also called “catholic” because it brings to obedience every sort of person – whether rulers or their subjects, the educated or the unlearned. It also makes available a universal [katholikos] remedy and cure to every kind of sin.
There are four senses of the term “catholic” in this short passage:
The various senses of the term “catholic” are also brought out clearly by Thomas Aquinas in his discussion of the section of the Apostles' Creed dealing with the doctrine of the church. In this analysis, Aquinas singles out three essential aspects of the idea of “catholicity”:
The church is catholic, i.e., universal, first with respect to place, because it is throughout the entire world [per totum mundum], against the Donatists. See Romans 1: 8: “Your faith is proclaimed in all the world”; Mark 16: 15: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.” In ancient times, God was known only in Judea, but now throughout the entire world. This church, moreover, has three parts. One is on earth, another is in heaven, and the third is in purgatory. Secondly, the Church is universal with respect to the condition of people, because no one is rejected, whether master or slave, male or female. See Galatians 3: 28: “There is neither male nor female.” Thirdly, it is universal with respect to time. For some have said that the church should last until a certain time, but this is false, because this church began from the time of Abel and will last to the end of the world. See Matthew 28: 20: “And I am with you always, to the close of the age.” And after the close of the age it will remain in heaven.
Note how catholicity is here understood in three modes, in terms of geographical, anthropological, and chronological universality.
As we saw earlier, a fundamental re-examination of the notion of “catholicity” took place at the time of the Reformation. It seemed to many that the catholicity and unity of the church were destroyed simultaneously with the fragmentation of the western European church in the sixteenth century. Protestant writers argued that the essence of catholicity lay, not in church institutions, but in matters of doctrine. The fifth-century writer Vincent of Lérins (died c.445) had defined catholicity in terms of “that which is believed everywhere, at all times, and by all people.” The reformers argued that they remained catholic, despite having broken away from the medieval church, in that they retained the central and universally recognized elements of Christian doctrine. Historical or institutional continuity was secondary to doctrinal fidelity. For this reason, the mainstream Protestant churches insisted they were simultaneously catholic and reformed – that is, maintaining continuity with the apostolic church at the level of teaching, having eliminated spurious nonbiblical practices and beliefs.
The notion of “catholicity” which has come to the fore in recent years, especially in ecumenical discussions subsequent to the Second Vatican Council, is the oldest sense of the term – namely, that of totality. Local churches and particular denominations are to be seen as the manifestations, representations, or embodiments of the one universal church. As Hans Küng states this position:
The catholicity of the church therefore consists in a notion of entirety, based on identity, and resulting in universality. From this it is clear that unity and catholicity go together; if the church is one, it must be universal; if it is universal, it must be one. Unity and catholicity are two interwoven dimensions of one and the same church.
In the twentieth century, increasing attention has also been paid by western theologians to the notions of “catholicity” that have been dominant in the Orthodox churches. This is often expressed using the Russian word Sobornost, which has no exact equivalent in other languages. While the term denotes the general idea of “universality,” it also stresses the unity of believers within the fellowship of the church. The idea, which is developed most fully in the writings of Aleksei S. Khomyakov (1804–60) and Sergei Bulgakov (1871–1944), attempts to do justice to both the distinctiveness of individual members of the church and the overall harmony of its corporate life. This is linked with the notion of “conciliarity” (the Russian word sobor means “a council” or “an assembly”), by which the life of the church is governed in such a way that authority is dispersed among all the faithful, rather than centralized and concentrated in any single quasi-papal figure.
Apostolic
The term “apostolic,” like “catholic,” is not used to refer to the church in the New Testament. Unlike the word “catholic,” this term is restricted to Christian use and is therefore not subject to the kinds of confusion with secular ideas noted in the case of other marks of the church. The fundamental sense of the term is “originating with the apostles” or “having a direct link with the apostles.” It is a reminder that the church is founded on the apostolic witness and testimony.
The term “apostle” requires explanation. Its use in the New Testament suggests that it bears two related meanings:
In declaring the church to be “apostolic,” the creeds thus appear to emphasize the historical roots of the gospel, the continuity between the church and Christ through the apostles whom he appointed, and the continuing evangelistic and missionary tasks of the church.
The notion of the “apostolicity” of the church was the subject of considerable discussion within English theological circles from about 1870 to the beginning of the First World War, in 1914. In a series of lectures given at Cambridge University during the academic year 1913–14, H. B. Swete (1835–1917) set out the contours of a biblically informed ecclesiology which made extensive use of the early patristic discussion of the matter. Swete, who was Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University from 1890 until 1915, set out three basic themes which he regarded as enfolded in the concept of the “apostolicity” of the church: “The Catholic Church is Apostolic in three respects: as planted in the world by the Apostles; as adhering to the teaching of the Apostles; as carrying on the succession of Apostolic ministry.” The first point, according to Swete, can be seen in the New Testament itself, especially the history of the expansion of the church recorded in the Acts of the Apostles:
Before the Ascension our Lord charged the Apostles with the work of preaching the Gospel in Judaea and Samaria and to the uttermost part of the earth. This evangelization of Judaea and Samaria was carried out by the Twelve and their company, as the Acts relate; the Gentile missions, so far as the West was concerned, fell chiefly into other hands. But the mission of St. Paul was undertaken with the full approval of the original Apostolate, and was in fact a fulfilment of a part of their task with which they were themselves not qualified to deal. By agreement and fellowship with St. Paul the Twelve “were enabled to feel that they were in effect carrying out through him that extension of their sphere which it is incredible that they should ever have dismissed from their minds” [H. J. A. Hort]. Thus Gentile Christendom was ultimately of Apostolic planting, even if we limit the Apostolic college to the Twelve. The churches founded by St. Paul and his associates were Apostolic foundations, not only because St. Paul was an Apostle, but because his work was done with the concurrence of the original Apostles.
Having established that the historical origins of the Christian church rest with the apostles, Swete goes on to demonstrate that the teaching of that church was equally apostolic:
The earliest converts, it is noted in Acts, “continued steadfastly in the Apostles' teaching” (Acts 2: 42). On their teaching and the teaching of St. Paul there was built up a tradition, or as the Pastorals put it, a “deposit” was formed, which remained as an abiding treasure of the Church (2 Thessalonians 2: 15; 3: 6). Its substance was known as the “rule of faith,” and found expression in the early creeds. [...] The witness of the Apostolic age was the heritage of the Catholic Church; she claimed all Apostolic teaching as her own, and admitted no other body of truth.
Swete's attention now turned to the question of the type of ministry exercised by the Christian church. Again, his point mingles historical and theological reflection; the ministry entrusted to the church was of apostolic origin:
Besides Apostolic tradition, the Catholic Church possessed also an Apostolic ministry. The orderly devolution of ministerial authority from the Apostolate is a clearly marked principle of the first age. The Seven were chosen by the whole body of the disciples, but on their election they were set before the Apostles, and by them admitted to their office. In the new churches among the Gentiles, elders (presbyters) were appointed by Barnabas and Saul. Later on, at Ephesus and in Crete, in the absence of the Apostle, the ordination of presbyter-bishops and deacons was entrusted by St. Paul to his delegates, Timothy and Titus. Timothy himself had received the gift of ministerial grace through the laying on of the Apostle's hands (2 Timothy 1: 6).
Swete's discussion of this issue can be seen as reflecting the general tenor of late Victorian reflection on this subject. The three criteria of apostolicity which he identified are:
Such ideas were especially influential within the Church of England (where they were of some relevance to debates over ecclesiology resulting from the aftermath of the Oxford Movement of the early nineteenth century) yet would receive acceptance far beyond the English national church.
Yet issues remain unresolved and continue to be debated keenly. For example, is the apostolicity of the church safeguarded institutionally, through historical continuity with the apostolic church? Or can it be safeguarded through replication of these ideas and practices, without necessarily having historical or institutional continuity? The former tends to characterize Catholic and Orthodox thought, the latter Protestant.