5 One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church
One holy catholic and apostolic Church
The day of Pentecost is often marked as the ‘birthday of the Church’. According to the Acts of the Apostles (chapter 2), the climax of the work of the Holy Spirit was to spark into life the Church as a community of believers. The same Spirit, who hovered over the face of the deep in creation and inspired the prophets, initiated the mission of the Church into all the world.
Before Pentecost, there had been gatherings of the original disciples who spent time reflecting on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. After Pentecost, a new and increasingly diverse group rapidly emerged – believers who had not been disciples but were now convinced of the truth of the gospel. We’ve already come across the Greek word ekkle-sia – a gathering or assembly of those who are ‘called out’ – that came to be used to refer to this new community.
As the Church grew in numbers and influence, it was forced to think through some fundamental questions. What did it believe? How should it worship? What was its relationship with Judaism? Or with paganism? Many of these discussions are echoed in the New Testament itself. One further question had to be explored: what was the Church? How was this new community of faith to understand its own identity?
The creeds present us with a framework for making sense of that identity, focusing on four key themes. The Nicene Creed declares that Christians believe in ‘one holy catholic and apostolic Church’. In this chapter, we shall explore each of these four ‘marks’ and consider how they help shape our understanding of the nature, mission and purpose of the Church.1
We will then look at the role it can play in the Christian life. After all, the Church is something that we inhabit, not something we simply think about!
The first mark: one Church
I used to find it baffling that there were so many churches. In my home town in Ireland, we had churches to meet most tastes – provided, of course, that you were interested in God. I wasn’t, and that ruled them all out as far as I was concerned. So many of these churches seemed to have come about as a consequence of disputes that happened generations ago, which nobody had got round to sorting out. So the Nicene Creed’s statement that there was ‘one Church’ seemed totally unrealistic to me. And, to be honest, there are times when it still does. Many times.
However, we can make some sense of this. Let’s begin by looking at the New Testament. Paul’s letters inform us that individual Christian communities were growing up throughout the civilized world of his era, especially in the great cities of Asia Minor. Paul refers to these communities as ‘churches’ – that is, as assemblies of people who have been ‘called out’ of the world. Each of these assemblies had its own distinct identity and – as Paul’s letters make clear – its own problems and issues to sort out. Yet it is evident that these individual groups of believers saw themselves as part of something greater that somehow transcended their local communities and their own specific situations. In the later writings of the New Testament, the term ‘church’ – in the singular – increasingly comes to be used to refer to the body of Christians throughout the world.
The basic assumption is that, since there is only one gospel, there can only be one Church. There is ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism’ (Ephesians 4.5). Anyone who responds to this Lord in faith and is baptized is therefore a member of the Church. The Nicene Creed’s declaration that there is only one Church thus affirms that there is only one Jesus of Nazareth. The Church is the community of those who put their faith in him. This community is presently dispersed across the world and throughout history; yet, in the end, all its members will be gathered together in the New Jerusalem. There can be only one such community, since there is only one gospel. The second-century theologian Irenaeus of Lyons put it like this:
The Church having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying only one house, carefully preserves it. She also believed these points [of faith] just as if she had only one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, teaches them, and hands them down with perfect harmony, as if she possessed one mouth.2
The letters to the Colossians and Ephesians also emphasize this point of the unity of the Church. Jesus is described as the ‘head of the body, the church’ (Colossians 1.18). The same term ‘church’ is thus used to describe both a local gathering of believers and the greater universal reality of all believers. One very simple way of thinking of this relationship is to say that each local church is an embodiment or manifestation of the universal Church, which consists of all believers down the ages.
This might seem to suggest that congregations are to be seen as local branches of banks or supermarkets, and this notion does actually have some relevance! For example, the Church of England is a national church, represented throughout the nation in parish churches, and many other denominations have similar structures. But the New Testament does not advocate an organizational arrangement with a focus on the here and now. It thinks more in terms of the continuity between local Christian gatherings and the entire body of believers – past, present and future – who will one day gather in the New Jerusalem.
An institutional approach to understanding the unity of the Church made sense for the first thousand years of Christian history. During this period, there was one church throughout the Roman Empire, whose dispersed leaders were based in its great cities, especially Rome and Constantinople. By 1054, tensions between Greek- and Latin-speaking churches had become so serious that they went their separate ways, in effect leading to the splitting of the Church into what we would now call Catholicism and Orthodoxy. It was now no longer possible to speak of a single universal Church on earth. The situation became more complex in the sixteenth century, with the emergence of Protestantism. Each church saw itself as the most authentic version of Christianity and asked of the others: are they really churches at all?
These debates continue, and it is not my intention to resolve them. But we can reflect on how to understand the relation between local churches, here and now, and the gathered body of believers in the New Jerusalem. The simplest way of thinking of this is to look on the body of believers on earth as the ‘wandering people of God’, pilgrims on this earth. Other Christians have made this journey before us, just as others will make it after us. Finally, all will join the throngs gathered in the courts of the New Jerusalem.
John Calvin and others drew a distinction that might be helpful here. On the one hand, we have the ‘visible church’ – the congregations and gatherings of believers that we see throughout the world. On the other, there is the ‘invisible church’, which is the community of all believers throughout history, including the saints of the Old Testament, who ‘died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them’ (Hebrews 11.13).
This sets our own faith in a deeper context. It reminds us that we are part of the pilgrim people of God. Others have made this journey before us. We each individually occupy a tiny slice of history; the Church, however, is deeply rooted in history. We are connected by faith to those who have gone before us, who watch over us and encourage us, as a great ‘cloud of witnesses’ (Hebrews 12.1). It’s something we remember when we read the classics of the Christian faith – such as Augustine’s Confessions (written in 397– 8) or Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ (written sometime in about 1425) – or when we visit old churches.
However, many readers will feel that C. S. Lewis’s notion of ‘mere Christianity’ (see pp. 85 – 8) – with its focus on the here and now and its concern to address the many varieties of Christianity he encountered – makes most sense of the idea of one Church and many denominations.3 Lewis had no interest in making judgements about which way of living out the Christian faith was the best. His point was that we each have to choose where we find ‘fires and chairs and meals’ – in other words, the community of faith in which we feel at home, and receive spiritual comfort and nourishment.
From what has been said, it is clear that we can make a lot of sense of the Nicene Creed’s declaration that there is only one Church. But what about the idea that this Church is holy?
The second mark: a holy Church
A friend of mine was trying to teach a Sunday school class about holiness. He wanted the group of children (that included his son) to think about what the word meant and how they could explain the idea to their friends and family. ‘If someone said that I was holy, what would that mean?’ he asked. There was an awkward silence. Eventually, his son put up his hand. ‘I guess it would mean they don’t know you very well.’
The long history of the Christian churches makes many wary of regarding them as ‘holy’. It is hard to take this idea seriously when we hear so many stories of clergy involved in child abuse or financial fraud. And what about the wars of religion? They didn’t seem particularly holy. Of course, there are people, such as Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who really have lived holy lives. But that doesn’t stop us from feeling that it makes little sense to speak of the Church as a whole in this way.
And it’s not just the Church that causes us unease. Paul often addresses his letters to the ‘saints’. For example, he opens his letter to the church in the Roman colony of Philippi by addressing ‘all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi’ (Philippians 1.1). It immediately becomes clear that he is not referring to some special category of Christians at Philippi, but everyone, including those he believes are behaving badly.
So are all Christians really holy? I’m certainly not. Maybe I ought to be, but I’m honest enough to know my many failings. As Groucho Marx’s famous one-liner goes: ‘I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.’4 Why? Because the admissions standard would have to be ridiculously low! If I’m a saint, the currency has been devalued.
Let’s try shifting our thinking from the Church to the idea of ‘holiness’ itself. For most today, the word suggests stern prohibitions against drinking, dancing and playing cards. Or an austere other-worldly piety, disconnected from the banality of real life. However, these forms of behaviour could be seen as specific cultural implementations of the idea of holiness, which may have made sense in some situations but now seem tired and outdated.
The basic sense of the word ‘holy’ is ‘to be set apart for God’ or ‘to be dedicated to God’. The call to holiness is of major importance for individual believers and for the Church. ‘Be holy, for I am holy’ (Leviticus 11.44; 1 Peter 1.16). To be a Christian believer – or a Christian church – is to reflect the character of God. And how do we know what God is like? As we have seen, the classic Christian answer to this question is that God is like Jesus of Nazareth. By becoming more like Jesus, we become more like God.
To be like God is to be faithful, truthful, compassionate and righteous. It means crucifying our old natures, or healing our wounded souls, in order that a new way of living and thinking can emerge. (As we saw earlier, Augustine of Hippo saw the gospel as a healing balm, which restored humanity to what God intended us to be. Perhaps this helps us understand why one of Augustine’s favourite ways of thinking about the Church was as a hospital – a place where people came for healing.) But how might this work out in any specific personal or cultural context?
It could help to think of holiness as being less about the way in which we behave and more about the mindset we adopt. Holiness is a principled intention to be Christ-like, expressed in action. Then again, it is not always easy to convert our attitude to specific behaviour! Jesus of Nazareth’s summary of the law gives us the guidance we need to begin living a ‘holy’ life: we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and love our neighbour as ourselves (Matthew 22.34 – 46). But what might this mean in day-to-day terms?
Some time ago, I read a piece by the American political statesman Henry Kissinger. It was a foreword to the memoirs of Raymond Aron (1905 – 83), one of the great political philosophers of the twentieth century. Kissinger valued philosophy because it emphasized the importance of truth. But it proved difficult to apply this in practice.
The philosopher deals with truth; the statesman addresses contingencies. The thinker has a duty to define what is right; the policymaker must deal with what is attainable. The professor focuses on ultimate goals; the diplomat knows that his is a meandering path on which there are few ultimate solutions and whatever ‘solutions’ there are more often than not turn into a threshold for a new set of problems.5
I’ve often thought that Kissinger’s remarks help us reflect on the difficulty of being holy in today’s world. The Church has a good sense of what is true, right and our ultimate goal. The real test is to figure out how this might be put into practice in the ‘meandering paths’ of our lives and our churches.
But there’s another challenge that the Church has faced down the centuries as it reflects on the theme of holiness – namely, how to cope with the failings of human nature. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of many to have pointed out how Christian communities break down countless times because of an unrealistic view of human nature, leading to disillusionment.6 How can we be holy, if we’re not capable of living up to the expectations we have of ourselves?
This issue regularly surfaces in church life, and there has been much theological reflection on it. Perhaps the most famous debate, which erupted in the early church, was the Donatist controversy. Beginning in the third century, it rumbled on for the next hundred years or so. During the short-lived and ultimately unsuccessful Diocletian persecution of 251, Christian leaders in North Africa were faced with a choice: hand over their Christian books or face death. Many capitulated, unable to cope with the stress. What was to be done with these Christian leaders? A rigorist faction, led by Donatus, held that their failure compromised their integrity. The Church was meant to be holy, so how could it allow such people to remain as leaders? Or even as members of congregations? To maintain the holiness of the Church, it was necessary to be vigilant about church membership and weed out those who failed to live up to their calling.
Another faction, led by Augustine of Hippo, took a different view. Human nature is flawed and weak. We are simply not capable of living up to the full demands of the law, even with the help of God’s grace. Failure is the inevitable result of human frailty and sinfulness. Church leaders who lapse under pressure should be readmitted, once they have admitted their failings. It is unrealistic to expect Christians to be perfect in this life. Both church policy and pastoral care need to recognize the limited ability of Christian believers to achieve the holiness to which they are called!
Where does this leave our discussion about the holiness of the Church? We might surmise that holiness can be thought of as a goal, rather than something achievable in the present. It marks the end of our journey, not our present position or condition. The Church is ‘holy’ in that its individual members are called, inspired and enabled by a holy God, who foresees the end of the transformation that has been begun in our lives.
In The Living God, we used another analogy for this process: Michelangelo sculpting his magnificent statue of David from a damaged block of marble. Michelangelo could ‘see’ the final masterpiece as he worked, and this vision guided and encouraged him. As we look around our churches, we may feel despondent about their leadership and their members. But God sees ahead to what we will finally become. And so must we.
C. S. Lewis made this point beautifully in The Screwtape Letters. He points out how those who have just discovered Christianity often have totally unrealistic expectations of what Christians ought to be like. These ‘dreaming aspirations’ may well get shattered the moment a recent convert starts going to church and sees ordinary people, not saints:
When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather an oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided.7
Lewis’s description of a 1940s English church rang true with many at the time! His point, though, is timeless. The Church is God’s work in progress, as God takes ordinary people and makes them extraordinary. We must seek to see the hearts and minds of those who have discovered something precious and vital – a treasure that is contained within (and so often concealed by!) a humble outward appearance.
The third mark: a catholic Church
The third mark of the Church emphasizes its universality. In some versions of the creeds, the phrase ‘one holy catholic and apostolic Church’ is replaced with ‘one holy universal and apostolic Church’. This is a perfectly acceptable translation, although many would feel that it is important to retain the word ‘catholic’ for historical reasons. In this section, we shall use the term ‘catholic’ throughout, although you are welcome to replace it with ‘universal’ if this is helpful.
What does it mean to speak of the ‘catholicity’ of the Church? And why does it matter? Let’s begin by clarifying what the word means. Like so many words that relate to the Christian faith, it is based on a Greek phrase. This phrase, kath’ holou, means ‘relating to the whole’ or ‘universal’. It came to be used at an early stage in Christian history to refer to the idea that the Church is able to embrace, transform and save men and women of any nation, race or social standing. Early hints of this point can be found in the New Testament, which makes clear that human social evaluations of someone’s importance should not carry weight within the Christian community: ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3.28).
We know that the early church had to come to terms with a growing body of Christians from diverse backgrounds.8 Some were Jews who saw Christianity as the fulfilment of their faith. Many were Greeks and Romans, who came to see Christianity as displacing traditional pagan philosophies and religions. The new converts included high-ranking Romans and slaves, men and women. So how was the new movement to cope with this rapid expansion and diversification? Would tensions between different groups lead to the formation of ethnic churches? There are hints in the New Testament, particularly in the Acts of the Apostles, that some would have welcomed such a development. But at an early stage this possibility was rejected. Just as there was only one gospel, so there was only one Church. And that gospel and Church were able to meet the needs of all people groups.
By the middle of the third century, Christian theologians had developed a mature understanding of the catholicity of the Church. In a series of lectures given to those preparing for baptism in the fourth century, Cyril of Jerusalem explained what was meant by this idea:
The Church is called ‘catholic’ because it extends through all the world, from one end of the earth to the other; and because it teaches completely, and without any omissions, all the doctrines that ought to be known to humanity concerning both things that are visible and invisible and things that are earthly and heavenly; and because it brings all kinds of people – whether rulers or subjects, learned or ignorant – under the influence of true piety; and because it universally treats and cures every kind of sin, whether committed by the soul or the body; and possesses in itself every kind of virtue which can be named relating to words, deeds or spiritual gifts of every kind.9
This rich passage sets out four basic ideas. First, the Christian Church is ‘catholic’ or ‘universal’ because it extends throughout the entire world. There is no region in which it is absent. Wherever there are people, there the Church must be – and will be. This was one of the motivations driving Christian mission in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Second, the Church is universal because ‘it teaches completely, and without any omissions,’ the whole body of Christian truth. This is an important point, which we considered in Faith and the Creeds. The Church is the depository and transmitter of the whole Christian faith, not simply those parts of it that are thought to be relevant to its own situation.
As someone who has studied the history of the Church, I have often noticed the tendency of one generation to regard some aspect of the Christian tradition as being of little interest, only for a later generation to rediscover its importance. The survival of the Christian faith depends upon the full richness of its intellectual, spiritual and ethical teachings being preserved and transmitted. We simply do not know what challenges we may face in the future, and which of the many resources of our faith may come into their own in meeting them. Christianity doesn’t always need to develop new ideas; it can reach back into its past, and rediscover ideas and approaches that have a new relevance in today’s context.
That’s one of the big themes that C. S. Lewis develops. Lewis discovered that many classic theological ideas developed by Christian writers of the Renaissance could help him think through the big questions of faith. This naturally made him want to share these with his readers. In works like Mere Christianity, Lewis took some classic Christian themes and gave them a new lease of life by reworking them and presenting them in imaginative and creative ways. We see the same pattern time and time again, especially in the field of spirituality. Modern writers discover the rich potential of earlier thinkers and interpret and present them in new and helpful ways, so that they can enrich us today.
My own special interest is the relation of science and faith. Back in the 1990s, I was trying to develop a way of thinking that would provide a good framework for thinking about integrating scientific and Christian ways of thinking about creation. I soon realized that others had thought about these questions long before me! There was no need to reinvent the wheel! In his commentary on the book of Genesis, written around 401, Augustine of Hippo talked about creation as an instantaneous act of God, which brought the universe into being, followed by a long process of development, guided by God’s providence. It’s a very helpful approach. Yet it’s just one example of how earlier Christian thinkers can stimulate and resource us today. Most of the great questions of faith have been discussed by earlier generations, and we can learn by listening in on their conversations. The Church is thus a repository of inherited wisdom, available for us to rediscover and reappropriate.
Third, the Church is there for every kind of person. We might call this a ‘sociological catholicity’. To put it technically, we could say that the Christian faith transcends human social constructions, such as nationality or class. The Church declares that there is a vertical dimension to our life that is, in the end, more important than any of its horizontal dimensions. This does not mean that Christianity devalues or denies things that really matter to people, such as their nationality or ethnic identity. It simply asks us to avoid thinking that these are of ultimate importance.
In practice, Christianity affirms the importance of the universality of the Church, while respecting particularities. Churches frequently develop specialist ministries, often because particular groups are seen to have special needs. Individual congregations can develop a social identity, mirroring the locality in which they are based. But the basic point remains the same: the Church is, and is meant to be, for all who are drawn to God.
Finally, the Church is entrusted with a gospel that is able to meet the needs of all people. It ‘universally treats and cures every kind of sin’. The Church has the resources to deal with the problems of humanity – past, present and future. But that doesn’t mean that the Church can be complacent. Each generation has to ensure that the Christian faith is explained and communicated effectively, rather than relying on what previous generations found accessible and helpful. Why is this important? Well, one of the points that I take away from reflecting on this section of the creed is summed up in Cyril of Jerusalem’s remark that the Church is called to teach ‘completely, and without any omissions, all the doctrines which ought to be known’. I find this challenging because I have settled into my own way of thinking about the Christian faith, which highlights some of its themes and tends to overlook or marginalize some others. Now I’m not alone in doing this! But it’s not right.
The creeds challenge us not to become complacent or lazy. They offer us a map, so that we can explore the landscape of faith more fully. If some theme seems unimportant or uninteresting to us, maybe it’s because we haven’t investigated it properly. This is an especially important point for preachers, who all too often orbit their own particular favourite topics and texts and fail to encourage and enable their congregations to discover the full riches of faith.
The fourth mark: an apostolic Church
Finally, we turn to consider what it signifies to say that the Church is ‘apostolic’. The word ‘apostle’ is derived from the Greek verb apostellein, ‘to send out’, and means something like a ‘messenger’ or ‘emissary’. In the New Testament, it has the developed sense of ‘someone who is commissioned to preach the good news’ or ‘someone who Jesus of Nazareth authorized to preach on his behalf ’. The Gospels speak of Jesus singling out twelve of his disciples and naming them ‘apostles’ (Mark 3.14; Luke 6.13), and there are occasional references to this inner group of disciples as ‘the Twelve’ (Matthew 10.2).
In the New Testament letters, the word is used in a slightly different sense, meaning those who have been indirectly commissioned by Jesus of Nazareth to proclaim the good news. Perhaps the most obvious example is Paul of Tarsus, who clearly understood that he had encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and been commanded to preach in his name. Paul’s major letters to the churches at Rome and Corinth all open with a declaration of his calling to be an apostle. Other figures in the New Testament, including Barnabas and Apollos, are also referred to in this way. At one point, there is a suggestion that this role became part of the ministry of the churches – for example, the letter to the Ephesians speaks of some within the churches being called to be ‘apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers’ (Ephesians 4.11).
What does it mean to speak of the Church as ‘apostolic’? For many Christians, the idea of ‘apostolic succession’ is important, as it highlights the continuity between the churches of today and the first Christian community. There are three basic points to explore.
The first is historical. The Church can track its origins back to the apostles. This was of huge importance to the early church, as it faced off rival visions of Christianity that emerged in the second century. These had no connection with the apostles and were often recent inventions of maverick writers who mimicked the style of the Gospels or argued that they had some special divine endorsement (not recognized by anyone else, of course) to preach a new gospel.
The early Christian writer Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130– c. 200) emphasized that the Church had inherited two things from the apostles: the texts that we now call the New Testament, and the right way of interpreting these texts. Historical continuity with the apostles was seen as safeguarding the apostolic preaching. The Church taught what they taught, having ‘received this tradition from the apostles’.10
The second theme emphasizes this further: the first Christians are recorded as having ‘devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching’ (Acts 2.42). In one of his earliest letters, Paul asked believers to ‘stand firm and hold fast to the traditions’ that they had been taught by himself, Silvanus and Timothy (2 Thessalonians 2.15). The later letters continue to emphasize the importance of receiving and passing on the apostolic teaching, which is described as the ‘good treasure entrusted to you’ (2 Timothy 1.14).
Two complementary, yet distinct, models of ensuring connection with the apostolic church have developed within Christianity. The first holds that links with the apostles are best maintained and demonstrated institutionally: that is, through bishops who can demonstrate a continuity of succession back through history, eventually connecting up with the apostles themselves. The second places an emphasis upon the Bible as a record of the apostolic teaching, and holds that continuity with the ‘good treasure entrusted to you’ is maintained through the public reading of the Bible at Christian worship and through preaching on its themes.
The third point concerns the Church continuing the evangelistic, pastoral and social ministry of the apostles. Many churches follow a three-fold understanding of this ministry, consisting of bishops, presbyters or priests, and deacons. Today’s ministers continue with the ministry of the apostles – for example, in baptizing people, or in inviting believers to share in bread and wine, following Jesus’ command to his disciples to do this in remembrance of him (Luke 22.19).
Taken together, these three aspects of the apostolicity of the Church speak to us of a community that is deeply rooted in history, concerned to safeguard and pass on its good news for the world. Yet the idea of the apostolicity of the Church also speaks to each believer in a much deeper way. It reassures us that we are connected by faith to the apostles themselves. They are part of our history; we are part of theirs.
There is much more that could be said about each of these four ‘marks’ of the Church, although some readers may feel that our discussion has already gone far beyond the theme of ‘the Spirit of grace’! But the Church was called into being by that Spirit, which continues to guide and energize it, so we cannot avoid thinking about its shape, form and function. The creeds provide us with a toolkit for deepening our understanding of the nature of the Church, so we can build this into our thinking.
In bringing our reflections on the Church to a close, let’s reflect on an analogy for the Christian community that many within today’s Western cultural context find especially helpful: the idea of the Church as a ‘colony of heaven’.
The Church as a colony of heaven
The letters of the New Testament were written at a time when Roman power was at its greatest. Rome established and maintained its authority by means of the colony (Latin: colonia). In one of his letters, Paul develops the idea of the Church as a ‘colony’ – not of Rome, but of heaven. What might he have meant by this?
Unfortunately, modern Western ideas of ‘colonies’ are largely shaped by the outcome of European imperialism in the nineteenth century, when overseas territories were in effect annexed as belonging to a European state, such as Great Britain or France. The Roman idea of a colony was very different. For a start, the term referred, not to a territory, but to a city or township. When a city was conquered, its administration was handed over to Roman settlers. Typically, a city would be populated by Roman citizens or by inhabitants of the region around Rome (‘Latins’). These colonies would be seen as extensions of the mother city abroad, with citizens enjoying the right of return to Rome.
Rome, of course, was not alone in establishing colonies in the ancient world. Many Greek cities established colonies, and one such was Krenides in Macedonia. This city was captured by Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, and renamed Philippi in his honour. It was taken over by the Romans in 148 bc, and in New Testament times was populated by Roman citizens and governed according to Roman law.11 Although Philippi was situated in the Greek-speaking Roman province of Macedonia, its official language was Latin and its public buildings were modelled on those of Rome. Philippi was, in effect, a relocated, scaled-down version of that great city.
This historical detail is needed to make sense of one of the most remarkable features of Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi: its use of the Roman colonia as a way of understanding the place of the Church. Paul assumes that his readers in Philippi, already familiar with this political model, will understand his allusion to the situation in the colony and its implications for thinking about the Christian life. ‘Our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Philippians 3.20).12 What does he mean?
The immediacy of Paul’s analogy is now lost on us, and we must therefore reconstruct and analyse what would have been intuitive and obvious to Paul’s original intended readers. The best sermon analogies are fresh and imaginatively compelling, making immediate and plausible connections with the life and experience of their audience. Two thousand years later, this one needs exploring and unpacking.
Paul’s central theme is that, just as Philippi saw itself as an outpost of Rome in the distant province of Macedonia, so Christians must see themselves as a colony of heaven on earth. The idea of Christians being ‘citizens of heaven’ came naturally to Paul, since he himself held Roman citizenship and was aware of the privileges that this brought. There are three ways in which Paul’s analogy would have connected with his readers in Philippi.
First, Philippi was not where they really belonged. They were Romans. Roman citizens residing in Philippi had the right to return home to the metropolis after their service in the colony. Paul’s point is that one of the ‘benefits of Christ’ – that is, what Jesus of Nazareth won for believers by his obedience, death and resurrection – was the privilege of being a citizen of heaven. The greatest privilege of a citizen of a great city was the right to live there permanently. Roman citizens had the right to reside in the world’s greatest city, even though they might serve the Empire in some of its most far-flung regions.
Second, the Roman colony at Philippi spoke Latin, the language of their native Rome. The practicalities of living in Macedonia required that they be able to speak other languages (Paul, after all, wrote in Greek to the church at Philippi). Nevertheless, they kept their native language alive. And third, they observed the laws and customs of Rome at Philippi. In both these ways – through language and laws – they maintained their identity as Roman citizens. One day they would return to their homeland. In the meantime, they kept alive its memory – partly to recall the past, and partly to anticipate the future.
The Church is a community of believers, a colony of heaven on earth, a place in which the ‘Spirit of grace’ (Zechariah 12.10, AV) dwells. In its worship and prayer, the Church speaks the language of heaven. Although we live on earth, we observe the customs and values of our real homeland. Christians thus live in two worlds and must learn to negotiate their boundaries.
In this book, we have reflected on Christian understandings of the Holy Spirit, human nature and the Church, picking up on some of the statements set out in the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. We shall have more to say about the place of the Church in Christian life and thought in the next volume in this series, especially as we explore the place of the sacraments in sustaining and informing the life of faith.
Our thoughts now turn to the great theme of the Christian hope and the way in which this transforms and sustains the Christian life. What is this Christian hope and how does it affect how we think and act? In The Christian Life and Hope, the final volume in this series, we shall reflect on how the creeds give us a framework for Christian living, as much as for Christian believing.